Big Plans

by Bob Shea
illustrated by Lane Smith
Hyperion 2008

He's got big plans! Big plans (he says)! Over and over and over...

Last year author Shea gave us some New Socks to play with, and they were good. Just the one image of that a chicken, with glasses, using a sock as a phone was enough for me. That's how kids are, that's how they play, I'm good. I think that for a certain age level picture books ought to try and capture that sense of childlike whimsy (claiming they're the biggest thing in the ocean, for example) and New Socks did it.

Shea's back, tugging illustrator Lane Smith for the ride, and things don't roll so smoothly. We start with a boy facing the corner of his classroom, obviously on punishment, the chalkboard full of all the "I will not's" he's most likely committed. From this single opening spread we learn that this boy rolls his eyes, schemes, laughs when others speak, isn't nice, proves the teacher wrong, considers himself the boss of the class, and announces that what he says goes.

I hate this kid.

I hate this kid so much that everything that follows better show me in some way that he is charming or in some other ways undeserving of this punishment in the corner, otherwise this book is really going to piss me off.

This book pissed me off.

He's got big plans, he announces, and he screams these words in 240 point type across most of the book. He's going to shout at the yes-men in the boardroom, take on the mayor, verbally assault the president. He's going to wear a skunk as a hat (because the only thing that stinks worse is this kid's attitude) and march all over the world shouting down everyone and everything else with his big plans. He's going to take over a losing football team (with his yes-man mynah bird) because losing is not part of his big plans. He'll order people to do this and that, and when he goes to the moon he'll order the rocks be moved so they can be read from Earth announcing his big plans.

And in the last spread we see that all his planning and scheming were a direct result of all the things surrounding him in the time out corner. There's a map of the moon and a book of presidents, and his snide little smirk that says "Yeah, they can put me in the corner, but I'll show them one day."

I never want that kid to leave the corner.

You know how it is when you get an email from someone who doesn't realize that writing in all caps reads like shouting? This book feels just like that, only worse. It's a bossy kid with a microphone hooked up to the Who's loudspeaker system shouting about his big plans at 160 decibels ten feet from your face. Did it have to be so loud, Lane? Couldn't the kid be less of a schmuck and more of a dreamer? Couldn't there be something in this kid that would make us want to root for him to take over the country and fly to the moon and be the star football player?

Not cute, not endearing, and please, let no one read this to boys at story hour unless they want an army of bossy boys shouting down adults and thinking they own the world, or a dozen time-out corners in need of occupants.

1001 People/Events That Made America

I'm a particular fan of American history in that I'm particular about the parts I like. It isn't an ideological divide as much as it is that there are certain periods that appeal to me for some reason. I'm fond of the colonialists and the American Revolution, but for the stories of the smaller moments and not the battles. I also have a soft spot for the socialist movement of the 1930's and anything that sheds light on the deceptive prosperity of post-war American in the 1950's and 60's. In a lot of cases, the history I'm attracted to are the stories of people who left a lasting impression.

I'll be frank: what originally drew me to these books by Alan Axelrod -- 1001 People Who Made America and 1001 Events That Made America -- was the subtitle on 1001 Events -- "A Patriot's Handbook." Indeed! 1001 events to serve as a handbook for patriots? Now I'm curious.

1001 Events proved to be exactly the book I expected, a collection of short paragraphs that chronicle the history of the country from the original Asian migration 40,000 years ago to Hurricane Katrina. Though presented chronologically, Axelrod suggests (and I agree) that the book should be perused for areas of preference. Using the index in the back one could look up a topic of interest -- like Manifest Destiny -- and read a quick summary to sate one's curiosity before glancing at the entries to either side for a little historical context. In this instance there is a paragraph immediately preceding about the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club formalizing the rules for baseball, disputed by the suggestion that the game had been invented in Philadelphia 12 years earlier. The entry following manifest Destiny informs us that Texas was admitted into the Union, "vitually ensuring a war with Mexico." Why is that? Well, you'll have to read back a few pages to find out what's been going on in that part of the country.

That, for me, is the joy of this sort of collection, being able to jump around at will. The actual content is fairly safe -- no mention of the Chinese perhaps discovering America, but also no mention of when the Russians first occupied Alaska -- and the brevity of the information given ensures that the curious will need to seek detailed information elsewhere. I was surprised to see that a certain Volney Palmer of Philadelphia becomes the first ad agent and coins the term "advertising agency" in 1841. Not very long after that we get our first "modern" presidential campaigns full of slogans, songs, and negative attack ads. God Bless America!

Which leads me to Axelrod's other book, which in some ways s more satisfying. It would seem a daunting task to believe that the number of people it took to "make" American can be reduced to 1001, but this alphabetical listing of noted Americans does a fine job.

In addition to the usual suspects -- the presidents, the rich and famous -- are the names of those readers might know but never considered the person behind the name. The Armour behind the meat packing business, the Colt behind the gun, the Henry McCarty who was Billy the Kid. I'm pleased to see a fair number of players in the Watergate saga are here: Woodward and Bernstein, of course, but Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Hunt, Dean, and Sam Ervin all make an appearance. The last time I saw a high school history textbook the Watergate scandal was given cursory coverage, and certainly less than what there is here. Usually we get that Nixon was involved in a break-in and cover-up and that's about it. These entries won't fill in all the 18-minute gaps but it's a start.

Artists, musicians and writers are also represented (though not as well represented as I'd like) as are some whose distinction in "making" this country can be seen as dubious. The Reverend Jim Jones and the cuddly Charles Manson are here, but so is Monica Lewinsky. That these people had an effect on events in our nation cannot be ignored, but to say their actions "made" this country what it is strikes me as a bit much. This is where the limitation of 1001 entries is perhaps the book's weakness. I find myself wishing there were more artists mentioned, more women... but to the exclusion of whom?

