A Very Big Bunny
by Marisabina Russo; illus. by the author
Preschool, Primary    Schwartz & Wade/Random    40 pp.
1/10    978-0-375-84463-8    $17.99
Library ed. 978-0-375-94463-5    $20.99
Amelia towers over her fellow bunnies at school. In addition to always being last in (the height-arranged) line, she is excluded from the other bunnies’ games: “We can’t turn the jump rope high enough for you.” She learns to entertain herself, and even rebuffs the attempts at friendship that the new girl in school, Susannah, makes. Susannah is so tiny that she, too, is shunned by her classmates; but instead of retreating, she comes up with a plan to outshine the mean-girl bunnies on picture day. She entices Amelia into working with her, and, in the end, despite their disparate sizes, the two become friends. Like most of Russo’s work, this gets at the heart of the ordinary child experience with emotional truth and sensitivity. The gouache paintings show rabbits in human (very cute) clothing and situations, but Russo uses their bunny ears effectively to express emotion, from sadness to apprehension to pride. SUSAN DOVE LEMPKE

Pretty Dead
by Francesca Lia Block
High School    HarperTeen    197 pp.
10/09    978-0-06-154785-0    $16.99
Flawless beauty Charlotte Emerson has a palatial home filled with beautiful things: a Ming vase, a Picasso, Chanel suits and Dior gowns. Sweet, vulnerable high school classmate Emily wishes she was like Charlotte, while Charlotte envies Emily her loving boyfriend — and her human life. After nearly a century as a wealthy, glamorous vampire, Charlotte wants only to be an imperfect teenage girl. The story moves back and forth in time, as Charlotte recounts her decadent years with her maker, dark, handsome William, in the great cities of the world. They witness the birth of Art Deco in 1925 Paris — but also the London Blitz of 1940, Hiroshima in 1945, New York on September 11, 2001. Terrible destruction follows them everywhere, Charlotte notes with horror, but William finds it beautiful, so she leaves him. When William finds Charlotte again, both she and Emily get what they want, but not without pain. The dramatic narrative blends elements of gothic romance with the lighter, fairy-tale setting of Weetzie Bat’s LA: hot clubs, cool beaches, sushi and burgers. Offering sex, love, glamour, and danger, the book will be gobbled like candy by teen readers. LAUREN ADAMS

Incarceron
by Catherine Fisher
Middle School, High School    Dial    442 pp.
2/10    978-0-8037-3396-1    $17.99    g
Finn is a Prisoner, trapped in the sentient prison Incarceron, where he survives by being the craziest, most fearless fighter in the gang-like Comitatus. Claudia, daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, has been raised to privilege in a technologically sophisticated society that has nonetheless chosen to “retreat into the past” and artificially re-create a simpler, seventeenth-century-esque “Era.” When Finn gets hold of a crystal key, he, his oath-brother Keiro, and a fanatical wise man make plans to escape from the hellish Incarceron; meanwhile, Claudia’s arranged marriage to the brutal Prince of the Realm approaches, and, in order to find a way out, she and her beloved tutor Jared must uncover her ruthless father’s secrets. Claudia finds a second crystal key that allows her to communicate with Finn, and the novel’s two worlds begin to intersect as its twin mysteries slowly unravel. Fisher’s dystopic future, in which technology and decay coexist in a dazzling kaleidoscope of images and time periods, is brilliantly realized; the intriguing sentient prison adds an element of mech/steampunk to the narrative texture. Although the pacing is deliberate, reader attention never flags through this elegant, gritty, often surprising novel. ANITA L. BURKAM

Definitely Not for Little Ones:
Some Very Grimm Fairy-tale Comics
by Rotraut Susanne Berner; trans. from the German by Shelley Tanaka
Primary, Intermediate    Groundwood    48 pp.
9/09    978-0-88899-957-3    $18.95
In this collection of eight cartoon-strip versions of Grimm stories, we see Rapunzel and the prince cuddled up in bed, bare-shouldered, a wicked stepmother smoking, and a princess who throws the poor frog prince against the wall with gusto; but the overall tone of this world is nonetheless benign — not for preschoolers, perhaps, but certainly for third graders on up. Straightforward, unfractured, pared-down translations with mild demotic touches — a frog who says “ribbit,” the bad sister’s sullen “phooey,” Rapunzel’s rueful complaint, “Oh, brother, not again” — accompany sometimes cheeky drawings of a folktale world of wishing wells and wolves and hedgehogs playing bagpipes. The format works perfectly with the material, and Berner has devised lively and comical ways to show the passage of time, interior monologue, and simultaneous action. Tom Thumb’s journey into the cow’s stomach is especially clever. “Hans the Hedgehog” has a queasy subtext, but otherwise there is little “very Grimm” about this collection except for a matter-of-fact tag that ends four of the stories — “And they would still be alive today…If they hadn’t died, that is” — which is unlikely to traumatize the elementary school crowd for whom this would be a fine first Grimm. SARAH ELLIS

