Coming Soon from Jon Scieszka, Mac Barnett, and Matthew Myers: Battle Bunny

I am a big fan of subversive books, say the ”recommended inappropriate books for kids” featured in Lane Smith’s Curious Pages.  That said, I also have observed that kids respond better to some of these more than others, an issue I explored years ago in a Horn Book article “Pets and Other Fishy Books.” So when I ran into Jon Scieszka a few months ago and he excitedly told me about the forthcoming Battle Bunny, I was intrigued but also wary — was this a book kids would get or would it be something more amusing for adults? Then an advanced copy of the book showed up in the mail and I took it to school to see what my students thought.

First of all, let me try to explain just what it is (and how tricky it was to read aloud). If you look at the cover above you can perhaps see that it appears to be a sweet book of the Golden Book sort, originally titled Birthday Bunny, that has been erased, scribbled on, and reworked by…someone. I began by showing the cover to the kids and we discussed what that original book was; some of them knew Golden Books, but all of them appreciated that it was meant to be one of those sweet little journey books they’d all read when very small. Next we explored the scribbles — evidently someone named Alex had received the book from his grandmother for his birthday (there is an inscription on the inside front cover), wasn’t too happy, and decided to make it into a completely new story. And so he thoroughly erased the original title and put his own in instead. As for the interior, he crossed-out text, added new words and art, and turns the story into something completely different.  

The first day I tried reading the book aloud on my own— alternating between the original text and Alex’s. The next day I invited one child to join me, reading Alex’s story and then had the kids take over completely — one reading Birthday Bunny and the other reading Battle Bunny. They had a great time!  It may well be that the best way to take in the book is solo or with one other child, but I still think it was a blast to read this way. The group reacted, pointed out small things to one another, and just had a lot of fun. Jon tells me they are planning on providing a copy of The Birthday Bunny online for kids to print out and rework just as Alex did.  Great idea!

So for those like me who go for this sort of thing (and not everyone does, I know),  Battle Bunny is an excellent addition to the world of subversive books for children.

My NYT review of Shirley Hughes’s Hero on a Bicycle

Historical fiction has an interesting place in the world of children’s literature. Regularly celebrated by adults with awards like the Newbery, these books nonetheless raise the question of whether the intended audience feels the same enthusiasm. What I’ve observed as a classroom teacher is that while not in the multitudes that flock to the goofy fun of Wimpy Kid or the wild fantasies of Percy Jackson, there are still plenty of young readers who can’t get enough of the past.

Those among them who find the excitement and anguish of World War II especially fascinating, along with others who enjoy a gripping wartime tale whatever the time period, are going to relish Shirley Hughes’s realistic adventure, “Hero on a Bicycle.” A much-lauded British creator of picture books like the Alfie series, the octogenarian Hughes was inspired to write this historical novel for older children by a family she met during a postwar visit to Italy.

Read the whole review here.

Rita Williams-Garcia’s P.S. Be Eleven

A huge fan of Rita Willliams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer, I was incredibly happy when it got a great deal of award-love and recognition. I mean, who could not be taken with those three sisters going off to spend the summer in California with the Black Panther mother they never knew? And who could not want to know what happened to them when they went home to Brooklyn?

Happily, we find out in the sequel,  P.S. Be Eleven. Taking off immediately after the girls return from California, their life in late 60s Brooklyn is all about changes. Delphine is starting sixth grade with a teacher she wasn’t expecting, Vonetta and Fern are becoming more independent, their beloved uncle Darnell is back from Vietnam and not doing well at all, Pa has a new girlfriend, and Big Ma is struggling with all of it.

And Delphine is struggling too– to make sense of her world, her family, her friends, and herself as she moves through this pivotal year. Her mother Cecile is on the other side of the continent, but her letters consistently and repeatedly remind Delphine to be eleven, to not grow up too soon, to be herself.

As in the first book, time and place are vividly evoked. I was particularly moved by the girls’ adoration of the Jackson Five, their efforts to make it to a concert…and what happened about that. And Williams-Garcia does the small epiphanies of youth with exquisite perfection. Say Delphine learning the hard truth about her beloved dictionary, the tiny rare moments alone with her father, her growing awareness of the painful aspects of the lives of the adults around her, aspects completely unrelated to her or her two sisters.

