The Dunderheads, by Paul Fleischman, illustrated by David Roberts - review

The Dunderheads, by Paul Fleischman, illustrated by David Roberts
Do you want to live in David Roberts's world? I want to live in David Roberts's world. In David Roberts's world, no trip to the thrift store does NOT yield a polyester caftan in a trippy geometric pattern. Or at least a pair of green Chucks. In David Roberts's world, every surface is there to be customized with gaffer's tape in lots of colors. In David Roberts's world, it is impossible to pass by a jacket with a circle zipper pull and not want to put it on. (The circle zipper pull being, of course, the sexiest item ever to appear in the notions aisle.) In David Roberts's world, even a lawn chair with yellow and gray webbing is the coolest webbed lawn chair I have ever seen. That part's actually a bit frustrating. I'm never going to find a lawn chair that looks that good.

But what makes Dunderheads the perfect storm of quirky greatness is that David Roberts's world has somehow overlaid and merged with Paul Fleischman's world. Paul Fleischman, whose previous world, Weslandia, was also a world I wanted to live in. Not least because it's just a darn clever name.

In Paul Fleischman's world, every child feels free to express his or her individuality in every way possible - through the acquisition and deployment of bizarrely abstruse knowledge; by discovering and practicing (and in some cases, inventing) an unique talent; or? by filing one's fingernails into handy tools. In Paul Fleischman's world, Pluck Conquers All.

The Dunderheads are a group of kids so labeled by their villainous teacher, a towering bully who despises children and loves things with pointy teeth and/or spikes. Miss Breakbone keeps an electric chair in her classroom and awards herself a gold star whenever she makes a child cry. In other words, she is a Miss Trunchbull in dire need of a Matilda to scare her off. But this is Paul Fleischman's world, remember?

What follows is not a Use of Underage Magic story - what follows is a classic American Kids Get Even tall tale. Didn't you hear those stories when you were growing up? The story about how those kids, a few years older than you, finally got back at Coach Wolf by putting a potato in his tailpipe? Or how Miss Park lost her eyebrows one time because somebody doctored her makeup? Those kids in those stories were HEROES. Like Paul Fleischman's heroes. Everyday, funny, underdog heroes.

Man, I am really babbling along here, aren't I? It's because I just keep paging through the book and finding more to love. I am pretty darn sure David Roberts has quoted a couple of his own characters from Iggy Peck, Architect and Dumpster Diver, but I can't be fussed to go get those books to check, because they're in the room where my sons are (supposedly) sleeping.

So, one day, Miss Breakbone goes too far. She confiscates an item that the smallest kid, a boy called Junkyard, who wears a rainbow on his sweater and a Quadrophenia patch on his jeans, had been planning to give to his mom for her birthday. She makes him cry. The kids embark upon a daring plan that will humiliate Miss Breakbone and restore Junkyard's pride, not to mention his property.



It's worth mentioning that Dunderheads is a long-form picture book, almost a graphic novel, really. My rising third grader read it to me and to his younger brother with no trouble (their faces shining - they love it when the bad guy gets his due). In the picture above, 5th grader Rabbit is reading it to rapt 3rd graders Legolas, Zee, & Mao, plus my 1st grade Zhou. Although not a chapter book, it falls into that short-long space that is so hard to keep populated when the second graders come around. Thanks, Mr. Fleischman!

It is also worth mentioning that while David Roberts is a master of stylized, expressive characters sporting fearless fashion choices ("from the sixties, seventies, AND eighties" as the classic rock station trumpets), there are many many illustration and design elements quoted from various sources and executed in different styles, all of which he does well. It gives his world a lot of depth. As Laurie Anderson said, "You know? I think we should put some mountains here. Otherwise, what are all the characters going to fall off of?"

And I'm out. Go find this one.

Attack of the Growling Eyeballs by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin - review

Attack of the Growling Eyeballs by Lin Oliver, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin
Feeling picked-on and underappreciated in your own family? Surrounded by people who don't understand you? What you need is a one-inch-tall identical twin brother. Really!

Daniel lives with his three sisters, his mom, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother, and he feels a little overlooked. One day, he shrinks to the size of his fourth toe. Yes, he does. He grows back to normal size, though. Perplexed to say the least, he turns to his great grandmother, Granny Nanny, who reveals that the tendency to shrink is a well-kept and little-understood family secret. Another secret is Pablo, his twin, whom even his mother has never known about. Granny has been raising Pablo in secret all these years. She suspects it's her goulash that makes people shrink.