The Story of Snow:
The Science of Winter’s Wonder
by Mark Cassino with Jon Nelson; illus. by Nora Aoyagi
Primary, Intermediate    Chronicle    32 pp.
11/09    978-0-8118-6866-2    $16.99
This account harnesses our everyday delight in snow-flake shapes to draw us into the scientific explanations for their formation and variety. Cassino uses an inven- tive combination of text and illustration—such as drawings following the growth process from a speck to a droplet to a full crystal—that explains the higher-level scientific concepts with impressive clarity. Numerous beautiful photographs of snow crystals, enlarged to highlight their intricate detail, show the differences in crystallization due to temperature and humidity conditions at the time of formation as well as the common imperfections inherent in crystal growth. Instructions for conducting one’s own scientific observations of snowflakes—using a dark board and a magnifying glass—are included. DANIELLE J. FORD

The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy)
by Barbara Kerley; illus. by Edwin Fotheringham
Primary, Intermediate    Scholastic    48 pp.
1/10    978-0-545-12508-6    $17.99    g
At age thirteen, Susy Clemens wrote a biography of her father, Mark Twain, an undertaking that informs this unusual account covering both Susy as biographer and Twain as biographee. Kerley details Susy’s process of writing about and observing her father (“She noted his habits. She described his fine qualities. She even described his not-so-fine qualities”), mentioning that Susy would often include primary sources (such as a silly poem he wrote about their donkey) in her biography. Similarly, Kerley also uses primary sources, inserting seven small facsimiles of Susy’s journal pages (complete with “frequently desperate” spellings) into the body of the book. Separate fonts represent Kerley’s narrative, Susy’s direct quotes, and Twain’s own words. Fotheringham’s muted palette and large, sturdy illustrations provide discreet counterpoint to this complicated design. The target audience may not be familiar with Twain’s work for a few more years, and Kerley’s author’s-note references (“Ernest Hemingway said that ‘all modern American literature comes from…Huckleberry Finn’”) may be lost on middle-grade readers. The art of writing is not, however, and an appended guide to writing biographies sums up Susy’s approach. Backmatter also includes a time line of Twain’s life and source notes. BETTY CARTER

Tender Morsels
by Margo Lanagan; read by Anne Flosnik and Michael Page
High School and up    Brilliance Audio    Rev. 9/08
12 CDs    978-1-4233-9678-2    $29.99
Library ed. 978-1-4233-9678-9    $79.97
The victim of incest and gang rape, young Liga is magically removed to her own “heaven,” safe, bland, and uneventful, where she raises her two daughters, until intrusions from the real world — a greedy dwarf, men trapped in bears’ bodies — finally force her return. Entirely appropriate for a story in which sexual politics/oppression plays so great a role, the audiobook is narrated by one male and one female reader, each superb — Page lusty and loud; Flosnik gentle and subdued — and each doing full justice to Lanagan’s vivid prose. Those who found the opening chapters too brutal to read in print should, with this outstanding audio version, be propelled all the way through to the life-affirming ending. MARTHA V. PARRAVANO

Knucklehead:
Tall Tales & Mostly True Stories About Growing Up Scieszka
by Jon Scieszka; read by the author
Intermediate, Middle School    Brilliance Audio    Rev. 11/08
2 CDS    978-1-4233-9975-9    $42.97
Scieszka should have a disclaimer on the front of his memoir: don’t try this at home. Growing up the second of six boys, he set plastic on fire, played a bone-breaking sport called “Slaughter Ball,” and kept his mother (a nurse) and his father (a school principal) on their toes. In this laugh-out-loud audio edition Scieszka hits the punch lines with the talent of a stand-up comedian while authentically recalling the voice and emotions of his younger self. Scieszka is at his best in the chapter “Random Reading.” Audiences will get a kick out of young Jon trying to explain through a one-sided conversation to his teacher, a nun, what MAD magazine is (“It’s not a cartoon. They are little stories without any words…I see, Sister. Probably sinful, too”). Listeners can easily replay their favorite parts and marvel over and over again at how Scieszka grew from a kid who invented swear words for Sister Margaret Anne to a grownup who became a beloved writer. CHELSEY PHILPOT