In me own words by Graham Roumieu - review

I don't do this often. But I gotta.

I was at Book Expo in New York last weekend, tramping around publishers' booths, telling them what a white-hot children's literature blogger I was and how they should send me free books all the time (some of them bought it - suckas), when I stopped in at the Manic D booth, ostensibly to look at the new Francesca Lia Block, but mostly because they were not displaying a single book about the rain forest or the solar system or bullying, except maybe one about how bullying can be a lucrative career choice for tween girls.

Anyway, I picked up this book and laughed my ass off. Despite my feet hurting A LOT and my shoulder carved into ruts from the 50 lbs of books I was lugging around in a tote bag. (Confidential to China Miéville - OH MY GOD YUM.)

Ok. Listen. I not know where all you morons come from but holy water no hurt Bigfoot. Garlic and Crucifix also no. Fire, pitchfork, Silver bullet Ok. Cryptonite do nothing. It not even real. Please stop sending letters asking "What you vulnerability? What Bigfoot?" Like I tell. What next me bank account number? Why not you invest time in moving out of Parent basement? Maybe have sex or something.

It's Bigfoot's autobiography. Bigfoot is afraid of digital watches and Irish people. He never went to Vietnam. He's a nifty dancer and a would-be screenwriter and he mourns his pal Denis, who I think was a hamster. And I tell you all this and YET! Still not spoil!

The book is written and illustrated by Graham Roumieu (Cat & Gnome, A Really Super Book About Squirrels). It may be the only book I actually purchase for myself this year. When I read it aloud to my friends and co-workers, which I have done like three times tonight (Storytime? I got your Storytime RIGHT HERE), I use my Drunk Cookie Monster voice. What voice will YOU use?

I'm Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle

Me by Sam, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Among the shit I ain't had time for lately (i.e. and to wit: blogging, grammar)... reading.

You should see the books stacked up on my read / review shelf. Now that I have one. Which - oh my god - so great! (Wow, I was just my friend Jaime there for a second. Hi James! See you in two weeks!) But setting up the office was not time doing work that might be done in the office. Also, planning the music for today's Circus Arts Club performance at school was not time doing work that might be done in the office. Although, I did do that in the office, because I did it in iTunes, and you know what? You'd think that after having listened to the Beastie Boys since like 1987, which is pretty much the year Adam Horowitz was BORN, I'd have a copy of "Sabotage" in my iTunes. But not.

Or, in fact, you'd think that I could walk my flat ass up the street and borrow it from a neighbor: I may not be absolutely sure that I have a neighbor who has a working hand mixer that I can borrow, but I AM absolutely sure that the combined music collection of Kyle and Gretchen, Matt and Chelsea, Stacy and Lui, Peter and Chris, and David and Chuck contains at least one copy of Ill Communication. (I LOVE MY STREET.) But I plunked down my $1.29 and now I have an iTunes copy of "Sabotage". I'll get the rest of the CD from Kyle.

But right, I am scraping ten minutes here between ordering bus tickets to NYC for Book Expo (HELLOOO, KidLit Drink Night!) and getting ready for this performance this afternoon, and I was going to talk about books.

Here's a book that showed up just yesterday:



Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea by Alice Waters

If you were a world-famous restauranteur and intiator of a food revolution, and wanted to take a middle school in hand, what could you do? Where would you start? Alice Waters convinced a MS principal to let her start a garden on school property, and several years later, the food garden was incorporated into the science, math, and even English curricula. You should see some of the stuff the kids wrote in their journals while sitting under the arbors in their school garden in Berkeley, CA.

GOD I would love to see this happen in Baltimore. I've been watching the Edible Schoolyard idea for 10 years - the Berkeley model has been repeated at a school in New Orleans - and it seems to me it addresses about a million ills. Innovative curriculum that thinks on its feet and adjusts to match the materials available; lessons about nutrition; better science instruction; getting kids outdoors; getting kids into a kitchen.

I didn't manage to do more than skim the book and look at the gorgeous photos (Prince Charles visited, not that he's gorgeous, but you know, when the Prince comes, so does a really good photographer). I did see enough to know: this is one orgasm of an education book. Would make a great end of year gift for the educator in your life. Just be sure when you give it, you specify that you're not saying, "HEY dammit - do this!" Not everybody has the resources of Alice Waters.

Let Me Eat Cake: a celebration of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, and a pinch of salt by Leslie Miller

Ok now THIS one I am seriously a delinquent for not reading. Leslie lives right around the corner, and got me an advance copy for FREE, and what did I do? I read the part she said she was worried about, and then I put it on the shelf and unpacked another dozen boxes of filthy OLD books.

But in the bits I read (I also read the last chapter, and the first part), I found that I thought I knew Leslie, because Leslie has a blog, and is my friend on Facebook, and posts her beautiful photos to Flickr, not to mention I see her at parties and shit, but I did not quite know how good Leslie writes. Leslie writes GOOD.

That alone should convince you to pick up Let Me Eat Cake, but I will also say that Leslie is FUNNY. Funny + Good = Read it. Not that anyone needs me to tell them, apparently: the 19 copies in my library system have been more or less entirely checked out ever since their arrival.

And look at that pretty cake on the cover - MMM!

I was sent this Huffington Post article on the Love as the Practice of Freedom conference at Princeton by my old friend (library cataloger supreme and romance novelist) Ann Herendeen. Ann self-published her first book, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, a gay Regency romance novel (yeah I told her I was never gonna read it, I barely read adult fiction as it is, and romance? and Regency? although gay? interesting!) and it was so popular that Harper picked it up. Harper! Nice!

The article is the most thought-provoking thing I've read in a while. It presents romance as a "fundamentally progressive activity", breaking down boundaries, transgressing mores, challenging the status quo. And I buy that. What is more, the romance novel is "an important transmitter of values," says the article's author, Hillary Rettig. I like thinking of that: the ladies who read romance novels are - I don't want to generalize here - in some cases not young, not NPR listeners, not people who live and think on the edge. Other romance novel readers ARE. (Ok, Left Brainiac the Baking Librarian, I know I'm a snob (and you know I'm a snob), and I'm trying to get over it!) I love the idea of these nice romance-reading ladies maybe rooting for a protagonist (and a protagonista) who are non-white, or not completely heterosexual, or whatever.

To that end, I thought I'd give romance one more try. Left Brainiac recommended Jayne Castle (one of Jayne Krentz's brands), who writes strong women and strong men in a sci-fi setting. I checked out Ghost Hunter, and I read the first chapter in the parking lot waiting to pick up the kids. Hm. Awfully heavy on dialogue. Long scenes. Lots of simmering. Not for me. I may try Ann's book after all.




