Review: Nappy Hair

Nappy Hair by Carolivia Herron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book was a fun experience! (I'll have to compare to the other three picturebooks on this theme.) The voice of the grandpa reminded me so much of my own grandpa, who also loved to push a joke. I thought the call/response storytelling was so fresh and unique, and the way fonts were used to represent different voices responding was perfect. I loved how some of the voices were protecting the little girl, and how the grandpa responded by repairing and nurturing her. I found myself worrying whether her feelings would be hurt, and then the conversation would shift to something that built her up. Since she tells us the text comes from an audio recording, I wonder how true the text is to that recording. I also wonder if she appreciated this kind of attention at the time, or if she did find it embarrassing. I would read another book by Herron in this style in a heartbeat!

The story of the neighborhood mob that drummed a white teacher out of a Brooklyn school (because she helped the kids learn to enjoy reading through this book) is heartbreaking. You can find it on page 58 of Foerstel's book on bannings in the US.



View all my reviews

Review: Beach Feet

Beach Feet by Kiyomi Konagaya

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I might call this a concept book, because it focuses so directly on just the sensory experience of the beach. The corresponding-style illustrations are for helping me experience just what the words are saying.

With the pictures, this might be enough to help someone who had never actually been to a beach imagine fairly clearly what it could be like (making the strange familiar). Because I have enjoyed some days at the beach, the book resonated and felt true to my memory (so it doesn't really make the familiar feel 'strange').

Thanks to goodreads, I see there was a 1996 book with this same title. It'd be interesting to compare them!



View all my reviews

Review: Archie

Archie by Domenica More Gordon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



An interesting example of a wordless picturebook, because there are words all over it--but these words are more about subtext through sound effects. Kind of like an episode of Mr. Bean. The story is still mostly a picture narrative.

Still, it's interesting to think about how this book would signify without the environmental print/sound effect words. I have to say I really enjoy the trend of handwritten text in picturebooks over the past 10-15 years. I think it takes extra skill in design and illustration to be able to do this and make it come off. Gordon does well at this aspect of it. Her design is very tight, and her drawing skill is impeccable.

I just wish there had been something different about the story. The whole narrative leads up to a visual gag (which did make me chuckle). But I thought it was a lot of book just to end with a little sight joke, which didn't really do much with the strengths Gordon had set up throughout the book.

Gordon's drawing is rough around the edges, but each image still feels super tidy. Her magazine / greeting-card style of illustration is well-known in that sphere of publication, and she is totally in control of her skill. I wouldn't mind seeing more picture books drawn by her, and would like to see this same kind of sensitivity from her illustration bleed over into her construction of the story. Maybe she should find a partnership with a really great writer.



View all my reviews

Review: Life Story

Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book blew me away when I first read it. It's approach to natural history and evolution is unapologetic and embraces the beauty of natural history. It does so through a kind of anthropomorphism or anthropocentrism (in the device of a theater) that is easy to criticize, but which in this case seems like an interesting technique to bring interest to the lifeless or non-human eras of the world's development. I have owned several copies in the past 15 years, and have had my students buy it as one of the key books for discussing design and visual elements. Burton controls composition and visual elements such as line and color masterfully. She knows exactly how to guide our eyes along a line to see her illustrated narrative emerge as if the picture were live on stage.



View all my reviews

Review: Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas

Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas by Molly Bang

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I could have used this book years ago when we were doing an inquiry project on oceans, and we could hardly find anything on plankton. This is a great book for making single-celled phytoplankton into an interesting thing to look at and think about.

This book reminds me of Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story in its storytelling and composition style. It emphasizes the beauty of the life cycles and the organisms themselves, but without making them cute or non-dangerous.

This book also has the extended 'fact section' at the end where the storytelling voice is broken and shifts straight to an informational text structure for 2-3 pages. Lu Benke was wondering yesterday what practical needs editors and publishers might have for insisting on this section at the end of these books. This book is cowritten by a biologist, so there's some reputability to the science. But the fact that the book presents no sources is a liability--minimally on its credibility, but more so on its usefulness in inquiry. If there's a scientist on board, can't she show us what some of the best sources are for further exploration of plankton?



View all my reviews

Review: The Stupids Die

The Stupids Die by Harry Allard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



When Bela came home from school one day in first grade, she said that a boy got in trouble for saying the 's' word. We asked, "Which s-word'?" Stupid! was the reply. Some strange cultural undercurrent made this word into a no-no in primary education in the 1990s and this book was and is still the antidote. When will teachers and parents learn that making a word into a tabu only makes it all the more enticing to use on the sly?

This book is the perfect antidote! But the story is only part of it. It's the way James Marshall adds subtext to the story with the illustrations that makes it interesting reading. The paintings on the walls, the looks on the faces of the dog and cat--all part of an overall mix of complementary and counterpoint illustration.

