Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

POETRY FRIDAY It's a small, squeezable world after all

Hug Time
by Patrick McDonnell

Little, Brown

My husband is a huge Mutts fan and wouldn't let me pan a book of McDonnell's even if he were capable of writing a bad one. Though this one leans a tad toward the pedestrian, if I can avoid getting shot at for saying so. Still, if I could say as much in so little space,  I'd bottle his talent, sell stock in it, and retire to my own island.

So Hug Time doesn't rate with my all-time favorite of his, The Gift of Nothing, but it's a fine little book about dispensing full-frontal, no-holds-barred hugs. I don't know all the Mutts characters (being a relative newcomer to the McDonnell orbit), but a little kitty named Jules sets off on a round-the-world trip wearing a favorite sweater and carrying a hug-to-do list.

In rhyming quattrains, he meets up with a variety of animals, more than a few on the endangered list, and gives 'em a big ol' squeeze:

Exploring the rain forest by foot and canoe,
Jules discovered a species brand-new.
Kneeling, he whispered, "We welcome you."
Off to India--with its tigers so few,
Finding one is hard to do.

Okay, so there are better rhymers out there, and McDonnell isn't above some blatant sentimentality, especially considering his famed fondness for animals (he's on the board of directors of The Humane Society of the United States, among other accomplishments).

There's no real plot here--no conflict or mounting drama or discernible character arc. Still, 'tis the season for such things, and you could do worse than put a hug in someone's stocking.

Rating: *\*\

Schizophrenia, A-Z

The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!
by Steve Martin; illustrated by Roz Chast

Flying Dolphin Press

Reviewed by Kelly Herold

I'm of two minds reviewing this. On the one hand, does the world really need another alphabet book? (I have one child who refused to be read yet another alphabet book from age two on.)  On the other hand, how can a creative, wacky alphabet book be a bad thing? On the one hand: I hate the whole celebrity book industry. On the other hand, Steve Martin is a smart celebrity who can write (see: Shopgirl) and Roz Chast is a genius (see: The New Yorker). On the one hand, it's nice to see a book for children that adults will enjoy.  Over to you, other hand: aren't we all just a little sick of coy books written to two audiences?

It's difficult to review a picture book when your mind is so obviously boggled, but I'll do my best. 

One hand:

Steve Martin's couplets are funny and scan beautifully. No stray syllables here!  His "letter" choices are unusual, giving xylophone, x-ray, and zebra a sorely needed break.  Take the letter X as a successful example of Martin's technique:

Ambidextrous Alex was actually axed
For waxing, then faxing, his boss's new slacks.

These lines have a nice crunchy feel to them and are truly new. Chast's iconic illustrations add to Martin's lines. They're busy and full of supplementary detail (the X page, for example, does indeed contain xylophones in the illustration), giving the child plenty to look at and consider. 

Chast has added a truly brilliant touch to her illustrations, posters and notes that deal with English's infuriating orthography. On the X page, for example, a poster gracing the side of a desk reads, "Links, minks, facts, and links sound like they have X's, But that idea STINKS!" 

Other hand:

Some of Martin's vocabulary choices tend to the overly knowing.   Do you really want to explain the letter G to a three year old?: "While Granny in Greenland had gravlax for three,/Her gallant son Gary grew green gracefully." Really? Or, how about O?: "Old Ollie the owl owed Owen an oboe/But instead bought him oysters at Osgood's in Soho."  Shorthand? O is for annOying.

Also on this other hand...I wonder about Chast's illustrations and their appeal to the average alphabet-book audience.  Do small children really appreciate her anxious style?

In bringing my two minds together, I find I have to give this book two ratings.  One for adults (3 buds) and one for children (2 buds).  Considering that celebrity books are really written with adults in mind, The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z! is a marketing success just in time for the holidays.

CELEBRITY SMACKDOWN! Economist needs to take a freakin' break

CELEBRITY SMACKDOWN!

The Boy With Two Belly Buttons
by Stephen Dubner

HarperCollins

Stephen who? I promise you a celebrity and you're saying Stephen freaking WHO?

Freaking is right! As in Freakonomics, a big ol' bestseller on economics. Yawn. Dubner is yet another smug smartypants mooching off the New York Times' paranoia for having a blog on absolutely every subject whatsoever. Okay, so he's not Madonna or Will Smith. It's kinda iffy whether he's a real celebrity.

