Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Bear essentials

The Bear Upstairs

by Shirley Mozelle; illustrated by Doug Cushman

I don't think it's this book's intention to teach that rudeness can lead to romance, but that's how I've been using it. Upstairs Bear's moving in with much bumping and ka-thumping, and Downstairs Bear can't get a lick of writing in. So she musters her courage and knocks on the door, only to find that her thoughtless new neighbor has great taste in cookbook authors, so to speak. Plus, he's a chef. How yummy!

When I read it to my shy son, who never seems to know how to react to noisier, pushier boys, I point out how we can sometimes turn enemies into friends with our words. We have to discern who means us harm and who's just wrapped up in their own world.

He kinda doesn't get it, but he loves this story of two bears making peace over an impromptu omelette.

Rating: *\*\

On the inside looking out

The Hello, Goodbye Window

by Norton Juster; illustrated by Chris Raschka

Oh, my aching shelves. Holding all those books make them creak more than my 42-year-old bones. I never seem to get to all the books I'd like to review, but then some of them don't need my help, I guess.

Take this one, for example. It just won the Caldecott medal, the highest honor for a picture book. I planned on reviewing it someday soon. Okay, now. Why not? I still have it on hand, and the 2006 books are only just starting to arrive.

Every now and then, an author perfects a character's voice and we can jettison the need for a plot. Just spending time with this fictional person is good enough. In adult novels, 300 pages can seem a bit long for nothing to happen. But in a kid's book, it's a shame to get to the end pages.

This powerhouse duo -- Juster wrote "The Phantom Tollbooth" and Raschka's a previous Caldecott honoree -- capture a little girl so well, you'd swear she was speaking to you. Or rather, shouting, in that gleeful way kids do when they forget about their "inside voice."

In the morning the first place we go is back to the kitchen, and there's the window waiting for us. You can look out and say good morning to the garden or see if it's going to rain or be nice.

And you can see if the dog next door is doing stuff in Nanna's flower beds. She hates that!

Even the art looks like a kid smudged and smooshed finger paints, watercolors and blobs of primary colors to conjure up a day at her grandparents, whose kitchen window looks out on the world. It's special only because the little girl thinks it so, and the source of its magic comes from the loving faces it reflects.

Bonus points for a multi-racial family, but really, get this one because it doesn't merely sing so much as jump up and down and giggle.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Flying high

Hurry and the Monarch

by Antoine O Flatharta; illustrated by Meilo So

A butterfly. A tortoise. Instead of thinking opposites -- the swift and the slow, the fleeting and the long-lived -- think of them as part of the same cycle of life.

Oh Gawd, I think I hear a Disney theme song in my head.

Fortunately, Flatharta's spare prose soars in this tale of a brief encounter between a migrating Monarch and the sedentary Hurry. We follow the butterfly to her winter perch in Mexico and partly back, pausing long enough to lay a clutch of eggs in Hurry's garden home in Texas.

That garden is Hurry's whole world, but Flatharta uses it to symbolize completeness, as the seasons come and go with Hurry unhurriedly witnessing its tiniest miracle: the birth of a new caterpillar and its transformation into a full-grown butterfly. The cycle is complete, with two worlds -- one vast but fleeting, the other confined but permanent -- briefly intersecting.

Plus, you learn a lot about Monarchs and their amazing, cross-country journey. Includes an end note.

So's watery splotches of color add expressionistic depth to the illustrations, matching Eastern subtlety and awareness of nature with a Western flair for bold colors.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

To sleep, perchance to dream

Clara and Asha

by Eric Rohmann

I have trouble catching enough Zzzz's most nights, because it's prime time for my imagination. With the lights out and the house quiet, I'm free to let my overactive mind roam, even as my body begs for deeper rest.

I have an ally in Clara, a restless tyke who can't will herself to sleep, even as an off-stage mother insists it's bedtime in this lush, dreamy story of what happens after the lights go on in a little girl's head.

A fish named Asha comes to life after the two meet "in the park" where Asha's really a fountain statue. True to a child's outsized creativity, the pretend Asha is larger than life and swims through the air, frolicking with Clara in the tub or in the snow and on many other outings.

On this night, they sail across a night sky together in wordless, panoramic spreads painted in sleepy midnight hues. A hush falls over my little one too as the pair soars across the starry pages before Clara settles into bed, only to be kept awake by another potential buddy. I can almost feel his pulse slowing as the story drifts to its close.

Rating: *\*\*\

&*^%$#@!!!

I normally don't share much personal stuff on this blog, since I have Inland Empress for that, but I had a frustrating experience with kids' books this week.

Impossible, you say. How could anything related to children's lit be frustrating?

Lemme tell ya' ...

It all started with a visit to Mom-in-law's in Scottsdale, Ariz., for New Year's. We lugged a few books for the kiddies, plus MIL took out one or two from the library. Somehow, a library book made it home with us. Whoops!

Now, if it'd been left to me, weeks might've passed before I threw the book, or something resembling a book, into a box and hauled it to the post office. MIL might've then opened the box, only to find my laundry or leftover tofu or used kleenex, who knows? I can't be expected to keep track of everything.

