Teen and adult again.  I’ll feel better about myself if I can get under 600.

Zach Whedon et al put out The Shepherd’s Tale, an off-shoot of the Firefly/Serenity series, in which we finally get the backstory of Darrial Book, which is interesting to know but awkwardly told in reverse.  Someone should scan and reorder the thing and then see how it works out.  Still, Firefly fans will get something out of it.  I did.  I also reread Those Left Behind and Better Days.  I found Those Left Behind to be the strongest of the three stories, but all are enjoyable.  I miss the characters.

Speaking of the Whedons (and missing the characters), I also re-read and then caught up on the Angel: After the Fall stuff, including Bryan Lynch’s Spike: After the Fall.  Again with the weird endings, but I enjoyed it.  I need more time before I go back and read it.  I think I’ll enjoy it more the next time.  So many good things going on with the characters.  I really need to keep up with wherever they went after that.

Oh, and I reread Fray when I reread the Buffy stuff.  I think it’s good reading even if you’re not familiar with Buffy, but I could be fooling myself.

I tried to get into Yuki Kure’s La Corda D’oro Volumes 1 and 2, but I couldn’t.  It was like Nodame Cantibile with magic, and I don’t like magic.  Nodame instead, please.  I also read the third Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs by Yukiya Sakuragi, which is mostly realistic and cute.  I’m a cat person, but hey, dogs can be cute.

I read Victoria Holt’s Daughter of Deceit, and it was boring even for Holt–and obvious, too.  Bleh.

I read a Harlequin Superromance called What the Librarian Did because, you know, librarians, but it was only okay.  I forget all the things I didn’t like about it, but I remember the second half was far, far better than the first half.  Poor romance can’t win me over anymore.  The next Jennifer Crusie can’t be published fast enough, and the day she officially retires (it’s coming), I’ma cry.

Oh, speaking of, I also read the appalling The Dewey Decimal System of Love by Josephine Carr, which I could’ve sworn I ranted about SOMEWHERE.  I guess it was the book club.  LET US NEVER SPEAK OF THIS BOOK AGAIN.  Blargh.

I read books 2, 3, and 4 of the Elemental Assassins books by Jennifer Estep: Web of Lies, Venom, and Tangled Threads.  I reviewed the first book in the series here.  The series gets stronger as it goes on, which doesn’t surprise me because Estep is not a bad writer.  She just had to find her “urban fantasy” footing.  Bad news?  Other than that, I can’t remember a thing about the books, except there’s a cop and his partner went bad but he doesn’t know so he blames the main character for the dude’s death and eventually I think he figures it out, but there’s no reason for her NOT to tell him, and yet she doesn’t.

Oh, okay.  I believe she, like, HINTS.

Apparently, the next book, which I never bothered to pick up, rounds out the arc, but there are books after that.  A quick glance at her website says she basically keep writing the character so long as people are paying her.  In other news, there’s a short story for her Bigtime books!  Whee!  Superheroes!

Speaking of women and superheroes, GAIL SIMONE.  I read the four volumes of the All-New Atom–well, I’d already read one, and last year I read two through four.  I didn’t fall utterly in love with it like I usually do with her books, but I enjoyed it.  I like Ryan!  More Ryan!  All the Ryan!  I’m one of THOSE people.  I WANT comics to move forward.  I don’t MIND if someone takes someone else’s place.  For example, I also read Blue Beetle: Shell Shocked, Road Trip,  Reach for the Stars, and End Game.  Jaime!  I like Jaime!  More Jaime!  Although we get him in Teen Titans, so I’m happy.  And STATIC.  OMG, I could not be happier about Static.  I adore Static!  I also read Teen Titans: Changing of the Guard, Death Trap, Child’s Play, and Ravager: Fresh Hell.  Oh, and Year One.  Some were of course better than others, but I love DC when it’s moving forward.  Ugh, reboot.

More comics!  Love & Capes Volume 1 by Thomas F. Zahler starts out a little “boys are like this, girls are like this” but really finds its footing as it goes on, and I enjoyed it a lot. 

American Vampire Volume 1 is pretty good when it’s not Stephen King, and okay when it is.  I hadn’t read King in a long while, but it was about what I expected: put the man in the old west and it’s all misogyny and whatnot.

Marvel-wise, I read as much of Civil War as I could get my hands on and, for the most part, REALLY REALLY enjoyed it.  Avengers; House of M; Ms Marvel; Road to Civil War; Peter Parker, Spider Man; both Front Lines; Civil War; Heroes for Hire; Fantastic Four; Amazing Spider-Man; X-Men Universe; Captain America; Iron Man; World of M; Mutopia X; and the three Christos N. Gage House of M books I could get my hands on were all awesome.  Punisher War Journal; Black Panther; Wolverine; War Crimes; and X-Men were all good.  Chris Claremont’s House of M stuff was bleh.  Only one stunk, and that was Thunderbolts.  My husband says it’s not as bad as I make it out, but that it’s still bad.  AND IT IS. Which is too bad because the characters were pretty cool.  It was just really confusing and oddly-written.

