The No. 1 Car Spotter
by Atinuke; illus. by Warwick Johnson Cadwell
Primary, Intermediate    Kane Miller    112 pp.
9/11    Paper ed.  978-1-61067-051-7    $5.99
Oluwalase Babatunde Benson, called No. 1, is the best car spotter in his African village. His unnamed country has cities and towns with skyscrapers, hotels, offices, tap water, electricity, and televisions, but in his village they “only talk about such things.” In their limited spare time, No. 1 and his grandfather sit by the side of the road, calling out the makes and models of cars. “It is what we men do…What Grandfather does not know about spotting cars is not to know.” In the first story of four, when the village’s only market cart breaks, it’s No. 1’s ingenuity, the seeds of which have been planted by his grandfather, that saves the village (aptly, the solution involves a disabled car). One of Atinuke’s gifts is her ability to tell her stories with humor while introducing serious topics to younger readers. Here, we meet a boy who learns to face the challenges of life in a village where the men have left to seek work in the city. Whether it’s helping to man the market stall, shopping for lipstick for Auntie Fine-Fine, working for food, or worrying about his sick grandmother’s lack of money for a doctor, we see a boy who is willing to pitch in and to think about solutions. Stylized black-and-white illustrations have the energy to match No. 1. Frequent perspective changes, exaggerated facial features, and light pen line add movement, giving readers the idea that No. 1 and his friends are always moving, always ready for the next assignment. A welcome addition to the very small selection of books — particularly early chapter books — about modern Africa.

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When my oldest child, Rory, was a toddler, I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about Santa. “You wouldn’t rob him of that!” my mother scolded. Rob him of what, I thought, but I knew she meant the wonder of it all, the belief that a magical, benevolent being would grant your wishes. In the end I caved and told Rory the big merry lie; he ate it up like so much gingerbread.

My childhood self scoffed at the idea of flying reindeer, but my son gloried in the magic of beasts that could fly without wings. As a girl I’d noted that even if Santa were to come down our chimney, it was blocked by a woodstove; Rory didn’t care that we had no chimney and said Santa would probably come in through the heating vents. I was charmed by his imaginative openness and fed into it, even as I felt a twinge of guilt about lying to my kid. “It’s not lying,” my mother insisted. “It’s about including him in the story.”

Picture books played a big part in perpetuating the Santa myth in Rory’s life, and we soon amassed a broad library of stories to indulge his fascination. After just a few listens, he flawlessly imitated the British accent of the readers of our audiobook version of Bruce Whatley’s The Night Before Christmas, and he was baffled by the ending of The Polar Express. “Why can’t his sister hear the bell anymore?” he demanded. “She stopped believing in Santa Claus,” I told him, “but the boy kept believing.” “Me too,” said Rory emphatically. “I will always believe.”

Rory made good on this promise well into elementary school. He doggedly resisted peer pressure until one autumnal night. “Mom-Mom, is Santa real or do you and Mama put the presents under the tree?” It was the moment I’d dreaded. “Why do you ask?” I dodged carefully. “The other kids say I’m a loser for believing still. Just tell me the truth. I can handle it.” I took a deep breath. “OK, Rory, Mama and I do put the presents under the tree, but Santa — ” “All of them?” he interrupted and burst into tears. No, not tears — heaving, racking sobs. I tried to channel some inner “yes, Virginia” muse and explained that it’s the spirit of Santa that we hold onto, the joy of giving, the celebration of childhood…but Rory would have none of it. He whispered, “It’s like I know the words to the song, but the tune has slipped away.” A knife to the heart, I tell you! But then he said, “We can’t tell Emilia. She still believes.”

Yes, two-year-old Emilia did believe in Santa, since we had to include her in the story that her brother had loved so well. However, she did not adore Santa; she was terrified of him. Just a month or so earlier, Emilia’s toddlerhood fascination with babies had led to an attendant love of trains when I read her New Baby Train, Marla Frazee’s picture book version of the Woody Guthrie song. She firmly associated babies and trains from then on, doggedly looking for infants in any book about a little engine; this included The Polar Express. Seeing no babies, Emilia fixated on the jolly old elf — and was struck with horror.