I've loved this series since I found a used copy of #2 at a library sale in Michigan in the 1990s (the dust jacket and cover illustration were missing, but the hard cover was embossed with a drawing of a chicken labeled 'cow').



View all my reviews

Review: This Moose Belongs to Me

This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Jeffers wins again. This was an enchanting example of counterpoint illustration-text relationship (I set it squarely on my goodreads 'counterpoint' shelf, which has only 7 books--cue cricket chirps).

That is, the pictures contradict what the words say, and vice versa. Jeffers' take on counterpoint gave me the sense that either the narrator in the words or in the pictures was exaggerating, maybe just plain lyin'! Here it feels more like someone is winking at me about Wilfred, as if to say, "Leave him alone. Let him have his dream." Jeffers enhances all this by using an incongruous style for the backgrounds--the painterly landscapes don't match his cartoony figures at all.

The specific experience of this counterpoint book prompts some wicked reader-response theorizing(are you listening, Wolfgang Iser?): In a picturebook are there two narrators, one for the pictures and one for the text, or just one narrator for both? This becomes even more convoluted when we think how so many picturebooks are written by an author and then illustrated by a separate artist. Because the narrator, implied reader, implied author, narratee are all 'characters' made up by the reader (in the back of the mind usually), these questions can't be answered simply: i.e., 'The writer makes up one narrator, and the illustrator makes up another.'

This would be an excellent book for a technique like 'sketch to stretch'--to ask readers to draw this omniscient teller outside the frame of the pages, maybe on scanned pages with wide white borders. Putting the narrator's words into a thought bubble and giving the narrator a concrete character. Then the narratee question is easy to ask: To whom is this 'guy' telling the story? This is exactly the kind of book that could support folks discovering some nifty inner workings of literature!



View all my reviews

Review: Boy and Bot

Boy and Bot by Ame Dyckman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This story of misunderstandings didn't do much other than present the two misunderstandings and solve them. Sometimes I worry that formulaic stories seem a bit too mathematical and formulaic. The parallel misunderstandings in this story are very similar to the one in Boot + Shoe. But even before that it reminded me of Blueberries for Sal, where for some reason the misunderstandings were more electric. Blueberries is one of my all time favorites, and this one didn't give me even close to the same experience.

The story is so spare, it makes me think of more of a preschool book than a primary grades book. The pacing, illustration, and design are all interesting to look at and have the slick style we expect from Yaccarino, including the animator's sensibility for storyboarding and design he brings from his work with the Oswald project. No designer credit suggests Yaccarino took the lead on graphic design.

As far as themes go, as soon as I read the misunderstandings about switches and sleep I was reminded of I, Robot, where the idea of being switched off was the same as being executed. Then I was reminded of the anthropology and ethnography I've read on how ancient cultures perceived sleep as being very similar to being dead (I think there are passages about this in Frazer's Golden Bough--where the people had all kinds of rules and taboos about what you do and don't do to a sleeping person at the risk of their soul or life), and at that moment this story seemed very poignant. But the pictures did nothing to carry forward any idea that either the boy or robot was very disturbed, just that they went through the regular motions to help someone who is 'sick'. When I think of the deep emotion I experienced with Gaetan Doremus' Bear Despair, Boy + Bot was far, far away by comparison.



View all my reviews

Review: The Bulldoggers Club: The Tale of the Ill-Gotten Catfish

The Bulldoggers Club: The Tale of the Ill-Gotten Catfish by Barbara Hay

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



After reading the first two chapters, I flipped through to look at the book and was utterly disappointed in the illustrations. A book for middle-grade boys shouldn't be drawn in the childish style Steven Walker used. These pictures look like they're from a primary-grade kids' magazine, a boring one like Highlights for Children. This kind of illustration is condescending to start with, and more so given the main characters are supposed to be in middle school. In an era where so many people talk about not enough books to engage boys, Hay's series is a fine idea. But it's like the editor wasn't even awake when selecting and assigning the project to the illustrator! I notice another reviewer agrees with me, but more politely so.

Hay has some good writing moments here, and makes a valiant effort to keep a young person's point of view. But she lost the handle about halfway through and the whole thing turned into an after-school special. At the start of chapters 14 and 16 Hay switched to a preachy voice that wasn't half defused by the apologetic "Geez, I'm starting to sound like my dad." It was too easy to tell she was stepping in to be the narrator. I almost laughed out loud at the end when the townsfolk gathered round Dru and started clapping. Cheese. It's moments like this that remind me why I don't usually like contemporary realistic fiction--moments of contemporary, moments of realism, but tempered by some difficult moments of 'not'.

I think Hay could pursue this series without that tv-show feel, because she knows how to write point of view and dialog, which are difficult. It always gets in the way of a story when there is a predetermined lesson as the outcome. If Barbara Hay is listening: Would you consider upcoming books in the series that will draw more on your strengths in writing, and what feels like clear background knowledge about growing up rural, and lean less on the need to teach a lesson via a story?