This won’t matter to young readers, but boy did reading this make me feel old! I was certain The Archie’s “Sugar Sugar” was older than the time of this book as I recalled having to listen to it ad nauseam during Driver’s Ed. But indeed I did that in 1969 and that was the year of that bubblegum hit. So I was older than Delphine in 1969.

But never mind about that — all that matters is that young readers today are going to delight when they re-encounter Delphine and cheer as she ponders difficult things around her, learns, enjoys, and is, as her mother urges, (even after she turns twelve): eleven.

Coming Soon: Jerry Spinelli’s Hokey Pokey

The border year for me was 6th grade. The idea of adulthood was anathema, but it was coming. Ten going on eleven, I veered back and forth, sometimes playing longstanding fantasy games with my younger sister and other times meanly and harshly dismissing them and her. One day I was happily playing with dolls and the next I couldn’t imagine ever doing so again and was out chasing and being chased by boys. Whether I liked it or not I was growing up.

It is this complicated time in life that Jerry Spinelli has captured brilliantly in his forthcoming Hokey Pokey. This isn’t the Spinelli of Stargirl or Wringer; it harkens back to the storytelling style, lush language, and powerful voices of Maniac Magee and Milkweed. That said, Hokey Pokey is its own original and unique thing, one wild and crazy book and I loved it.

It is a fable set in an alternate place, somewhere called Hokey Pokey, a world of children. Toddlers, little ones on trikes, slightly older ones chasing around on bikes, and some of those really big kids that all the others look up to inhabit this land. One of these is Jack and Hokey Pokey is both his story and that of everykid. It is a work of nostalgia, but one as much for a young person just leaving childhood as it is for Spinelli or any other adult reader. That is, while he has set the tale in a childhood that is sprinkled with elements from his own 1950s youth it is so piercingly authentic that I am certain that it will resonate with many looking back regardless of when they were a child.

Written in the breathless NOW of the present tense, full of richly crafted prose with a poetic sensibility, the book pushes the reader relentlessly along. Jack is confused. Things are changing for him and he doesn’t like it. He tries various tactics from ignoring what is happening to him to being mean to those around him to vainly grabbing at things as they slip away. He tries to stop it in every way he can, but there are tinges of what might be good about this movement to somewhere else and by the end of the book Jack, as everykid and everyadult will and does, embraces it. I see this as a book that will be just perfect for a certain sort of child-becoming-a-teen who is as confused and bothered as I was, as Jack is in this book. Someone who absolutely doesn’t want to grow-up, but is.

I can’t wait to see what those kids grappling with the border time will think of this original and remarkable book.

Stefan Bachmann’s THE PECULIAR and Laura Amy Schlitz’s SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS

Here is a richly realized alternate Victorian world of elegant upper-class homes and squalid faerie slums. Filled with healthy doses of suspense and action, this is a story young fantasy buffs are sure to enjoy. And while he is bound to be compared to Christopher Paolini, whose “Eragon” was also published while he was still in his teens, Bachmann has written an accomplished book that deserves to be considered on its own.

and

Schlitz skillfully manages multiple narratives as the story makes its complex way forward, creating scenes of warmth and humor along with those of drama and horror. Filled with lush language and delightful sensory details like the savored warmth of a velvet cloak, this marvelous story will keep readers absorbed throughout. While the intricate storytelling, captivating characters and evocative setting owe a great deal to Dickens, the book also feels very much in the tradition of such grand 20th-century writers as Joan Aiken and Elizabeth Goudge. Filled with heart-pounding and heart-rending moments, this delicious, glorious novel is the work of a master of children’s literature.

For the rest of my reviews of Stefan Bachmann’s The Peculiar and Laura Amy Schlitz’s Splendors and Glooms in today’s New York Times please go here.

Reviewing Niceties

Reading Jacob Silverman’s “Against Enthusiasm: The Epidemic of Niceness in Online Book Culture” has me yet again doing my own navel-gazing. “Not nice” for my 4th grade students can be code for anything they don’t like. Good thing that I’m thick-skinned enough at this point in my career to know that their identifying me this way is generally temporary due to one irritating moment and that soon enough something else will happen to redeem me in their eyes.

