Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Hum a happy Toon

Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons
by Agnes Rosenstiehl
TOON Books

TOON Books ran out of copies of their three debut titles before they even hit the shelves the other week. I got an email press release (as I suspect a lot of bloggers did, but I'm too lazy to check Technorati) with a fun quote from the publishers:

“We were in the middle of preparing for our launch,” says Editorial Director Françoise Mouly, also the Art Editor of The New Yorker, “but I couldn’t imagine a more welcome distraction.”

Here, here.

I plan to review all three titles, but picked Silly Lilly as my immediate favorite for its understated simplicity and total girl appeal. Like all graphic novels, the story is told in comic format, though the gap between picture book and graphic novel has all but disappeared. About the only way I didn't know this was, in fact, a picture book is that there's no narration, no text imposed over the art except in Lilly's speech bubbles.

The book breaks into five short vignettes, one for each season plus a bonus Spring. In each, Lilly sets herself a simple task, such as going to the park or the beach or picking apples. And that's it--though every story has its twist at the end, when a sea shell has a tiny inhabitant or a snowball goes astray.

It's all Lilly, and she's all glee and giggles, a pen-and-ink Everygirl who can turn any day into a pleasant adventure.

I'm all for it.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Burry funny

Sticky Burr: Adventures in Burrwood Forest
by John Lechner

I'm still a newbie at graphic novels, and unsure what divides the genre from the comic books I devoured growing up. Maybe it's the hard cover? Or that the creator mixes full bleeds, sequential boxes, straightforward narrative and every other arrow in the creative quill all at once?

Then again, quirky visuals as storytelling aids are as old as the novel itself, if you recall Tristram Shandy.

So I'm happy enough to embrace the suddenly-new-again-after-250-years format, particularly when it's as cleverly done as with the plucky little Sticky Burr, who keeps getting nettled in all kinds of trouble.

The other burrs are a prickly lot, if you'll pardon the pun, but not our ukelele-playing, paintbrush-wielding Sticky. But he's no pansy, that's for sure. You can count on him and his trusty sidekick, a dragonfly named Draffle, a resourceful duo who are quick on their, er, feet.   

Lechner alternates the comic format with pages from Sticky's journal with tidbits about burrs, bugs, and other helpful asides as the action moves briskly.

But when the last adventure is finished, the village is saved and his nemesis shamed, is there a character arc here? No. Sticky's pretty much the same oddball seed pod at the end that he was at the beginning; it's the rest of the folks who've had a change of heart and are allowing him to stay, ukelele and all.

While I loved the way the story unfolded and the many clever lines, visual puns and inventive graphics, the story itself was decidedly eh. It amounted to little more than a bunch of adventures held together like beads on the same string. What if, say, the threat of being tossed from the village gave Sticky pause? What if he tried to change, but couldn't, and finally embraced his true self?

What if I stop reading too much into *&%$#@!! kids' books?

Rating: *\*\*\

Clutter a-flutter

Leaving the Nest
by Mordicai Gerstein

I'd been flipping through the slush pile, skimming a dozen or more books, wondering if I was simply getting jaded or if the books were really this dull, when one leapt out for its creative take on the coming of age/rite of passage plot.   

A baby Blue Jay, a kitten, a girl and a squirrel all cross paths in the girl's front yard, beneath the spread of a shady tree. Each is exploring, on foot or bike or wing, and getting themselves into pulse-quickening danger. Will Baby Jay fall? Will Kitten catch him? Will the girl run them over? And Squirrel; what's she up to?

With everything happening at once and so much to see, each page becomes a place to stop, ponder, point, exclaim. Kids will enjoy finding each character on each page and updating their part of the story.

The acrylic and ink illustrations feature Gerstein's signature small, rapid, zig-zaggy brush strokes, big-eyed people and generous infusions of light and warmth across each two-page spread, with full bleeds. The tree frames the pages but also hems the characters in, a device that works wonderfully for building suspense as the chaos sorts itself out in such a tight space.

And when we need to look up into the tree, Gerstein turns the art around vertically, so it opens up-to-down. Clever.

One small nitpick: Gerstein uses speech bubbles as in comics, but awkwardly adds "says ____" to the quotes. I think we can figure out who says what, no? Maybe he's experimenting with a graphic-novel style but wasn't fully confident about a new genre--hard to believe given his artistic prowess.

Rating: *\*\*\

Another Gerstein book I've reviewed.

Comics for kids, can you believe it?

Big Fat Little Lit

The  gray envelope announced THE NEW YORKER in its signature font, all oversized and all caps and importantly stylish. What did THE NEW YORKER want with me? Had I ever had the chutzpah to send THE NEW YORKER any of my execrable short stories? Hmmm ... no. Had someone ordered me a gift subscription? Nope. Maybe they meant some other Anne Levy?

Inside was a graphic novel, or rather, an anthology of graphic short stories. I still thought they had the wrong person. Graphic novels are for grown-ups, right?