View all my reviews

Review: Breaking Stalin's Nose

Breaking Stalin's Nose by Eugene Yelchin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



When I read one of these disillusionment stories, it's so predictable for it to be about the Soviet bloc. The fact that it's historical fiction doesn't change this, because the themes are still there. I remember when Laura Apol suggested we consider that Lois Lowry's The Giver might actually be about our own society instead of some other, it blew open the way I read dystopia novels. So the big question is, does a novel like this help me consider the ways I blindly buy into the party line or does it just make me glad I wasn't there during Stalin's regime?

Because I read this so quickly on the heels of The Bomb and The Wall, it makes me think about the competition between the US and the CCCP. In particular, this book emphasizes the propaganda about how bad things must be for daily life in the 'enemy' country--we were fed SO much of this when I was a kid (in Russia they don't believe in God and don't get any Christmas presents). It made me wonder whether the standard for daily lifestyle here wasn't actually 'created' as a response to communist pressures worldwide. Leaders in all countries must have been rightly afraid of revolution after 1917. Was ensuring an enviable daily life part of the competition of the pre-War and Cold-War years? What would have happened without that competition? Would we still think depression-era standards of living were okay?



View all my reviews

Review: Drummer Boy of John John

Drummer Boy of John John by Mark Greenwood

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Interesting historical fiction!

Based on sources and well-sourced in the end notes, Greenwood puts this into a basic narrative on the advent of the Caribbean metal drum. This was an interesting slice of history to capture in the short form of the picturebook. There was a lot of potential for the informational that Greenwood missed, but he favored the context in which the drum became important so it was a decent call.

Lessac's illustrations are faithful to the Caribbean folk art tradition and have a vibrance that shows she gets the spirit of it. The best of her art reminds me of Gaugin or some later Van Gogh in the way it emphasizes color+light at the expense of light+shadow.



View all my reviews

Review: I, Too, Am America

I, Too, Am America by Langston Hughes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I haven't read Uptown or 2012 by Collier yet, but by comparison to his biographical work I like this one better. As a general rule, I don't like poems to be illustrated, because the illustrator usually interprets the poem for me instead of encouraging me to interpret for myself. But Collier did his work well. Here's how:

1. His choice of just one segment of the history of African Americans in the US feels narrower than the poem, which for me meant there was so much more the poem could do--so his illustrations did not shut off my sense that these words could do more than apply to Pullman porters.
2. He did not use a corresponding style. That is, he really does not illustrate the words at all. He has told a whole story with his picture sequence, and he has 'set' the poem in this sequence, almost like a musical score.
3. Because this poem is so spare to start with, Collier's storyboard decisions (with Laurent Linn as designer) slow the reading down, forcing us to go through multiple turns of the page and looking at illustrations before moving on to the next line. For me this resulted in a kind of savoring of the words. When I read the book aloud to Nancy, she was thinking and interpreting because of these pauses: "Does the poem actually say, 'I am the darker brother'?--that's interesting language!"
4. It's a genre-breaker. It's poetry, it's history, it's historical poetry. If he had tried some counterpoint between the illustrations and the words, I might have given it a 5, but his reverence for Hughes and for the Pullman porters stops him at a complementary relationship. And reverence isn't all that interesting, so it was hard to say 'amazing'.

I also thought Collier was on his game with this storyboard, in his signature collage and painting multimedia style. There were numerous spreads where I just wanted to sit and look for a long time---not as many of these in his other books. I should probably give it a three because I was expecting to give it a 2, and usually only go up one from there. But I was just very pleased with the experience of Hughes' poem in this setting.





View all my reviews

Review: Charley's First Night

Charley's First Night by Amy Hest

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was like a prequel to Hest's other boy and his dog book, The Reader. I liked this one more, because it's about disobedience in the face of a Catch-22. It was a better narrative because of that conflict than The Reader. I appreciate the 'boy and his dog' from The Reader more now since reading Lu's review, and might have liked to see these books as a chapter book or even a series, something to allow another conflict-based narrative to bookend with Charley around the more benign story of The Reader? [Hey, Lu, you changed your rating to a 2--did I bully you? I thought you were right on.]

Oxenbury does what she always does, pulling no punches on the darlingness. It's very quaint, familiar, and comfy. I like this style, and the subtle palette for this book made it even more palatable.



View all my reviews

Review: The World's Greatest Lion

The World's Greatest Lion by Ralph Helfer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The watercolor paintings were really remarkable. The transparent tan colors used as the background for each page (see the end-page notes) were perfect for putting me in that 'tawny' veldt that matches the lion's fur, and also happens to be a main color of the hills in California where he landed later in the book.