God, I loved Civil War.  THINGS HAPPENED.

Another series where things feel like a progression?  New X-Men, specifically the Childhood’s End series.  Craig Kyle does a great job making us like these new characters, these new X-kids.  I grew up with Generation X and stuff, so I’m okay with things–say it with me–MOVING ON.

I listened to Tina Fey’s audiobook of Bossypants, and I highly suggest going the audiobook route with it.  For one, she isn’t just reading the book.  She takes the audiobook format and runs with it, and it seems like it’s extra-hilarious.  Plus, I think some of her concerns could come off condescending on the page, but you can tell by her voice that she’s completely in earnest.

Oh well, I’m out of time.  And I had more to discuss!  I’ll get to it.  I’m still over 600 though. : /

Let’s discuss the brilliantly entertaining Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Have I mentioned this one yet?  My favorite of 2011?  Because it was SO MUCH FUN.  Maybe you have to be a child of the ’80s to absolutely love it, but I gave it to my kid to read after I was done, and she really enjoyed it.  (It probably helped that her stepdad made us watch War Games last year at some point.)  It’s an epic–yes, I’ll say epic, because I rarely say epic–nostalgia-fest of puzzles and a bleak but realistic-feeling look at the future.  Loved it.  LOVED it.

Then I read Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, a name unusual enough that you’d think I’d remember it, but I never do.  The author, I mean, not the title.  Everyone made fun of me because I was like “HOLY CRAP THIS IS SCARY!”–I don’t think I’ve been that afraid of a book since House of Leaves–and they were all “Didn’t you look at the cover?”  Well, not really.  I kind of glanced at it.  I didn’t realize that IT WAS CREEPY, and the book KEEPS BRING CREEPY FOR A LONG TIME.  After a while, this whole get-into-the-plot thing, I stopped being freaked out, but until then?  jfdsjkldfskjlfdsjkldfsjklfds;jklfds

I liked it a lot.  I think it would’ve been better as a standalone, but what can you do?  I feel that way about most things.

I’ve been feeling pretty good about these new suggested books because my next book was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which was a little bit Gaiman, a little Jonathan Strange, and a lot engrossing.  Around three-quarters of the way through the book, I think the pacing missteps, but that’s the only complaint I had about it.  It was beautiful, really, and it made me want to only wear black, white, gray, and red for like a week.  (I only did it the day after I finished the book, though.)  I’ve seen this cataloged as YA and I cannot figure out why.  Anyway, highly recommended, especially if you have the time and isolation to create an atmosphere.

Then I read like a zillion Asterix books (see Goodreads) that my husband suggested.  They were quite fun, although I have to say I enjoyed them more before the original writer died.  I feel like it’s a series that you can go your whole life getting new things out of, and sometimes I just wanted to Google the Latin, you know?  Just to get the joke.  I wonder if I could talk my kid into reading them.  I mean, there’s no romance, not really.  So she might or she might not.

I finished the Jack of Fables series with The Fulminate Blade and The End.  Bill Willingham really dropped the ball on that last one; I was really disappointed.  Ah well.

I read or possibly re-read Nick Hornby’s About a Boy the other day, which I really enjoyed, but I knew I would because even if I haven’t read it before (can’t remember), I like Hornby and I liked the movie.  This story of a manchild bonding with an actual child is really, really well-done.

Okay, quick backlog time!

I loved The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  This story of a man who has no control over his jumping through time and the wife that has to live in realtime without him was just amazing.

I also got into Irredeemable and Incorruptible by Mark Waid.  Already knew I loved Waid but, my God, these series.  I’m so excited for the library to get more.  A hero gone bad?  A bad guy gone good?  LOVE.  Highly recommended for anyone who wants a good story and can deal with lots of violence.  The premise is basically “What if Superman went bad?  Really, really bad?” but obviously no one’s allowed to write that story, so instead Waid creates his own world, more head-nod-y than spoof-y.

I read Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series.  At first I thought I would hate it, but after the first book, it really grew on me, until I enjoyed it very much.  The first book had a bit of a party vibe, so I didn’t want my daughter to read it, and then there’s the whole “I wanna do it with my mentor” thing so I still haven’t really suggested it to her, but I know she’s read worse, and it’s handled fairly well.  (Adult responsibilities in teenagers = adult…er.)  The concept of the different classes is handled really well, I cared about a lot of the characters, and although you KNOW what has to happen by the end, it’s okay because the author follows through with her characters, for the most part.

