Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Pots and poems

The Kitchen Talks

by Shirley Mozelle; illustrated by Petra Mathers

What a cheery way to introduce my kids to my favorite room in the house, one that brims with warmth, yummy smells and comforting sounds. And much of it's captured with disarming wordplay in this all-too-short collection of poems.

In Mozelle's kitchen, every gadget has its own abbreviated story to tell: the pot holders dream of something cool; the flatware longs for some nightlife; even refrigerator magnets have their preferences.

Mozelle makes every word count in free verses that are tighter than a stuck jar lid. She's a gourmet of the unexpected image and apt phrasing:

Toaster
Jack-in-the-box
For bread
Includes a tan

Mathers' watercolors blend one part chaos and two parts whimsy that never feels overdone.

If I have a complaint, it's that, like a scrumptious dessert, I was left craving more.

Other books by this author reviewed here:
The Bear Upstairs

Rating: *\*\*\

Monster Mama Knows Best

Who Is Your Favorite Monster, Mama?

by Barbara Shook Hazen; illustrated by Maryann Kovalski

On some levels, being a mom of very young children is a little like being a rock star. I’m the center of my children’s universe, both girls thrilling to play with me, show off for me, follow me around or simply cuddle. Their looks of naked adulation I memorize for recall in later years when my star inevitably falls. And then there’s all the screaming, the sleepless nights, the empty bottles strewn about.

Harry is a little monster who loves his mama, and his mama loves him “as much as a mountain, as wide as outside, and deeper every day.” He’s happy when he is the center of Mama’s attention. But when Mama can’t come running because she is tending to baby sister Bronwen or big brother Bruxley, the green-eyed monster takes over our little green guy, leading him to believe Mama has more time for his siblings than for him.

Proving that monster children take the same logical leaps as human kids, Harry decides Mama must love Bronwen and Bruxley more than she loves him. But Mama is clever, and helps Harry figure out for himself that she loves all of her furry, warty children the most. Little Harry is happy again.

Mama’s response makes perfect sense to me, now that I’m a mom and I love both of my kids the same – with every particle of my being and with an intensity that would be frightening if it weren’t so natural. No rock star ever loved her fans as much.

Note: reviewed by Deb Clark

Rating: *\*\

A child prodigy turns 250

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

by Ernst A. Ekker; illustrated by Doris Eisenburger

Mozart turns 250 this year, something worth celebrating even if you're skeptical he can work wonders with your own kids. Sheesh, talk about marketing.

I got suckered into videos and CDs from Baby Einstein, Baby Genius, Baby Miracle Worker, Baby Mad Scientist and Baby God Almighty and they all feature Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.

But that poor Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart had it tough as a kid. Honestly, he did.

We usually remember the cool parts, like composing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" at age three, or writing entire operas in his head, or being the popular guy at parties.

Ekker sketches in the rest for us: the prodigy amazed by his own gift for music and dance, but forced to grow up on the road as he was pulled from one royal court to the next until he'd outgrown cuteness and his welcome.

We see the stage father who pushed, the doting mother who sacrificed, the beloved sister whose gift never quite matched his own. He contracts deadly diseases and composes soaring pieces; he was singularly focused on his music, able to block out the world even as it buzzed around him, yet he was painfully grounded in the reality of having a family to feed.

The story chugs along without getting weighted down in a "this is important" tone, but occasionally the chronology feels rushed. Wait, how long has he been in Prague? When did he meet his wife?

Ekker lives in Mozart's beloved Vienna and creates a glowing, awestruck portrait of him.

Eisenburger's illustrated other biographies of composers, such as Bach and Schubert and clearly feels at home in the formality of 18th century European court life. But watch for the inspiring way she weaves Mozart's fantasies into clouds and puffs of smoke: they tell their own story.

I'm sure my kids feel smarter already. 

Note: Comes with a sublime 50-minute CD of Mozart's music in roughly chronological order to complement the story.

Rating: *\*\*\

Is history repeating itself?

Aliens Are Coming!

by Meghan McCarthy

My Dad wasn't fooled for a minute. While the rest of the country panicked at the thought of a Martian invasion, Dad sat thrilled by the radio on October 30, 1938 as Orson Welles updated the sci-fi classic "The War of the Worlds." Unlike thousands of others who fled their homes, jammed traffic or prepared for the worst, Dad caught the fact it was just a show.

At least, that's what he claimed.

McCarthy captures the wide-eyed hysteria that accompanied the notorious broadcast, plus we get to see slobbery, tentacled aliens. Yes! With tongue firmly planted in cheek and a retro touch to her brush, she reprints some of the script and depicts what people imagined was happening.

Cut to reality: jammed switchboards and clogged intersections, and a desolate pasture in a New Jersey town called Grovers Mill (in Princeton Township) where the first ship allegedly landed. I've actually seen the water tower people mistook for a "Martian cylinder." I guess it's easy to laugh now, eh?

As she cuts back and forth from fictional to real, McCarthy's palette shifts from rusty Martian reds to black-and-gray tones, as if listeners were extras in a 1930s movie. She stays true to the era and resists the temptation to slide into 1950s B-movie camp.

Beginning and substantial end notes flesh out this fascinating glimpse into how one nutty genius hoodwinked a country.

Karl Rove, are you listening? 

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Please don't eat the pages

Fast Food

by Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers

Dog Food

I've complained about this before:  I just cannot get my scallions, peppers and cukes to pose this nicely for the camera. I don't know how these guys do it.