I suppose questions like that cannot be helped. Recently I was asked to name my top three films of all times and found myself stumbling. For every title I could come up with there were easily three more that sprang to mind, and suddenly I was trying to find some way to winnow down a couple dozen into just three. I suspect it's no less difficult narrowing a list of noted Americans down to 1001 as well.

I found little in 1001 Events to support the claim toward being a patriot's handbook -- unless the implication is that it contains all the information one might need to know to pass a citizenship exam -- and noticed that in the paperback edition National Geographic has left the subtitle off the cover. It's easy to tout patriotism and another to define it. Leave the fuzzy work to politicians and give me raw bits of history to gnaw on instead.


(This post also appears over at Guys Lit Wire. Really, you haven't checked it out yet? You really should.)

Duel! Burr and Hamilton's Deadly War of Words

by Dean Brindell Fradin
illustrated by Larry Day
Walker Books 2008

It's a reflection of my quality education that I graduated without knowing the story of the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Or it's proof of what a horrible student I used to be. But perhaps if I'd had this nifty little picture book when I was younger it would have stuck with me while I was attempting to handle the grind of AP US History at the same time my family was falling apart.

In a few quick pages Fradin shows us the troubled childhoods of these two men, how they suffered similarly as boys, and grew to be men with something to prove. Throughout their adult lives their paths cross and intertwine, Hamilton the insecure with a chip on his shoulder for being foreign born, Burr the arrogant with anger management issues. It quickly becomes apparent that these two men were as star-crossed as any, rivals fated to shoot it out on the shores of the Hudson river one cold morning. To summarize any more would be to retell the book, and Fradin does such a great job swiftly hitting the highlights in this historic rivalry that it makes you want to reach out and shake either Hamilton and Burr and point out "Dudes! You're on the same side! Quit fighting!"

Day's watercolors have some best dramatic compositions I've seen for a non-fiction book in a stretch. The cover image looks like a frame borrowed from a spaghetti western, and the illustrations throughout are no less striking for their choice of angles and moments.

As always with picture books like this I'm a little uncertain about the audience. Readers old enough to be interested in the details of history like this would prefer, to my mind, something other than a picture book.

Ten Mile River

by Paul Griffin
Dial 2008

In a sentence: It's Of Mice and Men, only set on Manhattan, and it's dogs and not rabbits, and instead of the big guy being strong and dumb he's strong and smart, only he's book smart and he still takes lip from his scrawny pretty-boy partner because... uh, let me get back to you on that.

The premise does seem to lean heavily on Steinbeck even if that was never the intention. Two underage juvie loners, Jose and Ray, on their own and living off the fat of the land (taking cash for breaking windshields and boosting whatever else they need), living hand-to-mouth until they are 20 which is when Jose thinks is a good time to think about the future, if he should make it that far.

Ray, hefty and insecure, could probably return to a foster home, land himself a good education, and really make something for himself. But he keeps taking orders from Jose who is one dumbass mistake after another and prone to taking off his shirt to show off his abs in front of girls. Ray's bashful longing for a girl at a salon leads both him and Jose toward going straight, but with the opportunity/cliche to do "one last job" and the retire (Jose wants the cash to buy a motorcycle) everything falls apart and the boys are incarcerated and and taken back to square one.

The bond that holds these boys together is elusive. They fell in at juvie a while back and seem to have one of those classic unspoken man-love relationships. Ray plays the housewife at times, insisting on cleaning and being left to cook, and Jose both takes advantage of the situation and gives Ray a hard time for it. The homophobic banter is authentic learned-from-the-inside posturing but there may be something just below the surface to justify it; we are never really given insight into their background to know for certain.

Come what may, it's clear that Jose's living on borrowed time and Ray will turn out okay.

Griffin's debut, though it feels derivative and mines familiar territory, is assured and authentic in its language. Wannabe delinquents will enjoy Ray and Jose's exploits from a safe vantage point though I totally suspect the prime audience for this book are the sheltered, privileged kids who need the occasional dose of reality to remind them that there's another world just outside their comfort zones.

I liked it, I didn't like it... my opinion about the book seemed to go with the breeze. I think once the Steinbeck imagery entered my head it was hard not to go looking for the parallel commentary -- how are Ray and Jose like modern day depression-era drifters George and Lenny, what's the underside of the homeless juvenile off-the-grid workforce look like, that sort of thing. I should let Griffin's book stand on its own but like I said, whether it tried to or not, it brought on the comparisons on its own and once it did it became impossible not the read it the way one would a modern day adaptation of Hamlet. There is tragedy all over this from page one and the question is: will it resonate with a the YA reader it's intended for?

Honestly: dunno.

Sons of Liberty

by Marshall Poe
illustrated by Leland Purvis
Aladdin Turning Points series 2008

This first title in a new series of graphic novels that focuses on "turning points" in history follows the members of a fictitious Boston family as they endure British rule from 1768 through the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That's the nuts and bolts and as things go the book is about as dry as that description.

This is the down side of the "trend" in graphic novels. "Let's take the most exciting moments in history and show them in a comic book format and that'll make them less dull." Uh, no it doesn't. The idea of having fictitious events "blended" with factual moments sounds like it could be dynamic, but if the interest isn't there going in you have to create that interest.