See, graphic novelists are victims of their own PR. Having kvetched for decades that comics aren't for kids, they send me a collection aimed straight at the cartoon underpants crowd. The connection to The New Yorker: It's edited by husband-wife duo Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, she being that magazine's art editor.

The collection--culled from three previous Little Lit anthologies--is, of course, literary and brilliant and oh-so-eclectic, and if you know nothing about the genre, it's an easy intro. Fairy tales nestle comfortably next to horror stories and folklore, and my four-year-old easily adapted to the diverse narrative styles and voices: after all, he could see the differences.

The comic world's Big Names are well represented, including Kaz, Jules Feiffer, Patrick McDonnell and my personal fave, Barbara McClintock, looking as classy and lushly detailed as ever. Joining them are such kidlit luminaries as Neil Gaiman and Lemony Snicket, though I'm rarely as thrilled with author/artist collaborations as when it's a singular vision by one person doing both.

The LA Times has also reviewed Big Fat Little Lit (hat tip: Kelly) so I won't repeat details of individual stories. Looking at the big picture, pardon the pun, I was struck by how many were told with forceful moral underpinnings. More than a few protagonists must face the gloomy consequences of their misdeeds and I didn't spot a single story where evil prevailed. Naughtiness, maybe, but not genuine eat-your-family badness.

That's not to say it's all goody-two-shoes fluff. Like the original Grimm's Fairy Tales, many stories venture into nightmare territory, where mothers-in-law try to devour grandchildren, stuffy noses explode with dopplegangers and cute kitties come from alternate worlds, and little that seems comfortable and safe turns out to be so.

I get the distinct impression these are stories written by actual parents who have braved the wild terrain of a child's imagination to chart both its twisted roads and startling flora.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

A story with some bite in it

Shark and Lobster's Amazing Undersea Adventure

by Viviane Schwarz; colored by Joel Stewart

You'd think with all those teeth and claws between them, Shark and Lobster wouldn't be easily intimidated. Except by tigers.

Tigers?

Apparently, these guys never heard of Snopes and fall prey to a toothy aquan legend. In graphic-novel panels laid out vertically, they enlist the aid of a cuttlefish and a score of other crabby critters to build a mighty fortress to ward off the threat of big cats with fins.

Then they hit on the notion of dragging the ugliest, scariest sea monster up from the depths: "Its mouth was wide enough to eat a whale sideways."

That doesn't prove to be the brightest idea, of course.

The vertical panels makes the briny sea bottom seem endlessly deep, but smacks of gimmickry and can be hard for wee hands to handle. Fortunately, Schwarz' cartoonish work provides many surprises and don't-miss-'em details, and her sea critters are loony instead of scary. Stewart's computer-generated coloring is awash in happy sea greens and washed-out blues, as if viewed without a scuba mask.

Schwarz' writing keeps this "undersea adventure" cheerfully afloat. Shark and Lobster and their friends get the tiger rumor revving until it builds its own momentum, and they sound exactly like kids in a playground: "Tigers are invisible -- until they EAT you up!"

Narrative is minimal and presented as typed lines pasted in, as if we're just dropping in on another crazy day under the sea.

Rating: *\*\*\

Nothing for everyone

The Gift of Nothing

by Patrick McDonnell

What do you give the dog who has everything? Nothing!

That little epiphany occurs to Mooch the cat, who wants to show his best friend, Earl the dog, how much his friendship means. Mooch ponders why his people grouse about nothing on TV, nothing to do, nothing in the stores. But everywhere he looks, "nothing was not for sale."

McDonnell fans will recognize the characters from his Mutts comic, drawn in quick, black penstrokes with a dash of Christmasy red.  He manages to be both mushy and funny, sweet and disarming, and while you can more or less sense where the story's headed, there's a surprise on every page.

This simple fable about the gift of friendship, while technically non-denominational, might go far to appease those thin-skinned types screaming about the True Meaning of Christmas. Or at least it might get them to lighten up a bit.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Casualty of war

Alia's Mission: Saving the Books of Iraq

by Mark Alan Stamaty

What would you do if war broke out? What would you try to save? If you’re one of my many librarian readers, you know exactly what you’d do. You’d be stuffing books under your coat, same as your counterpart in Basra on the eve of the 2003 invasion.

Alia Muhammad Baker’s the modest, brainy type. She grew up proud of her ancient heritage, but mindful of the last time her culture was destroyed: by invading Mongol hordes. Feel free to draw any parallels, of course.

Actually, Stamaty, who pens the acerbic Washingtoons and other political comics, steers clear of the blame game for Alia’s peril in this quick-reading graphic novel about her herculean effort to save 30,000 volumes from the Basra library before the bombs drop.

Stamaty shoehorns in several critical days’ worth of frantic activity in stark beige-and-black, with dialogue in all-caps for extra oomph. A compelling narrative plays itself out on Alia's facial features alone; you can even make out flames reflected in her eyes as her beloved library burns.

Rating: *\*\*\*\