I reread Shizuru Seino’s Girl Got Game, and it’s another series that lasts too long, but what you can do?  It’s enjoyable.  A girl dresses as a boy to fulfill her father’s dream of having a basketball star; hijinx ensue.

I caught on everything the library had for Fables, by the way.  Still enjoying the heck out of the series.

Argh, out of time.  Byeeeee!

Ava’s Poppy by Marcus Pfister feels like it’s missing its last page.  Otherwise, it’s the cute story of a girl and her flower.

Carl at the Dog Show by Alexandra Day is kind of cute, but it’s missing something.  I usually like Carl, so I don’t know what’s going on here.  There aren’t many words in the story, and I found it difficult to follow along–maybe because I’m not in the mood, or maybe because it’s sometimes unclear what’s going on.  Also, who leaves a baby alone at a dog show?  Weird.

Ah, the crap that is the new Strawberry Shortcake.  In The Valentine’s Day Mix-Up by Amy Ackelsberg, we find again that boys are doing all the non-girly work–like delivering mail–and there are only like 10 people in the entire city.  The crux of the problem is that Strawberry Shortcake hasn’t gotten any Valentines.  When she finally receives a big one signed by all her friends, she’s happy again.  No, I’m not going to talk about acquiring blah blah blah.  What I don’t understand is WHY they gave her a big one, or why she doesn’t get any from other “city” residents, or why they even have a party TO MAKE VALENTINES FOR ONE ANOTHER.  Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?  And yet there they are, with the names of their friends clear on top of their piles.

Oh okay.

I am not a good person to review My Friend with Autism by Beverly Bishop.  I wish I could send a copy to my friend Kibbles to review.  I’m finding the information for parents at the end easier for me than the story itself.  I don’t like that the child doesn’t have a name, and something about the way it says “Sometimes I tell my friend to ____” makes me feel like the book is accidentally suggesting to peers, especially those prone to being assertive, to be in a position of being “in charge.”  I don’t know.  It didn’t sit quite right though, but I’ve got SUCH an outsider’s perspective on this.

The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That and Tish Rabe’s Spring into Summer!/Fall into Winter! are cute and informative.  Not sure it’s necessary to do the flip-the-book thing for the second half, since it reads like one big story, but hey, whatever.  Rhyming issues?  You bet, but again, whatever.  I find the whole semi-realistic Seuss thing to be off, but…say it with me: whatever.

Backlog?

Some of these books, I feel like I’ve already reviewed…

I could’ve sworn I’ve mentioned Christine McDonnell’s Goyangi Means Cat and Herve Tullet’s Press Here before.  They’re my favorites from 2011!  Press Here is so interactive and adorable, and Goyangi Means Cat is a tear-jerker about an adopted girl’s first few days in America.

Read It, Don’t Eat It! by Ian Schoenherr is my go-to for outreach story-times.  It covers the basic rules of library books very well.

My Name is not Isabella by Jennifer Fosberry is another favorite.  Isabella wants to be called by all different names, but some clever children will pick up on who she’s pretending to be before you get to the explanations at the end.  Great choice for Women’s History Month.

Kiss! Kiss! Yuck! Yuck! by Kyle Mewburn went over well at storytime.  I think we can all relate to having that one relative who can’t stop being affectionate to us.

I put all the books in order by stars and I’m seeing sooo many good ones!  Spinster Goose: Twisted Rhymes for Naughty Children by Lisa Wheeler is a good one for your morbid kid (and so many of them are, or go through a phase of it).  Mike Twohy’s Poindexter Makes a Friend is a sweet story of two shy kids finding each other in the library (bonus points!).  In King Jack and the Dragon by Peter Bently, three boys are using their imaginations to play away the day, but what happens when night comes?  Finally, Philip C. Stead’s A Sick Day for Amos McGee is so charming you won’t believe it was published in 2010, and deserves every award it got.

Okay, that’s enough for me.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll give myself a break from all this kids’ stuff and actually try to plow through a big chunk of the adult backlog.

Laters!

Fancy Nancy and the Too-Loose Tooth by Jane O’Connor is much better than the last Fancy Nancy I read, but it still didn’t charm me.  In fact, Nancy’s machinations (that’s a fancy word for plotting) are falling into the obnoxious category.  Why is she coming off so spoiled and bratty in this?  Maybe it’s me.  Maybe I’m in a mood.  You can usually tell because I’m down on everything I read in a day…

Oh, unfair!  Curious George?  I’ve never liked Curious George!  This level one book, Curious George Colors Eggs by Kate O’Sullivan, is a decent introduction to primary and secondary colors, but is nothing special.  Who are Betsy and Steve?  Can’t they just say “his friends Betsy and Steve”?  Another TV show adaptation forgetting that not everyone has seen the show.