We start with Nathaniel Smithfield at age ten excited by the rousing words of the patriots, much to his loyalist father's dismay. Okay, so you want to set up the tension between generations, and you want to play with history... you still have to provide both the history and the emotional tug. You can't just assume the reader will know what's going on in Boston in 1768 and you can't portray a ten year old boy like a modern day boy in colonial clothing.

In a visual level this is sort of a mess as well. I missed the initial transition between the "chapters" in Nathaniel's life, from ten year old play-soldier to teenage apprentice to engraver Paul Revere (yawn). It wasn't readily apparent that Nathaniel had aged, he just looked inconsistently drawn. This was followed by a clumsy bit of exposition meant to show how Nathaniel had grown in his beliefs and feed a bit of history at the same time. And is that his dad he's talking to? That wasn't clear either, and on the whole being able to recognize characters (no matter how thinly fleshed out) is crucial in sequential storytelling, particularly if you're going to follow a character as they age.

If you have even the most passing knowledge of American history (uh, we got our independence is all you need to know here) then it's obvious from page one how this ends. The boy will grow, and with him his sympathies toward the the colonialist cause, and in the end dad will be converted by reason to liberty. Yea, liberty. What would rock, what would be new and fresh and make history come to life are all the details from the other side. Let's see it through the blind eyes of the loyalists -- because we know how it turns out in the end, let us see the reaction to those on the losing side, how they lived it and rationalized it If history is written by the winners let the winners be gracious enough to show both sides.

Poe, a professor of history, doesn't give us anything that we haven't already seen before in Forbes' Johnny Tremain, or even Lawson's Ben and Me for that matter. With an eager audience like the one currently built into graphic novels aimed at kids why not shoot for the moon? Instead of a passive-aggressive boy who throws the first rock in a riot, then wonders "did I just do that?" lets see something that might hit a little closer to home: show us how the occupying forces came to overstay their welcome, and how liberty was forged as a result of their oppression, really show it. Show the oppression and the struggle and not merely a couple of brash statements illustrated by the slamming of a hand on a table.

It's hard not to constantly see how history echoes, and to be accused of revisionism in the process, but there are some uncomfortable points in Colonial American history that inform who and what we are as a nation today. Why give us a retread of textbook material in comic form when we can deliver so much more to today's young readers?

Shooting the Moon

Frances O'Roark Dowell
Atheneum 2008

Jamie Dexter is an army brat, her dad a full bird Colonel running a base in Texas during the Vietnam war. When her brother skips college, and medical school, to enlist Jamie couldn't be happier. In her 12-going-on-13 year old mind, there can be no higher honor than to serve one's country. Isn't that what her dad is always saying? But then why does her dad, always referred to as the Colonel, keep trying to talk his son out of his enlistment? And why instead of letters does her brother keep sending Jamie rolls of film for her to develop?

It's apparently natural that history repeats itself as the echoes from Vietnam and our current situation in Iraq reverberate in literature. As seen through Jamie's eyes we watch her move away from her pro-war position as she comes to meet and know other soldiers on the base. She never waivers in her pride for her brother, never loses the respect of or for her father, but a shift takes place when she comes to realize that the price of service, the high price of honor, may not always be justified.

I walked into this book cold and I wasn't sure I was going to like it. That may be the point, to have a young girl so gung-ho for war that it might appear a bit uncomfortable or distasteful. Naturally she's going to grow and change by the end - she's in those awkward years as it is - so the only real questions are how will she change, and how much.

But the book has a serious flaw: it's missing it's final third. In the last couple of pages (no, I won't spoil the ending here) there is a new piece of information that would seriously effect Jamie's entire family. Worse, the two years following this information are essentially tidied up in two paragraphs that seriously cheat the reader from watching the effect on Jamie as she grows into being a young woman. If this was a conscious decision to withhold this information in lieu of a sequel, it was a serious mistake. As it stands, this ending is a sort of slap in the face. Imagine if the Harry Potter books jumped from number four to number seven with two pages to cover the two years in between. That's how much I feel the ending here leaves out.

Some might disagree. The book did receive the Boston Globe/Horn Book Honor for fiction this year.

As a final note, this book and Barbara Kerley's Greetings From Planet Earth both deal with Vietnam from a child's eye view and the moon features prominently as a symbol in both. It's curious, because Kerely's book deals with what happens after the soldier returns home and less about how the family felt when it happened. In that sense these books might be well suited for a classroom to discuss the full range of feelings concerning either the Vietnam War or the effect of war on families in general.

I'm the Best Artist In the Ocean

by Kevin Sherry
Dial 2008

The follow-up to I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean turns out to be The Biggest Disappointment of the Year so far.

Giant Squid is back, and being a creature full of ink, he just has to draw. He's pretty goo at drawing all the other fish he sees -- he can draw this, he can draw that -- just as he was boastful of all the fish he used to be bigger than. Leave it to a couple of disgruntled clown fish and a shark to rain on Squid's creative spirit by pointing out that he's making a mess. Then, after a similar thoughtful moment Squid announces that he's making a "Mess-terpiece!" Fold open the the extended spread to reveal that Squid has tagged a whale with oceanic graffiti.

What was great in the previous book was that Squid was a boastful little boy. Like a boy first able to grasp the concepts of language and self, Squid defines himself according to his limited knowledge until he realizes the error of his boast. Then, quite energetically, he embraces that realization and realigns his ego with his environment: he's the biggest thing inside the whale!

But the brag of being the best artist in the ocean doesn't make sense because he's the only artist in the ocean, as far as we can tell. Comparing himself to nothing, the fact of the matter remains in question. Logically one would assume he would find a better artist in nature and then could readjust his claim, but not here. Instead he utters a play on words and leaves us with a very elaborate illustration.

