Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Snicket's latke's a tasty morsel

The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story
by Lemony Snicket; illustrations by Lisa Brown

McSweeney's Books

What, a Lemony Snicket picture book? Oh please, pretty please, may I have one?

Or not. Shrug.

The publisher not being the usual sort to make the kidlit blogging circuit, I had no idea if a review copy would be forthcoming. It was.

And, joy of interfaith joys, the book is indeed wryly funny and lightly philosophical, and by this I mean that it gets its point across without bruising you with repeated beatings.

Its billing as a Christmas story should alert Jewish readers that the story isn't necessarily aimed at them; it's designed to give Christians a feel for being on the outside looking in. By now, many people will know that Snicket is the pseudonym for Daniel Handler, and his wife illustrated this stocking-stuffer-sized book about feeling left out, misunderstood and literally out in the cold.

"This story ends in someone's mouth, but it begins in a tiny village more or less covered in snow."

Peas on earth

Shante Keys and the New Year's Peas
by Gail Piernas-Davenport; illustrated by Marion Eldridge

Albert Whitman & Co.

Black-eyed peas, dontcha know, are an African-American tradition on New Year's Day. But Shante's grandma -- who's been cooking up a storm -- forgot all about them. Shante scurries about the neighborhood, but her neighbors have their own traditions and foods.

By the time Shante returns with those legumes, we've learned a bit about Chinese, Hindu, Scottish and Mexican celebrations. When everyone turns up with their own dishes, you can almost smell the varied spices. How come I don't get invited to potlucks like that?

Suspense builds quickly and we move at a brisk pace, thanks to Piernas-Davenport's taut rhyming couplets. It was almost over too quickly, but end notes describe some other customs around the world.

Eldridge's acrylics are cheery and upbeat, in pleasing pastel shades, adding all the right ingredients for some lighthearted fare.

Rating: *\*\*\

The Shlockiest Time of the Year

Are You Grumpy, Santa?
by Gregg and Evan Spiridellis

Reviewed by Deb Clark

The 1978 made-for-TV Star Wars Holiday Special with guest appearances by Art Carney and Bea Arthur. A CD of traditional Christmas songs by '80s hair band Twisted Sister released this year. Movies like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians or Christmas with the Kranks.

Happy birthday, Jesus. Hope you like schlock. Christianity’s holiest day of the year is a major inspiration for commercial fluff.

Add to the list Are You Grumpy, Santa? by the Spiridellis brothers, founders of JibJab Media. The pair are best known for their wildly popular 2004 animated spoof featuring caricatures of presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry singing a parody of This Land Is Your Land.

This Christmas book was published in 2003, with a release in paperback this year. The story, in sometimes stilted rhyming verse, tells of a series of setbacks Santa faced one Christmas. He didn’t sleep well, he got stuck in a chimney, he was chased by a poodle, and on and on. But his bad mood suddenly lifts when, at the very last house on his list, he discovers the plate of cookies someone left him.

So remember, make them chocolate,
Silky smooth, or extra lumpy…
Just be sure to leave some cookies,
In case Santa’s feeling grumpy.

Yeah, it’s not Dickens. But my kids love it. They enjoy the cartoonishly simple computer-generated illustrations. They laugh at Santa’s travails. They ponder over just who might have set out that plate of cookies. Must have been a kid, they deduce. A grown-up would never be so kind and thoughtful.

Just more proof that the value of an artistic endeavor is not universally dependent on its possession of redeeming qualities. Sometimes it’s a lack of quality that makes it fun. Which is why I’d love to get my hands on a copy of that Star Wars special.

Rating: *\

Plush toys on patrol

While You Are Sleeping
by Alexis Deacon

I tried the whole stuffed animal thing with my son, tucking them in with him and all that. Not a chance. Nemo survived a few days. A stuffed shark a few days more. I found a sock in its teeth. But lambies and teddies and fishies and dolls? Over the side of the bunk bed they went. Aaaiiieeeeeeeee ... splat!