Then there are the impulse books I've been snatching up while shelving new books at the library. Jedediah Berry's The Manual of Detection attracted me first with its steampunky green and gold and black cover, then with the inside cover blurb which made it sound meta without being tedious, like Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. I may have to force my friend Melissa to read this book and tell me about it.

I also grabbed up The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet because of its cover: an engraving of a bird skeleton nestled in a flat box with a pair of dividers and an old-style museum specimen label. Boy am I a sucker for that style. But leafing through: neato! Tricks and illustrations and marginalia - I love that stuff in kids' books, and it's about time somebody (other than Mark Z. Danielewski, man I can't handle those books) served some of that fun up for grownups. Plus, blurbs by Gary Shteyngart and Stephen King, kind of an interesting combo).

I also picked up Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery by Jason Buhrmester, because a) it looked funny b) it looked cool and c) it was about crime. Also, the word "Baltimore" appears in the back-cover summary.

Bruce Sterling has a new book which I am sure to like. When I can read it.

And the latest YA book that everyone seems to be recommending for adults too is The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. There are zombies. I want to read this book. I may have to just rely on Eerily Similar Paula's assessment - she was probably the one who recommended it in the first place.


All this is not to mention the VERY nice books the journal I review for has been sending me lately - thanks for easing up on the nonfiction about China! sorry all my reviews have been late this entire calendar year! Does "sheepish" come across on the Internet? I am sheepish.

AND not to mention the stacks and stacks of picture books that I have actually READ in the past few months, and just not been able to review. Orangutan Tongs: Poems to Tangle Your Tongue? YES! When the Moon Forgot? A little weird, but extremely lovely. Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea? You don't need ME to tell you anything Steve Jenkins is involved with is awesome.

THERE. It's FRIDAY. I spent some time doing something that was not work, not school, and not house (although I have killed several ants while working here at the kitchen counter, so I guess that counts as a little house stuff. There goes another one - SMISH, you little sugar-addicted motherfucker!). You know what? I should just break out the leftover rum-soaked pineapple and give up on the day! Wouldn't that fucking rock? It's ten a.m. Who's with me?

Teach him he's alive before he wishes he was dead

An open letter to Andrew McCarthy:

Dear Andrew McCarthy,

I am a woman of a certain age.
No, I don't mind you asking: forty-two. That makes me the answer, ha ha.
It's from a book. Never mind.
Well, that's very nice of you, but you are mistaken. You're just confused because I don't act my age.

Andrew McCarthy, if I may make an observation? Age? is funny. It doesn't mean as much as it used to. Age no longer serves as a cultural definition. Remember when it used to? Used to be that if you knew the Speed Racer theme song, that meant that you had been in elementary school sometime between 1972 and 1981. But then MTV started showing Speed Racer, and then somebody else picked it up, and now I can get that song as a ringtone on my new phone. Because of the way stuff is archived and documented on the Internet, the merest cultural moment is always poised to make a comeback. Strawberry Shortcake. Mr. T. Transformers. Pegged jeans.

So it's actually increasingly rare that a generation, or a cohort, or a graduating class, has a movement, an icon, a trend, or even a fad that they can call their own. And this is where you come in, Andrew McCarthy. Stick with me here.

People spend a lifetime developing and modifying their mental Cute Boy Ken doll. (Unless, like, they don't, and therefore routinely fall spasmodically in love with men just like the boy who lived across the street with the long eyelashes and... god, fill in the blank yourself. I'm coming up dry. The kid who lived across the street from me growing up was obsessed with his toy lawn mower and would try to run over your feet with it if he saw you barefoot. Not a romantic figure, at least to me.) (NB: I am told that he grew up to be perfectly normal.)

Most people my age probably started with Erik Estrada as their base model, added Leif Garrett's hair and Matt Dillon's jeans, and then continued to tweak their Cute Boy ideal from there. Some went the Chachi route, and their Cute Boy is short and smartmouthed. Others discovered androgyny when they saw Robert Downey Jr. wearing eyeliner and breaking your heart in Less Than Zero. Many add a brood-and-explode component, à la Judd Nelson (ick) in Breakfast Club. Everybody adds his or her own bits and pieces: Val Kilmer's oversized Ray-Bans in Real Genius; Eric Stoltz's blue eyes from Some Kind of Wonderful. The girl who used to live in this house liked Christian Slater: when we moved in, I found pencilled graffiti in the closet of the boys' room noting that she saw Pump Up the Volume in May of 1991.

These are the movies that every suburban girl my age saw, and which by and large haven't been co-opted by subsequent cohorts. You know where I'm going with this.

Because even though most of us were rooting for Duckie, in the same situation we all would have gone for Blane, too. After all, Duckie was clearly gay, even though the movie wasn't written that way. They chickened out on that, didn't they? Ok, a few girls would have held out for Spader. But for me, that stickie-out chin? Nah.

No, it was the Andrew McCarthy take on brood-and-explode: the paper-thin, fooling-nobody offhand veneer that gave way to horrified alarm and then escalated to frantic, wild-eyed panicked outrage that became a characteristic of many of our mental Cute Boys. That shit still plays - just look at the career of David Schwimmer (Or, yeah, don't - sorry). Also, my Cute Boy has a cotton sportcoat with skinny lapels hanging in his closet, just for emergencies. I bet you were wondering where that thing got to.

Years have passed, of course, since you lusted after the likes of Jami Gertz and Molly Ringwald, and my tastes have coarsened too. I go for the more obvious now - the Clive Owen, the Daniel Craig. And of course the most requested ALA READ poster boy of all time. (Although we just saw The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I may be back on James McAvoy, who is not obvious at all. He played Tumnus the Faun all sidelong glances and conspiratorial nods: he appeared to be harboring seriously inappropriate thoughts about little Lucy Pevensey.)

So - just the other day, I heard something that sent my skull flying back to 1985. I'm kind of a voice person, I notice voices. I can pick out Mark Hamill or Brooke Shields before the words "Listening Library presents" are out of the CD player. I am insufferable during TV commercials. "Christine Lahti!" I will crow. "Listen, that's Duchovny!" Shatner, Sheen, Sutherland (père et fils), Linda Hunt, Peter Coyote, Thomas Haden Church - their secret commercial shilling is an open book to me.