When it comes to the world of children’s books it is not so easy. Long ago when I didn’t know anyone in this world it was easy for me to voice strongly my feelings about the books I read. If I liked one I said so and if I didn’t I said so too. But now I’m a part of this world (online and off)  and consider many members of it my friends. And so Silverman is accurate in that I prefer to focus publicly on those books that I like rather than those I don’t. One reason is because taste is so involved — what speaks to others may just not speak to me for reasons that have nothing to do with quality. But most of all it is because I know how much the creators put their hearts and souls into their books.

That said, I still feel critical reviewing is necessary. And so, on occasion with books on topics I know a lot about, books that have too many errors and problems in my opinion to be ignored, I grit my teeth and point them out. I’m sure others may disagree, but I do think it is possible to do this respectfully if not exactly nicely.

What about the rest of you?  I know some of you don’t do negative reviews, but some of you do.  Thoughts?

Coming Soon: Rebecca Stead’s Liar & Spy

I am a huge fan of Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me (see my NYT review and this post as to why) and am very happy to report that her new Liar & Spy is just as good. I read it a while ago, but because I reviewed it professionally only gave it a brief mention here. Yesterday I learned that my Horn Book starred review was made available to Random House and so, while I can’t put the whole thing here (be sure to keep an eye out for it in September), I will give you the quote from it that they are using:

Starred Review, The Horn Book, September/October, 2012:
“Stead’s spare and elegant prose, compassionate insight into the lives of young people, wry sense of humor, deft plotting, and ability to present complex ideas in an accessible and intriguing way make this much more than a mystery with a twist.”

Coming Soon: Geoff Rodkey’s Deadweather and Sunset

So let’s see. It is easy to see a certain kind of formula that came about over the last decade or so involving male Cinderellas. You’ve got Harry Potter with those nasty Dursleys making him live under the stairs. There’s Percy Jackson with his dyslexia. Both, of course, have sidekicks with whom they banter and battle highly dangerous foe. The result of Harry and Percy’s success among young readers has generated a whole lot of heroes of their ilk. Now there are plenty of young guys treated badly who find out they are special and, of course, have sidekicks and some sort of maybe- first-love interest (who may or not be a sidekick).  Most of these are entertaining and immediately after reading, forgettable. So my initial response when I received Geoff Rodkey’s Deadweather and Sunrise, the first in The Chronicles of Egg, was a distinct lack of enthusiasm.  Chronicles?  Pirates?  A boy and a girl on the cover?  Yawn.

But, but, but then I began reading and was immediately and completely hooked. Rodkey has created a witty and intriguing alternate world, one that is filled with pirates and feels along the lines of 18th and 19th century British Empire or something of that ilk. His male Cinderella is one Egbert, who understandably prefers the nickname Egg. He lives on the putrid outlier island of Deadwater which is largely populated by pirates. “There were two kinds on Deadwater: the normal ones who hung around down in Port Scratch, drinking and getting into knife  fights whenever they weren’t off raiding Cartager gold ships; and the busted-down, broken ones,who’d lost too many limbs or eyes or organs to crew a ship, but not enough to kill them outright.” It is the latter who work on his father’s ugly fruit plantation, seemingly the only legal enterprise on Deadwater.  Tormented by his miserable older siblings Adonis and Venus (both of whom are nothing like their namesakes) and ignored by his taciturn and always-working father, Egbert’s life is that of the classic downtrodden male Cinderella. But suddenly everything changes. There’s a map, a girl, her villainous father, gruff and good pirates, nasty dangerous pirates, and something more sinister lurking in the wings that may involve the original people of the area, termed Natives, who we only see far, far off, toiling on the nearby island Sunrise’s silver mine.

Egg tells his own story with humor and a  likable lack of self-pity. There is adventure galore as he goes from one cliffhanger (one is literally a cliffhanger) to the next and wit as well. For it is Rodkey’s writing that made this rise for me above the others of its type — a dry sense of humor, the sort of throw-away lines Dickens does so well, great pacing, and excellent world building.  I can see that some might be worried about the mention of those mysterious Natives, but my sense and hope is that Rodkey is setting us readers up for something significant about them in future volumes. In this start to the series they are far-off figures Egg is only very vaguely informed about through hearsay and stories of the past related by various characters.  That they are so barely known and then only as myth feels intentional on the author’s part and something I am hopeful he will bust open in good ways in future volumes.

Of course there is much more that we readers will be waiting for as well — what exactly did happen to Egg’s family after they went off?  What and where is he headed next? Geoff Rodkey has definitely got my attention and I’m eager to see where he is going to take this chronicle next.  Oddly enough, when searching for a link for the book I came across a review by none other than Rick Riordan who describes it as “Lemony Snicket meets Pirates of the Caribbean,with a sprinkling of Tom Sawyer for good measure.” Not too bad a description at all.

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s No Crystal Stair

I’m a fan of boundary crossings, those books that don’t sit neatly in one genre. Say Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Wonderstruck with their mix of textual and visual storytelling or Deborah Wiles’ Countdown with the atmospheric setting heightened through the use of documentary material. Now along comes another hybrid, Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s superb No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller.

To say this is the story of a bookseller hardly does Lewis Michaux or his great-niece Nelson justice. For this bookseller was also political, socially aware, charming, smart, and a player through a significant historical time and place. Nelson spent years researching and figuring out how to tell the story of this incredible man. In her author note she writes:

Researching this family history was exciting and challenging, though nonexistent and conflicting information complicated the project, I did my best to tell Lewis’s story using facts when I could, filling gaps with informed speculation, making this a work of fiction. My goal was to leave readers with the essence of the man, an understanding of what shaped him, and a picture of how he and his National Memorial African Bookstore influenced a community. (166)

She brilliantly succeeds with this goal having created a book that is a community itself. A vibrant collection of voices take us from Lewis’s youth in early 20th century Newport News, Virginia all the way to 1970s Harlem. Throughout we hear from Lewis himself as he goes from a mischievous pig thief to a gambling den owner and on to the creator of a politically and unique Harlem institution, along the way considering the historical figures of his time — among them Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. We hear from his family — his lively father, his serious mother, his siblings — especially Lightfoot who establishes the reknown Church of God, his wives, and his son. And we hear from many others, in particular those who were touched by this charismatic man. Helping to provide context are fictionalized newspaper and magazine articles, programs for public events, and “off the record” memories of a fictional news reporter. And then there are the documents, among them photographs, fliers, programs, business cards, newspapers, death certificates, book covers and title pages, and FBI files.

I started the book wondering how I would ever manage to keep straight the many voices telling the story, but I had no need to worry. Each is absolutely distinct — when one returns to the narrative there is no question who it is. These individuals are poetic, energetic, moving, and full of fascinating historical information. In addition to the real people around Lewis, Nelson created several completely fictional characters based on “the oral-history stories of real people who were touched by the bookstore.” I particularly appreciated the”Harlem Teenager” later known as Snooze whose growing-up voice weaves among the other mostly adult voices. Furthering the genre-crossing aspect of the book are R. Gregory Christie’s excellent illustrations, the book’s fine design, and Nelson’s meticulous back matter filled with information and citations regarding her research.

No Crystal Stair is an elegant and riveting look at an extraordinary man who was part of a remarkable historical time.

Coming Soon: Mary Losure’s The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World

I’ve long been besotted with the Cottingley Fairies story even going so far as to use it to frame a talk I gave on literary fairy tales. Thinking I might write a kids’ book about it one day I went on to do a ton of research, but now along comes Mary Losure who has done even more research than me and written that very book, The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Mary Fool the World. Darn you, Mary! Just kidding as this is one terrific book (that I reviewed in the March Horn Book — starred no less).

The story, if you don’t know it, involves a handful of so-called fairy photographs by two young girls in 1917 Cottingley, England. It was the time of spiritualism and a great yearning by many for fairies and such to be real. So when prominent types such as Arthur Conan Doyle heard about the photos the story went viral (in the early 20th century manner, that is). Even after growing up, Elsie and Frances insisted for years that the fairies in their photographs were real.

My adoration for the story is because I vividly remember spending time in gorgeous places myself as a child where, being highly imaginative and prone to fantasy play, could easily have convinced myself that fairies inhabited the area.  A butterfly seen in the corner of my eye?  Really a fairy.  So I totally get how it may have for Frances, the impressionable younger girl.  And the fun Elsie may have had encouraging that play and belief.  Until it all got away from both of them.

Losure provides her own take on the story — say why the girls (especially Elsie) may have been inclined to make-up such photographs, much about Conan Doyle’s and the other adults’ need to believe, and much more within the context of the times. Sympathetic, fascinating, well-researched (and I should know:), clearly written, this is an all around great read.