This was an interesting biography because it's a famous figure you might wonder about after seeing many MGM movies, and there are some very nice story elements about being displaced, finding a new home, experiencing loss and danger, but also surprising understanding where you wonder if there is any.

Also part of the 'small slice' tradition of biography--this is based on small episodes from a much larger memoir-style book.



View all my reviews

Review: Those Rebels, John and Tom

Those Rebels, John and Tom by Barbara Kerley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The stylized characterization based on historical sources was interesting. In a simplistic way, the writing complicated Jefferson's slave ownership. A caricature of King George reminded me of the short Schoolhouse Rock "No More Kings" video, and when I looked it up on youtube it looks like a lot of the illustrations were quotations of the animation. There's an old caricature that might hint at the origins. My favorite thing was the contrast between Jefferson and Adams in the writing, and Fotheringham's complementary illustration style. Like some others, difficult to tell it was computer illustration.

Marijka Kostiw was the designer on this book, and showed a clear sense of pacing and voice in how the text is sized, placed, and spaced on each page.

Again, get ready for 50% of kids' books to be genres like this under CCSS! Every publishing house in the country is going to try to be first to get all the basic informational text covered.



View all my reviews

Review: Splendors and Glooms

Splendors and Glooms by Laura Amy Schlitz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is tricky. I've been reading so many picturebooks that I had to shift gears to rate a novel. Why? Because I spent so much more time on this book that I want to rate it higher. Just because I read it and liked it, I want to say I "really" liked it. But truth be told, I don't know how many people I'll go out and recommend: "You're going to need to read this book." Again, a five would have to be beyond 'recommendable' and into the 'must have' and 'will re-read' category, and a four would have to be something I really wanted to talk to other people about. This one, I would talk about with people who happened to read it (which could be a lot because of the silver medal), but I wouldn't go around seeking out my own people to read it just so I could share the experience and discuss it with them.

I experienced some some fine aesthetic moments while inside the reading. I enjoyed the dark tone, and felt the small dose of fantasy in the premise was used well to set up a highly polarized and distorted moral world where dark themes could be explored because of the exaggeration. Much like in a fairy tale, we need something as extreme as a cannibal ogre to be the enemy so we can justify killing him in the story.

Social class is an issue that can be exaggerated very well in the Victorian era, so the setting made for interesting dynamics that way. Servants and the served is a strong theme. Containment, cruelty, magic (what makes something magic), and belonging could also be explored pretty deeply. Schlitz pulled no punches on the violence, which was refreshing because this realizes the sense of danger and immediacy.

The content about puppet theater was fun, but I spent the whole time wishing it was about a Punch and Judy 'swatchel omi' instead of a marionette (fantoccini) theater--many of these performers in the 1800s were also Italian. Punch & Judy is just so much more Victorian and English.



View all my reviews

Review: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Wanda Gág

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



After reading the picturebook biography of Wanda Gag I wanted to see some more of her work beyond Millions of Cats. This was a great version, which hews closely to the Grimm original, and adds in some elements from Three Bears for dialog. I wished Gag and the editing and design team had done more to ensure there were more full-page illustrations. The spot illustrations are great decorative touches, but Gag is at her best when she keeps the whole frame to her meticulous drawings.



View all my reviews

Review: Four and Twenty Blackbirds: Nursery Rhymes of Yesterday Recalled for Children of Today

Four and Twenty Blackbirds: Nursery Rhymes of Yesterday Recalled for Children of Today by Helen Dean Fish

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a very nice little collection, with Helen Dean Fish's special attention given to songs not usually featured in the Mother Goose collections. Only a few of the shorter verses are included, and quite obscure. The longer items are most often complete, multi-verse songs. A good number of these have obviously been cleaned up for modern use, with hints of older darker themes hiding in the background. But for some of them, the old themes are strong and rich like black coffee.

My favorite in the bunch is "The Robber Kitten" where although the Kitten does reform in the end, the entire bulk of the verse is spent in the imagined life of a vile highwayman. This is the same kind of moralization as in Peter Rabbit, where the sudden moralistic ending does little because so much time throughout the entire text has been spent in disobedience and difficulty.

Fish has been careful to make notes and acknowledgments for her sources for each song. This scholarship predates Iona & Peter Opie's dictionary, and follows strongly in the tradition of Alice B. Gomme's Children's Singing Games.



View all my reviews

Review: Santa from Cincinnati

Santa from Cincinnati by Judi Barrett

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Okay, so I was just kidding when I shelved this as Biography. But the book does use the tone and structure of a biographical picturebook!

I'm going to go out on a limb here and declare the 'Reality of Santa Claus' book its own genre. It's really unlike any other holiday or occasional books, especially in the way it walks a line between fiction and non-fiction. Each author makes up different facts for the Santa story, so 'fiction' right? But the biographical structures in these stories so often fit exactly with the 'mythmaking' tradition we know from biographies of great figures like Abraham Lincoln and MLK (which are supposed to be non-fiction, but where authors also have clearly 'make up' an ideological vision and agenda).