But no, the box was put together by Mr. Practical himself, the wonderful, both-feet-on-the-ground hubby of mine. He put in the purloined library book, plus several other kids' books for an elementary school where MIL volunteers. Altogether, it was a nice little package.

I took it to the post office in the next town and hit a decorative stone curb while parking.  Don't ask. Tales of my driving skills, or lack thereof, could fill a blog on its own. 

Grrrr ... there's now an ugly gash under my front fender.

Then yesterday, MIL calls to say we sent the wrong book. She had opened the box and found one on sea turtles. The hubby asked her to double check the box. Sure enough, there was only one book and some crumpled papers.

So, in addition to fixing the fender and paying postage, we have to replace the library book. This was one expensive trip to the post office.

Or maybe I should be glad that a humble postal worker coveted children's lit enough to steal a few titles out of our package.

But I now consider all jokes about the U.S. Mail to be valid social commentary.

Grrr ...

Calling all cardiologists

In My Heart

by Molly Bang

It's common for my son and I to disagree on books. His taste isn't exactly discriminating. He's as fascinated by the phone book as anything else I show him.

Occasionally, however, he spots something I miss, for all my persistent snobbery. This busy jumble of a book got his attention and kept it, despite the lack of a coherent story line and enough saccharine to cause organ failure.

As Mommy heads off to her job as a veterinarian, a window opens in her heart for her son. First we see her day, then his, and he's ever "in my heart."

When we're apart,
I miss you.
But then ...
I look inside my heart,
See you sitting there and
Hello Happy! Happy jumps right back in my front door.

Bang uses retina-scorching oranges and a feisty palette for her mixed-media art, which spreads in full bleed across most pages with details jammed in every which way. There's a full array of activities, sick animals and ethnic urbanites, plus the first letters on each page become part of the illustrations. Most impressive is a "Y" that holds Mom and Dad as they fold laundry.

Longtime readers (all two of you) know I always award points for multiculturalism, but I still would've tossed this back on the pile as well-intentioned eye candy, geared mainly toward overly clingy kids. Um, well, except I have an overly clingy kid, okay?

And one day, as his father drove off to work, Seth announced, "But I'm always in his heart."

Damn, I hate when I'm wrong.

Rating: *\*\*\

Welcome, BoBbers!

Howdy to all those popping in from BoB, and welcome to my humble site. It's organized a bit differently than many other book blogs, and I realize it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Basically, I get a bunch of books in the mail or have my husband steal them from the newspaper where he works. Yes, steal. We are not above setting a bad example for our kids. Though, technically, we have the paper's tacit approval, which means they haven't had him arrested yet.

I then write a review and file it under one of the many handy categories to your right. The list keeps growing as I think of more. It's organized by age-appropriateness too, according to entirely arbitrary criteria based on my own addled calculations and an extensive survey of exactly one child (my son, who loves me anyway).

Now and then someone will wildly disagree with a review and denounce me as the enemy of all that is childlike and pure. I once had an author email me all brokenhearted, but we quickly kissed and made up.

It's good to remember that my shelves are groaning from all the picture books that find their way to me, by hook or crook or fourth-class mail, and just getting reviewed means it leapt off the shelf for whatever reason.

A two-bud rating says it's worth the cover price. I'm pretty stingy with those buds, though I weakened a bit around the holidays.

Giving your kid's favorite book a ho-hum review does NOT mean that I hate your child, or that he or she has questionable taste in books and will therefore never amount to anything. Your child is brilliant and lucky and destined for greatness because he or she has a book-loving parent. That would be you.

So welcome. Have a look around, or come back when you have something specific in mind. And feel free to leave an acerbic comment about my appalling inability to recognize literary genius.

Enjoy.

Spacing on rockets

This Rocket

by Paul Collicutt

My son is bigtime into outer space, whereas I am merely an aging space cadet. So while his room is chock-a-block with stars and spaceships and astronaut-related stuff, I merely gaze off into the cosmos. At least we both keep busy, even if only one of us is moving.

This book's on his recent list of must-reads, since it's so obviously on-topic, but I found it short on details, and it skips around chronologically.

The Flash Gordon feel to the graphics is what makes this book soar. We whiz through rocketing history from the Soviet space chimp through the international space station. The highlight is, of course, the Apollo 11 countdown, blasting vertically across the final pages.

"This rocket" repeats on every page, paired with opposites: big rockets and small, zooming up and splashing down, etc. The repetition does wonders for wee minds, of course, and it's clearly geared toward the gizmo-obsessed, as are the rest of the books in Collicutt's transportation series: "This Truck" and "This Train" to name but two.

Rating: *\*\

Hungry for more

Dinosaurs

by Benedicte Guettier

Hmmm ... there seems to be something missing, like someone took a giant bite. Open the book and ... ah, I see, it's a big hole in the middle! Where a little person's face goes! Aw, cute.

So, basically, what you have is a page after page of hungry dinosaurs arguing over what to eat, and each looks suspiciously like your own offspring. So when you get to Tyrannosaurus, who wants to eat the other dinosaurs, it should induce a few giggles instead of lip-quivering terror. 

Or you can always explain that this is an import from Belgium, and those durn furriners will eat just about anything.

Kidding!

Though my monsterling prefers PB&J's with the crusts cut off, thank you very much. ROAR!

Rating: *\*\