(I believe this voice thing of mine dates back to 1987, when there were two televisions in my apartment, one stacked on top of the other. Both had been trash-picked: one had sound only, and the other had something resembling a picture. It was greenish and bled offscreen at the top, and only came in when Star Trek: The Next Generation was on. Everybody looked like Beldar on that TV, especially Picard. I think it was pointy-headed old Patrick Stewart, who, despite being bald and sort of beady-eyed, was absolutely devastating whenever he rumbled "Make it so," that made me start listening as well as looking. You know who's sexy? These guys are sexy: Campbell Scott, Stephen Fry, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Eddie Izzard. I will listen to whatever they are saying.)

But I had forgotten, until we slotted The Nixie's Song into the CD player a couple weeks ago, that Andrew McCarthy has this funny, breaky, bone-dry voice. I guess when I was a kid it was eclipsed by the sportcoat. But the moment I heard it, I thought to myself, "Oh yeah... Andrew McCarthy. Holy crap." Well done. Tired-sounding yet excited, this voice makes Holly Black's snotty characters funny and sympathetic. Creaky and quiet, yet charged with tension, this is the voice of hopeless causes, betrayed friendships, and unrequited longing for Ally Sheedy - and that shit never gets old either.

Andrew McCarthy, live in peace. Stay clear of Brooke Shields. That girl pissed off the Scientologists, she's got a target on her back.

Sincerely,

-- Your Neighborhood Librarian

Pink is the new BLAAAHG

No more reviews of children's books on this blog. Sorry, Jaime, I know you're going to miss them. If, however, the thought of choosing picture books without assistance from a learned, opinionated librarian leaves you shaking in a corner, please click yourself over to the BRAIND NYOO BLAHG Pink Me (http://pinkpicks.blogspot.com) and I believe you will find the guidance you crave.

Also, if you choose to purchase books rather than take them out of the library, each title on Pink Me has been thoughtfully linked to the fine folks at Amazorn dort corm, who will, upon your purchase, thoughtfully deposit a tiny referral fee into Pink Me's bank account.

This is a test: J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography

New picture books, late February 2008

New picture books, late February 2008, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

Ok listen: I'm going to live-blog the Oscars again tomorrow night, because, as I found out last year, blogging it actually makes the telecast slightly more bearable. Also, gin helps. So I figured I'd better get in some wholesome picture book reviews before I indulge in my annual orgy of bustline bashing. Here's to you, Mrs. Berenstain:

No English, by Jacqueline Jules, illustrations by Amy Huntington
Blanca speaks no English when she arrives in Diane's 2nd-grade class. But instead of hammering on the old "it's ok to be different" nail, this book makes a number of small, good points - about intention, about sensitivity, and about the importance of bilingual books in a library's collection. Unfortunately, this particular book is not bilingual at all - might have been nice to have presented it in both English and Spanish.

Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts
There's a lady with a beehive hairdo and a beauty spot on the cover of this book - a sure-fire signifier of "quirky," perhaps even "offbeat". And let me tell you, it ain't just the illustrations! (although now I'm craving Iggy's mom's Pucci-esque caftans and Twiggy A-lines) The story is fun and the wordplay is quirky in this book about a second-grade engineering prodigy.

"Young Iggy Peck is an architect
and has been since he was two,
when he built a great tower - in only an hour -
with nothing but diapers and glue.
'Good Gracious, Ignacious!' his mother exclaimed.
'That's the coolest thing I've ever seen!'
But her smile faded fast as a light wind blew past
and she realized those diapers weren't clean!

Oh and PS of COURSE - David Roberts is the superstar who illustrated one of my all-time super-faves, Janet Wong's Dumpster Diver. I remember the Missoni jumpsuit in that one - the guy likes fashion, I think, and that ain't bad.

Engelbert Sneem and his dream vacuum machine, written and illustrated by Mr. Daniel Postgate
Oh, awesome! It's a fun, good-looking book that, very sneakily, is also for helping with nightmares! Mr. Sneem is like a reverse Santa Claus who shows up and suctions away the dreams of children, keeps them corked up in brown bottles for his own consumption. Then one night a mom reads her kid a bedtime story - a book about Engelbert Sneem (ooo! meta!) - and the kid has a nightmare about him. Sneem sucks up the kid's dream and then views it at home. He is so upset to find out that he himself is a nightmare that he vows to change his ways.

And now...
if a child has frightening dreams
Of ghosties and ghoulies
and terrible things,
The good Mr. Sneem
is right there in a tick,
And he sucks up the nightmare
and plugs it up quick.

Junk Man's Daughter by Sonia Levitin with illustrations by Guy Porfirio
This is from the Tales of Young Americans series, which I think is not part of the American Girl empire. Just the same, it is a straightforward little historical fiction picture book of a family coming to America, facing poverty, and becoming successful through perserverence, ingenuity and hard work. I am sure there are kids for this book. Not really any that I know though.

When the Shadbush blooms, by Carla Messinger, with Susan Katz, illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden

"My grandparents' grandparents walked beside the same stream where I walk with my brother, and we can see what they saw."

Clever. This books takes us through the cycles of the year as defined by the Lenni Lenape people, Native people who originally lived along the eastern seaboard. Each page spread shows the sights and activities of the season - on the left, as experienced by "my grandparents' grandparents" and on the right as experienced by a modern-day Native girl and her family. There's more information about the Lenni Lenape in the back. "American Girl," indeed!

Snail's Birthday Wish by Fiona Rempt and Noelle Smit
Snail wishes he could be as fast as his friends Beaver, Ant, Frog etc. They give him all these odd birthday gifts: nails, a round thing, a chair, wheels. Then they build him a car out of all the parts. Cute. Like Pssst! by Adam Rex, but for littler kids.

Night Shift by Jessie Hartland
Don't load the sardines next to the ocelots! I love the detail that Jessie Hartland jams into her saturated, messy paintings. The late-night DJ plays Monk and Brubeck; the newspaper printing plant is a union shop; and there's a Rothko on the wall at the Modern Art Museum. More than just a cool occupations book (though it totally fills a niche there), this one should be fun for everyone up to 9 or 10.

Ballet Kitty by Bernette Ford and Sam Williams
Ok. Last time we had the ballet kangaroo, and I already knew about the ballet javelina, the ballet mouse, the ballet boy and the other ballet boy. This better be good. Aaaand... ok, I'm just going to say it: It's not. It's a pure celebration of girly-girliness, and I just can't get behind it.

Oh, Brother! by Nikki Grimes, illustrations by Mike Benny
The ambivalence of being in a brand-new blended family, plus a happy ending, all in Nikki Grimes' accessible poetry.