It took me a while to figure out why Emilia was suddenly refusing to go to bed. Finally, after much prompting, she explained, “If I go to sleep Santa will come and Santa is scary!” Emilia had no sense of the passage of time, so telling her that “in a few weeks” Santa would come to her house meant that he could come any minute. She was, after all, the same child who was frightened by masks, clowns, and the potato mascot who ran around our town fair each fall lauding the benefits of fruits and vegetables. It made perfect sense that she would be terrified at the prospect of a big, bearded man prowling around while everyone was asleep. I told her that Santa would leave presents in the garage that year and staged a phone call to the North Pole to tell him not to enter our house.

When, in the space of one year, baby Caroline (now five), Natayja (now thirteen), and Stevie (now six) joined our family, we half-heartedly went along perpetuating the myth, with the thought that if Natayja and Stevie had any belief in Santa, it wouldn’t be fair to say, “Guess what? In our family he doesn’t exist. Happy adoption day!” And, just a few days after Natayja, nearly eight, came home to our family, I curled up on the couch with her to read Christmas books. “Which one do you want me to read?” I asked. “That one,” she said, pointing to Trina Schart Hyman’s illustrated edition of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales. I wasn’t sure she’d have the attention span for the long text, but I started reading, “One Christmas was so much like another…” and we read the book straight through. This longer story allowed Natayja the uninterrupted time she needed to let her body sink into closeness with mine. Just as the mistletoe hanging in our dining room gave her an excuse to open herself up to kisses, shared reading of this book afforded her the time and space to cuddle. It didn’t matter how much she understood of the metaphor-rich language, or that Thomas’s Christmas memories were completely different from her own, or that in her experience of moving from family to family, one Christmas was so unlike another. What mattered was the sound of my voice reading to her, the images before her eyes as she pointed to them and said: “Look. It’s snowing,” or “Firefighters,” or “What’s that?”

When we reached the end she asked, “Can we read another one?” It was the first time she’d asked me for anything. We read for more than two hours on that couch, moving from eccentric aunts and candy cigarettes to a train traveling to the North Pole, and yes, to flying reindeer and good old Santa Claus. She delighted in these stories and later in visiting Santa at a local park, where she shyly told him what she wanted him to bring for her and her brothers and sisters and her two new moms.

I’m not sure when or how Natayja discovered that Santa is a story rather than a real person. She’s an ideal big sister, protective and kind, and she has played along every year for the benefit of her younger siblings. Stevie still believes in Santa Claus, but he can’t hold a Christmas candle to Caroline’s devotion, which seems to have surpassed even Rory’s belief. Caroline wants to read Christmas books all year long, and I indulge her in this, particularly in her favorite one, another Marla Frazee title, Santa Claus: The World’s Number One Toy Expert. “I just love his little underwears!” she says mischievously every time we read it and she beholds Santa romping around in his crazy Frazee boxers. But it’s not just Santa’s fashion sense that appeals to her, it’s his power. She regards St. Nick with what seems like an emphasis on his sainthood and worships him, perhaps filling some spiritual void born of growing up in our non-churchgoing household. Once, when she was being bossed around by her siblings, I said, “Ignore them. They’re not in charge of the world.” Without missing a beat she responded, “You’re right. Santa is.”

It seems that Santa, Mrs. Claus, and Rudolph form Caroline’s personal holy trinity as surely as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost formed mine when I was a devout Catholic girl who said her rosary every night, praying to be as good as Mary and delighting in taking part in my church’s Christmas pageant. If I allow my lapsed Catholic self to surface, I can admit to a personal preference for nativity stories over Santa ones, in part because they tie me to a heritage of faith that in other ways has slipped away from me. I grew up on Tomie dePaola’s pop-up book The First Christmas, and it, along with Margaret Wise Brown and Floyd Cooper’s A Child Is Born, are favorites in my family’s library today. The nativity book we turn to most often, however, is Julie Vivas’s The Nativity. Vivas’s art makes the text — straight from the King James Bible — accessible and wondrously human for her audience. She said of working on this book, “I’ve been pregnant. I couldn’t do a pretty Christmas book.”