I'm going to use a Randy Jackson rating--it was a-ight, a little pitchy. The story was playful enough to read, but bothersome in spots. Hawkes and Barrett have launched a thinly veiled attempt to unseat William Joyce as reigning king of 1930s-50s Christmas nostalgia (who in turn had to unseat Van Allsburg). The thin veil is Hawkes' painterly less-airbrushed style, which is a more interesting to look at than Joyce's work. But the art deco toys and the red-cheeked, button-nosed figures all owe royalties to Joyce. Chart some new territory, gang!

The Santa we worship in America clearly emerged from the 1930s-50s, at the hands of mythmakers like songwriter Gene Autry. So Barrett's 'what if he was from Cincinnati' premise is worth the effort, but ends up flawed. Examples? 1. The idea that the naughty-nice list was purely a matter of industrial efficiency is weak, and b. The elves appear out of nowhere with no text to position them in the story! Don't editors read books before sending them to the printer anymore? I understand willing suspension of disbelief, but this is a major gap in a book that is supposed to provide an accounting for all the facts in the Santa story. If you have to explain the toys and the reindeer, you have to explain the elves.

What would be fun is a 'Reality of Santa' book based on primary sources! Jed and Jennifer were involved in a mockumentary a few years ago called Stalking Santa (great word play with 'stalking'), where a guy dedicates everything he has to finding proof of Santa's existence. That was a lot of fun.

As a believer and traditionalist, I prefer to stick with Mason & Hinke's Jolly Old Santa Claus or the sappy Rudolph book by May & Gillen. We own Joyce's Santa Calls and Van Allsburg's Polar Express, but Cincinnati was not much of a contribution to the genre.



View all my reviews

Graphic Designers

Frank Serafini has been noticing graphic design explicitly in his presentations, a product of his work on the Looking Closely series of photography books. Nancy and I have talked about this for a long time as well because of her work in illustration and work for graphic designers, and then of course my mom is a designer. So I think in the upcoming editions of children's literature textbooks, there needs to be more explicit calling out of graphic designers as professionals in the process. In particular, I am taking note for many books whether there is a credit given in the small print to a designer. This is one of the ways a publisher can tell authors, illustrators, and the world that they put high value into a project. The 'in house' design team is less likely to get a credit than a designer hired from outside the firm. I suspect this is true for Saho Fujii and Marijka Kostiw, who seem to be part of some pretty big projects that were in the running for the major awards. So an editor most likely brings in the big guns when she wants the book to really look and feel like a contender.

Editors with imprints?

There is a broad trend of imprints from large publishing houses with the names of people. Nancy Paulsen at Penguin, for example. I will begin to compile a list of these names, and find out where this trend comes from. My suspicion is that these are editors who have been able to pitch the idea of an imprint as a way to flatten the hierarchy of the corporate publishing industry. The imprint editor would have to pitch a vision and mission that helps her distinguish her business plan from the rest of the company. If so, this is an indicator of organizational problems in the industry, for which this is an ingenious short-term solution.

What does my goodreads.com rating mean?

After blitzing through over 100 picturebook reviews this past month, I have to update what I think about rating books on goodreads.com. I originally wrote on my goodreads.com profile:

My fives are for lifelong favorites, ones I'll re-read and probably buy. Fours are more ephemeral, but still great experiences. Threes were enjoyable and interesting, but flaws starting to overshadow bonuses. Twos I should have used my time some other way. Ones are enemy books.

In retrospect now, everything stays the same except the 3-star rating.  This one is more complicated. I find three stars often means:

1. I was expecting to be disappointed and was ready to give it a 2 just because of a hackish topic or smarmy approach, but then there was a pleasant surprise in the reading. Yum's book on the 1st day of Kindergarten was like this for me.
2. I was hoping for a really good experience, but ended up being disappointed. The Olivia princesses book was like this (although I find Lu's disagreement with my review interesting).
3. Just what it says: I liked it but no more than that--not ready to use the shoulder shrug implied by 'it was okay' (or the 'I guess' those words imply).

With all this in mind, the 3 is the more complex of all the ratings, because if I didn't bring pre-judgment to books (which is impossible), some of the experiences as stand-alones might have gotten the book a 4 rating. But when 'what the book is by comparison to the larger tradition of picturebooks' makes me expect to be bored or roll my eyes, and then I am pleasantly surprised by the book I still do not feel right giving it a 4 star rating. A bad expectation turns a potentially 'amazing' rating into a 'really liked it' rating, a 4 into a 3, a 3 into a 2.

Side note: A 2 rating might be a good place to use the word 'nonplussed'--it left me perplexed and confused in a not good way. The question "How did this get published" usually comes to mind. Hest's The Reader was one of these.