I bruise a banana, it looks like a bruised banana, not a dog or a canoe. I cannot entice mushrooms to hold hands and smile. It would never occur to me that black-eyed peas make for some eerily expressive eyes, or how to manipulate broccoli into the pampered tufts of a poodle.

These guys do not need my help selling their books, which teach kids shapes, colors and counting using carved fruits and vegetables. Dog Food features dogs (wouldn't you know it) and lots of canine puns, while Fast Food depicts modes of transportation, such as an eggplant train or a squash school bus with smiley radish faces peering out.

I guess we'd better not tell the folks at People for the Ethical Rights of Vegetables. This could constitute veggie abuse.

I really have nothing else to add, except perhaps some balsamic dressing.

Rating: *\*\*\*\ 

Other books by these authors that we've reviewed:
Food for Thought

Painting with words

Through Georgia's Eyes

by Rachel Rodriguez; illustrated by Julie Paschkis

You went to the exhibit, you bought the poster. Maybe you saw the biopic on PBS or have read other biographies about her.

This one's better.

Georgia O'Keeffe changed the way we look at contemporary art; not just American art or women artists. We expect what we see to be larger than life but intimate, to reveal what we overlook every day, but what cannot be captured on film; she came down firmly on the side of timeless images versus what's merely frozen in time, like a snapshot.

So it makes sense that a children's picture book should slip off the constraints of dates and timelines in favor of a poetic pastiche of images. We follow Georgia from birth to old age, from Wisconsin to New York to her beloved New Mexico, but instead of her glory fading into infirmity, she gains vigor as her artistic vision matures and her talent ripens.

And this is how her many fans -- myself included -- remember her; more graceful, commanding and revered with every beloved wrinkle. 

Paschkis captures what she can in paper collages, but its Rodriguez' prose that brings the artist to life:

Georgia expresses feelings in her own way. Words work. But for her, the color blue says it better.
Or red. Or a seashell.
A pale bone.
Sunset.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

More fun in the Forest

Just another short plug for the March/April issue of The Edge of the Forest, up and running at an Internet near you. This month features an interview with Happy Kid! author Gail Gauthier and blogger Liz Burns dissects a teens-and-seniors fad in recent fiction.

Uncovering herstory

Seven Brave Women

by Betsy Hearne; illustrated by Bethanne Andersen

I was in my mid-20s when I took my first women’s history class, and it was both a revelation and a comfort. Before then, history courses focused on wars and the lives of the wealthy, ruling class – a bunch of dead, white guys. Seeing the past through the eyes of women who accomplished great things and the many more who lived unremarkable lives let me see it was my story too.

In Seven Brave Women, a young girl – daughter of the author – recounts the stories of seven women in her family, each depicted in a vibrant, two-page oil painting, starting with great-great-great-grandmother Elizabeth, who traveled to America in a wooden sailboat with two very young children and another on the way. Each woman lived during wartime – from the Revolutionary War through Vietnam – but each, it is noted, “did not fight.”

Some of the women accomplished undeniably remarkable things, like the great-grandmother who moved to India and opened a hospital for women. Others’ accomplishments are mundane – a great-great-grandmother lived on a farm and made “candles and soap and bread and butter and jam and everything else that now you can buy at the store.”

For the most part, the accomplishments of these women are not the type that make it into history books, but Seven Brave Women reveals their true significance. They are among the great and heroic acts that helped create our country, our way of life, that the men fighting in all those wars longed to come home to.

The book ends with the narrator, who is still a child but knows she will make history as her foremothers did. “There are a million ways to be brave,” she says.

“Seven Brave Women” is a lovely introduction to history told through individual stories as opposed to major world events. And it just might spark an interest in genealogy. It’s got me interested in writing about the women in my family, just for my own kids. I’ll do it someday, when I discover some free time. Until then, I’m happy to have this book to share with my daughters.

Note: reviewed by Deb Clark.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

And away she goes ...

Fly, Little Bird

by Tina Burke

For reasons too juvenile to explain here, I blew two chances as a kid for free art classes that would’ve put me on an entirely different path in life. One was a special program in elementary school, the other a scholarship for private lessons – arranged for me by my public high school! Wow, were my teachers furious when I spurned it.

Feh. What do kids know?

I thought about that when it occurred to me that cracking the kiddie lit market's going to be tough as a mere wordsmith. Illustrating your own picture books sure must make things easier.

You don’t have to explain your concept to the artist, and you can use words sparingly, confident the illustrations will convey the story you wish to tell.

Burke uses only one line, “fly, little bird,” when a little girl discovers a colorful hatchling who promptly falls flat onto its tail feathers. The girl and her doggie take the flightless chick home and there’s that healing magic of doting attention and big-hearted friendship.

Time passes, until an open window beckons. A breathless search, and the little girl catches up to her friend, when the book’s title is repeated, this time as a tender goodbye.

Odd, but my father used this same line when I was 24 and still living at home.

Feh. What do parents know?

Rating: *\*\

Two books for two buddies

Num, num, num!

Hug, hug, hug!

by Emily Jenkins and Tomek Bogacki

What a noodge, that ferret Haha. Bea just minds her own business, hugging her blanket or numming a bagel. Haha wants in, so why doesn't he come right out and say so, huh?

Well, because that whole passive-aggressive schtick makes for a comical pair of board books. Jenkins shows you can conjure up a richly imagined character with a few penstrokes; Bogacki's artwork brings the hippo Bea down to toddler size.

Rating: *\*\