The Pen that Pa built by David Edwards, illustrations by Ashley Wolff
Man, it always seems that these cumulative stories (The Apple Pie that Papa Baked, The Van that Dad Cleaned, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain) have the best illustrations. Such a shame I find them so daggone tedious. This one at least has an interesting subject - it shows how a colonial family would have processed wool from sheep to blanket: washing it, spinning it, dying it, and weaving it on a loom. Makes me think of Ox-Cart Man, and the illustrations, reminiscent of woodcuts but dense with color, are rich and satisfying. Ashley Wolff also illustrated Philemon Sturges's She'll be comin' 'round the mountain, one of my favorite librarian-as-hero books.

Chowder by Peter Brown
Who is my man Peter Brown? Is he the scholar who wrote so incisively about the early Christian church? Is he the boy who broke my friend Bill's heart back in high school? I don't think so, but I think I can find room in my life for another Peter Brown - this one, the one who can convey expression in a character at a great distance, or from behind. The one who created a bulldog who sits on the toilet to poop and who excavates bones instead of digging them up. The man who gave his bulldog's owner Eugene Levy's hair. I like this Peter Brown.



And he has another book: The Fabulous Bouncing Chowder
This book is about Chowder finding something he's good at - bouncing on a trampoline. There is something so precise and vivid about the artist's use of space, and light - almost hyperreal. The velvety colors, the large-scale, formal compositions - it all really showcases the wit of the story and the visual detail. On a page showing Chowder's trampoline, spotlit on a darkened stage, you can barely discern a few little drops falling from above, as the pre-performance hush is broken momentarily by the brief patter of drool on the trampoline's surface. Is that explicit in the story? No. You get it from the art. That, kids, is illustration.

Cooler than fiction

Yeah baby! It's snowing!, originally uploaded by your neighborhood librarian.

First of all, this picture is cooler than fiction. You couldn't MAKE UP a six year old in striped Hanna Anderssen pajamas and moon boots, dancing because it's snowing, wearing his father's hat. The hat which for some reason the children describe as, "That's your hat for going down to the harbor to blow things up!"

Hey, I would like to make clear: my husband has never blown anything up at the harbor.

What else is cooler than fiction?

AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll. by Murray Engleheart with Arnaud Durieux.
I haven't read this and I don't care. I've flipped through the pictures and that's cool enough for anyone. You know what I love about AC/DC? Well besides ALL the music, and the fact that my kids were BORN liking AC/DC, and this shirt? I love that when Bon died, the entire band, without a moment's hesitation, canceled whatever else they were doing and flew back to Australia to be with his family.

Breaking the Mode: Contemporary fashion from the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, by Kaye Durland Spilker and Sharon Sadako Takeda
No pesky provenance problems here... all this Fashion as Art was donated fair and square by some very fancy fashion victims indeed.

Hello Charlie: Letters from a serial killer by Charlie Hess and Davin Seay
Just what you'd expect: over the course of dozens of letters, a convicted killer gives up the details of another 39 murders. It's like fiction, but it's better.

When Man is the Prey: True stories of animals attacking humans, edited by Michael Tougias
You know the difference between fiction and non-fiction? Subtitles. Yeesh. This one's good for a read-aloud, as long as your listeners get creeped out by sharks. Or bears. Monkeys. Lions. Snakes, of course. There's even a deer attack! No bunnies though.

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker book of food and drink, edited by David Remnick
The author list here gives me a little shiver of joy: Adam Gopnik, Bourdain, Miss Mary Francis, John McPhee, Buford, Susan Orlean, Miss Parker, Woody, Steve, Roald Dahl, Don DeLillo (wait, Don DeLillo on food? do you think the food is depressed?), and other wits. Can't wait.

W.A.R.: The unauthorized biography of William Axl Rose by by Mick Wall
Ever since that weird article in GQ last year I have been on the lookout for Axl. How'd he get so funny-looking so fast? Is he really back on stage? Plus - pictures!

And here's why I had to write this post: I walked into the workroom this afternoon and spotted THIS:

go fug yourself presents: The Fug Awards, by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
All new content, expanded commentary, and copious photographic documentation bolster the opinions expressed in this book: a) Chloe Sevigny is not a productive choice for a style icon b) Bras = good and c) a little color never did any girl any harm.

And here I thought I was going to settle in this weekend with naught to read but the new issue of Vanity Fair. And the second Kiki Strike novel. And An Ordinary Spy by Joseph Weisberg, recommended by a customer. Ok, shut up.

Fug the READ poster - Orlando Bloom

Yes, yes, I'm a huge fan of Go Fug Yourself. I can't get through the day without a few photos of rich and famous women who have made sad and tacky fashion choices.

I so rarely run into debutantes and starlets, but there's a whole genre of seriously awful images that I know all too well, and I think I'm the one to fug them. I have complained about the American Library Association's READ posters before - the ALA has the uncanny ability to honor any good-looking celebrity willing to take time out of his or her busy schedule (making out with other celebrities, shopping, learning to swing from vines) in order to promote literacy - by making that person look like a grimly hung-over version of Mickey Rourke.

I figure Orlando Bloom, shown here endorsing the work of some obscure British fantasy writer, is an apt choice for promoting reading. He's English, which always at least sounds educated, and he has been in at least three movies based on fiction (and three more based on a ride at Disney World, but, well, you take what you can get I guess). And you have to assume he was named after the gender-irrelevant Virginia Woolf hero/heroine. Either that or his parents tragically misremembered the title of the first Police album, thinking it was "Orlandos d'Amour," which at least wouldn't make any less sense.

Not that I think names are predictive, at least not to the extent that Kirsten Dunst's character does when she meets Orlando Bloom's character in Elizabethtown, which we just saw, but come on: Orlando Bloom is one of just a few men I can think of who has to wear facial hair just to make it clear that he's a fella. He's so slight, so fine-boned, he barely held up against Dr. SunkenTits, who basically defined our modern idea of "wispy" when she made The Virgin Suicides.

Maybe he should stick with buckling on the swash: Elizabethtown was not so good. It's one of those movies that goes: uptight guy meets beautiful, boyfriendless, free-spirited girl; girl removes stick from boy's ass. Garden State is also like that; Along Came Polly; and that movie with Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock and a hurricane (Forces of Nature, thank you imdb). Beautiful Girls, oh please.