Pablo, or "The Pablo" as he calls himself, is The Bomb. Nobody can hear him, so he is free to make wisecracks about the women of the house. He can give voice to the opinions and comments that Daniel would get SO beat up for. He can pick and choose what he wants to learn about - Granny homeschools him, but he hitches a ride to school with Daniel whenever Daniel's class is studying something interesting. Pablo can watch TV in the daytime. Pablo has lots of good ideas about how to have fun.

This is a super-funny, super-cool book for kids at about a 3rd grade reading level. The illustrations are slouchy and hip, and the cover is a can't-miss. So glad it's a series!

The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle - review

The Giggler Treatment by Roddy Doyle
Your Neighborhood Librarian: Dude, thanks for reading this book to me in the car.
Prosper: You're welcome.

YNL: What did you like about The Giggler Treatment?
P: I don't know. I just liked it. It was funny.
YNL: Talking seagull?
P: Yeah! That was funny, and the Gigglers, they were funny.

YNL: Anything unusual about this book?
P: Well, there was a lot of poo in it.
YNL: And that's unusual?
P: Yes!
YNL: How about the questions?
P: That was unusual. It was like someone else was reading the book.
YNL: And asking the author questions?
P: Yeah! And he was always like, "Good question!"
P: And I liked the talking biscuits, the one was like, "When you put your feet in water, when you take them back out, they are wet! Isn't that interesting?"
YNL: That was funny. Because, like...
P: It's not!

YNL: We were driving, so I didn't notice it has illustrations til now. Are they just, like, decoration, or do they tell you about what's going on?
P: They don't tell you what's going on, but you can see what people look like.

YNL: What kind of kid would you recommend The Giggler Treatment to?
P: My friend [Titan], because he really likes funny books.

YNL: Thanks, man. Can I take your picture with that book?
P: I guess.



Prosper is seven and will be entering 2nd grade in a month. He also likes funny chapter books like Sideways Stories from Wayside School and detective chapter books like Encyclopedia Brown.

I would leave this review entirely to him, except I really have to note that the entire book takes place during the time it takes a man to walk four steps toward a giant pile of wet dog crap. Plus there's quite a lot of back-chat from an imaginary reader. Altogether Joycean, Proustian, Pynchonesque - name some other authors completely inappropriate for seven year olds and slap adjectival suffixes onto them - but funny (Ok, funny-er, if you, like four other people on the planet, thought Gravity's Rainbow was really a stitch).

Audio book roundup - little kids

Well, it's road trip season again. Ostensibly. Although I would have thought that my family would be the only ones fool enough to be paying for gas from here to the Gulf of Mexico and back this summer, I have already walked plenty of people though the kids' audio book section, trying to fix that panicky look that parents get when they contemplate 9 hours trapped in a vehicle with a semi-incontinent person who doesn't know how to read yet.

For really little kids, say, up to 4 or 5, you have to go with collections of shorter stories. Long narrative is kind of lost on them, and they can get bored and cranky when they've lost track. On the other hand, you the parent are going to be in that vehicle too, and all is lost if the story or voice makes you so crazy that you drive into a bridge abutment before you make it to the family reunion. Unless your goal is to give everyone else something to talk about in years to come, and hell, you could do that just by talking about your intestines every chance you get (we miss you, Cousin Roy!).

Luckily for you, some of the most accomplished professional voices in the world occasionally record children's books. Here's a good long list (remember, they're short, so grab a big stack!) of audio books that small people enjoy and bigger people don't hate:




The One and Only Shrek by William Steig, read by Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci
I reviewed it this March, and I was incredibly impressed. Worth listening to again and again, whether you're an adult marveling at Meryl Streep's virtuosity, or a kid who thinks that a talking bone is just funny.




The Stink books by Megan Mcdonald, read by Nancy Cartwright
Nancy Cartwright is one a hard-working person. Among other things, she's Bart Simpson - Bart Simpson! Some adults (my husband, for one) find her Stink voices grating, but kids think they're hysterical. She injects plenty of variety, so kids can tell the characters apart, and the mechanics of her reading - pace, emphasis, etc. - are flawless.