Amen to that! Vivas’s pictures of a very pregnant Mary mounting and then riding on a donkey drive this point home with great humor and a subtle feminist panache. Reading this book when Rory was three, in preparation for attending Christmas Eve services with my mother, called for a certain amount of explanation of the text. Vivas’s angels wear work boots and have tattered, tie-dyed wings, and Mary, during the scene when the Archangel Gabriel comes to tell her that she will bear God’s child, is hanging the wash out on the line, oblivious to his descent. On the next spread Mary and Gabriel are seated at her kitchen table having their important conversation. The expression on Mary’s face is one of pure incredulity as she takes in the angel’s words: “Fear not Mary: for thou hast found favor with God. Thou shalt bring forth a son and call his name Jesus.” I paraphrased for Rory, “So here the angel is telling Mary that she is going to have a baby and Mary is really, really surprised about this news. Look at her — she’s like ‘Are you kidding!?’”

Rory loved this book. We read it dozens of times and brought it to the church so he could follow along with the lector. All was well until the “Fear not Mary” line resonated throughout the quiet sanctuary. Rory, taking this as his cue, called out in full voice, “And Mary was like, ARE YOU KIDDING?!” I gasped. But my mother whispered, “Oh Megan, don’t worry. Kids are what Christmas is all about,” and gave Rory a kiss on the top of his head.

When I think about the story of a long-awaited child born as a symbol of hope, my mother’s sentiment is something I want to celebrate in every season, but perhaps especially at Christmastime with all of its seemingly unavoidable family baggage and chaos. The holiday books I’ve shared with my kids hold more than just stories. They hold the memories of shared time together, and the conversations they’ve provoked have seen us navigating the emotions that come with being a family comprising people with different dispositions, hopes, and fears. I still question whether I made the right decision in telling my kids about Santa, and I am dreading the day Caroline confronts me about why the Polar Express hasn’t stopped at our house, or in some other way catches me in the big jolly lie. But I have reason to hope that she’ll come through it all OK based on how Rory’s feelings have evolved over time:

When Rory was twelve, he stayed up after his siblings went to bed to help stuff stockings and wrap presents. He was delighted by his new role and announced, “It’s even more fun to be Santa than to believe in him.” I looked at my son and recalled the night he wept over losing his belief in Santa Claus. Maybe he couldn’t hear a bell from the Polar Express, but it seemed that the tune that had slipped away from him was back. Joy to the world, indeed.

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The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth

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Bailey

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The Princess of Borscht

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A good space book captures this melding of anticipation and discovery that lies at the heart of space exploration.

Space books generally touch on one or both of two major themes. First, there are books that feature astronomy—the science-focused books—that explain our knowledge of the planets, stars, and the universe, of comets and nebulae and black holes and all sorts of fascinating, mind-bending deep space phenomena. Then there are those that foreground space exploration—the technology-focused books—that introduce the engineering innovations like telescopes, spacecraft, and rockets that give us better access to what’s beyond our atmosphere. Cutting across and anchoring these two themes are people—the scientists engaged in discovery, the engineers who produce the craft, and the astronauts who get to fly them—and the possibility that young readers, too, could take on any of those roles.

Astronomy is first and foremost a visual field. Humans and machines have only physically been to a few extraterrestrial sites, so focusing on images is integral to the practice of astronomy. A good astronomy book puts visuals front and center. From old-school naked-eye stargazing to the latest in imaging technology, what we see is the data on which the field of astronomy rests. It’s hard to resist the beauty of the orangy-red planet Mars, a close-up of the sharp edge of a ring of Saturn, or the swirling stripes and whorls of the storm-produced clouds of Jupiter. The definitive images in this category belong to Seymour Simon, whose books on planetary bodies (Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids; Our Solar System; Venus; Destination: Space, etc.) set the bar so high that the many lower-quality solar system series books quite literally pale in comparison. Of course, others besides Simon have produced excellent image-centric books. Twenty years of distortion-free images from the Hubble Space Telescope, most recently covered brilliantly in Elaine Scott’s Space, Stars, and the Beginning of Time: What the Hubble Telescope Saw, have given researchers and the public alike access not just to better pictures of the planets but to invitingly mysterious nebulae clouds and distant clusters of star-peppered galaxies. First-rate images can also be found in Sally Ride and Tam O’Shaughnessy’s books (Mystery of Mars, Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System, and Exploring Our Solar System)—and who can beat learning planetary science from a physics PhD who also happens to be one of our most famous former astronauts?