These movies make me crazy. Why should these gorgeous women give a crap about the likes of Ben Affleck, Orlando Bloom, Zack Braff, or for god's sake any character played by Ben Stiller? In fact, these movies make their quirky lasses pursue the crap out of our dour heroes - what's that about? In Elizabethtown, Kirsten Dunst would not leave Orlando Bloom alone. Overnight, she recorded 42 hours worth of mix tapes for a cross-country trip he had not yet committed to taking. If she weren't gorgeous, her nutbag behavior would be completely creepy. As it is, the movie has us rooting for her - Oh, Orlando, don't pass her by! She's a keeper! Oh yeah, until day 3 of the honeymoon when she's sobbing on the bathroom floor for reasons clear only to her poor bipolar brain.

Cameron Crowe routinely writes female characters whose behavior would seem to indicate major self-esteem issues, and then casts unbelievably beautiful women to play them. Their behavior makes them approachable, but their beauty makes them acceptable: the fantasy of the down-to-earth knockout, the girl next door who doesn't know how beautiful she is. Jennifer Jason Leigh in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, and here, Kirsten Dunst.

At least Zack Braff, when writing Garden State, acknowledged that there MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG with a Natalie Portman who would spend time with a Zack Braff (under any circumstances), but even so, instead of making her mentally unstable, he gave her brain cancer or something.

But. We're talking about Orlando Bloom and that fugging poster. He's little, no doubt, but by no means as wee as this slender reed we see hunched over a volume of Tolkein in the classic model-with-cramps pose. They could at least let him wear his leather wrist thong, which he rocks better than anyone else on the planet, instead of that silver bangle. Or they could have brought out the tight head-shmatte he wears at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, when, after 3 movies of doing outraged and/or confused, he finally looks good.

You have to imagine the photographer trying to get this shot: "Orlando, can you give me thoughtful? But, like... manly thoughtful! And pining! You're pining manfully about a girl... or a guy, that's your business... or you're thinking about a really nice bow and arrow..."

Meanwhile, Bloom is thinking, "How come it's only me and Elijah have to do this? Where the hell is Mortensen? At least they don't have me up in a tree wearing the wig. Poor little fucker - guy knows everything there is to know about rock and roll and just because he's got glazzies the size of buckeyes he always ends up playing either endearing or psycho. Hey, did somebody check that I'm holding the book right-side-up? Did anybody tell these guys I'm dyslexic?"

The true meaning of smuckday

Inside Jacket for Stephen King's Lisey's Story, by Mark Stutzman

I used to read Stephen King a lot. A LOT. Like, that's what happened to my sophomore year of college a lot. When I wasn't pining for the scruffy little building-climbing astronomy guy who used to live in our dorm, I was sitting half-out the window of the third-floor lounge, smoking and reading Stephen King.

Those were some good scary books. Stephen King can find the menace in a dead cat, in a lawn mower, and his use of such banal items taps an existential dread you didn't even know you had, in books like the 'S' books: The Shining, 'Salem's Lot, The Stand... and the 'C' books: Carrie, Cujo, Christine. Those books primed me for Peter Straub, Clive Barker, Jeff Lindsay, Mark Billingham... and they ruined me for John Saul, Brian Lumley and Robert McCammon. I love serial killers and lunatics, and even monsters, if you can convince me. But I don't like crappy writing.

I quit Stephen King, though, after It. Killer clown in a storm drain? Turns into the giant spider from The Return of the King and is vanquished by adults regressing to their child selves and singing "Red, red robin"? Sorry, man, that's just stupid. I read an interview with the author a few years later, in which he confessed that he thought It wasn't much of a book. "Should've called it 'Shit'," he said, and I thought, "NOW you tell me."

Since then, I went through a arty comic book phase, a LONG non-fiction phase, a couple of sci-fi phases, and now I'm back to reading the occasional horror book.

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain was like tar - gooey black tar that you'd be tempted to eat, if that makes any sense. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay fully deserves that guy from "6 Feet Under". Not many actors can pull off creepy/funny/brilliant, which is what those books are. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill was interesting and well-paced and scary.

This new Stephen King novel, Lisey's Story, less a horror novel per se than a celebration of idiom, was kind of a disappointment. I had heard that it was a real high point for him, that King himself felt very good about it, and so, when a friend had an extra copy, I took it.

And here you go: there's a ghost, a ghost that is not only benign, but positively cheery, jollying the plot along even when (especially when) there seems to be no reason for it to go anywhere. There's a lunatic, a not-too-bright redneck lunatic who shows up late and leaves early, sent off with pitiful ease by a couple of middle-aged women. There are monsters, monsters whose motives and origins are unfathomable and unexplored. There's also a magic power, an easy-to-use plot device that gets the good guys out of trouble just about every time.

As a "Stephen King novel", I just wouldn't call Lisey's Story 'good'. It feels like the author is employing his familiar elements as shorthand devices, using them to shape a plot that will string together a batch of rather nice dialogues (and less-successful monologues) featuring different combinations of about five members of two families. Some of the pieces are scary, but the supernatural elements seem to be there just for atmospherics, and if there's one place you expect ghosts and ghouls to be treated with respect, it's a Stephen King novel.

What I might call Lisey's Story, and why I think Stephen King considers it some of his best work, is 'mature'. He has always been really good at depicting family relationships - for me, the fact that you believe the dialogue between Jack and Wendy Torrance without even thinking about it is a big part of what sets The Shining above, say, anything by Dean Koontz.

But Lisey's Story is all family relationships. Lisey is the widow of Scott, a celebrated best-selling writer of fantastic fiction. Scott had a monster father and a saintly older brother, except when he had a saintly father and a monster older brother. Lisey has four sisters, one of whom dabbles in mental illness. The way they all talk to each other is written fantastically well, especially the crazy older sister. She's so sensible and matter-of-fact sometimes that you feel her sisters' annoyance when she dips over into crazyland. I swear I know her. However, if I wanted to read about families, I'd read Ann Tyler. If you're going to write all these duets, you might as well string them together in a grief narrative, or a coming-of-age story... not an ostensible horror story.

And what about this novel's relentless blizzard of idiom? No piece of action, commonplace or remarkable, can transpire without King trotting out a colorful little phrase, either collected from regional America, borrowed from another writer, or newly invented for the occasion. Usually we get at least two. Lisey's sister Darla goes to the bathroom, and instead of allowing the poor woman to "have a pee" and be done with it, we have to revisit her activities: she was "whizzing a little lemonade" and "blotting the old bush."