Uh-oh, another adaptation.  The SpongeBob Squarepants book Dancing with the Star, written by Alex Harvey, is cute enough, except that the on-and-off use of contractions is off-putting in the mouths of the characters.

I guess no one wants to write original stories anymore.  The next one is from Iron Man: Armored Adventures and is called The Might of Doom based on the episode of the same name and adapted by Dennis R. Shealy.  Is this based on Ultimate Iron Man?  (I couldn’t get through it because I hate the idea of supporting Card anymore, the homophobic jerk.)  They’re TEENAGERS?  Why is a teenager all War Machine-ing it up?  THIS IS CONFUSING, PEOPLE.  I mean, I’m familiar with an aspect of the source material and I’m still confused.

LOVE RHODEY’S WHITE FACE, GUYS.  “What’s a Nubian?”

Also love all the gaps of things that must’ve made sense in the episode, like Doom’s diplomatic immunity or whatever, since Nick Fury lets him go.  “Oh, it’s cool you tried to bomb some stuff.  See you next week?”

Grrr.

Lalaloopsy appears to be Strawberry Shortcake IN HELL.  Forget that.  I’ll admit to reading Jenne Simon’s The Ballet Recital, but only because I didn’t fall into a sugar coma just reading the stupid names.

Okay, this is just unfair.  Zonderkidz?  Noooo.  I have NEVER liked Zonderkidz.  I feel they are badly-written stories with scripture jammed in.  The Princess Twins, in Mona Hodgson’s books The Princess Twins Play in the Garden and The Princess Twins and the Puppy, are no different.  First off, WHERE are they princesses?  Where is this set?  Also, Puppy is disjointed and weird, and Garden has a good point and good scripture to go with it, but apparently it’s the adult’s job to connect them because the story doesn’t do it for them.  That could be a good thing, or it could be bad writing.  Hard to tell.

Finally, a book I like!  Tick Tock Clock by Margery Cuyler is cute!  The kids are mischevious without being little jerks!  The words are easy to read but not boring, or rhyme poorly, or scan funny.

I AM HAPPY.

That’s it; I’m ending on this book.  It’s not going to get any better than that, I’m sure.

The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! books are awkward because keeping the rhyme scheme going when you need to be informative means you don’t have a lot of room to play and yes, some of the lines are a little awkward.  If I Ran the Dog Show, which I read today, is a lot of information tucked inside a lot of rhymes and dog names.  Perhaps this is a good way to pass on information; I dunno.  Maybe the kids will get the rhymes stuck in their heads and the information sticks more easily.  Maybe it’s easy for Seuss fans to get interested in non-fiction if the Seuss characters are all together in one book.  Either way, it might be something you’d want to take out from the library to try out on your little one.  Same with Why Oh Why Are the Deserts Dry?  Both books are by Tish Rabe.

Jessie Hartland’s How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum is the story of one dinosaur’s trip from life to death to discovery to Smithsonian.  It’s good information combined with a “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly” kind of listing, giving the roles of the people involved, from dinosaur hunter to museum director.  I really enjoyed this book, and would say it’s a must-read for dino fans.  The art is child-like but clear.

Oh my gosh, Worst of Friends: Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the True Story of an American Feud by Suzanne Tripp Jurmain is SO GOOD.  I could still be emotional over the interview I read with the girl who’s playing Rue in the Hunger Games movie, but maybe this book is as good as my teary eyes believe.  Although, frankly, I could live without the panel of the men snoring over Jefferson’s violin playing–hello, what do you think was popular music at the time there, Larry Day?–or, if it’s true that his playing was snooze-worthy, put it in the text.  This story is about how two people can and have had different views on incredibly important things, and eventually can get to the point where their friendship is what matters most.  Sometimes it takes a long time.  Sometimes people fight, like Jefferson and Adams, for years at a time.  And sometimes it just takes one letter to heal the rift.  But what I think is the important thing to take away from this is that we can be in different political factions, and truly believe with all our of hearts completely opposing things, and still manage to be friends, to find connection despite our differences.  Jefferson and Adam start out on the same page with the fight against the British, but they break over how the country should be run–with a strong leader or laissez-faire.  Any parent who’s been on Facebook since 9/11 will find this book relevant to their interests and the future of their children.  Connecting political muckraking to children’s interpersonal battles is damn clever.  This is a good read and a great jumping-off point for discussion about friends with different views.