I have to interject here that I went to art school and have more art history in me than I know what to do with. That's me being Squid, but the boast is for a purpose. See, when you read the tiny print at the back of the book you discover that Sherry modeled the endpapers off the work of Miro and the illustration in the whale was influenced by Picasso's Guernica.

The graffiti on the whale is an homage to a cubist's rendition of the horror of the Spanish Civil War? What. The. Hell.

Now, if I hadn't read this note I would have just tripped merrily along, but then I had to go back and look. I don' quite understand how Miro fits into it, but is the Guernica-whale supposed to represent the Squid-artist's depiction of the horror of the oceanic life cycle? I mean, I guess it's cool and all, if you get it (which I didn't on the first pass) but is that really something to casually work into a picture book?

To make a sequel to I'm the Biggest Thing in the Ocean it would have seemed natural to me that Squid have some other illusion of himself exposed, knocked down another peg, or perhaps he could help some other sea life see the error of their ways. Perhaps we could learn something about the oldest thing in the ocean, where we move from old dolphins to old tortoises to crusty Old Mr. Coelacanth.

I guess that's the lesson I never learn. No matter how much I want sequels to favorite books I really should be more careful what I wish for.

The Willoughbys

by Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin / Walter Lorraine Books 2008

I resisted this initially because I was deep in other reading and couldn't get to it. Then when I had the time to get to it I resisted because, oh, I don't know. Because I was afraid it would suck, and I'd hate to have to say that about a Lois Lowry book?

Fear not, I will not say that The Willoughbys sucks. Neither does it shine.

It does what it sets out to do: it tells of a family of unpleasant children who wish nothing more than to rid themselves of their parents and live as orphans in the world. While fully cognisant of classic books concerning orphans in this world -- Horatio Alger and Dickens tales and the like -- the story is set in another world altogether. It appears to have been hewn from the same fabric as children's books from the mid-20th century. In it's sparse settings, it's descriptions of people, in it's overall vibe it all but shares the same literary lineage as books by Roald Dahl and William Pene Du Bois.

These are no slouch authors, and this is not feint praise, yet there is this lingering feeling that the book resides in a place that isn't so much a shadowy netherworld that parallels our own but a sort of Disneyland facsimile, where the details are perfect but the grit and soul are missing.

The Willoughby children, headfed up by the obnoxious older brother, decide that they would be oh-so-much better of in the world if they were orphans. Realizing that their reprehensible parents don't care much for them, they concoct a plan to send them abroad on a dangerous vacation in the hopes of an untimely demise. Unknown to them, the Willoughby adults have decided it best to vacate their house and, once away, sell off their possessions and leave the children to fend for themselves. Naturally there subplots, chiefly concerning a baby left on the doorstep, a rich-but-heartbroken candy inventor, an immature nanny, and some shenanigans concerning a mother and her son abandoned in Switzerland.

All of this Victoriana plays well into the hands of children who may be yearning for something akin to Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events. The only problem is... who's reading those books anymore? They appear untouched every time I check the shelves in my local library, and they certainly aren't selling in the stores. It begs the question of a phenomenon rather than a predilection toward this type of story, though Harry Potter did sort of redraw the map for dark adventure. Still, there isn't much call for a book that parodies those classics, so what has to sell here isn't the atmosphere but the humor.

And it's a dry humor, droll, one for only the sharpest crayons in the box. I know of at least one fourth grade class whose teacher read this book aloud to them toward the end of the year. The comments I heard were "It was pretty good," and "A little weird." They didn't know the source material for these ragamuffin tales and heard them strictly as face value modern stories. Was the audience too young? Perhaps, but an older audience would ask for more of this sort of story. A little more gore, a few more perils.

I am reminded suddenly, and for no reason whatsoever as my mind wanders, of Edward Gorey books. There comes a point where a reader suddenly gets what Gorey is doing -- internally, they grok the Edwardian-cum-Poe drawing room farce -- and from that point on the reader has become jaded. Anything similar to, but not, Gorey becomes instantly derivative and weak. So what happened here?

Lowry has given us a paper doll theatre with beautiful decor, costumed characters, even a script, but no motivation or soul. Everything is driven toward the happy ending from the very start, right down to the naming of the abandoned baby, the entirety a mechanical exercise in changing scenery but not in the joy of the story. One could (and someone has) attempt to make a story with the character cards from a game of Clue and do no worse.

I am happy to see Lowry write something not-so-serious for the middle grade set. I only wish, well, that it didn't feel so orphaned as a result.

Off Go Their Engines, Off Go Their Lights

by Janice Milusich
illustrated by David Gordon
Dutton 2008

Future generations (or species, should we not survive) will marvel at a society that would complain about gas prices while at the same time feeding their children books like this that replace warm and fuzzy animals with warm and fuzzy service vehicles as a bedtime story.

I recognize that boys like cars and trucks and things that go. I also see frantic parents looking for a book that features various books on vehicles because otherwise they cannot get them to sit still for a book. I find this combination particularly odious.

Hiding behind "friendly" service vehicles (each with its own little face across the grill) doesn't disguise the message that these anthropomorphic cars don't also represent a good deal of what's wrong with our culture. As the humans drive around town in their double-wide taxi on clean, unclutterd streets (a nostalgia for an America that never existed) the occupants watch as fire engines and delivery vehicles go about their daily duties only to be put to bed with the sing-song title refrain. "Here we go, little car, it's time for bed!" it says.

Okay, little fossil fuel guzzling, planet destroying society, time for the big sleep.

Where's the book that features the electric trolley putting in a day's work powering down? Where are all the pedicabs parked for the night, the mag-lev trains running the commuter lines?