Both families: Lisey's, with all those sisters, and Scott's, with all that craziness, have pet phrases, euphemisms, acronyms, made-up words, nicknames, malapropisms, and we have to hear them all, in all their variations and combined forms, and often we have to learn their etymology. The swearing alone is enough to make you gag. I love swearing, everyone knows, but Scott says "smuck" instead of "fuck," and it drove me up a wall.

I kept being reminded of The Talisman, with its alternate world and second set of colloquialisms. "God pounds his nails" is a phrase I will never completely erase from my brain, though thankfully I've never heard myself say it aloud.

The moment that provokes the most thought is after Scott's father has killed the saintly-older-brother-turned-cannibalistic-monster of a son, whom he has kept chained up in the basement for three weeks in the hope that he can be returned to sanity. After his death, the boy is seen to be a starved, skinny child, imprisoned and eventually killed by his mentally ill father. It brings to mind, as it is supposed to, people like the woman in DC who killed her 4 daughters because they were possessed by the devil. Just for a second you have to wonder what she saw when she looked at them.

Stephen King excels at crafting chilling little moments of doubt like this one. I'd really like to see him write a whole book that way. Dolores Claiborne was quite like that. Misery. Those were terrific books, very short on the supernatural. Maybe our man should be done with the unexplained altogether.

In the meantime, I will be on the lookout for more from Joe Hill, and I will be grateful to the King family. It is damn considerate of them to put forward a new great horror writer to keep me up at night, now that the old great horror writer seems to want to move on to different things.

May I also add that I would like to dive into Mark Stutzman's jacket illustration (above). I'm thinking of papering the kitchen with it.

Righty and Lefty: A tale of two feet by Rachel Vail - review

When I used to have to change diapers, I used to talk to feet. Each child had a Happy Foot and a Grumpy Foot.

Happy Foot would say to me, "Ooo! Hi there! I am so happy to see you!" and Grumpy Foot would say, "Take your hands off me, whaddaya doin there? Back off, lady!" Kid would dissolve into fits of giggles.

I would say, "I'm happy to see you too, Happy Foot! What's the deal with your brother over there? He seems kind of crabby," and Happy Foot would say, "Ooo! All he needs is a big kiss! Come here, you!"

Grumpy Foot would flee as far as his fat leg would take him (that would be me, yanking the child's foot around), and Happy Foot would pursue. Grumpy Foot would make "Bleagh!" sounds and Happy Foot would make kissy sounds.

Foot puppets. That's my milieu. I kill with foot puppets. There is NO VIDEO of me doing Happy Foot and Grumpy Foot. My performance masterpiece, and it is lost to the mists of memory. No justice.

Anyway, Righty and Lefty: A tale of two feet is pretty much Happy Foot and Grumpy Foot - illustrated. It is funny funny funny.

They help each other out of their sneakers.
"Ew," says Lefty. "You stink."
"You stink, too," says Righty.
"I know," says Lefty. "We are quite a pair."
They chase each other around.

(Righty and Lefty would appear to be boys)

A boo-boo bunny comes to help.
It has no legs and is freezing cold.
Lefty does not trust this bunny.

Dude, Lefty, follow your instincts.

This book also works really well as a bedtime book. At the end, Lefty wants to go to sleep but Righty wants to keep playing. After a while, Righty realizes that it's no fun to stay up by himself, and he slides in under the covers with Lefty. Very peaceful end to a very fun and unpredictable book about brothers.

The Chocolate Cat by Sue Stainton - review

It's a cliche to say that all librarians are fanatic cat people. For example, I can't stand our cats. But... I have cats. I think I'd have to turn in my MLS if I didn't.

Our cats, St. John Bosco and Buzz Aldrin, are inside cats. Sisters, scavenged by Bob and me from a shelter in Brooklyn 10 years ago as Valentine's Day presents to each other. Predictably, they hate each other. When they're not binging and purging on Hill's Science Diet, they're laying around making mats of cat hair on any item of clothing I have chosen to care about. They wake up in the middle of the night to fight and hiss at each other. Not a whiff of magic realism about them, unless that's that smell coming from the mattress in the guest room.

But then, we don't live in a picturesque village "nestled between the mountains and the sea". We don't have Anne Mortimer to illustrate our home life. And I am about as good a chocolate maker as I am a welder.

Sue Stainton and Anne Mortimer have a habit of making these lovely cat books - The Snow Cat, The Lighthouse Cat, and now The Chocolate Cat. And for Sue Stainton and Anne Mortimer - and especially for The Chocolate Cat - I am more than willing to suspend my distaste. You pretty much have to see this book to believe how luscious the illustrations are.

Cat lives with a grouchy chocolatier in a humdrum little town. One day, the chocolatier makes chocolate mice "with crunchy pink tails". Cat eats one, and is inspired. He delivers a mouse to the greengrocer across the street. As the grocer bites into a delectable chocolate mouse, he in turn is inspired. He visits the chocolatier, bringing his best fruits to experiment with. Together, they create delicious (and visually spectacular) new confections. The same thing happens with the baker, the florist, and the other business owners in the village. Each brings new ideas and ingredients to the creative process. Eventually, even the chocolatier becomes inspired, and the village thrives.

This is, in some ways, a "Stone Soup" story - except the result of all the pitching-in-together-ness isn't, like, SOUP (hard to get super-jazzed about soup, especially if it has turnips in it), but instead, truffles with candied violets, Turkish Delight, and "honeycomb fireworks that would sparkle in your mouth". That's what I call inspiring.

This book is pretty much the G-rated version of the movie Chocolat. Also, with its emphasis on creativity, beauty and quality, this is no gluttony book. The degree of craftmanship that goes into these creations implies that they are meant to be appreciated and savored. This message is delivered explicitly at the end:

Every now and then Cat is still given a chocolate mouse. But not very often because, as you know, you should never eat too much of scrumptious things. Because they lose their magic.

In Baltimore, visit Kirchmayr, Wockenfuss, or Rheb's. Buy half a pound of dark almond bark, or chocolate caramels, or mixed truffles with the cocoa powder dust on them. Rent Waitress or Brokeback Mountain or Shoot 'em up, as is your wont. Have a happy Valentine's Day, and don't let the cat eat your chocolate!

New picture books for February

There come a soldier by Peggy Mercer, illustrated by Ron Mazellan
Not a book glorifying war, not a book excoriating war, but a book paying tribute to the author's father, a soldier who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Told from his point of view, it enumerates the ways that his rural childhood taught him bravery, compassion, fortitude, and other qualities he draws upon during hardship. And beautiful. With lovely vernacular language.