It is difficult to review Darrin Lunde’s After the Kill.  After all, it’s brutal.  But it’s brutally true–it is the story of a lioness attacking, killing, and eating a zebra, and the groups of predators that come in to fight for or scavenge off of the carcass.  It does not hold anything back.  However, I do not believe it is a bloodthirsty book, although it is not for faint of stomach.  Although the art, watercolor, I believe, is far from realistic, the sense of motion and tension are.  You will want to flip through this one before you decide to check it out.

Speaking of bloodthirsty, Aesop’s Fables, retold by Beverly Naidoo and illustrated by Piet Grobler, are horrible stories of murder and feasting–and yet, don’t we read these to our children?  (Admittedly, the most popular ones I can think of don’t have the “and then the animal was eaten” end of most of the fables.)  Well, I don’t mean HORRIBLE.  They’re good stories with strong, clear morals, but the horrible is how quickly we want to root for an animal, and how quickly in these page-or-two stories they are taken out by a predator.  Tell me again how post-apocalyptic stories are too depressing and horrible for kids, please.

Naidoo’s stories and Grobler’s art are based on Naidoo’s theory that Aesop was an African slave in Greece, and the text is peppered with words in Afrikaans, while the art is bright and simple, often with borders in the colors of the desert.  If you don’t want just the dog and his reflection and the tortoise and the hare for you child to read, you might want to pick this up.  But again, a lot of death, a lot of eating of animals–your call.

To shrink the backlog, here are a few suggestions of mine from the non-fiction section:

Suryia and Roscoe: The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship by Bhagavan Antle

Easy Animal Origami by Christopher L. Harbo (and all the books in the series!)

Emporer Penguins by Deborah Lock

How to Make a Liquid Rainbow by Lori Shores

Energy Island: How one community harnessed the wind and changed their world by Allan Drummond

ZooBorns! Zoo Babies from Around the World by Andrew Bleiman

I’m guessing I should be thankful that my daughter is too old for Wow! Wow! Wubbzy, because The Kooky Kickity-Kick Ball was really irritating.  You know, back in my day, if a character was going to do really stupid or silly things, you got the sense that they were always stupid or silly.  You know, like the Little Miss and Mister books.  You knew when a character was going to do ridiculous things like try to use marshmallows as a kick ball–you wouldn’t know exactly what the ridiculous thing would be, but you’d know it was going to be ridiculous, and you’d look forward to it and laugh.  Maybe Wubbzy is one of those characters.  I can’t tell.

The Sleepless Little Vampire by Richard Egielski is a cute story that wouldn’t quite work for bedtime, since your kids could use it as an argument to stay up late, but would work on Halloween.  Forgettable but worth taking out of the library for the holiday, is what I’m saying.

Aldous Huxley–yes that one–wrote a children’s book called The Crows of Pearblossom, and I feel like I’m missing something, unless the goal is to teach everyone to be rude to each other.  In fact, the first lesson I learn is that husbands can treat their wives terribly, even when their babies have been eaten.  What a let-down.  Then again, so was the second half of Brave New World (ba-ZING!).

The Prince’s New Pet by Brian Anderson is really, really good–until you’re on the last page, wondering, “Who is that woman, if the Queen is dead?”  So either you have a weird inconsistency, a few pages missing from the end, or a very, VERY rushed ending.  But your children will love it, because it’s awesome.  A world is drained of color upon the death of its queen, because the king cannot bear to be reminded of her.  Their son hates living in a world without color.

But wait, also, who sent him the–oh God, I shouldn’t even think on it.  Oh, also?  There’s a fairly grusome death.  Oh, and also?  Come up with an answer to who the woman is before the kid reads the book, in case your clever little one notices it too.

Stars by Mary Lyn Ray is beautiful but a bit rambly.  Good night time story; I’m going to try it out with my evening story time.

Little Owl’s Night by Divya Srinivasan isn’t perfect either, although the art is so adorable you’ll forgive it.  I’m going to read this one next evening story time, too, if they’ll sit for two stories.

I would wear any of the woman’s artwork, I have to say. T-shirt me up, Ms. Srinivasan.

Finally, my pick of the day, Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur: A First Book of Manners by Judy Sierra is so freakin’ cute and well-done.  Can’t wait to revolve a story time around manners just so I can read it again.

Okay, that’s it for me.  No time for backlog, I’ve gotta wake up and do it all over again tomorrow.

Maudie and Bear by Jan Ormerod and Freya Blackwood brings up a lot of questions as an adult reader: why is this bear raising this little girl?  Why isn’t he horrified by the fox scarf?  Why does he always give in to her demands?  If this is supposed to be the parent-child relationship, this kid is SPOILED.  But I guess a bear would spoil a child…

I don’t know.  It’s so cute, and I want to love it, but I do not.