An enemy book (1 star) is a book that I hold out as a paragon bad example. Rainbow Fish and Love You Forever are 1-star books. This is the irony of hate. These books will probably get more attention than 2-star or 3-star books, which are usually only worth the one visit. They demand attention and energy, which shows hate is not the opposite of love, but rather a close cousin to it. Only distance and willingness to ignore a book (2-star, some 3-star ratings) that really embodies the opposite of love.

Summary of ratings thus far:
131 picturebooks reviewed.

• 5 stars, 9% total but only 2% of this comes from this wave of reading--the other 7% are old favorites.
• 4 stars, 27% total with 20% coming from this wave of reading and 7% from previous reading.
• 3 stars, 49% with all coming from this wave of reading.
• 2 stars, 13% with all coming from this wave of reading.
• 1 star, less than 1%

A few books are on my to-read list which haven't actually been reviewed, but show up on the reviewed list anyway.

What do I think all this means? I am an optimist. The meaty 49% is me saying I liked it. I probably won't read those again, but I don't regret the time spent. However, this number is misleading. Lu Benke has been bringing in piles of books since before the Caldecotts and Newberys this year, and they're all well-reviewed books. So I've read 111 titles from the year's 'gold-star' list and I'm still seeing numbers like this--out of some of the year's best books I can say "I liked it" to half, "really liked it" to a fifth, and "amazing" to 2%.

This view of the stats tempers my optimism in two ways: 1. It makes me trust the reviews a little less. When there is truly something remarkable reviewers seem to take notice, and I'd rather not be plowing through random selections, but I wish there were something more [Lu Benke reminds me that correlating across review companies for multiple starred reviews is a good technique]; 2. It reminds me of one of Maurice Sendak's last interviews where he lamented the sorry state of the publishing industry. He believed he was part of something interesting in the 1960s and saw it deteriorate over the years. I find it's easy to say you love books, easier still to say you love picturebooks. It's not so easy to think about how much junk has to be put out to yield a few 5-star books every few years.

Review: Little Dog Lost: The True Story of a Brave Dog Named Baltic

Little Dog Lost: The True Story of a Brave Dog Named Baltic by Monica Carnesi

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



A very simply written book. The odd grammatical choices made me wonder whether Carnesi was going for a feel of Polish in translation, or whether she was doing a pared down grammar for a preschool audience. Hopefully the former, because the latter would be condescending.

This is a very direct and also simple example of a complementary picturebook. The best detail in this telling was that Carnesi left the inference about why they named the dog "Baltic" to the environmental print in the paintings of the ship, and did not spell it out in the narrator's text. It would be fun to let kids in an emergent literacy stage solve this puzzle.



View all my reviews

Review: Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Couldn't put it down. I would like to read historians' reviews to see how they think it stacks up and what the historiography looks like. But all the quality indicators are there--meticulous documentation of primary and secondary sources; and an unusual item--a source index for all quotations. So many of the picture book authors skimp on telling about use of primary sources in their notes, and it makes the research look shallow.

Sheinkin was obviously swallowed up in this project. His narrative interweaves elements of various characters' activities in a chronologically parallel story that has the feel and style of a novel. The third person narrative helped me feel that it is more informative in nature than fictional.

The best thing about this book is that it does nothing to indict Gold, Fuchs, and Hall or to make them feel like wicked traitors. In quotations from Fuchs' discussions with his lawyer, he is clearly told that spying for a British ally carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. Sheinkin's decisions to include lines like this are remarkable, because he helps us understand that in Europe and America in that time period 1930s, 1940s, many ordinary people's emerging beliefs and understanding of global politics made them at least curious and intrigued by the Soviet Union as an alternative government. There was a clear feeling that many people were highly disappointed by the Great Depression as a major failing of US government and politics.

I was amazed to see quotations from scientists at Los Alamos who clearly decided that the Cold War and arms race was a better solution than an American monopoly on nuclear arms. Even 20 years ago, just after the collapse of Soviet communist governments, it would have been terribly difficult to write from this perspective. Sheinkin found a perfect moment to tell the story of Americans spying for the Soviets with this kind of aplomb and candor.



View all my reviews

Review: Cold Snap

Cold Snap by Eileen Spinelli

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Priceman's flowing lines and folk americana style gave this book the small town feel the story was going for. The stock group of characters interact through words and pictures that achieve a kind of chaining complementary effect--sometimes pictures lead out ahead of words, and sometimes the other way around. The short term disappointment people feel in extreme weather is captured well here, and the combination of wish and knowledge that it will pass does not diminish the feel of the experience. A recipe at the end? Okay.



View all my reviews

Review: The Camping Trip That Changed America

The Camping Trip That Changed America by Barb Rosenstock

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Part biography, but mostly a historical retelling, this informational book was well complemented by Gerstein's illustrations. Much like Byrd's illustrations for the Ben Franklin book, the ink drawings have a hint of old engraving to them that makes the book feel in the correct period (interestingly, the palette was almost identical to Byrd's Franklin book).

