Trouble Gum by Matthew Cordell - review

Trouble Gum by Matthew Cordell
Here is a book. A book with gum. A book with two brothers. A book with two brothers stuck inside on a rainy day who aren't usually allowed gum because - oh my god gum! Gum on the furniture! In the carpet! Gum in the hair! Swallowed gum! Gum on the wee little faces! NO GUM!

My colleague La Mirabile (also the mother of boys) is sitting next to me cackling over this book. Seriously, she's laughing so hard I'm worried she's going to swallow her own gum.

Matthew Cordell illustrated one of my favorite picture books about brothers, Righty & Lefty. Maybe he has sons. Maybe he has brothers. But he sure as heck knows how funny it is when a little boy jumps off the couch and into a pile of cushions and momentarily stuns himself.

One K-5 school library, coming up! The 000's

Checking out the picture books

Late this summer an entire library of books was delivered to a new school in Baltimore. I should know - I picked all 2,254 of them. It was what you might call a labor of love. Emphasis on the "labor". Actually, emphasis on the love.

As we shelved what amounted to thirty thousand dollars worth of brand-new beautiful books, one of our parent volunteers said, "I bet you've read half the books in this room!" I did a quick scan of a few shelves and admitted that actually, I have read probably upwards of 75% of them. Most of the fiction, all of the picture books, and one heck of a lot of the nonfiction. Wow. I am either really really sad or really really dedicated.

You may hire me to create or maintain your school library collection, and I will certainly not object, but I thought it might be nice to share some of the lists I created. I'll do a series of about a dozen posts, at least the nonfiction, starting with the 000's. This will be my own version of School Library Journal's Series Made Simple issue (which is a great resource, by the way).

The 000's are kind of a weird little miscellany area of a school library. Every school should have a set of the World Book, and please do buy an almanac every year, but if you have the bucks, try to get a few "strange but true" reference books in there. Some kids really respond to Ripley's Believe It Or Not and Guinness World Records. Books like these have a sneaky added benefit - the indexed entries introduce kids to a nonlinear method of approaching a book, important when they're doing real research later.




Gee, Joshua. Encyclopedia Horrifica: The Terrifying Truth About Vampires, Ghosts, Monsters, & More. A kind of weird book to start off with, but, as the kid says in Beetlejuice, "I myself am strange and unusual."

Teitelbaum, Michael. Bigfoot Caught on Film: And Other Monster Sightings!. The 24/7: Science Behind the Scenes series from Scholastic is... it's ok. Little niblets of info, good for hooking readers, but it's nice to have something with a little more depth to back these books up, in case your readers do get interested in the subject. I picked carefully through this series and selected just a few titles.

Prieto, Anita C. B Is For Bookworm: A Library Alphabet. These alphabet books from Sleeping Bear Press are a bit uneven. This one is pretty dry, but I wanted to fill out a small suite of library-themed books. If you're tempted by the ABC book for your state, or about a particular subject, be sure to get your hands on it and read it through first. Some of the words can be awfully obscure.

Ruurs, Margriet. My Librarian Is A Camel: How Books Are Brought To Children Around The World. How people live around the world is a particularly important theme in this school, and one that I personally find important. Kids find the juxtapositions fascinating, too. The pictures in this book are very nice.

Farndon, John. Visual Encyclopedia (DK). I keep buying and buying this book, and they keep loving and loving it until they love it to pieces. I'm not the world's be-all end-all fan of Dorling Kindersley - I don't think they fact-check hard enough - but this single-volume encyclopedia + elementary school kids = LOVE.

Aronson, Marc. For Boys Only: The Biggest, Baddest Book Ever. Frankly? I bought this on Jon Scieszka's recommendation. More graphically interesting and up-to-date looking than that other "dangerous" book, which I swear was written for parents.

Farndon, John. Do Not Open. Irresistable, full of fun facts about freaky stuff, several activities and suggestions for bringing the info in the book to life. Worth the few extra bucks. My 8 year old got a copy of this for his birthday and was enraptured. His little brother is learning to read just as fast and as hard as he can so he can have a turn with it.

Macdonald, Guy. Even More Children's Miscellany: Smart, Silly, and Strange Information That's Essential to Know. Same stuff, but for smaller kids.

McDonald, Megan. Stink-O-Pedia: Super Stink-y Stuff From A To ZZZZ. I like Stink Moody. I like him better than his sister, Judy. I buy Judy Moody, but I buy Stink too. He's funny, he's good-hearted, he's a 'second chapter book' for boys who think fantasy is pointless. Stink reads encyclopedias in his spare time, so I thought I'd offer his fans Stink's very own encyclopedia.

Murrie, Steve & Matthew. Every Minute On Earth: Fun Facts That Happen Every 60 Seconds. I never can seem to find enough books about time. Time is hard to explain. So when this book arrived at the public library, I snatched it. I stood and read it between customers at the information desk and I figured if I was fascinated enough to read it all the way through, surely somebody in that school would be too.

Mark, Jan. Museum Book: A Guide To Strange And Wonderful Collections. This is Baltimore, baby. We've got a light bulb museum and a teeth museum and we used to have a dime museum. We are to strange and wonderful as Paris is to lovely and inspiring.

Marcus, Leonard S. Side by Side: Five Favorite Picture-Book Teams Go to Work. Marvelous funny anecdotes, lots of illustrations showing all steps of the creative process, a very nice introduction to the concept of collaboration. Terrible cover though.

You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien - review and interview

You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien

2009 is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. Did you know that? Yeah maybe the astounding array of commemorative books tipped you off. We've had books by everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Norman Mailer hit the shelves this year. Many, if not most, of these books have been inspiring and beautiful. Many, if not most, have made me cry.

But while I am fully aware of the importance of the Apollo 11 mission as a concrete example of the highest heights that can be achieved - by man and by mankind - I have wondered just how engaging this story is for young people. My own children are mystified and a little alarmed when I get all choked up reading them Brian Floca's atmospheric and detailed Moonshot or try to explain to them the unique perspective represented by former astronaut Alan Bean's paintings in Mission Control, This is Apollo.

That's why I think Patrick O'Brien's work of "speculative non-fiction" is so important this year. For my kids, and for their friend Alex, who is the model for the kid in the book (disclosure: Pat's family and mine have been friends since our 3rd-grade boys were barely walking, much less traveling the solar system), space travel is not something that happened on a tiny black-and-white TV set in the kitchen forty years ago. Space travel is not even the - let me take a deep breath and try to use an adjective that is not pejorative - somewhat tepid space shuttle program.

Space travel is "huge ships shaped like pine cones with lots of little sonar devices and everyone wears goggles that can switch from night vision to underwater vision to sunglasses!" (I asked.) They think the future will involve "a permanent space colony on the Moon as big as Texas!" "Or maybe at one of the Lagrange points!"

But ok, that's my kids. Not every kid knows that the gravitationally stable Lagrange points are good spots for a space station. But I will argue that my kids are representative of many kids when they think that space travel is part of their future. And Patrick has done our kids a service by writing and illustrating, with his usual blend of meticulous research and stunning art, a reasonably plausible conception of travel to Mars. His journey includes a space elevator up to a geosynchronous orbit point, a nuclear thermal ship that gradually accelerates to 75,000 miles per hour as it covers the 35,000 miles to Mars, and a Mars lander that bombs through the Mars atmosphere before parachutes drop it gently to the dusty red plain.



The friendly, explanatory second-person narration contrasts nicely with the giant grin on the face of the kid as he bounds across the Martian surface. Makes it feel like the book is being narrated by a teacher chaperoning a really good field trip, trying to keep from letting on that she is just as excited as the kids are.