Cuter?  Loved?  Plant a Kiss by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Peter. H. Reynolds.  This simple, rhyming book about a planted kiss is definitely going right into my storytime pile.  Adorable!

I knew I wasn’t going to like 10 Valentine Friends from the moment I saw it, because I recognized it as one in a series.  Janet Schulman and Linda Davick also wrote 10 Easter Egg Hunters, which is in my backlog and I’ll tell you what I don’t like about both of them: the syntax.  It’s awful,  Schulman uses awkward phrasing to make rhymes, and I hate it.

A dinosaur card, thinks little Pete,
My pal Max would find real neat.

See what I mean?

Barbie lives in a world without men or religion in Barbie: An Egg-cellent Easter!  by Rebecca Frazer.  Apparently, girls don’t need anything but bling, and lots of it, the latest gadgets, and abused puns.  You know who will like this, and you probably know if you read this blog on even the rarest of occasions that I don’t.

Back to my near and dear friend, Dawn Sirett (you review enough of someone’s books, you bond, I swear, even if you have no idea who they are at all, which I don’t; I was kidding.  Get it?) and her board book Baby: Beep! Beep!  How sad is it that Sirett does in one tiny board book that Barbie books never do: empower girls?  The pages swap gender no matter what the next thing is, so you end up with female planes and tractors.  Awesome!  And, of course, you have the usual bright colors, simple, fun patterns, and the tabs again!

They need to make big versions of these books for story time.

The person over at our ordering department who thought to send me a copy of Ding Dong! It’s Dora! by Eric Furman is going to a special hell.  IT MAKES NOISE.  IT IS GOING UP HIGH.  If not for the first page, it would actually be a decent story, though.  The first page is a bit much, sound-wise.  I’m just saying.

Okay, that’s it for me, book fans.  Time to make dinner.  Vegan chicken (or “ficken” as we say) marsala.  My first attempt.  Cross your fingers for me!

Level one books are probably harder to write than books of higher levels, I think.  You can only say so much (or so little) and getting a story across can be difficult.  Also, adaptations are always tricky with limited space.  Take, for example, Maryoku Yummy: The Blue Wish by Mary Tillworth.  This is based on a show, right?  I know this because the book is incomprehensible without having seen the show.  I’ve said this before but these companies shouldn’t just be working for their target audience.  Parents and grandparents need to be able to read these books to the kids, which means having some grasp of what’s going on.

Take, for example, a well-done level one ER: Toy Story: The Bunny Surprise by Apple Jordan.  I laughed aloud.  I didn’t need to know who the characters were to enjoy it.  I don’t know who Bonnie is.  That’s not what matters.  What matters is that the story, brief though it is, is told so well that I had a good time even though I’m 1 1/2 movies behind in the Toy Story series.

Look for the Lorax by Tish Rabe is confusing for those who’ve read the book but apparently not seen the movie.  Is it a prequel?  Does it matter?  I’m not sure it does, because it has that Seussian follow-along-with-me logic, you know?

Apparently, all the Disney princesses have the same birthday in Happy Birthday, Princess! by Jennifer Liberts Weinberg.  This book ends with the title line but includes pictures of eight princesses, which I guess is everyone saying it at the same time in different places?  But I first got the impression that you were supposed to read it to your own “princess” and that’s who the birthday princess was at the end.  I don’t know.  Princess-crazy kids will go crazy for it, of course, and it’s cheerful enough.

Barbie’s I Can Be…A Horse Rider by Mary Man-Kong has a good story, but it doesn’t feel like the others in the series.  After all, those are actually professions.  This doesn’t even seem to have an accurate name.  But, hey, it has a story!  That story works!  Not a lot of words, but a lot going on!  It can have a pass from me.

Finally, I read LEGO City: Fire in the Forest! by Samantha Brooke.  It’s the story of a guy who does his job poorly because he’s too busy being lazy or competent.  I guess he’s supposed to be funny, but we’re not talking about a clown in the circus–we’re talking about firefighters.  A little disappointing, but at least I didn’t feel like this one was a walking advertisement.

Backlog time!

Cookie’s Week by Cindy Ward was my daughter’s faaavorite growing up.  Well, one of them.  I read it to my storytime kids and they liked it too.  Other favorites from her (and me) are June 29, 1999 by David Wiesner, a story about a vegetable experiment gone wrong–maybe; Jennifer Jones Won’t Leave Me Alone by Frieda Wishinsky, the story of a little boy tormented by an adoring classmate; The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone (which I’ve mentioned before) and let’s just point out that I read Another Monster at the End of This Book and leave it at that (ARGH ELMO); Maryann MacDonald’s How to Hug, which is sooo cute; Pierre: A Cautionary Tale in Five Chapters and a Prologue by Maurice Sendak, which I can’t read without singing like Amanda Palmer; and two great celebrity-written books: Weird Al’s When I Grow Up and Michael Ian Black’s A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea.  Love them both.  Some five-star books for you to check out, vetted by either my daughter or me, or both of us together.