The 'slice' of history is again a refreshing approach, because it allowed me to see both Muir and Roosevelt in some depth through this one experience. One of the nice details Rosenstock wrote was how Muir was annoyed by Roosevelt's constant stopping to make speeches and talk to reporters. The sources listed at the end give pointers to both some primary and secondary sources. I was disappointed that Rosenstock mentioned her access to the Muir-Roosevelt correspondence, but gave no details on how she got to look at those letters--not even cited in her source list!



View all my reviews

Review: Question Boy Meets Little Miss Know-It-All

Question Boy Meets Little Miss Know-It-All by Peter Catalanotto

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The superhero conflict was a clever idea, but the strongest aesthetic moment in this book is the total absurdity of Know-it-All's barrage of random facts. It was hilarious. My 8-year-old Pearl thought the one about ducks on the head in Minnesota was worth repeating--I bet she tries it on kids at school today! The resolution wasn't half as satisfying, but stayed nicely within the comic-book structure of battle between arch-nemeses.

On second thought, the dogged pursuit of the question about oil tanks was just as absurd, and made me laugh there, too. The fact that adults just want to get away from the questions and the answers felt all too real.



View all my reviews

Review: The Duckling Gets a Cookie!?

The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? by Mo Willems

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Have to admit it, I'm a fan. I have a great time with this series with my kids. My favorite structure in these books is the part where it breaks into the 8-box sequence for the pigeon to go on a tirade. This is just one example of Willems' control of pacing through use of a cinematic montage style. Again, Willems' animator sensibilities for storyboarding are impressive.

Mostly, I rate this one a four because the sentence "Oh! Look at all those nuts" demands some inference, when it gets just dropped off as the pigeon enters. It comes back at the end of the book. As far as books with a message go "cookies without nuts, please" is a message I can support fully. And brownies, too.



View all my reviews

Review: Mom, It's My First Day of Kindergarten!

Mom, It's My First Day of Kindergarten! by Hyewon Yum

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I couldn't believe I was actually reading another book about the first day of school. This topic has become one of the standing jokes about how to get your bad picture book published. Can't give it a four, because it's about the first day of school, but I did like it.

Noteworthy among books on this topic, Yum's decisions in the illustration were inventive and required interpretation. She drew the mom small and painted her blue throughout almost the entire book. As an adult reading, it felt like typical children's fears were being projected onto the mom. But then again, a lot of moms are more nervous about sending their kids to school than the kids are themselves, so it could be straight realism. The depictions of the mom were paired with oversized pictures of the boy, so that he constantly appeared much larger than his mom--that he was the 'big' one in this situation. These decisions would make the book interesting to talk about.



View all my reviews

Review: Mousterpiece

Mousterpiece by Jane Breskin Zalben

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



It's really informational text more than it is a story book. Zalben puts a survey of modern art into a simple narrative. She does not attempt to explain the pieces shown or to do interpretation. This was nice. The concept of styles is brought home with Zalben's own painting attributed to Janson, her main character. As a survey of art it's good just to look. If I were reading this with children, I'd want to have larger examples from many of these artists on hand. The list of artists at the end whose work Zalben drew on was helpful information.

Generous white space draws attention to the 'paintings' on each page. It is hard to tell whether this was Zalben's work or the designer, Jennifer Browne's. The cutout cover was more likely Browne's work, and contributes to the concept of framing. But this also made it seem like the cutout was going to be an ongoing part of the book, like it is in so many books that use the cutout technique.



View all my reviews

Review: Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by Robert Byrd

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book has a very good cover, useful for judging. It reminds me of the 1960s Alton Kelley posters for groups like the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane.

Surprising for the book's size, Byrd presents a lot of information on Franklin. The illustrations are mostly representational, and done in a style that harks to old printed engravings from Franklin's time. Each double-page spread is more like a chapter than a picture book spread, with text either dominating or sharing the page equally with its images. There is a wide variety in layouts, thanks to Jason Henry, designer. Every image is captioned, making it a good example of differentiated text. Because of the book's structure, I immediately used it for browsing rather than cover to cover reading, which is what books like this are meant to encourage.

This is definitely one for the 'mythmaking' tradition. It brings up all the industry, thrift, and general orneriness we expect from this character. It does a tiny bit to complicate his character with respect to Native and African Americans, but truly avoids any substance on these issues. Byrd apologizes for Franklin's prejudice against Indians by couching it as the norm for his day. There needs to be a balance between this kind of 'judge people in history by the standards of their own time' and the larger cultural patterns that enabled atrocities.