How do you break a cultural dependence on a petroleum-based economy when you raise children to see nothing else from their earliest bedtime books?

All politics is local. Start here. Find another bedtime book.

/rant.

Tupelo Rides the Rails

by Melissa Sweet
Houghton Mifflin 2008

Covers are funny things. You're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but a lot of time goes into making those covers appealing so that you'll pick them up. Also, after the umpteen-millionth time you decide to ignore your gut feeling and give a book a chance despite its cover, and get burned, you decide that maybe you should trust the gut a little more.

So I passed this book by several times, is what I'm getting at. The cover didn't speak to me. The title didn't speak to me. Nothing about this went "woof! woof!" And generally, I'm not a dog person, and I've been seeing a lot of dog books recently that left a sour taste in my mouth.

Obviously I put the gut in check and picked it up. And then I almost gave it up again. Tupelo is deliberately left by the side of the road with his sock toy, Mr. Bones. What?! Who starts a book off by having a dog dumped by the side of the road... unless its a middle grade novel where the dog will save the family but only at the risk of his on life? That's a heavy message to dump on kids without warning. So many questions; why was Tupelo dumped? Was he a bad dog? Did he live with mean people? Won't kids wonder (and worry) about being left by the side of the road themselves?

Very quickly Tupelo sniffs out hot dogs, and a hobo camp, and a band of dogs who are themselves lost or abandoned. They take Tupelo to a hill where they each bury a bone in honor of Sirius, the dog star, their impromptu god. Then along comes Garbage Pail Tex, a hobo with a bucket of cooked hot dogs for the dogs. Once fed they hop a train to another town where Tex finds the dogs either their old masters or new homes. All find homes but Tupelo who, lacking a bone before, could not make a proper wish for a new home. He decides it is time for him and Mr. Bones to part company, to bury him and make a wish to Sirius. Garbage Pail Tex finds him and together they find Tupelo and new home.

It says something about this book that I was compelled beyond the cover and the introduction to read through. You couldn't have asked me to imagine abandoned dogs, hobos, train-hopping, star gazing, and religious ceremonies for dogs all in one place. Certainly not in a picture book, which I suppose is why this one surprises.

And here we get to that area I harp about with picture books, where editors fear that kids cannot handle sophisticated, demanding stories. I'm thinking "Wow, dog dumped by the side of the road - no one's done that before" and then it hits me in the shower: Hansel and Gretel, taken into the forest and left for dead not once but twice by their parents. These days it's a wonder you don't see libraries being pressured to purge all their Grimm stories that aren't rewritten to have more favorable (in some eyes) endings.

It was worth pushing through my misgivings about this. While it might not be one of my favorite books of the season it's certainly a title worth checking out.

Big Dumb Book: Tim, Defender of the Earth!

by Sam Enthoven
Razor Bill / Penguin 2008

Let's play a game of Mental Picture and see how things go.

First, imagine two giant monsters throwing down like a couple of WWF wrestlers in a large metropolitan city. Sort of like in a Godzilla movie, with both of these monsters a couple hundred feet tall, tossing each other into famous landmarks and obliterating the skyline. One of them is a genetically cloned T-Rex and the other is a mad-scientist- turned-humanoid-cockroach mutant.

Are you still with me?

Okay, so the city is London, not Tokyo, and both creatures are the inadvertent results of secret British government funding. There is no radioactivity involved. T-Rex makes his appearance when the funding for his project evaporates and he escapes down the Thames to the sea where he instinctively seeks the Yoda-like wisdom from a nine million year old Kraken who is the current Defender of Earth.

Have you cried uncle? But wait! When asked by the Kraken if he has a name T-Rex responds with a line pulled straight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

"There are some who call me... Tim."

Oh yes, and the mad scientist. Well, he was working with nanobots that could deconstruct organic matter at the cellular level, move about as a swarming cloud under mental telepathy, and then recombine it either as it was or modified. When his project is rebuffed by the government he takes it upon himself to take his research to the field, as it were, deconstructing roaches and rats and hapless drunks in the Underground at closing time and recombining them into his own super-self, a god-like being impervious to almost anything that can be thrown at him.

And the scientist has a daughter, Anna. And she's a bit of an outcast. And she hooks up with another outcast, a boy named Chris. And Chris has been chosen to wear a special bracelet that can harness the energy of Earth, energy that can be used by Tim. And...

I'm sorry. Once you get started with a story like this it's hard to know how much is too much. Clearly the author doesn't believe in such restrictions because he tosses everything into the pot. There are times where I would say this is a bad thing because sensory overload eventually kicks in and numbs the brain to the point of boredom, but not here.

This is the book that recently helped solidify my thinking behind the Big Dumb Book. Just as there are Big Dumb Movies that you can enjoy on a purely entertainment level, so are there books that just carry you along, like surfing a wave on absurdity. As a break from all the other required summer reading -- you know, that stuff like broccoli that's supposed to be good for you -- here's a bit funnel cake from the county fair to prevent the brain from calcifying.

Bonus time! Check out this illo to be bound into the hardcovers










Do you know a teen boy who can appreciate literature, Monty Python, and comic books? Bingo, here's their next book.

NYC dystopia x2

Today, I am cross-posting with Guys Lit Wire, the blog for books aimed at teen boys.

dys·to·pi·a –noun. a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding.

Well, there's plenty of that going around in a pair of books I'm featuring today, both of them set in New York City but written 40 years apart from one another.