Time’s up.  Next time: …Not sure yet, but I bet it’s more children’s books.

My wife asked me to do a non-spoilery review of Bud, Not Buddy, since she knows I’ve got a beef with it. The thing is, though, my beef isn’t with Bud, but with Christopher Paul Curtis’ writing in general. I’ll be referring to both Bud, Not Buddy and The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 in turn, and I’ll keep the spoilers to an absolute minimum. Both deal with important points in history (the Depression and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, respectively). Both are more-or-less biographical in nature (I’ve heard). Both books are told from the perspective of a young African-American boy (10 in both cases, I think). I have a problem with the young boy perspective, and with Curtis’ concept of structure (i.e. he has none).

Curtis can’t write children. There, I said it. I don’t care how many awards the guy wins, how many people clamor for his insight into children’s minds, he can’t do it. What Curtis does is write children from the perspective of an adult. Or the children are far enough down the autistic spectrum that they should consider investing in some fashionable helmets. I guess that could be a possibility.

Maybe I’m just jaded, but let’s take a look at this. Consider how Bud (a titular character) and Kenny (from the other one) stack up next to each other. Bud is a young black orphan struggling to find purpose and a home, keeping himself together by writing his own book of rules to live by in his head when he’s not being a jackass and failing to consider the simplest of consequences. Kenny, conversely, is a young black non-orphan with a home and no purpose, keeping himself together by writing his own book of rules to live by in his head when he’s not being an utter simpleton and failing to consider the simplest of consequences. Despite a few tweaks, these are basically the same character. They’re both lonely, poor, and dumb kids with no concept of the future or the world around them. Bud is frequently tricked, often put-upon, and rarely does anything that could be called planning. Kenny is frequently tricked, often bullied, and rarely does anything that could be called planning. This is LAZY writing. Either that, or Curtis thinks black kids are all lazy, shiftless fools. I’m partly kidding, but really, that’s a dangerous rabbit hole to go down. Curtis is probably lucky that more people aren’t looking at the actual trends of his characters. Back to children, though.

Bud and Kenny act like reasonable characters who are uneducated, borderline illiterate, unintelligent, uncreative, and dull. It’s rather a shame, then, that NEITHER ARE ALL OF THOSE THINGS. Bud is supposed to be creative and interesting, using streetsmarts to replace his lack of education. Then why is he easily tricked by so many of his acquaintances!? Why is he so incredibly dull as a person? Why does he act more like a tour guide for the Depression? Curtis solves this problem the only way he knows how – he gives Bud the Wacky Trait of writing a book in his head. The book contains rules for getting by called Bud Caldwell’s Rules for Getting By and Having a Funner Life or some other god awful nonsense. See, this is the problem. A kid might think of a book to write, but Curtis clearly thinks that’s not ‘kiddy’ enough and has to give it some stupid name that’s a dozen words long, is a pain to say, and that no reasonable person would use. And he uses it all the time. ‘Rule X from Bud Caldwell’s Stupid Book With an Asinine Title: Always Lie.’ A chapter later: ‘Rule Y from Bud Caldwell’s Stupid Book With an Asinine Title: Adults Are Dumb.’ Curtis was clearly being paid by the letter. Every chance Curtis has to make his child characters seem goofy and stupid, he takes it.

And Kenny. Kenny, Kenny, Kenny. Kenny is incredibly stupid. He’s the kind of stupid where I kind of hoped that something terrible would happen to him by the end of the book, just to teach him a lesson about being so painfully inane. This is bad enough, but he’s also hailed by the other characters as being an excellent student and very clever. I must assume, therefore, that Flint, Michigan has an average IQ of three, or that a disproportionately large number of people are lying to Kenny to make him feel better. Actually, now that I think about it… since he’s the narrator, he’d probably in a ‘special’ school, but he can’t figure out the difference because he’s so… ‘special.’ That’s a fairly subtle twist, there, Curtis; my hat’s off to- Wait, never mind. There weren’t any ‘special’ schools in Flint at that time, and other characters also attend.