This still qualifies him to pen Children's Lit-rah-toor, as in For The Ages, for future dissertation writers, for awards committees. I know this because I've gotten three press releases on it. Two came via email -- including one from his research assistant. In my day, interns padded a resume by licking out the coffee pot and bending over for the HR folks. Now they have to flog insipid kiddie books too. It's getting tough out there.

Not since Jason Alexander committed acts of literary indecency on the Tooth Fairy has a celebrity (or near enough) sunk to such grimace-inducing depths.

It's about this boy, named after the author's son, just like books written by real celebrities. Wow, can't they all get their own vanity press already?

Anyway.

Celebrity Smackdown!

You knew it had to happen. You knew that eventually, I'd hate a book so much, my bullshit meter would melt down. That I'd have to start a whole new feature here at gentle, mild-mannered Book Buds.

We're talking

CELEBRITY SMACKDOWN!

Sure, I could blithely ignore the phenomenon. I could choose not to waste precious bandwidth on their ego-driven chicken scrawls. I could hide my eyes to the wasted shelf space, the murdered trees, the hemorrhaged marketing dollars that all could've gone to more deserving authors. 

But at last, my resolve cracked.

I found a book so smugly awful, so saccharine and banal, it needed taking down. And I'm just the reviewer to do it! Grrrr ...

Who will it be? A rock star? A washed-up TV "personality"? Sorry, no links and no hints. 

Come back tomorrow for Book Buds' first 

CELEBRITY SMACKDOWN!

You won't want to miss it.

*Snarrrrlll*

(cue heavy metal music)

POETRY FRIDAY War is a three-letter word

Why War is Never a Good Idea
by Alice Walker

HarperCollins

Today is International Peace Day (and, incidentally, the Eve of Yom Kippur, Judaism's holiest day), and this poem about war drops like jagged pieces of glass into your conscience, intensely sharp but, in the right light, shining and beautiful.

Set aside the word "never" in the title. You could make a good case for many wars in history, but we're not concerned with polemics here. Walker makes a character out of War; watchful and insidious, unconcerned and toxic:

Though War is Old
It has not
Become wise
It will not hesitate
To destroy
Things that
Do not
Belong to it
Things very
Much older
Than itself.

Walker, author of The Color Purple, obviously doesn't shy away from a controversy, but don't expect subtlety. The extended metaphor has no place to hide in her spare prose, though it builds its own momentum as idyllic images of families and landscapes sink beneath violence and gore.

Vitale's art drives the point home, literally. Turn the page on a lovely Asian panorama and the paper becomes wrapped around a filthy Jeep wheel with its rusting hubcap. Vibrantly hued renderings of azure skies, sun-dappled fields and teeming jungles channel Henri Rousseau or perhaps Paul Gauguin with their fondness for the primitive, in this case symbolizing the pristine. Brace for these pastoral scenes erupting with smears of toxic-looking goo, rusting nails, or cracked enamel. The effect is both jarring and yet sublime; it's hard not to admire the artistry even in what's meant to be the ugliest pages.

A few references chafe: Walker mentions War seeing oil and gas in the earth, though in the entire history of human conflict, only a tiny fraction involved those commodities. She pulls it all off in the end, however, by admonishing the reader about War's contagious effects on us all.

Is this the best way to teach kids about war? I have no idea. My friends and I are all agreed that we'd like to put off teaching our children about the Holocaust for as long as possible, and there are no mentions of Iraq at our dinner table, nor even much about Israel and Palestine.

What you decide to teach a young child about war is, of course, entirely up to you. Walker and Vitale are merely giving you one approach, which, if it doesn't prompt nightmares, should at least inspire numerous questions.

Rating: *\*\*\

The case for legalizing whale hunting

Abigale the Happy Whale

by Peter Farrelly; illustrated by Jamie Rama

I really do try to keep an open mind about celebrity authors. After all, they were smart enough to rise to the top in Hollywood, right?

So what am I to make of this flop by screenwriter Peter Farrelly, of "There's Something About Mary" and "Dumb and Dumber" fame that is shockingly unfunny. No potty humor, no semen site gags, no yuks at all, unless you count his numerous puns. But those provoke nervous laughter, the kind you emit from twitching lips before the meds take effect.