First up is the dead and the gone, Susan Beth Pfeffer's sequel to Life As We Knew It. As with the previous book, the events that follow occur after an asteroid has hit the moon, knocking it out of its former orbit. Where Life As We Knew It was set in rural Pennsylvania and followed closely the struggle for survival as seen from a teen girl's perspective, the dead and the gone shows us how events unraveled through the eyes of Alex Morales, a seventeen year old boy living in Manhattan.

Alex is the second-eldest of the Morales children, his older brother Carlos is a Marine stationed on the West Coast. Alex's mom is a nurse on night duty when the book begins, possibly on her way home. His father is in Puerto Rico attending the funeral of Alex's grandmother. At home, Alex's two younger sisters wait for him to return from his night job working at a pizza parlor. The news of the asteroid's collision course is peripheral at best; most people are listening to the baseball game.

Unraveled is the best way to describe events that follow. As the shifting of the moon has profound effects on the planet's delicate ecosystem, tides have flooded the subways and knocked out all satellite transmissions. Quickly Alex moves into survival mode in order to protect his sisters and keep the family together. When his sisters ask about the safety of their missing parents Alex reassures them without hesitation that everything will be okay. Alex is as pragmatic as he is protective, shunting his emotions in order to assure their survival.

Where events felt more ominous in Pfeffer's previous exploration of this disaster scenario, here in New York City the events that unfold seem merely to hasten the inevitable. As the food shortages and flu epidemic spread, as the rich get out of town and the poor are trapped on an island left for dead, New York comes to represent the ultimate failure of the urban model of living, an unsustainable wasteland. Alex casually learns to lie and steal and, in the end, manage to get himself and one of his sisters successfully out of New York and toward a promise of a new life further inland.

Recently released for its 40th anniversary, Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! gives us another version of the Big Apple in decay. The events are no less ecological, though the cause is man-made this time.

It's the future, the end of the millennium. You'll have to forgive a book written in the 1960's for getting the future of 1999 wrong, though in many ways the book does correctly understand some of the probelms we're facing today. Harrison's premise was that the US was unconcerned with population control and that short-sidedness led to a planet where the population outstripped its resources. Greenhouse gases have ruined rich agricultural farmland, food and water is scarce, New York city is under a constant heat wave. As Harrison paints it, only the date of this scenario might be wrong as we may still be headed in this direction under global warming.

I have to break the review here to interject that this book was nothing like I had remembered it to be. I had this strange sense of double deja vu because there are familiar elements in the story that echoed both a movie adaptation of this book and the sudden realization that my disappointment was the same I felt when I first read this book as a teen. The movie was Soylent Green, and the disappointment I felt then as now was that there is no such thing as Soylent Green in the book. That is to say, if you've seen the movie and you think you know what the book is about, you don't.

Harrison tells the story of a police detective named Andy Rusch who happens to land on a case of murder that was a crime of opportunity. The problem is that the corrupt politicos believe there's something deeper going on and Andy's forced to continue to follow through on the investigation beyond when it should have been dropped. There's a girl involved, a gangster's moll, who takes up with Andy once she's out of her meal ticket. And darting through the story is the thug on the lam who shows us the seamier underside of a New York Harbor clogged with decommissioned Liberty Ships used as emergency housing for the world's refugees.

What Harrison has done is graft a noirish crime story onto a New York City that has collapsed under the weight of its population. It's a dirty, ugly world with rationed water, no electricity, a black market for produce and meat, and corruption at every level of government. Where the dead and the gone gives us the quick death of NYC Make Room! Make Room! gives us the tail end of the long, slow demise. Both versions, as written, are equally plausible portraits of a city in decay.

But in a head-to-head grudge match it's Pfeffer's book hands down as the better read. Pfeffer's book continues to draw out the disaster in diary format, one day at a time, inviting the reader to put themselves in Alex's shoes in deciding whether or not he's made the right decisions. the dead and the gone deals somewhat flatly with Alex as a protector of his sisters and there is little for him emotionally. Harrison's book has a more balanced emotional story at it's heart with Andy questioning love and what it means to live in this rotten world, but in imagining the worst aspects of his world into our future he retained some ugly racial and sexist stereotypes that, while "authentic" for a reader back in 1966, detract from the story.

the dead and the gone
by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Harcourt Children's Books 2008

Life As We Knew It
by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Harcourt Children's Books 2006

Make Room! Make Room!
by Harry Harrison
Tor Books 2008

McFig and McFly

A Tale of Jealousy, Revenge, and Death (with a Happy Ending)
by Henrik Drescher
Candlewick 2008

Blurb: Extremely satisfying in a very old-school sort of way, but what a strange planet it seems to have come from.

McFig, a widower, shows up one day having purchased a plot of land next to another widower named McFly. Both men hit it off instantly, as do their children Anton and Rosie. McFig admires his new neighbor's cottage so much that he decides to build his next door exactly like it. And McFly is more than happy to assist while the children do as neighbor children do, they play contentedly in the background.

The day after the cottage is finished McFly is startled to see McFig building a tower on top of his otherwise identical cottage. Not to be outdone, McFly builds a glass playroom on top of his cottage. Then McFig retaliates, McFly responds, both men building higher and more absurdly until one day McFly falls from the top of his weather vane and dies. McFig, having lost his friend and with nothing to build for, dies from boredom.

All the while and unattended by their fathers Anton and Rosie have grown and fallen in love. They marry after their fathers have died, tear the cottages down to their original structures, and sell off the junk. With the proceeds from their sale they build a connector between their homes to create one large home for all their kids.

And they live happily ever after.

I'm feeling this book he way I felt Brock Cole's Good Enough to Eat. It feels like an older story but I can't for the life of me source it. That the main characters are adults acting like fools, I'm all for that. I think kids get plenty of picture books that are a bit warm and fuzzy, why not give them some lessons in the realities of the adult world?

Naturally younger readers will recognize the one-up behavior, and the blind rage that causes people to behave irrationally, just as it makes perfect sense that the children of these two maniacs are clear-headed enough not to do as their fathers have done. I even like that the two men are widowers -- let's explain that concept to the children while we're at it. I think that may ultimately be what resonates with me, like many old fairy tales where the widowers marry wicked step-mother types or are completely useless without a female influence to keep them on an even keel, these guys are a bit unhinged on their own.

Drescher's art -- back-painted drawings on acetate, like animation cels -- has a jagged, folk-art quality to it, perfectly in keeping with the overall feel of the homes being built. Sort of like Gary Panter meets Howard Finster in the Grimmwald.

I don't get the feeling this is going to end up high on a lot of people's list (i.e. libraries) but if you get a chance check it out for yourself and let me know if I'm as loopy as McFly and McFig.

Introducing... Guys Lit Wire!

Taking a break here from the reviews to announce a very big project that has been in the works for some time. It's a new blog, collectively dedicated to the pursuit of matching good books with teen boys

Guys Lit Wire is live!

The origins of this blog came about late last year when a bunch of us kidlit bloggers were lamenting a lack of books for teen boys, or at least a perception that there weren't enough good books, or that boys -- especially teen boys -- were getting lost in the static because of a presumption that teen boys don't read.

So for the last six months or so a whole passel of us have been preparing for a launch of this new site that will serve as a sort of clearinghouse of reviews, interviews, and whatnot aimed at books of interest to boys. Or rather, guys.

Colleen over at Chasing Ray and Sarah at Finding Wonderland have been the primary movers and shakers working behind the scenes, lining up our schedule of posts for the rest of this year, designing it to be Made of Awesome. This final result is the culmination of a whole lot of work by a lot of people and I, for one, am excited and proud to be a part of this.

New posts go up every weekday. I'll be checking in with my first post on Wednesday the 9th. No need to mark your calendar, I'll probably cross-post my reviews. In the meantime, drop in and see what's up!

Alistair and Kip's Great Adventure!

by John Segal!
McElderry Books! 2008!

"Let's build a boat and travel to distant lands," says Alistair. And so they do.

Alistair cat and Kip the dog build themselves a boat and sail down river, into the bay, onto the open seas. A storm comes up, the waves crash their boat into a whale who saves them and takes them home.

"Tomorrow, let's build a plane."

The end.

The journey is a time-honored device in literature, all literature, but usually there is something transformative in the process. The dangers and desires of a journey have to have a purpose, otherwise what's the point? The Bard of Manchester once provided one of the most succinct examples of the power of journey

I was looking for a job, and then I found a job,
And heaven knows I'm miserable now.

See, the main character sets out to do something, and then he accomplishes what he set out to do, and his life has been transformed as a result. No such enlightenment here for Alistair and Kip as they merely come home determined to do the next day what they did the day before. Might as well have a story about a turtle and a donkey who go to the grocery store, eat what they bought, then plan to go to the store the next day.

Let me look at this story again, maybe I'm missing something. Do they have a magical adventure, something beyond the pale? No, they do not. You might be tempted to believe that their interaction with the whale is something, but in order for that to be the case you would have to marvel at a cat and dog's ability to build a boat and sail the ocean. But when dealing with anthropomorphic animals that stand in for humans we aren't supposed to be surprised at their abilities any more than we would stare at stranger in public adjusting their socks. Talking animals would expect nothing less from another -- the whale in this case -- than sympathy and understanding, unless it had been established in advance that whales were something to fear on their grand journey.

Do they glean anything from their experience? That whales are nice, perhaps, but is that the sum of their adventure? No, I don't find a great adventure here. Some nice watercolor work, totally ruined by variable type sizes throughout. That's about it.

I guess my problem is that I'm seeing a lot of books this season that all seem as limp as this, a story that could have been concocted by a small child. Wait, I take that back, I've heard small children tell much more involved stories. These would be the same children a simple book like this would be aimed at. So if kids are capable of longer stories why are the shelves filled with so many empty calories?

Sometimes I wonder if picture books aren't going to cause the demise of picture books.

Lady Liberty: A Biography

by Doreen Rappaport
illustrated by Matt Tavares
Candlewick 2008

If ever there was a model for how to write the biography of an inanimate object, this is it. Is it too early to be suggesting a contender for a Sibert award?

Rappaport begins by imagining her grandfather's journey to Elllis Island, wondering what he must have thought and felt when he first saw the Statue of Liberty. She then jumps back to Edouard de Laboulaye's dream of giving America a gift of a grand monument to its independence. Then comes sculptor Auguste Bartholdi's work to capture the essence of this dream. Then comes Gustave Eiffel's work engineering the various components of this grand monument; and Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper accounts mocking the wealthy capitalists who refused to help fund the project while soliciting the donations of average Americans -- many recent immigrants themselves -- to see the project through; and Emma Lazarus's ruminations that led to the poem that adorns the base of Lady Liberty's foundation.

Rappaport gives each person involved their say, each getting a free-verse voice in their part of the process while Matt Tavares singles out a particular moment to represent their efforts across the spread of pages. Each voice, each part of the process, brings Lady Liberty one step closer to completion.

At it's core, Lady Liberty is as much a lesson on the birth of most collaborative arts. It's as complex as the planning and construction of a bridge, as complicated in its funding as an independent motion picture, and like most visionary works, difficult to imagine in the eyes of many who toiled toward a single visionary goal.