People who’ve read the book are probably thinking about the terrible thing that does, in fact, happen to Kenny. This terrible thing is even brought on by Kenny’s inability to understand the simplest of things or to predict the most obvious of outcomes. You’d think that this would appease me, but only infuriates me more because HE LEARNS NOTHING. Also, it becomes a gateway to what I consider the most appalling undercutting of an important event I’ve seen in a book ever. I mean, it’s right up there with having a ‘that’s what she said!’ joke at the end of Schindler’s List. I’ll tell you later, ‘cause it’s spoilery.

All right, here’s where I recant a small degree of my criticism. It is possible, just possible, that I don’t like Curtis’ child characters because I was never a child. I know, it’s hard to believe, but I sprang fully formed from the rocks at the base of Yggdrasil. Okay, fine, I was born and had to develop and all, but I never had what might be called a childish outlook. I was always a bookish sort of person who tended to look at things more seriously than my contemporaries. Oh, sure, I was still given to the occasional bit of absurdity and I’ve been known to run around the house fighting with phantasmal enemies (still do), but was never the silly over-the-top kind of childishness that Curtis seems to assume is the norm. Maybe it is, and I’ve always been the boring kid. So there it is. I still find Curtis’ child characters inane, however.

This has gone on a bit, hasn’t it? If this all feels kind of flimsy, lacking in my preferred quotable evidence, it’s because it’s been a while since I’ve read the two books (though as a teacher I read them about a dozen times each), and because I don’t want to get into spoilish specifics. When you read them, though, you’ll see them. Also, in the interest of space, I’ll go into my problems with Curtis’ concept of structure NEXT TIME!

My co-worker made me read It’s a Book by Lane Smith.  Ha!  People on Goodreads are all over the place on this one–some consider it for adults, like Go the Fuck to Sleep, and others consider it anti-technology, and others consider it hateful.  Some a combination.  Some love it.  I thought it was hilarious.  There’s nothing anti-technology about it.  No one makes a judgment  call against technology.  It’s funny.  It has a grown-up punchline.  Maybe it IS for the picture-books-for-adults crowd.  Maybe.  I’m taking it out for my kid, either way.

Oh, we got the hardcover version of The Secret Birthday Message.  It really isn’t any different than the board book, except that I think that the board book is cooler because of the thickness of the pages, and the puppy at the end looks SLIGHTLY less depressed.  So much for hoping for the board book to be a condensed version of a longer story.

Richard Scarry’s The Great Pie Robberty and Other Mysteries contains my very first mystery story: The Great Steamboat Mystery.  From a modern perspective, the jokes could be punchier and the characters more…colorful?  But the mysteries are solid, go figure!  You CAN figure out who did it, but not SO easily that it’s no fun.  Someone should update Sam and Dudley and give them a TV show.

There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover by Lucille Colandro has it all: bad art that reminds me of the nausea of sitting through the wobbly animation of Dr. Katz, it doesn’t scan well, it’s shoehorned to fit an existing story/character into a holiday theme.  Awkward and ugly.

Hannah Shaw’s School for Bandits is a cute read for bigger little guys.  There’s so much going on here and there, that it will be easiest to get into this one when they start to read on their own.  Ralph Raccoon is no bandit, and his parents are mortified.  Maybe a trip to Bandit School is in order?  The lesson–you get more when you’re nice (honey, vinegar, etc.)–is sort of awkward because the end result is that you’ve got a whole group of raccoons who are doing things for what they can receive in return.  But if we’re honest with ourselves, that’s why kids do things, okay?  So.

Clemency Pearce’s Frangoline and the Midnight Dream was a book I wanted to like more than I did.  I liked Rebecca Elliott’s art, I liked the idea…but the execution left me cold.  The refrain scans weird (it might sound better aloud), WHY is she the way she is, what have we learned at the end, WHY isn’t she twice as charming as she could be?  I suppose this might be a little girl’s Where the Wild Things Are, but that one never won me over, either.

We got a book in for Chinese New Year, but it bugs me.  The Year of the Dragon (Tales from the Chinese Zodiac) is bland, obvious, and you KNOW if it were animated it would have some of the most grating voices in all of animation.  Also, why are the main character’s lines bolded?  I thought maybe it was a dragon thing (good) but it wasn’t, just a main character thing (bad).  The art is attractive but too cutesy.

Bleh.

Also, why is a Chinese dragon called “Dominic”?  Why does NO ONE in the book look Chinese?

Finally, we have Nancy Tafuri’s All Kinds of Kisses, which is cute.  I’d call it bland except I just used that word for The Year of the Dragon.  It’s really more laid-back, bedtime story casual, with animal sounds and kisses.  Maybe it would  not be something I’d read to my work kids, but my own kids if I were ever going to have more.  (God forbid.)  More of a read-aloud than a read, if you know what I mean.

Ah, only about a billion more to go, and I haven’t even touched the backlog. D: