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Caldecott Medal 2008
The Invention
of Hugo Cabret
illus. by Brian Selznick
written by the illustrator
(Scholastic)
review
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Caldecott Honor Books
• Henry's Freedom Box illus.
by Kadir Nelson; written by Ellen Levine (Scholastic) review
• First the Egg written and illus. by Laura Vaccaro
Seeger (Roaring Brook) review
•The Wall : Growing Up behind the Iron Curtain written
and illus. by Peter Sis (Farrar) review
• Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity
written and illus. by Mo Willems (Hyperion) review
How the Horn Book reviewed
the winners
Brian
Selznick The Invention of Hugo Cabret; illus. by
the author
Scholastic
Reviewed
3/07
Here's a dilemma for the Newbery committee...and the Caldecott:
what do you do with an illustrated novel in which neither text nor
pictures can tell the story alone? Not to mention the drama to be
found in the page turns themselves. A brief introduction sets the
time (1931) and place (Paris) and invites readers to imagine they're
at the movies. And with a turn of the page, they are, as, over a
sequence of twenty-one double-page wordless spreads, a story begins.
A picture of the moon gives way to an aerial shot of Paris; day
breaks as the "camera" moves into a shot of a train station,
where a boy makes his way to a secret passage from which, through
a peephole, he watches an old man sitting at a stall selling toys.
Finally, the text begins: "From his perch behind the clock,
Hugo could see everything." The story that follows in breathtaking
counterpoint is a lively one, involving the dogged Hugo, his tough
little ally Isabelle, an automaton that can draw pictures, and a
stage magician turned filmmaker, the real-life Georges Méliès,
most famously the director of A Trip to the Moon (1902).
There is a bounty of mystery and incident here, along with several
excellent chase scenes expertly rendered in the atmospheric, dramatically
crosshatched black-and-white (naturally) pencil drawings that make
up at least a third of the book. (According to the final chapter,
and putting a metafictional spin on things, there are 158 pictures
and 26,159 words in the book.) The interplay between the illustrations
(including several stills from Méliès’s frequently
surreal films and others from the era) and text is complete genius,
especially in the way Selznick moves from one to the other, depending
on whether words or images are the better choice for the moment.
And as in silent films, it's always just one or the other, wordless
double-spread pictures or unillustrated text, both framed in the
enticing black of the silent screen. While the bookmaking is spectacular,
and the binding secure but generous enough to allow the pictures
to flow easily across the gutter, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is
foremost good storytelling, with a sincerity and verbal ease reminiscent
of Andrew Clements (a frequent Selznick collaborator) and themes
of secrets, dreams, and invention that play lightly but resonantly
throughout. At one point, Hugo watches in awe as Isabelle blithely
picks the lock on a door. "How did you learn to do that?"
he asks. "Books," she answers. Exactly so. R.S.
 
Ellen
Levine Henry's Freedom Box; illus. by Kadir Nelson
Scholastic
Reviewed 3/07
In a true story that is both heartbreaking and joyful, Levine recounts
the history of Henry "Box" Brown, born into slavery. Henry
works in a tobacco factory, marries another slave, and fathers three
children; but then his family is sold, and Henry realizes he will
never see them again. With nothing to lose, Henry persuades his
friend James and a sympathetic white man to mail him in a wooden
box to Philadelphia and freedom. Levine maintains a dignified, measured
tone, telling her powerful story through direct, simple language.
A note at the end explains the historical basis for the fictionalized
story. Accompanying Levine's fine, controlled telling are pencil,
watercolor, and oil paint illustrations by Kadir Nelson that resonate
with beauty and sorrow. When Henry's mother holds him as a child
on her lap, they gaze out at bright autumn leaves, and the tenderness
is palpable, even as she calls to his attention the leaves that
"are torn from the trees like slave children are torn from
their families." There is no sugarcoating here, and Henry is
not miraculously reunited with his wife and children; however, the
conclusion, as Henry celebrates his new freedom, is moving and satisfying.
S.D.L.
 