A good astronomy book, however, doesn’t let readers just admire the pretty colors and move on. It also assists us in understanding the technical elements of image production, in a way, changing how we “see.” Some of the pictures in these books are not photographs in the sense we’re used to, but in fact number-crunched, color-enhanced renderings of a wider-than-visible spectrum of electromagnetic waves emitted from astronomical bodies. Others are artists’ conceptions that use scientific knowledge but take some liberties in imagining what such places as the surface of a distant planet or the inside of a future spacecraft might look like. Critical information accompanying the illustrations helps readers clearly delineate among what’s real, enhanced, or imagined.

Of course, we can’t forget that, prior to all sophisticated telescopes and satellite imaging equipment, there were centuries of astronomers just staring up at the sky. Historical accounts such as Peter Sís’s profile of Galileo in Starry Messenger and Boy, Were We Wrong about the Solar System! by Kathleen V. Kudlinski explain the impressive amount of astronomical knowledge determined before modern times.

They also introduce the social and historical contexts of scientific inquiry. Ideas are transformed over time not just with better access to data but with changes in prevailing thought and social conventions. Thinking about what lies beyond the earth, and how it got there, has meant significant conflicts with religious beliefs during periods of Western history in particular. These biographical and historical accounts help us understand the many factors affecting scientific practice.

Children begin with just their eyes, too, and are greatly assisted by Franklyn M. Branley’s classic contributions to the venerable Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science series (the originals are the best, such as The Moon Seems to Change and What Makes Day and Night?) and the still-in-print constellation guides produced by H. A. Rey (The Stars and Find the Constellations). These books are great because they start children where the astronomers started, learning to recognize the objects in the sky and to notice their patterns of movement. Branley’s books are the definitive example of how to explain space concepts in remarkably comprehensible language, and the match of concepts to target age is absolutely perfect. These books may not have the sleek photo images of the books described above, but the charm of Rey’s star charts, or the friendliness of the Let’s-Read illustrations, certainly do the trick. There are a few recent revisions to the Let’s-Read books, also found in lesser astronomy books, that take the whimsy a bit too far. Overly stylistic, mid-century retro cartoons that violate the scientific principles they’re illustrating are a no-no, and there should never, ever be an alien in a good astronomy book—unless we reach the time when scientists have found some.

Though astronomy books are dominated by, well, astronomy, there are other scientific fields engaged in planetary exploration that when included enhance the quality of space books. Indeed, increasingly more important as we develop newer technologies and focus research efforts beyond just documentation and imaging is the cross-disciplinary potential of fields like planetary geology and exobiology. We have sensors that can remotely assess chemical compositions of rocks on the surface of a planet; we have actual samples from Mars and the moon; and researchers are actively exploring ways in which life might exist outside of the conditions we find normal. Exobiology, in particular, taps into that thrilling thought that there might be life other than us in the universe, and the science is cutting edge and complicated. Two notable profiles of scientists in search of life in outer space include Ellen Jackson’s Looking for Life in the Universe: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which features Jill Tarter, director of the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute, and Vicki Oransky Wittenstein’s Planet Hunter: Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths. If there are aliens worthy of illustration in a children’s book, Marcy, Tarter, and their colleagues will be the ones to find them.

Or perhaps someday a space explorer will meet them. The fascination we have with actually going to outer space, and the massive technological (and financial) efforts exerted to put humans into space, make for some of the most compelling space books available. The recent fortieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission—the one where humans walked on the surface of the Moon for the very first time—was the impetus for some truly outstanding space books that capture the wide-open possibilities and space fervor of the 1960s. Andrew Chaikin’s Mission Control, This Is Apollo: The Story of the First Voyages to the Moon surveys all of the Apollo missions, personalized by the inclusion of astronaut Alan Bean’s impressionistic paintings and commentary, and effectively conveys the full scope of the Apollo program as it progressed from rocket building to flight testing to actual scientific missions. Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca is a masterful yet intimate telling of the Apollo 11 story, reflecting what it must have been like to be there for the mission, be it as an astronaut in the spacecraft or a spectator watching on TV. Readers can also get the astronaut perspective from Buzz Aldrin himself in Look to the Stars, and can very convincingly place themselves in a virtual mission by reading the second-person narration of Faith McNulty and Stephen Kellogg’s If You Decide to Go to the Moon, winner of the 2006 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.

