The Monster Truck Rally of Picture Books

Warning: You should only read Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime aloud to a child if you are willing to do the following - 1) read the entire book with a voice like the announcer for the Monster Truck Rally commercials - deep and resonating and always ending with a slightly higher intonation; 2) roar like a dinosaur; 3) giggle uncontrollably with the audience you are reading to.

The illustrations are simple lines with rich hues- there's no nuance here - just simple dinosaurness in techn-o-color. The text too is straightforward - marked by a bold, all caps type face that gives us all the information we need ("Dinosaur vs. Spaghetti.... Dinosaur wins!"). Perhaps there's something worrisome about a book that puts everything in terms of combat - but if you've ever seen a four year old plunge ahead with dogged determination, you'll appreciate this one.

The Warmth of Candlewick Press

Do publishers have a smell?

Wow - that sounds entirely ridiculous as I write it, but I do think that if we could associate a certain scent with a certain publisher, then Candlewick Press would smell like homemade cinnamon rolls, just as they come out of the oven (rather than melted wax as the name might suggest).

When I pick up a Candlewick book, I know that I am always in for a treat. Sometimes the scent may be so powerful that it makes me catch my breath*, and other times, that perfume is the equivalent of a snuggly blanket and a kiss on the cheek from your mom.

A Visitor for Bear by Bonnie Becker and illustrated so warmly by Kady MacDonald Denton is just such a treat. Bear's home looks like the English cottage of my dreams (as does Angelina Ballerina's abode, if truth be told), but we know, as Bear will learn, that a cozy house is cozier if there is a friend to visit. Denton's bear, a cross between David McPhail's bumbling creatures and James Stevenson's whimsy, is huge and dainty all at once, but his bulk isn't enough to fill his home. The appearance of Mouse makes all the difference - and suddenly the white framing around Bear decreases, and Bear and his home take up more and more of the page, as though Bear's life is fuller with Mouse in it.

*Have you still not read The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing - published by Candlewick (really these editors are amazing)? What are you waiting for?

Valentin Thinks Ordinary Boy is Awesome

Valentin (age 6) and I have been reading The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy by William Boniface with snappy illustrations by Stephen Gilpin (check out his site). We're on book three now and have enjoined every minute of the series. What's not to love? The story takes place in a town where everyone has a super-power, ranging from Miss Marble - the fourth grade teacher who can immobilize her students by glaring at them, to Lord Pincushion who carries an arsenal of tools and weapons on his person, to FuzzBoy who can grow hair on anyone and anything. A town where everyone is a super hero, everyone except Ordinary Boy (or so we are led to believe). Valentin has been busily working through the plot details, trying to determine Professor Brain-Drain's next evil plot, or how time travel will work in The Return of Meteor Boy (the second title in the series), or if Ordinary Boy isn't so ordinary after all. And in the process, Valentin has started reading... independently.... challenging books.... and a lot of them. What's the connection? What's the real super-story behind Ordinary Boy? I think it's that reading can be fun. We shouldn't undermine the importance of this statement. There is a unique pleasure that only reading can provide.

Mercedes wants me to add that her little brother isn't the only Oboy fan around here.

Besides Manga

Kitamura, Satoshi. Me and My Cat. 1999.

As a professor and the mother of four children (one of whom is a teenager - egad!), I am slightly ashamed to admit that I love reading Japanese manga and watching Japanese anime (in translation... sigh...). From the first time I saw Star Blazers on Channel 38, I was hooked. I loved the slapstick comedy, and the ridiculous drama and the big messy hair. I had the same reaction when I first discovered a manga collection at my library and read through every series I could get my hands on.

But even if I had never watched Gaiking or read Ranma 1/2, I hope I would have found Satoshi Kitamura's picture books. His stories are strange and surreal and silly - think Haruki Murakami for kids - but it is his artwork that defines his style. I am especially fond of Me and My Cat, where the boy narrator wakes one morning to find that he has been transplanted into his cat's body. His adventures as he tries to learn to be a cat are immensely entertaining, but it is the images of the cat, now inhabiting the boy's body, that make me laugh out loud, especially the two page spread broken into multiple panels of the cat-boy's actions, including wrestling with laundry, playing with yarn, and trying to use the litter box.

The Mysterious Benedict Society

Stewart, Trenton Lee. The Mysterious Benedict Society. Illus. Carson Ellis. Boston: Little, Brown, 2007.

When I was seven and my sister was 4, we were forced to play with the Lewman boys (Andy and Timmy, who were the same age as we were) while our parents chatted after dinner. Upstairs in the boys' bedroom, we were appaled to find that the boys mostly had Hot Wheels (bleh) and Legos (double bleh). This meant that there was only one option for play: Pretend.

Pretend went something like this:

Let's pretend...

... that we are orphans... and that we all have special skills (I was a super-genius and can't remeber what everyone else was)... and that we're spies... and that we have to save the world.

That's all one really needs to be entertained for an hour or two.

Stewart's novel is just like that - all the delightful play and puzzles of a 7 year old's make-believe drama, wrapped up in a funny, well crafted, powerfully plotted novel.

The Untimely Demise of the Home Schooled Girl

What is it about the home schooled girl that drives writers to make her a tragic heroine? Is there something about her independence added to her quirky cuteness that dooms her in young adult literature? Do male writers, ashamed of their guilty crushes on these characters, feel compelled to do away with them? Why does the male protagonist betray the home schooled girl? Why is he so terrified by her careless disregard of social teen-age norms?

I've been thinking about this after reading three (well... four) titles that on the surface have nothing in common - Shakespeare's The Tempest, M.T. Anderson's Feed*, and Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl (and Love, Stargirl too).

My English 102 students have been reading Shakespeare's play about the magical events that occur when a boat-load of Italian nobels are shipwrecked on an island inhabitted by the magician (and former Italian nobel) Prospero, his servants Ariel and Caliban, and his daughter Miranda - who has been raised and schooled on the island by no one but her father. My class keeps coming back to their discussion of Miranda who perplexes them. Why is she so docile? How can she seem so well-educated and well-spoken and still be easily directed, first by her father and then her love-interest, the recently-stranded Ferdinand? Is her marriage to Ferdinand a blessing or a type of imprisonment? All of the characters consider her to be the perfect image of a young woman, and yet she seems so unreal.

Violet, the heroine of Feed is likewise "too perfect." Anderson's setting is a futuristic and apocolyptic world where the internet is implanted in the brains of those who can afford it and consumerism runs amok destroying what is left of our fragile ecosystem, The book is masterfully constructed and the teen male narrator, Titus, wins over the readers with his honest voice. Titus falls for the homeschooled Violet, who questions the fate of her world while trying to participate in it. She, like Miranda, is the "perfect" girl - beautiful, smart, funny, in love with Titus, and ultimately killed by the faulty internet implant. Her death was terrible... mostly because Titus has broken up with her because she is too needy and "uncool" - oh, Titus, how could you?

Spinelli's Stargirl doesn't die (and thank goodness has a sequel) but like Violet, she is betrayed by her guy, Leo, who when faced with the choice of dumping Stargirl and becoming unpopular, he chooses his reputation - et tu, Leo? It is only when Stargirl has moved out of state that he realizes what he has lost.

Won't someone save these girls?

* Excuse me, have you read the Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing? If not, you should stop reading this blog this instant and go find yourself a copy and begin reading it right away.

Unfortunate

"Let’s start by saying I have a lot of money. I’ve acquired it by writing children’s books about terrible things happening to orphans, and this seems like such a crazy and possibly monstrous way of acquiring money that I give a lot of it away." - Daniel Handler in a June 10, 2007 New York Times article.

He's right. There is something monstrous about the success of The Series of Unfortunate Events, which Handler writes under his pseudonymn of Lemony Snicket, just like there is something monstrous about The Basic Eight (Handler's first novel, the tale of a psychotic teen who goes on a killing spree with a croquette mallet - which is, not surprisingly and unmistakably, for adults, or more specifically adults with a taste for snarky, funny, and graphically violent prose).

I'll happily admit that I find that snarkiness to be delightfully entertaining, in both his adult and children's book, but I am aware that this is a guilty pleasure. One can't truely delight in these books without having a slightly queasy feeling about the nastiness of his characters' peril.

Ah... how unfortunate...

*** Another quandry... should one read the books for Brett Helquists pictures? Or listen to Tim Curry's recorded book narration?