Which you'll need. Trust me.

See, Abigale is cheerful despite all the other humpback whales being sad. Come to find out they want to beach themselves to protest pollution. How inspiring. Hey, all you insufficiently liberal beachgoers, just watch us kill ourselves! En masse! Bet that will make you feel bad, huh?

How uplifting. Maybe I should follow up with a few obituaries or the crime blotter.

And now for a few puns. Pardon my ellipses ...

Clem the Clam ... was acting like a real dip ...

"What kind of chowderhead would do this?" The steamed clam snapped.

Abigale ... dug this shellfish ... Clem was so surprised, he clammed up.

I know you want more. There's the golfin' dolphin and Dr. Gus the Octopus and my personal favorite, Fred Doofish the Red Bluefish, who suffers from an enlarged liver from eating poisoned seaweed.

Never mind that he'd probably be yellow, or that I must explain -- again and again -- what a liver is to a four-year-old whose knowledge of human anatomy begins and ends with his pipi. Oh, semen jokes, where are you when I need you?

Back to our story, which ends on Santa Monica, California, beaches with the whales deciding to swallow all the lawn chairs, bowling pins, golf clubs and other household flotsam and spew it through their blow holes onto the beach.

There! Let it be someone else's problem! What a great lesson.

And just in case you didn't get that message beaten into your head with the dolphin's nine iron, the front flap says that half of Farrelly's take goes to Heal the Bay, which cleans up Santa Monica's shoreline. He should give the other half to me, plus a refund for the stronger eyeglass prescription I need now.

Rating: *\

What's in a name?

Art

by Patrick McDonnell

The creator of the beloved Mutts comic is back with a book about a mischevious boy and his paintbrush, with a wink at Harold and the Purple Crayon. Alas, I made the terrible error of reading the Website hyperbole:

Patrick was delighted to escape his normal once-a-week color limitations and made sure he used every color he had on hand.

Oh, hello, I saw only primary colors. Maybe Pearl Paint had a shortage of watercolor pigments that week.

Okay, setting aside my anal retentiveness, this is a spirited, quick read that feels like McDonnell dashed it off in a light moment. Art and his art dribble, dash, swirl and streak whereever his imagination takes him:

He Zigs
He Zags
He really gets wired
There's no stopping Art ...
When Art is inspired

The verses rise like popcorn; airy and quick, zinging to a happy ending when curator Mom puts his opus on the fridge, because she "Loves Art." Aww.

Mutts fans will recognize McDonnell's signature simplicity and brilliant use of white space as the whole book becomes Art's canvas. Even the end papers bear his splashes and lines.

But while the ending endears, there's no getsya-right-here feeling as with his Christmas book, The Gift of Nothing, but I guess you can't expect perfection every time.

Rating: *\*\*\

Lotsa de Nothing

Lotsa de Casha

by Madonna; illustrated by Rui Paes

Once again, Madonna inflicts her addled notions of morality on us, disguised as a fable so poorly constructed that it’s hard to sit through even without having to tease out what the hell she really means.

Lotsa de Casha is a wealthy man (portrayed as a greyhound, for no obvious reason) in what’s presumably Italy, sporting a Renaissance-era wardrobe but a grating Italian accent. No other character is made to sound like a bad Godfather spoof. But then, much of the story makes no sense.

After journeying to learn the secret to happiness, Lotsa gets mugged. Rather than return to his carriage and go home, he hooks up with a cart driver (portrayed as a bull, Lord knows why) who gives stuff away. Lotsa learns that giving stuff away makes you happy.

But note he’s giving someone else’s stuff away.

And he’s always rewarded.

He gets fancy clothes and hot meals and places to sleep in exchange for doing another man’s good deeds.

Whaaaaaat?

Whatever happened to virtue is its own reward? Or that whole joy of giving thing?

Of course, Madonna has her own lessons she’d like us to learn, positing them as “facts” such as “Unhappy people like it when everyone else is unhappy.” Oh really? These read more as non-sequitors having nothing to do with whatever scene is painfully unfolding on the exquisitely over-embellished pages.