It also highlights how another of those things assumed to be quintessentially American didn't originate in America and was viewed with skepticism and derision before ultimately being accepted. We didn't invent hot dogs or hamburgers, or even the fireworks we set off on the Fourth of July. Our national anthem was based on a British drinking song. But were it not for a French visionary, a French artist, an pro-Zionist poet, a Hungarian-born journalist, and multi-national labor force we most likely wouldn't have this symbol of liberty, this internationally recognized beacon of all things most Americans hold dear.

For those who cannot visit Liberty Island and follow the Lady's journey in her presence this book is an excellent alternative. Even better in some respects, because it clearly shows the connections between the people from different backgrounds and nations, in the same way this nation was constructed as a collaborative effort. A lesson I feel we need to reinforce for children in these divisive times.

Sisters & Brothers

Sibling Relationships in the Animal World
by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
Houghton Mifflin 2008

I learn more from picture books than I probably did back in high school. Of course, I have a different perspective on what interests me than when I was younger, and kid books are pretty much all I read these days so I'm probably not learning as much as I could.

Still.

Did you know that armadillos give birth to four young, either all male or all female, each an exact clone of the other? I can't say I did, and that would make for an interesting relationship if you were raised along side three exact copies of yourself. More weirder than being identical twins.

Turkeys, on the other hand, hang around with mom for a year and then the ladies go off to mate while the brothers stay together in a band. Dudes, it's like some guys I went to school with! I guess they were turkeys of a sort.

Then there are the naked mole rats. Okay, they are practically blind and live in these huge burrows underground, that I knew. What I didn't know was that each colony has a single mom -- sort of like a queen bee -- and that when they meet each other in a narrow passage way they have to sniff one another to determine who has seniority, because the eldest gets to climb over the youngest.

And then finally, a puzzle piece I didn't realize was missing in a story I conceived long ago. New Mexico Whiptail Lizards are all female. There are no males. That just blows my mind.

I think this is the first time I can remember where the text upstaged Jenkins cut paper illustrations. Or perhaps I've just gotten so used to his work that it no longer surprises and delights the way it used to. That doesn't make it bad, it's just become as familiar as Eric Carle's style in it's sameness.

By using sibling relationships to explore these unique animal families, Page and Jenkins supply a lot of great information in a clean, easy to understand style that is obviously engaging enough for an adult but readily accessible to young readers.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some Whiptail Lizards to research.

The Beeman

by Laurie Krebs
illustrations by Valeria Cis
Barefoot Books 2008

This is a neat little picture book introduction to the art of beekeeping. Told in gently rhymed text (that didn't annoy the way a lot of rhymed text does these days) the story follows a boy and his grandfather the bee man as they dress, build a colony, study, care for, and harvest honey from man-made hives. Instead of the usual single page of back matter there are four pages all about bees, and a recipe for honey apple muffins that looks enticing.

Really, that's it. There's a load of great information that doesn't feel at all like it's teaching, or trying to be educational. A nice little book.

Oh. Huh. Look at that. This book was originally published in 2002 by National Geographic. Who knows what that's about? Different illustrator. Haven't seen the original to make comparisons, but there's a difference in page numbers for the two books, so perhaps the earlier version doesn't have the back matter? Whatevs. Doesn't change my opinion, I'm sticking with nice.

Nice.

Hen Hears Gossip

by Megan McDonald
illustrated by Joung Un Kim
Greenwillow 2008

I always understood a gossiping hen to hold negative connotations, not just about gossip but about a type of woman who get together with like and hold hen parties. Am I wrong, is this not considered a negative stereotype?

And I cannot be the only person with that song from The Music Man running through his head.

There. Now it's in your head too.

We start with hen, who overhears cow say something to pig. Gossip! She loves Gossip! And so she spreads the word.

From here the book turns into a game of telephone, where the message changes as each of the barnyard animals spreads the word. The messages are, of course, absurd, and as the animals track the original message back to the source it turns out that cow was telling pig that her baby calf was born.

I'm just "okay" with this book. I think if it had begun and been titled with another animal I wouldn't have that negative connotation rolling around inside my head, and then it would be a somewhat amusing story about some misheard information. I suppose one could extract the lesson that gossip is bad but in order for that to be the case here there would need to be some sort of consequence for the gossip. That's the missing component, the one that would give the story some depth.

I guess I expect too much story from what is, at heart, just a misheard rumor.

Physics: Why Matter Matters

created by Basher
written by Dan Green
Kingfisher 2008

From the people who brought you the Periodic Table...

Well, it's been a year since we last visited our friends the Elements, those hip cats who it turns out have their own personalities. Now Basher and Green have given us a companion volume explaining the world of Physics. The book opens with a quote from the the Big Guy on a bike:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein

Yup, that just about sums up what's going on here, proving the Einstein's smaller theories were pretty solid as well. The physical world and its inhabitants are once again anthropomorphed and grouped by association. We get the Old School dudes (Mass, Weight, Density, &c.), the Hot Stuff (Energy, Entropy...), the Wave Gang (Sound, Frequency...), the Light Crew (Radio, Microwave...), and so on. It's all here, each aspect with its own spread, a first-person breakdown on the one side and a graffiti-like cartoon portrait on the other. There's also a "first discovered" box and a short historical list of how or when they were famously employed.

As with the Periodic Table: Elements With Style, I think this book works best in the classroom as a supplemental text (though used correctly they could be primary) with wide appeal. A great introduction for budding young scientists to the basics of physics, a playful refresher for older young scientists, and an easily digestible crash-course for adults who need the background to keep up with their budding young scientists.

In a semi-related note, check out what happens when the Periodic Table meets Art. Courtesy of Sara over at Read Write Believe.