Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

POETRY FRIDAY Rejection letter haiku

Dear Phil N. DeBlanc:
Sorry for the form letter
and thanks for the stamp.

Yes, I'm reduced to printing my own scribblings this week. Here's the full opus.

Another reason why New York is lovely in the fall

An intriguing tidbit came over the transom today, if you're headed to New York in October.

Some top-notch authors and child psych types are teaming up to discuss the healing power of kids books in today's topsy-turvy world. Not that we live in a more violent or tragic era than any other, but kids may be exposed to more rough stuff via the Internet, TV, etc.

Enter Neil Gaiman, Mo Willems (is it my imagination, or is he everywhere these days?), Lois Lowry, Jacqueline Woodson, Pam Muñoz Ryan and others kidlit faves, along with a host of child development experts for “Fear and Fiction: The Power Of Children’s Books and The Inner Life of The Child.”

It's covering everything from picture books to YA, thanks to the smart folks at Yale University's Child Study Center and the Anna Freud Centre in London, with the conference taking place in New York at the Bank Street College on Saturday, October 21. Learn more and register here.

Easy on my tired eyes

Do Lions live on lily pads?

by Melanie Walsh

Oh, something simple for my sleep-deprived brain, please. Up all night with sick baby. No longer coherent. Bleah.

Found this book in the pile. Short! Small! Bright watercolors for sore eyes. Yes. I loved it from the garish stripes on the endpapers through the silly text and simple, flat figures.

Is this the nest of a goat? Do crocodiles live in shells? Do parakeets live in bowls?

All the questions you ever wanted answered about animals. Okay, probably not, but funny stuff if you're little and don't really know these things.

Welsh's art covers every millimeter of paper, and right now I'm staring at a full bleed of orange-red that would look smashing in a lipstick. Love those great washes of primary colors too.

Now I'm going back to bed.

Rating: *\*\

Books for Moms who are, uh, right. All the time.

There are some publishers who can't wait to contact me and beg me to review their books. And then there are some, quite inexplicably, who never write, never call. Whassup wid dat?

What to make of this? Hmmm ... an entirely new publishing venture in the happy land of kidlit. Proof those wacky right wingers do indeed have a sense of humor! Hahaha!

Honestly, I try to steer clear of politics in this blog and haven't detected much in other kiddie litters. If the author, Katherine DeBrecht, had been making a point about vapid celebrity pod people invading the publishing biz to push their half-baked world views on the rest of us, I bet we'd all be lining up behind her.

But what makes me suspect she won't be cozying up to Bookshelves of Doom anytime soon?

Oh, why bother. As a proud member of the Zionist conspiracy and the liberal media elite, I doubt I'll ever make their comp list anyway. Hit list, maybe.

Update: Added the author's name and link to her blog.

Dino mystery

Did Dinosaurs Eat Pizza? Mysteries Science Hasn't Solved

by Lenny Hort; illustrated by John O'Brien

Our first outing as parents to the American Museum of Natural History in April didn't go as planned, to say the least. I got us on the wrong subway and we ended up on the East Side, instead of Upper West, so we tried to cab it, then doubled back in frustration, then almost took an express to Harlem. By the time we got there, a mere 90 minutes before closing, we couldn't raise the people we were meeting via cell phone.

We headed to the dinosaurs so Seth could promptly express boredom with all those massive skeletons, none of which moved or flew or ate his sister. Humph. I hid in a small theater to nurse the baby, who promptly fell asleep, trapping me in an infinite loop with Meryl Streep. Mass extinctions! Rain forest butchery! Oh my.

But our love of dinosaurs emerged unscathed, even if they are just a buncha bones. And that's kinda the prob for paleontologists too. For everything they can surmise about the big lizard/bird thingees from their fossils, there's tons of sheer guesswork, like what color skin they had or whether T. Rex hunted or scavenged.

This is serious stuff, never mind the dopey title. I guess that was an attempt at whimsy, but the inside's all science, even in O'Brien's comical ink-and-watercolor art. Okay, there was a pizza reference. A sauropod loops around itself and the palms it's eating have red tops. It looks like a squiggly pizza with a sauropod crust, illustrating text about how anybody might eat enough to maintain a 100-ton waistline. Who knows?

This book doesn't have all the answers. In fact, it has none of them. What sounds did they make? How did they court? How did they lay eggs from such huge heights? It's like all the times kids ask you a question and you've no idea how many stars there are or whether that stain is poo or chocolate or can we go yet. So you say "I don't know, sweetie" and endure their disappointed/skeptical/disgusted look because you know that in another 10 years, you're going to be seeing that same expression a lot.

Hort keeps his text short, precise, quick, then lets O'Brien have all the fun. We see a tiny, bow-tied and aproned dinosaur waiter being shoved out the kitchen door to serve a platter to T. Rex, whose table is surrounded by empty aprons, bow ties and bones. Gulp!

This is a fun one for the dino-obsessed, who have more questions than anyone can answer, and just so y'know that even the answer people get stumped.

Rating: *\*\*\

This robot malfunctions

Rusty Robot and Charlie Monkey

by Jo Rigg and Simon Mugford

Reviewed by Brett Levy of DadTalk

Which came first, the gimmick or the story idea? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, but there is no mystery when it comes to Rusty Robot and Charlie Monkey, which are part of the Funny Faces series by Priddy Books.

The two big holes carved out of the book – with googly eyes on the inside back page – are not the worst of it. Nor the touch-and-feel pages that would interest a 1-year-old instead of the targeted over-3 market. No, it’s the loud, stupid noises that blast the reader when the last page is opened. (Fortunately, the sound device was broken on Charlie Monkey.)