So there's no point in even showing him this book, about how a little girl's plush friends keep her safe at night. It's the same territory covered most famously in Toy Story, where toys come alive when no one's around to see, done in subdued pastels on beige paper.

Deacon smudges edges in a technique called chiaroscuro, where the colors fade into the shadows, the characters are softly illuminated from some unseen source as they patrol beneath the bed or blankets to keep the little girl snug.

The style is instantly recognizable from the brilliant Jitterbug Jam, about a little monster scared of the boy under his bed. But the chiaroscuro makes this book subtly creepy, and it doesn't help that there's a monkey who bears too much resemblence to the kind you see in horror flicks banging a drum like it's possessed. And those eyes! What's with those round, expressionless eyes? *shudder*

Santa makes a welcome appearance -- a reddish blur in the background, paired with understated text:

And on that one night
when you absolutely must not wake,
we make sure you don't.

The warm sentiments save this from Deacon's dark side -- just barely. But wouldn't you just love to see another monster book from him somehow?

Rating: *\*\

A Mom's Dream

The Nightmare Before Christmas
by Tim Burton

Reviewed by Deb Clark

When The Nightmare Before Christmas came out in 1993, I was in my early 20s, Tim Burton looked hot and the comically macabre story was a welcome respite from the usual treacly holiday fare.

Now I’m within spitting distance of 40, Burton looks dumpy and I’ve developed a deeper understanding of main character Jack Skellington’s imprudent aspirations and disenchantment with his day-to-day work. Just in time, evidently, for a reissue of this book.

Really, can’t every mom relate to Skellington’s desire for a job change, even just for a day? I don’t care whether you stay at home with the kids or have another job on top of your mothering duties—we all want a break from the routine, some more often than others.

I’d like to think I’d feel less insane if, for a few hours each week, someone else would watch the kids so I could do crossword puzzles, sip a Hendrick’s gin and tonic and nap. (I also like to think my dreams will grow more ambitious as my kids get older, but who knows?)

So anyway, 13 years haven’t dulled my enthusiasm for this morbidly charming story and Tim Burton’s inspired illustrations. I had fun reading it to my daughters using different silly-spooky voices for all the characters.

As for my kids, they liked it okay but are a little too young to really get it, which is a good thing. Full appreciation of irreverence like this requires a loss of naivete that can be so unpleasant in the preschool set.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

POETRY FRIDAY Haunting refrains

Once Upon a Tomb: Gravely Humorous Verses
by J. Patrick Lewis; illustrated by Simon Bartram

I thought about saving this until Halloween, then thought, heck, it's Friday the 13th. Close enough.

Besides, you might want advance notice. That way, if your kids let slip one of these morbidly funny epitaphs from under their fright masks, you won't think there's something odd in their apple cider.

Lewis aims his poison pen at a bully, a movie star and a food critic, among many other not-so-dearly departed.

Though maybe your kid is a tad young to understand the delicious justice in the Book Editor's epitaph:

Miss Spelling's
Exclamation Points
Were myriad!!!
She lived on
The margin.
And died.
Period.

But the Underwear Salesman should evoke an evil chortle:

Our grief
Was brief

Bartram adds a dash of the surreal to his somber hues and pallid faces, using acrylics to achieve an amazing degree of exactness and detail right down to the array of coffin tattoos on a cadaver's foot. Think Edward Gorey meets Magritte.

Creepy stuff. Brrrr.

Rating: *\*\*\

And they lived Jewishly ever after

A Box of Candles

by Laurie A. Jacobs; illustrated by Shelly Schonebaum Ephraim

A complaint I've been hearing from Jewish families lately: there aren't enough good books about us that aren't idiotic primers on the holidays or -- gag -- about the Holocaust.

You'd think since we own the media (just kidding) the big publishers would stop cranking out kids' books that treat us as exotica or as history's redheaded stepchild. And I've heard it unprompted from enough families to know that I'm not merely injecting my own disgust into the conversation.