Anyone familiar with O'Brien's previous books (on topics like sailing ships, extinct mammals, knights, and, er, dinosaurs in space) will know that the man researches like a maniac. Marianne Dyson, herself an author of numerous kids' books on space, picked apart every fact presented in You Are the First Kid On Mars when she reviewed the book, but revised her opinion when the author emailed her, addressing her objections and supporting his every phrase. It is really nice to know that the book stands up to that kind of scrutiny.

The artwork in this book was done on a computer, a departure for O'Brien, who, in addition to illustrating his own books, paints large oils of ships under sail. His mastery of the software and techniques involved is impressive - many of the illustrations look like they could be photos, which is important for those kids who want things to be above all else "real".

We had the delightful O'Brien family over for dinner this weekend, and after my husband's excellent fish tacos, I had the chance to ask Pat some questions about the book.

Your Neighborhood Librarian: What was your inspiration for writing You Are the First Kid on Mars?

Patrick O'Brien: My editor, Tim Travaglini, was really into the whole space idea. It was his idea to do a speculative book about going to Mars. My books usually come from my ideas, but this one came from him.

YNL: Was there anything different about writing about future science vs. your usual subjects?

PO: All of my other books are about historic and prehistoric nonfiction subjects. It is fiction, because it hasn't actually happened, but I was treating it as a nonfiction book. The reason that it’s in the second person is I read some books like that as a kid. You will go to the Moon is the one that I remember most clearly. And they had it all wrong, it’s really funny to see all that. Presumably, my stuff will be all wrong.

YNL: What was your research process? Do you regularly read science periodicals like Wired or Scientific American? Or was this a new area for you?

PO: I’ve always been a science guy, I was a biology major in college, but my son is really into space. We watch a lot of space stuff on TV. When Alex was really young, he liked real space more than the fictional movies. We'd watch NOVA together, and his toys were Apollo models, not Star Wars toys. I read a lot about space with him, and on my own.

I used the most up to date, most accurate information that I could find about what it would take to get to Mars. I went through the NASA website, books on space travel.

YNL: Is this your first work created digitally?

PO: This is the first book I illustrated on the computer.

YNL: You're such a good painter though - why did you decide to do it using techniques that are new to you?

PO: Well, for fun, as a change. It was different, and I just thought it was appropriate to the subject matter. The thing about using the computer to do the art, a lot of people who don’t do it think you just push the spaceship button and you get a spaceship. You push the astronaut button, and you get an astronaut, and then you make it do what you want. But you still have to draw it, you still have to paint it. It’s just one more medium. When they invented watercolors, it didn’t put the oil painters out of business.

But there are advantages. You can make infinite changes - with watercolors, pretty much once it's down, it's there. You can make a certain amount of changes with oils, but with the computer, you can keep adjusting it until it's just what you want. I used Corel Painter X and a tablet, so it’s a lot like painting. It wasn't hard to learn.

YNL: Did you find it hard to stop making changes? Was it tempting to keep touching it, trying out variations?

PO: No. A little. I know what I’m going for, I have a picture in my mind, and when I've made that, it’s done.

There you go, folks. I made it, it's done. You will go to the Moon was, not surprisingly, on my shelf as a kid too.

I, Q by Roland Smith - review

I, Q by Roland Smith Book One: Independence Hall

Hold on to your butts, as Samuel L. Jackson says when he tries to reboot an entire island. And don't try to read this one if you're at all sleepy - Roland Smith has written a spy novel (the first in a series), and he is NOT kidding around!

Our story opens as teenage Q (short for Quest) and Angela become brand-new step-siblings, the children of two single-parent musicians who have found each other, fallen in love, and become massive rock stars at a fairly late stage in life. (Which is kind of a nice bone to throw the middle-aged reader - I had fun imagining Patty Smith as Q's mom and John Doe as Angela's dad. Shouldn't Patty Smith and John Doe fall in love and go on tour?)