Parables, fables and morality tales abound of wealthy men foregoing their worldly goods to attain something loftier. Lotsa gets losta, but then is founda. It’d be an easy tale to retell if she’d done it right.

But then, Lotsa sums up my whole attitude about this book:

“When I wanta your opinion, I'lla buy it from you.”

Rating: *\

This toothy tale lacks bite

Dad, Are You the Tooth Fairy?

by Jason Alexander; illustrated by Ron Spears

     I don’t know of many adults who sob to their psychiatrists about the childhood trauma of discovering the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real. But in case you’re worried your kids will harbor lingering hostility about this particular revelation, this is the book for you.

     Alexander writes without a hint of the razor-sharp comic instincts he brings to his acting, and the result is a maudlin discourse on what constitutes Truth with a capital “T.” Pardon me for thinking kids face greater hazards and let-downs than Dad’s fib about the fate of missing teeth.

     The plot’s predictable enough: Gaby loses teeth, gains a few coins, loves his personal Tooth Fairy. Come to find out through the rotten neighborhood kids that it’s all a myth. Imagine! Confronting Dad gets him an earful about how magic creatures once roamed the earth, but us pushy grown-ups scared them off. Says Dad: It’s Gaby’s choice whether to keep believing. Snort.

     In an end note, Alexander says events are largely as they occurred. The character names are also the same as his kids. The problem with hewing too closely to actual events in a fictional story is that you don’t leave yourself enough wiggle room for a more imaginative, amusing treatment.

Reviewed by Anne Levy

Rating: *\*\

A fantastic tale veers off-course

The Adventures of Abdi

by Madonna; illustrated by Olga Dugina and Andrej Dugin

     It’s so hard to hate an exquisitely illustrated book. Maybe I can just dwell on how the husband-wife team of Dugin/Dugina conjures a fantasy orient, mixing Middle- and Near-Eastern touches with a dash of India thrown in.

     Bedouin carts brim two stories tall, a guard carries a half-dozen enormous swords, a snake charmer has a cobra's body. It's as if these scenes are so breathtaking in their sweep, they can't fit fully on the page and cram against the edges, a clever device that lets the reader feel the awe of the humble, small boy at the story's center.

     Oh yeah, the story. Can't we skip this part?

     There’s so many fantasy-book rule violations, I want to call Madonna offside and penalize her for life. The plot: Abdi’s an apprentice to a fabulous jeweler, Eli, and I mean that in the classic fantasy sense. The jewelry is so wondrous, people swear it brings them good fortune, though Madonna’s just finished telling us you pretty much need a fortune to afford Eli’s creations.

     The king wants a bauble for the queen. It’s entrusted to naïve Abdi to carry it on the long journey to the palace – no royal courier for something so precious, no adult escort. Guess what? It’s stolen. Nooooo ...

     One of the thieves’ names is El Shaydi. Get it? If you're thinking Spanish, you're in the wrong part of Madonna's brain. “El Shaddai” is a Hebrew name for “G-d Almighty,” (which I easily googled, btw).

     I’m presuming either Madonna isn’t as up on her Kabbalah as she insists, or she has issues with the Big Guy left over from her “Like a Prayer” days or she’s hinting at something deep and metaphorical that never materializes.

     El Shaydi substitutes a snake for the Queen’s necklace. A veiled reference to Eden? Doubt it. After Abdi’s blamed for the bait-and-switch and tossed in a dungeon, he has, um, certainty that it’ll all work out anyway. Not faith, you understand. Certainty. There's a difference, apparently.

     Eli appears – voila – and magically turns the snake into the missing necklace and lectures us again about certainty. In most fantasies, simply revealing Eli as a magician is trick enough. In a story with an actual G-d in it, Eli's act would be a miracle brought about by stalwart trust in Providence, making him a prophet.

     Apparently Madonna wants it both ways, minus any actual mention of a higher power, the result being a muddle of sentimentality and empty moralizing. Certainty in what? That wizards will appear when we most need them?

     It’s a pity Madonna obviously never had editors courageous enough to teach her how to make fabulist fiction work without Deus ex machina. There could’ve been a compelling and amusing story here, but she undermines whatever message she intended with clumsy plot contrivances and jarring near-blasphemy.

     But then, that’s Madonna for you.

Note: reviewed by Anne Levy

Rating: *\*\