Jews are as mainstream as anyone else today, so where are the stories about mainstream Jewish families? Ones that don't have numbers tattooed on their arms?

I finally fished out this story of one family's rediscovery of love though it was published last year. Yes, it takes seven-year-old Ruthie, Sabbath by Sabbath, through the cycle of Jewish holidays. But she also comes full circle from her hatred of a new neighbor, Mr. Adler, who competes for her grandmother's attention.

Love is sometimes like a weed, growing surreptitiously between the cracks in our defenses. So it is with Ruthie, who finds in Mr. Adler a hearty storyteller and jokester who includes the little girl in his courtship of Grandma Gussie.

She's won over and so are we, and along the way we get a glimpse of how an observant family goes about readying for Sukkot or Passover or even just a typical Sabbath.

Judaism, in other words, is woven into their everyday lives, and never treated as "hey, look at the weird stuff Jews have to do!"

Schonenbaum Ephraim's watercolors have frames drawn around them, as if creating an unobtrusive window into Ruthie's world.

A glossary explains terms that would be unfamiliar to non-Jews, but perhaps not. I'm often pleasantly surprised by how much gentiles know about my faith. At least somebody's reading all those primers about our holidays.

Rating: *\*\

Pass this one over

Passover!

by Roni Schotter; illustrated by Erin Eitter Kono

In this embarrassing non-story about a Passover seder, we get cutesy rhymes about cutesy toddler antics and cutesy doggy antics and a few vague references to the actual purpose of the gathering.

It's useless for instructing kids and isn't fun as a story. The ritual foods on the seder plate are explained in endnotes, but there's no reference to Egypt or Moses.

Worse, matzoh ball soup and gefilte fish get prominent mentions. Oy. These are Eastern European foods; a Jew of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern pedigree wouldn't recognize them.

The rhymes are trite and the meter's off. The art at least avoids the more stereotypical renditions of Jews, but the exclamation point in the title bugs me.

It might've been salvageable had the story been titled Afikomen for the broken matzoh that gets hidden and prompts a treasure hunt. Its discovery marks the official end of the meal. At least that wouldn't have raised our expectations of something more.

Rating: *\

The gift between parent and child

You Are My Miracle

by Maryan Cusimano Love; illustrated by Satomi Ichikawa

Okay, it's two days before Christmas and I'm reduced to sentimental goo. I'd give the phone book a three-bud rating today. I almost can't wait until January when the cold weather will snap me back to my senses.

But then I'd have to put away all the books such as this one, which gave me such jollies.

This is the sort of book you want to read while your tot's curled in your lap, because the hugging instinct will kick in with the opening stanza:

I am your parent;
you are my child
I am your quiet place;
you are my wild.

The analogies progress along these lines throughout various holiday preparations, such as cocoa and marshmallow, Santa Claus and Christmas elf, etc., and ending with the "miracle" line from the title. It wouldn't be fair to print all the verses here, but you get the idea.

The watercolor illustrations inspire the warm fuzzies with the playful teddy bears. I mean, really, like I'm going to criticize anything right now?

Rating: *\*\

Chicken soup for the canine soul

Three French Hens

by Margie Palatini; illustrated by Richard Egielski

Colette, Poulette and Fifi are supposed to be on their way to a certain mademoiselle's true love in Paris, but somehow wind up in New York. Mon dieu!

These hens, decked out in heels and chapeaus, search for their mistress' beloved Philippe Renard. They settle for the friendless Phil Fox in his decrepit tenement, who's amazed when three free dinners strut into his humble home.

Hilarity ensues. Okay, just had to say that. But that's pretty much what happens as they take over his life and give him and his abode an extreme makeover to, um, not die for.

You know Phil's not going to eat them -- this is a Christmas story, after all. And it had me smiling all the way up until they refused gifts from him. Ugh, I thought, here comes some corny message about giving, right? Wrong! The birds celebrate Hanukkah -- they're kosher! Hahahaha!

Ohmigawd, I'm still laughing. Sorry for the spoiler. This one's funny.

Rating: *\*\*\