Anyway. The new family embarks on a cross-country tour in a luxury bus, but when a crusty old roadie shows up by the side of the road and turns out to be a freelance secret agent intent on protecting Angela from people who want to use her as leverage against her allegedly dead biological mother, a Secret Service agent killed by a suicide bomber at Independence Hall... (remember to breathe)... they realize that their trip is going to be even stranger (and possibly longer) than anything rock and roll could have thrown their way.

I think that sometimes people underestimate how much complexity kids can take. Yes, much of the plot of I, Q hinges on who knows what, when they know it, and how they know it - but that's spycraft for you. The 39 Clues series is similarly sinuous, plot-wise, and also works in missing parents, a boy-girl team, and an overall sense of Trust No-one. Any kid who goes for that series will lap up I, Q like fizzy pink lemonade.

Action, secret identities, shifting alliances, interesting locations (the next one's set in the White House!), groovy rock-star perks (Q can get tickets to the hottest show in town for people who help them), and, most of all, quick-witted cool kids who can think for themselves put this book right up there with the Alex Rider series and other "realistic" adventure novels such as The London Eye Mystery and the Young Bond Series.

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon - review

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon
It's possible that my opinion of this book has been influenced by the appearance in my bed this morning (at, possibly, 7am, I don't know, I didn't have my glasses on yet), of a seven-year-old who wasn't interested in it when I suggested it to him yesterday at the library, but who had apparently woken up, read the whole book, and now needed to synopsize it for me, read the funniest passages out loud, and tell me that he needs the next book in the series RIGHT NOW. He could barely get the words out for laughing.

After we kicked him out (my saintly husband: "Let Mommy sleep, ok? Go read something else."), I fell back to sleep and dreamed about pudgy animated dragon pirates. Ursula Vernon, get your agent on the phone with Noggin. Danny Dragonbreath is good animated.

So. Danny Dragonbreath is the only semi-mythological creature in a school full of non-mythic reptiles and amphibians. He gets a little picked-on for this, but his is an upbeat, enthusiastic semi-mythological 5th-grade spirit, and he doesn't let that bully Big Eddy the Komodo dragon get him down. His best friend Wendell is (predictably) a more cautious, intellectual type, and in the way of mismatched best friend pairs everywhere, Danny has to cajole Wendell into assisting him in his pursuit of unorthodox solutions to common problems.

In this instance, the problem is a research paper on the ocean, a subject that Danny knows nothing about. Danny's solution? A visit to Cousin Edward the sea serpent, who takes the gung-ho Danny and freaked-out Wendell on an undersea tour. They explore a coral reef, a sunken ship, and a deep-sea trench. Along the way, sneaky Ursula Vernon finagles interesting facts about sea creatures and ocean phenomena into the adventure.

But it's the snarkalicious writing that will keep my seven-year-old, and other kids who appreciate funny (I'm thinking it might appeal to Diary of a Wimpy Kid devotees, if I can get them past the dragon thing) coming back for more. In a sidebar, Vernon writes, "A school of potato salad can skeletonize a cow in under two weeks, assuming that the cow doesn't get bored and move."

Our library system has Dragonbreath filed as a graphic novel, but it's not. It's one of those hybrids, something like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, with pages of panels carrying the action in some places and pages of text doing the bulk of the work. There could be more graphic passages, I have to say. Ursula Vernon's drawing style is extremely nice - full-on grownup quality work, with a strong line quality and bold shading that highlights each panel's central idea. Think Owly.

Such high contrast sometimes makes a comic look ominous and bleak (Dark Knight Returns, Grendel), but in this case, the choice of grass green as a highlight color keeps that from happening, and it's a technique that is particularly appropriate and effective in the undersea scenes. The vertical panels that show the sinuous Edward diving or rising to the surface are unusually lovely. Page layouts are varied and interesting, but still quite simple and easy to follow.

In sum: . I've been looking for a Babymouse for boys for a long time, and I think Dragonbreath is it - snappy, giggleworthy text and strong, coherent graphic passages telling a fun, friendly, exciting story with just the right balance of realism and fantasy. I'm with Mao - we're waiting for Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs with bated breath!

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.

Mungo and the Spiders from Space by Timothy Knapman and Adam Stower - review

Mungo and the Spiders from Space by Timothy Knapman and Adam Stower
Well, looks like Your Neighborhood Librarian has a new artist boyfriend. Sigh. The beginning of a relationship is always so magical, n'est pas? My previous secret husbands of children's illustration have included Adam Rex, William Joyce, and Oliver Jeffers (who gets extra points for being Irish). Plus Antoinette Portis and Emily Gravett.* I have no gender hangups.

I read and enjoyed Two Left Feet when it came out, but I don't think I reviewed it. I remember liking the artist's strong but delicate line, old-timey fashion sense, and bangin' colors, all of which Mungo and the Spiders from Space has, times twenty. It has a steampunk vibe, very like Chris Riddell's work, but more energetic. My colleague TinkerCinderBelleAhontas finds it busy, but that's just because her son is still a baby and they like soft colors and one visual idea per page. Which is cool. But my sons, my boys who are 6 and 7? Jeez, my sons craaaave "busy". They want extra bonus cartoons, they want books within books. They want trompe-l'œil effects and they want marginalia and detail-alia and backgroundalia and illustrated endpapers and extra jokes on the back cover.

All of which, not coincidentally, Mungo and the Spiders from Space - has. Plus: a plot that keeps the reader hanging, slime, goop, a butt joke, and robots. Sigh. It's love, in point of fact.

Think I'll go gaze at the cover of The Shadow World for a little while.

*And David Roberts and Marla Frazee and David Shannon and Kadir Nelson and LeUyen Pham and a few others...

Into the Volcano by Don Wood - review

Into the Volcano by Don Wood

Into the Volcano is an intense mystery-adventure coming-of-age chapter book in comic book style - something of a departure for Don Wood, the illustrator of such picture books as Piggies and The Napping House.

Two brothers, Duffy and Sumo, visit their mysterious aunt in Hawaii, who sends them off on a perilous expedition into the bowels of an erupting volcano, accompanied by strangers whose skills are obvious, but whose trustworthiness is not.

The dangers faced by the boys are terrifying, especially an interlude during which Sumo, wracked by guilt and indecision after he thinks his brother has fallen to his death, is trapped in the dark on an underground cliff, and is visited by the specter of Death. That the children have been exposed to such peril knowingly by the adult who has been entrusted with their care is a dark vein running through the story.

A prose book with this content would probably be suitable for children in grades 3 to 5, and in fact, Sumo and Duffy appear to be no older than nine or ten, but Wood’s artwork brings the perils they face into startling focus, making the book more suitable for grades 5 to 7.

Keenly observed depictions of the Hawaiian landscape and geological processes lend an impressive veracity to this exciting and unusual offering; Into the Volcano is a rare example of a graphic novel for young people that is neither manga nor mainstream.

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger

Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run by Michael Hemphill and Sam Riddleburger
I grew up in Maryland. Which means that every third field trip was to some vast undulant green field that once played host to one of the big bloody shindigs of the Civil War. Bull Run, Appomattox, Antietam. Harper's Ferry, Yorktown. Gettysburg if you were lucky, because at least then there was a side trip to the farmers' market, where all the bad kids bought bullwhips which the teachers confiscated for the bus ride home.

Ohhh, god that stuff was boring to me. Whatever visualizations the Park Service dreamed up: films, dioramas, 3-D maps with little lights, rangers in uniform... I never could get it up for the Civil War. Still can't. Seriously, I'm a full-on adult - a librarian, a photo archivist, a reader - who has never given a rat's rosy rumpus about the American Civil War. It's embarrassing but true.

Which is why Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run has me SO IMPRESSED. Twelve-year-old Stonewall (named after the general by his obsessed parents) shares my outlook - he's been frog-marched to Civil War re-enactments every weekend since he was six, and he knows enough about the Civil War to know that he is not interested in it in the least.

I have to say, I was a little dubious at first. Those obsessed parents are pretty monolithic in their disdain, disregard, and disapproval of Stonewall, and Stonewall is good and sick of weekends without his PlayStation. I wasn't looking forward to, say, a father-son adventure during which they Learn To Appreciate Each Other's Skills And/Or Outlook.

Luckily, when Stonewall is catapulted back in time to the real Battle of First Manassas (aka Bull Run, the first battle of the Civil War), his parents are left behind, presumably to putter around pretending to shoot other History Channel addicts in the twenty-first century. No more jerky dad 'til the very end.

Instead, we get the entire Confederate Army, such as it was at this point in the war: barefoot and smelly, raggedly armed and freshly learning the terrifying and painful realities of battle. And Stonewall's reaction is even more visceral - no matter what words Stonewall uses in his fast-paced, detailed narration, you know that he is really saying "Holy crap!"

The action is easy to follow, though the decision to include a map of the battlefield is a good one. The supporting characters, though a bit broadly drawn, satisfy. The conclusions that Stonewall comes to - about war, slavery, freedom, and bravery - are strongly supported by the events that he witnesses. No murky philosophizin' here:

Most of them, I bet, had visions when they enlisted of doing heroic things in battle. But I wonder how many had thought about what really happens in war, that you might really get shot, get killed. I don't think my father and his reenactors think too much about this part of a Civil War soldier's life. How can you and still want to reenact it? (italics mine)

By the end of the book, Stonewall has a mission that reverberates into his own time, a pretty girl to share it with, and most importantly, a reason to attend next weekend's reenactment. Which I assume is also a reason for these authors to write another book. I hope so, because Stonewall Hinkleman humanizes the Civil War like nothing I've ever read.

Who Made This Cake? text and English translation by Chihiro Nakagawa, illustrations by Junji Koyose - review

Who Made This Cake? text and English translation by Chihiro Nakagawa, illustrations by Junji Koyose
Wonderful! Hundreds of tiny little hard-hatted construction workers use their (comparatively) giant construction vehicles to make a birthday cake for a truck-loving little boy. One huge excavator holds an egg over the batter while another excavator uses its drill attachment to break the egg, and flatbed trucks transport the eggs to the site and the broken eggshells away. Little people in bright boots consult plans, keep the site clean, ride a cherry-picker high into the air to push the button on the oven, and communicate via walkie-talkie. We love a book with lots of little details.

When they bring the helicopter out to lower the "Happy Birthday" card onto the top of the (very tasty-looking) cake, you just want to cheer. What a terrific birthday present this is going to be for some lucky kid!

Endpaper bonus: the tiny folk at leisure - painting, singing, playing ball, reading, and just hanging out.

Pink Me reader bonus: Check out Kikki's Workshop, the Komatsu company's website for kids. Not associated with the book, but full of all the massive construction equipment that certain little people love.

Town Boy by Lat - review

Town Boy by Lat
This is the kind of autobiographical graphic novel that people who have graduated from story-based, comic-book-like graphic novels such as Y: The Last Man, Bone, and Asterix (not to mention Naruto, Bleach, etc) start to appreciate.

It's a fact, Jack. Not too many people go straight for the autobiographical graphic novel. They'll start with Love and Rockets before they begin to appreciate Blankets. Ok, Persepolis is an exception, but Persepolis was marketed as a biography.

But I have high hopes for Town Boy. I think that the goofy, Don Martin-esque style is perfect for middle-grade boys. Our hero, Mat, and his best pal Frankie, live in Ipoh, Malaysia in the 1960's, but their poses and stratagems, gestures and uncertainties, and passion for loud music will feel familiar to boys, people who know boys, and people who once were boys.

I fear it's a little long for anyone younger than, say, 5th grade, but the subject matter would work for younger kids. I wish it had chapter breaks. But as an adult, it's certainly a childhood memoir to treasure.