Even the blocky drawings seem right out of a marketer’s little book of tricks. The result is art and poetry seemingly produced by committee:

This busy little robot
Is cleaning up the house.
Look behind you Dusty,
It’s a tiny robot mouse.

Or how about this from Charlie Monkey?

Swimming in the river,
Flashing toothy smiles,
Are Daddy Croc and Junior,
The snappy crocodiles.

Despite my reservations, the bright colors are sure to entice some young children and even trigger imaginations. And while I quickly slam Rusty Robot shut as soon as I hear the loud buzzing, some kids will love it.

My suggestion: if your kids must have books from the Funny Faces series, don’t forget to pick up a set of earplugs from the adjacent drug store.

Rating: *\

A Mutt in the Forest

Maybe he hasn't made Fuse #8's list of Hot Men of Children's Literature yet, but Patrick McDonnell can bring his Mutts over to my place anytime. He graciously submitted to an email interview with moi, ahem, for the special double summer issue of The Edge of the Forest.

It's due out later today, so don't be alarmed if you get the May issue the first few times you click.

The Forest elf also reprinted three of my picture book reviews: Mr. and Mrs. God in the Creation Kitchen, Museum Trip and Hippopotamus Stew.

Plus there are many other fine, cool, wonderful contributors who all have the same thing in common -- we can't keep our hands off our kids' books.

UPDATE: It's up! Hooray! Now go read it.

POETRY FRIDAY Smallest voices of the Holocaust

Terezin was the concentration camp gussied up for Red Cross inspectors and propaganda films about "relocated" Jews in their "model ghetto." Children attended school, where teachers encouraged art and poetry. More than 4,000 drawings and 42 poems survived, becoming the property of the State Jewish Museum in Prague.

The children didn't fare as well: of the 15,000 who passed through Terezin, fewer than 100 came back. The rest perished from famine or disease or were shipped to Auschwitz.

The following is from a collection of the children's poems and drawings, "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" originally translated into English in 1971, then expanded in 1993; it appears to be out of print now.

Terezin

by Mif, 1944

The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere inside our memories.

We've suffered here more than enough,
Here in this clot of grief and shame,
Wanting a badge of blindness
To be a proof for their own children.

A fourth year of waiting, like standing above a swamp
From which any moment might gush forth a spring.

Meanwhile, the rivers flow another way,
Another way,
Not letting you die, not letting you live.

And the cannons don't scream and the guns don't bark
And you don't see the blood here. Nothing, only silent hunger.
Children steal the bread here and ask and ask and ask
And all would wish to sleep, keep silent and just to go to sleep again ...

The heaviest wheel rolls across our foreheads
To bury itself deep somewhere inside our memories.

Stick It In Your Ear

Mabel O’Leary Put Peas in Her Ear-y

by Mary Delaney; illustrated by Kathy Couri

Reviewed by Deb Clark

The other day I read about a study that found kids don’t like to eat vegetables and must acquire a taste for them. This would only be news to people who (a) do not have children or (b) have suffered some kind of traumatic head injury that made them forget the lengths they went to as children to avoid eating anything green.

Kids, and those of us with intact memories, will relate to Mabel O’Leary, whose mom won’t let her leave the table until she eats a mound of green peas. But as soon as mom turns her back, Mabel sticks every single pea in her ear. Her creative, if ill-advised, scheme gets her released from the table but for the rest of the day she’s unable to understand anything her mom says.

Mother yelled, “STOP!”
But Mabel hears, “HOP!”
Which seemed like
An odd thing to say.
But wanting to please her
She tried to appease her
By hopping and yelling “Olé!”

The wackiness escalates from there – all of it in rhyme – until the peas fall out. Crayon-bright watercolor illustrations loaded with humorous details enhance the comedy of the story. Mabel doesn’t appear to suffer any ill effects, and on the final page she is seen disposing of broccoli in her mom’s shoes. Mabel has a lot to learn about the art of successful vegetable subterfuge.

Rating: *\*\

Yep, pond scum, that's me

Okay, so last October this very cool, funny author-type person contacts me about a chapter book he's written about a boy and his bugs. I tell him I don't really review anything but picture books, but okay, I'll make an exception.

I get the book. It sits there.

And sits.

For seven months it sits by my bedside. Sometimes it gets knocked off to eventually be retrieved and dusted off. Twice it made its way to the bottom of a stack of laundry.

Every time I flipped through it, I'd think "This looks so darned FUNNY, now why don't I read it?" And then I never would.

Basically, a boy's family is under threat from an alliance of bugs, slimy critters and an evil crow. You can read the Amazon descriptions here but the coolest part is that the boy gets to transform himself into an animal too.

It looks like it has everything you need in a book for boys: disgusting stuff, action and adventure and big battles with more excuses for disgusting stuff. I say "looks like" because Book Buds was recently under orders from our family's chief executive (that would be my husband) to pack everything up and put it in storage so we could sell the house.

And, so, uh, well, um ... I put the book in storage. And this isn't short-term, just-until-we-move kinda storage. It's sitting under a stack of family china I never used, Depression glass plates, and these linens. Plus a bunch of stuff I can't recall.

And plenty more books. Pond Scum is in good company, I'm afraid.

And then Alan Silberberg emailed me again last week to remind me about his book.

Ahhh ... I hope he'll forgive me if I only plug the book instead of reviewing it. Alan's planning a big summer promotion, which you can view here.

I'm so sorry, except that this may happen to a few more authors over the summer as Book Buds becomes temporarily homeless. (Oh yeah, we're in escrow. But, um, we don't have a new place picked out.)

Just imagine the trouble I'd be in if I blogged about china.