Laura Vaccaro Seeger First the Egg; illus. by the
author
Porter/Roaring
Brook
Reviewed
11/07
Seeger, creator of outside-the-box concept books such as Lemons
Are Not Red (rev. 1/05), here presents a companion volume about
the order of things. The text is minimal: "First the EGG /
then the CHICKEN / First the TADPOLE / then the FROG" and so
on with seed and flower, caterpillar and butterfly. Seeger then
proceeds to more abstract pairs — "First the WORD / then
the STORY / First the PAINT / then the PICTURE" — making
them concrete for the youngest viewers by incorporating objects
mentioned in the preceding pages into both story and picture. The
ending is circular — well, almost, because who really knows
which came first, the chicken or the egg? Pages are color-saturated
and as minimalist as the text; thick, practically palpable brush
strokes on canvas backgrounds draw the hand to the page as well
as the eye. As in Lemons Are Not Red, cleverly conceived
and executed cutouts reinforce the book's tactile appeal even as
they propel the page turns. The book's tidy square shape showcases
the simple objects; its relatively small trim size is the perfect
balance for the lushness of the art. The best picture books create
a world in themselves, and this tour de force is one of them. M.V.P.
 
Peter Sis The Wall: Growing Up behind the Iron Curtain;
illus. by the author
Farrar
Reviewed
9/07
The personal meets the political in this absorbing autobiographical
picture book from Czech emigre Sis. Born in 1949, just as Czechoslovakia
fell under communist rule and Soviet domination, Sis evokes the
childhood of a born artist ("as long as he could remember,
he had loved to draw") in a country where restrictions on what
an artist could do grew along with him, where a child's love for
drawing shapes and people was channeled, at school, into drawing
tanks and hammer-and-sickles. While the brief main text of each
page describes Sis's own experiences ("Slowly he started to
question. He painted what he wanted to — in secret"),
small captions illuminate the thumbnail pictures of conditions in
the country. Strategically accented with red stars and flags, these
black ink drawings, sometimes four or six to a page, are almost
entirely composed of short, stuttering horizontal pen strokes. The
technique is all the more effective for the contrast it allows to
Sis's — and Czechoslovakia's — expansive forays into
freedom, like the full-color double-page spread depicting the Prague
Spring of 1968, which blossoms with images of John Lennon, a Yellow
Submarine, and a star-dappled winged horse at the end of a rainbow.
The deployment of media choices and color throughout the book is
both expert and telling: bold, stark black marker for an invading
Soviet tank, dreamy blue crayon for the night the Beach Boys played
Prague. It's a surprisingly comprehensive portrait of an era, an
artist, and the persistence of the latter in the face of the former.
R.S.
 
Mo Willems
Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity; illus.
by the author
Hyperion
Reviewed 11/07
This second book starring Trixie, her parents, and her best stuffed-animal
friend (Knuffle Bunny, rev. 9/04) touches on situations
and emotions immediately familiar to small children and their grownup
caregivers. Trixie (older now, and a whole lot more verbal than
when we first met her) can't wait to share her "one-of-a-kind"
Knuffle Bunny with her preschool friends. But when she spots classmate
Sonja with a Knuffle Bunny look-alike (Sonja calls hers "Nuffle"),
"the morning [does] not go well." The girls fight, and
the bunnies are confiscated for the day. When it's time to go home,
their teacher reunites each girl with her toy...or so it seems.
An urgent middle-of-the-night phone call ("We have your bunny")
and an emergency rabbit exchange restore order and provide Trixie
with her first human best friend. Willems's page design and animation-inspired
panel illustrations are just as visually dynamic as in the first
book. As before, colorful cartoon-style characters are set against
black-and-white photographs of an urban neighborhood. While the
text winks above children's heads a couple of times, most young
listeners will be so engaged in the drama that they'll care as little
as Trixie does about such technicalities as "what '2:30 a.m.'
means." Who needs sleep at a time like this?
K.F.

2008 ALA awards
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