Delicious! a pumpkin soup story by Helen Cooper
Picky eater Duck won't even try the fish soup, mushroom soup, and beet soup concocted by his friends Squirrel and Cat - he will only eat pumpkin soup, which is orange. (Dances With Chickens, are you reading this?) So his friends make squash-and-carrot soup, which is orange, and basically trick him into eating it, which he does, and loves it.
The fine and fanciful illustrations in this book conquer my uneasiness about the age-old ploy of disguising food as something palatable to a child so that he or she will try it. I tried that once with Big Man, telling him an orange piece of canteloupe was cheese, and I felt pretty bad about eroding my child's trust in me that way. And he didn't like it, and he still doesn't like canteloupe. Plus my friend Sarah, who has (professional) experience with eating disorders, told me that it's common to find that habitual overeaters were conned like this as children. Still! Cute illustrations!



Sojourner Truth: Preacher for freedom and equality, by Suzanne Slade, illustrated by Natascha Alex Blanks
Wow! Color! This picture book biography is well worth adding to any library's collection. This picture makes it look ugly, and it's not.

A Poet's Bird Garden by Laura Nyman Montenegro
Cutie. I love that when Natalie's bird Chirpie gets out, she and her friend call upon the poets to come to the rescue. Full of the mythical Boho spirit of the Lower East Side.

A Fishing Surprise by Rae A. McDonald, illustrated by Kathleen Kemly
BEAUTIFUL, lush chalk and colored pencil illustrations surround the simple text. Lots of fun onomatopoeia for little kids.



Jon Scieszka's Truck town: Smash! Crash! written by Jon Scieszka, characters and environments developed by David Shannon, Loren Long, David Gordon
Not sure what that's all about, but Jon Scieszka is the new Library of Congress Ambassador for Children's Literature or something, and he can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes. What strikes me about this truck book is that it's totally a Beginning Reader. Word count, number of words per line, etc... if it can hold a first grader's attention, that first grader can read this book. Hmm. Large-format Beginning Readers - why don't we see more of those?

Josephine wants to dance by Jackie French, illustrated by Bruce Whatley
Ah. Fish out of water story. Kangaroo on the ballet stage. Not unlike the dancing hippo story, the dancing polar bear story, or the dancing javelina story. But I love Bruce Whatley's style - cartoony but not flat, with lovely, expressive faces and gestures. And the text is lovely too. Josephine bounces with the brolgas and leaps with the lyrebirds.

oooh! Matisse by Mil Niepold / Jeanyves Verdu
Big blam-blam closeups of Matisse cutouts prompt the question "What is this?" and as the pages turn, the perspective pulls out, different answers are proffered, until you see... a leaf, a dove, a star, a flower. Simple, brilliant.




The Crocodile Blues by Coleman Polhemus
What is WITH all the crocodile books this year? Love 'em! This one, nearly wordless and done in 3 colors, is a graphic illustration dream - a bit surreal and yet perfectly understandable.

The art book for children Book Two, text by Amanda Renshaw
Oh to have the assignment from Phaidon to make this book. Take a beautiful repro of a work of art, and ask some questions about it. Use as many detail photos as you want. "How fast do you think these boys are running?" "What kind of school could this be?". Discuss.

123 I can Paint! by Irene Luxbacher
Basic color theory, materials and painting technique. Completely fun and accessible for young elementary school kids.

123 I can Sculpt! by Irene Luxbacher
Just as good, but more project-based... how do you not, when it's sculpture? A good range of simple sculpture techniques are illustrated in the creation of a whole batch of animals.




Knock, Knock! Jokes by fourteen wacky and talented artists inside!
Hells yeah. My boys love knock-knock jokes, so much that I might cheerfully detach my head and hold it outside of the car sometimes, if I didn't think it would seriously impair my driving. Here are old ones, repeaters, sight gags, and a tribute to Maurice Sendak:

Knock knock!
Who's there?
Verdi!
Verdi who?
Verdi vild tings are!

That might also be a Simms Taback tribute, I don't know. Brought to you by the same lovable gang of idiots (actually, mostly a whole lovable new gang of idiots) who gave us last year's Why Did The Chicken Cross the Road?

Maya Angelou: Poetry for young people
I might have to do something with a few of these stanzas for Black History Month.

There ain't no pay beneath the sun
As sweet as rest when a job's well done.
I was born to work up to my grave
But I was not born
To be a slave.

Go, Miss Maya!

One Million Men and Me by Kelly Starling Lyons, illustrated by Peter Ambush
The author attended the Million Man March as a journalist in October of 1995. Recently she spoke to a group of young people who had never heard of that important event. If for no other reason than that, it is good that we have this book. However, it's also well written, with that journalistic eye for detail and texture, and very nicely illustrated in realistic watercolors.




When Randolph Turned Rotten, a story by Charise Mericle Harper
Love Charise Mericle Harper. Love Flush, love Fashion Kitty, love love love The Monster Show. Her sense of humor and faux-naive illustration style are to love. And When Randolph Turned Rotten is the best yet! Every panel, every page will make my kids helpless with laughter. The moment when Randolph turns, he goes from Best Friend Randolph, with 'rainbow-filled-with-love-insides' (there's an arrow pointing to where his insides are), to Nasty Randolph, with 'stinky rotten insides' (and also, 'mad hands'). Spoiler: he turns back.

Sam Tells Stories by Thierry Robberecht, illustrated by Philippe Goossens
This is the same story as The Show-and-Tell Lion. Kid is a big liar, gets caught, is forgiven, decides that his lying is a big TALENT and embraces his storyteller-ness. Hrm.

Jenny found a penny by Trudy Harris, illustrations by John Hovell
It's a sweet one, with addition, coins, earning, and a child's first purchase. And computer illustrations that are somehow not lacking in warmth.

Today's new picture books - mid-January

The only boy in ballet class, written by Denise Gruska with illustrations by Amy Wummer.
Hey! Billy Elliot, his own story! No. Good lord. It's a wonderful and heartwarming story about a boy who loves ballet and who gets picked on and teased until one day when he... wins The Big Game. The other kids see that the jetés and chassés that they derided as poncy and fey are effective strategies for avoiding defensive linemen. Kind of stretching it a little here.

Llama llama mad at Mama by Anna Dewdney.
I may be the only mom, and certainly the only librarian I know, who ever didn't fall in love with Llama llama red pajama. As for this one: aw, no. Llama llama pitches a fit at the supermarket and throws all the crap out of the cart and instead of indicating her displeasure at his behavior, Mama suggests that they work together as a team to get the shopping done. Go on, pull the other one. Still, the rhymes and pictures are excellent, and I could see reading this to a three year old and saying, "Oh my gosh! Isn't that a terrible way to behave?"