In addition, I find Stink Moody to be a more sympathetic character than his older sister Judy. McDonald includes informative sidebar material and unexpected incidental funny stuff. I love that one of Stink's friends insists on being called Sophie of the Elves, and that bit is carried through all the books. Also available: Stink and the World's Worst Super-Stinky Sneakers & Stink and the Great Guinea Pig Express and Stink and the Incredible Super-Galactic Jawbreaker.


Three Tales of My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett, narrated by Robert Servra
This CD of three stories is gentle to the point of lullaby. But kids love 'em. We listened to this CD last summer in the car, and this year when my son's first grade teacher read it aloud, he was a big celebrity in class because he knew what was going to happen. It's old-fashioned and well-written and original and underappreciated.




Dr. Seuss on audio
Anyone who's ever had to read If I Ran the Zoo every night for about two months knows that reading Dr. Seuss aloud is no laughing matter. It's written in anapestic tetrameter, a term that certainly sounds like it was invented just for him, and is chock-full of made-up words and names that would stop even the most nimble-tongued truck. The Bippo-No-Bungus, the It-Kutch, the Tizzle-Top-Tufted Mazurka, and the Fizza-ma-Wizza-ma-Dill? You've got to train for that kind of thing, else you're going to injure yourself.

John Cleese, Walter Matthau, and Dustin freakin' Hoffman are among the name-brand voices that read Seuss stories on The Cat in the Hat collection (image above).
On Green Eggs and Ham and Other Servings of Dr. Seuss, we are read to by brave enunciators such as David Hyde Pierce, John Lithgow, and Michael McKean, who will always be Lenny to me.
Billy Crystal, Hoffman and Mercedes McCambridge (also the voice of the possessed Linda Blair in The Exorcist!)do the voices on Horton Hears a Who and Other Sounds of Dr. Seuss.
Lithgow and Ted Danson read the more message-y stories on Oh, the Places You'll Go! and The Lorax.
If you can't find these collections, the British comedians Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall (Vyv and Rick from The Young Ones (dating myself, fine, but it was a very funny show)) are the improbable narrators of the cassette-and-book versions of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and The Cat in the Hat Comes Back . I would give a lot to get my hands on those.




Other audio collections for very young audiences that I would recommend:

• Geronimo Stilton (read by Edward Herrmann)
• Hank the Cowdog (my colleague Mercedes swears by these from when her boys were younger)
• Flat Stanley (above)
• Russell Hoban's Frances (narrated by the throaty yet refined Glynis Johns)
• Little Bear (read by Sigourney Weaver - perfect!)
• Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad stories read by the author
• ...and Piglet Meets a Heffalump and Other Stories read by Dame Judi Dench, Mister Stephen Fry, and Jane Horrocks (Bubble from AbFab and Angelina from Angelina Ballerina) among others.

Round it all out with Fry reading A Bear Called Paddington, and there you are, pulling into the hotel parking lot.

Whew!

Medusa Jones by Ross Collins - review

This jaunty little first chapter book came my way courtesy Betsy Bird at Fuse #8. Every now and then she jettisons some excess ARCs, and I was lucky enough to snag one this time around.

Here's the old underdog-saves-the-day story with a new angle: Medusa, a gorgon, with the requisite snaky hair and reputation for petrification, and her pals Chiron the centaur and Mino the minotaur are picked on at school by The Champions, shiny shiny hero kids named Perseus, Theseus, and, oddly, Cassandra (presumedly pre-curse).

Teasing, name-calling, etc. A hat is snatched off and thrown in the gutter. Then the three freak kids have to go on an unsupervised camping trip with the hero kids, and, what do you know, by using their skills together, the monster kids save the jerky trio of champions and return to Athens big heroes.

Then Medusa turns The Champions to stone anyway, which actually sounds more satisfying here than it does in the book. In the book, her parents are very big on self-control, and you're led to feel proud of Medusa for exercising hers, so it comes as something of a surprise that she blows it at the end. I'm guessing that the author is setting up a conflict for future books.

My sixth-grade friend Alice, admittedly a little old for this book, read it and said, "Meh." I'm inclined to agree. However, the kids that lap up anything to do with Greek gods and heros will accept this book. And I won't hold it against Ross Collins. I adore his illustration style: it's like Marla Frazee with attitude. And Alvie Eats Soupand Supposing are marvelous books, and I'm hoping to get my hands on Germs sometime soon. Wait, no. Oh, you know what I mean.