View all my reviews

Review: The Man from the Land of Fandango

The Man from the Land of Fandango by Margaret Mahy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Mahy's poem was rhythmically great, and the nonsense was a lot of fun. She never goes into the actual meaning of fandango, but just seems to enjoy the word. I could hear a lot of Edward Lear in this, but also it reminded me very much of Nancy Willard's "The Man in the Marmalade Hat."

Dunbar's illustrations were not a great complement, because they did way too much to set the tone for how to think about the poem. She is a good cartoon-style illustrator, but the mismatch to the poem made it difficult to appreciate. As with most poetry, I just wish it weren't illustrated. I think it would be a very good poem for a read-aloud and to learn to recite, but without the pictures would be better.



View all my reviews

Review: The Man from the Land of Fandango

The Man from the Land of Fandango by Margaret Mahy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The poem was rhythmically great, and the nonsense was a lot of fun. She never goes into the actual meaning of fandango, but just seems to enjoy the word. I could hear a lot of Edward Lear in this, but also it reminded me very much of Nancy Willard's "The Man in the Marmalade Hat."

The illustrations were not a great complement, because they did way too much to set the tone for how to think about the poem. As with most poetry, I just wish it weren't illustrated. I think it would be a very good poem for a read-aloud and to learn to recite, but without the pictures would be better.



View all my reviews

Review: Lemonade in Winter: A Book About Two Kids Counting Money

Lemonade in Winter: A Book About Two Kids Counting Money by Emily Jenkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



There's a lot of realism here. 1. Kids are relentless once they decide on lemonade stand--nothing else will do. 2. It costs a lot to get started. 3. If you're not right on with the timing and the place, business is slow. This book reminded me so much of all my daughters' lemonade stand attempts. Fictional license: The kids in the book made all the lemonade themselves and didn't ask the adults for any help.

It was a pleasant surprise that Jenkins had the kids bust their butts on advertising and scrape up enough money to start up, and then they didn't break even. And then they spent the money they did make! I love it. It's not a book about business. It's a book about kids taking charge and spending the day the way they want.



View all my reviews

Review: Penny and Her Song

Penny and Her Song by Kevin Henkes

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Another installment in the Penny and Her ____ series. The approach to validating a child, even though it may be delayed, was okay. The overall feeling I had after reading it was "Why did this get to be a published book?" Henkes has a good racket going with his mice, and he's obviously trying to fill a niche in the Early Reader market.

Henkes' mice remind me a little of the earlier Rosemary Wells, back when she did the original 1976 version of Noisy Nora (I disagree with her--it didn't need to be redone). I realize he can't be 'on' all the time if he puts out high volume, but I can hardly believe this is the same author from Olive's Ocean.



View all my reviews

Review: Goodnight iPad: a Parody for the next generation

Goodnight iPad: a Parody for the next generation by Ann Droyd

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



The palette and tone of the pictures is right in line with the original.

I was disappointed in the non-realistic 'throw everything out' approach to teaching a lesson about overuse of electronic screens. And, of course, it's a book with a lesson. The original was designed so that a person could get lost in the small moments of bedtime, not like so many of the bedtime books today that are about getting the kid to go to bed. It makes me wonder what the crabby old lady did on all the other nights before this one?



View all my reviews

Review: Olivia and the Fairy Princesses

Olivia and the Fairy Princesses by Ian Falconer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book had such promise! The voice and Olivia's interesting and odd choices were so funny throughout the book. I laughed out loud when she said, 'Just the part where everyone gets eaten.' Then at the end when she made her final decision, it was so anti-climactic I wished Falconer had just put 'the end' after the page about corporate malfeasance--one of my favorite moments this year!



View all my reviews

Review: Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team

Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team by Audrey Vernick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The draftsman style of black chalk illustration harking to H.A. Rey or Syd Hoff. It gives the book a nostalgic feel, and offers some unusual style in the form of pastel and painted backgrounds. The book shows an interesting variety of page layouts, often moving into a sequential art style with lots of white space (informational). The designer got no credit, but this book owes a lot to the design.



View all my reviews

Review: Monsieur Marceau: Actor Without Words

Monsieur Marceau: Actor Without Words by Leda Schubert

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Oh, no! Why on earth did they not do this one as a wordless picture book?

It does just the basic outline of Marceau's life, with no special emphasis on any one slice or chapter. I seem to prefer this latter approach as I see it done more now. But perhaps people are doing that with figures whose outlines have been done so many times that they need something new. Not a lot of Marcel Marceau biographies for kids out there to compete with this one. The notes at the end were interesting, including not only a more detailed text of biographical facts, but also some tips on mime.



View all my reviews

Review: House Held Up by Trees

House Held Up by Trees by Ted Kooser

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



What a remarkable story. None of the people had to learn a lesson, and they just got to live their lives. The house stayed there at the center of the story, and the clearing away of trees was eventually subverted by them taking house. A bit dark!



View all my reviews