The Nutcracker Doll, written and illustrated by Mary Newell DePalma.
Just in time for Chri- .... oh, I've made that joke before, haven't I? Wouldn't it be nice if our holiday books were processed in time for the holiday in question? This is a nice little one, for all the ballet-mad girls. Kepley gets to be onstage in a production of The Nutcracker. Pretty straightforward, and as it turns out, that's because it's a true story about the author's daughter. If it were me, I'd have included that tidbit on a page at the beginning or end. Maybe it was there but I missed it.




Br'er Rabbit Captured! A Dr. David Harleyson Adventure, by Jean Cassels.
Cute, cute, and more cute! It's fractured Br'er Rabbit! The narrator's uncle is trying to catch up to Br'er Rabbit to paint his portrait, and he is aided by the other characters in the folktales. Told in epistolary multiple first person narrative, a favorite for fractured stories (think Hoodwinked), we get to hear many of the tales retold in the course of trying to find the rabbit. Really fine art.

Magic Night, by Isobelle Carmody, illustrated by Declan Lee.
Don't let your adult fantasy readers get their hands on this - it'll never get back to the children's section. A pixie-like thing gets into the house and things start transforming weirdly, with only the cat to see. BEAUTIFUL illustrations, the kind that make you look at a coffee mug full of pens and wonder what it would look like if it came to life. My Big Man is going to love it, and any other Spiderwick fan is too.




Ivan the Terrier by Peter Catalanotto.
Just like Mélanie Watt's cat Chester, Peter Catalanotto's dog Ivan takes over this book, interrupting every story the narrator tries to read. The cover, a straight-on portrait of Ivan, is the best thing about this book, and I'm not being bitchy.

The Mine-o-saur by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen, illustrated by David Clark.
Sharing. Dinosaurs. But! David Clark, we love that guy! He illustrated Gakky Two-Feet, which was super-weird, but worth it for the pop-eyed hominids (it's the only picture book I know about natural selection) and the smart colors.




When dinosaurs came with everything, written by Elise Broach, illustrated by David Small.
Now, why aren't all picture books written like this? The mom is very mom-like, and the kid sounds just like my 6-year-old, who, when asked the other day if he bugs the kid who sits next to him with too much talking, said, "No. Sometimes I ask him, 'Dude, how's it going?' but that's all." The kid in this book, upon learning that he gets a dinosaur instead of a sticker after his checkup, crumples slightly, knees together, throws back his head with his arms up, and cries, "YESSS!" And I LOVE the scratchy pen and ink and watercolor illustrations - David Small also illustrated The Gardener, one of my all-time happy weepie picture books. I even love the typeface, the same one used in 17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore. In other words, unless In Jesse's Shoes turns out to be an unexpected superstar, I think we have our Book of the Day!

Keep love in your heart, little one, by Giles Andreae, illustrated by Clara Vulliamy.
No, no. Shut up. How am I going to know that I can't stand books like this unless I read one every now and then? Well, I have to say, if you're going to take home this kind of book, Keep love in your heart is a good option. The illustrations are quite beautiful, with lovely little details. And it's not pure schmaltz... it's more like... lemon curd. Probably because it's British.

In Jesse's Shoes: Appreciating Kids with Special Needs, by Beverly Lewis, illustrated by Laura Nikiel.
Yes, that Beverly Lewis, the one who writes the "dirty Amish books", as one of my Monday-night patrons calls them. That explains the heavy God content of this otherwise perfectly ordinary, maudlin book about Allie and her developmentally disabled older brother Jesse, who she feels guilty about being embarrassed by. Sort of like Al Capone Does My Shirts for a younger crowd. And with divinely-inspired guilt in addition to ordinary empathy-deficit guilt.

Ziba came on a boat, written by Liz Lofthouse, illustrated by Robert Ingpen.
Afghan(?) refugee child. What it was like in her village before everything went to crap and what it was like when it went to crap, plus Ziba's dreams of freedom. So many questions, starting with: what's she doing on a boat? What part of which cold, mountainous, headscarf-wearing, goat-eating country - it certainly appears to be Afghanistan, an impression that is backed up by the author's short biography - do you flee in a boat? Too distracted by that one question even to enjoy the lovely illustrations by the always-classy Robert Ingpen.

Punk Farm on Tour by Jarrett J. Krosoczka.
You know I just want to love everything JJK does: Bubble Bath Pirates was such a fave at our house a couple years ago, partly because the mom is a pirate too, and besides, the man is just so damn funny. But when I took Punk Farm (this book's predecessor) home, it got a totally ho-hum response. Aaaand... I'm not sure this one's gonna rock the house either. The band covers "Wheels on the bus"... that's kind of never a good sign.




Chester by Ayano Imai.
What do you call this kind of book? Underappreciated family member runs away from home but does not find comfort anywhere else and then comes back home and now they love him. Do you call that Wizard of Oz? Goldilocks? Whatever you call it, it is Oh My God So Very Done. I'll forgive Ayano Imai because she has spent most of her life in Japan and maybe it's not such a tired trope there, and besides, her pictures are just excellent.

Romeo and Lou Blast Off by Derek Anderson.
Well, it's cute. Romeo and Lou are a penguin and a polar bear (do you get as cheesed-off as my six-year-old does when people put penguins and polar bears in the same environment? Even when it's a silly book, it's still just Not Right.), anyway, an Arctic mammal and an Antarctic bird build a snow rocket that magically takes off and crash-lands them in a city. As they try to figure out how to get home, they interpret the city sights using their native vernacular: they think two guys with mustaches are walruses, kids in bright-colored swimsuits are fish, etc. Kind of a dud.

This is the day! Adapted by Phillis Gershator, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman.
I don't always go for Marjorie Priceman's sort of Chagall-y work: I know it's meant to be gestural, but it often falls over the edge into slapdash for me. But boy do her willowy women and 1950's wirework furniture work in this book, an adaptation of an old song that goes "Monday's the day we give babies away with half a pound of tea. Here comes a lady who wants a baby. 'I'll take this one,' says she..." It's an irresistible song, light-hearted and with an adoption theme, and the illustrations are sunny and swingy and the whole book just really works. Besides the fact that a different song with the same title is one of my favorite songs of all time. ALL TIME. THE THE ROCKS, PEOPLE. (And oh my, wasn't Matt Johnson cute back when he had hair!)