Not all children have had equal opportunities to see themselves as space explorers, however, as the barriers faced by women and people of color attempting to enter the space program (at least in the United States) were not overcome until the late 1970s. Tanya Lee Stone’s noteworthy Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream presents an unvarnished history of the “Mercury 13”—the accomplished women who tried but failed to get into the American space program in the early 1960s—and the times in which they lived. A good space book like this one compels readers to discuss its implications, perhaps with their elders who lived through this era, to reflect on what still hasn’t changed about our expectations for women in space, and to appreciate what has.

What era are we living in today? Although we’ve had two more prominent space programs—the space shuttle and the International Space Station—there doesn’t seem to be similar enthusiasm in the book world to produce compelling stories about the last few decades of American efforts in piloted space missions. Do peacetime international cooperative agreements and an increased commercial outsourcing lack the frisson of the Cold War quest for space domination? With now hundreds of astronauts walking the Earth, do none stand out in our collective mind? Sure, there are plenty of lower quality books diagramming rocket parts or providing hero bios of various astronauts, but few are noteworthy. Two notable books about more recent space technologies (Floating in Space and The International Space Station) come, not surprisingly, from Franklyn M. Branley and the Let’s-Read series again, this time illustrated by True Kelley, but, published in 1998 and 2000, respectively, they’re starting to show their age.

Perhaps it is because the coolest missions going on right now are the human-free, computer-controlled ones. A series of trips to Mars in the past decade, fronted by the appealing

Wall-E-like rovers, have been featured in superior books such as the latest in this category, Cars on Mars: Roving the Red Planet by Alexandra Siy. Hopefully the upcoming NASA missions, even sans humans, will spark additional interest. Or perhaps it will be the scientists, not astronauts, who serve to inspire and motivate the next generation of space dreamers.

Good Space Books

Look to the Stars (Putnam, 2009) by Buzz Aldrin; illus. by Wendell Minor

Floating in Space [Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science] (HarperCollins, 1998) by Franklyn M. Branley; illus. by True Kelley

The International Space Station [Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science] (HarperCollins, 2000) by Franklyn M. Branley; illus. by True Kelley

The Moon Seems to Change [Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science] (Crowell, 1960) by Franklyn M. Branley; illus. by Helen Borten (reissued by HarperCollins in 1987 with illus. by Barbara and Ed Emberley)

What Makes Day and Night? [Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science] (Crowell, 1961) by Franklyn M. Branley; illus. by Helen Borten (reissued by HarperCollins in 1986 with illus. by Arthur Dorros)

Mission Control, This Is Apollo: The Story of the First Voyages to the Moon (Viking, 2009) by Andrew Chaikin; illus. by Alan Bean

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 (Jackson/Atheneum, 2009) by Brian Floca

Looking for Life in the Universe: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence [Scientists in the Field] (Houghton, 2002) by Ellen Jackson; photos by Nic Bishop

Boy, Were We Wrong about the Solar System! (Dutton, 2008) by Kathleen V. Kudlinski; illus. by John Rocco

If You Decide to Go to the Moon (Scholastic, 2005) by Faith McNulty; illus. by Steven Kellogg

Find the Constellations (Houghton, 1954) by H. A. Rey

The Stars (Houghton, 1952) by H. A. Rey

Exploring our Solar System (Crown, 2003) by Sally Ride and Tam O’Shaughnessy

Mystery of Mars (Crown, 1999) by Sally Ride and Tam O’Shaughnessy

Voyager: An Adventure to the Edge of the Solar System [Face to Face with Science] (Crown, 1992) by Sally Ride and Tam O’Shaughnessy

Space, Stars, and the Beginning of Time: What the Hubble Telescope Saw (Clarion, 2011) by Elaine Scott

Comets, Meteors, and Asteroids (Morrow, 1994) by Seymour Simon

Destination: Space (HarperCollins, 2002) by Seymour Simon

Our Solar System (Morrow, 1992) by Seymour Simon (revised edition from HarperCollins, 2007)

Venus (Morrow, 1992) by Seymour Simon

Starry Messenger: A Book Depicting the Life of a Famous Scientist, Mathematician, Astronomer, Philosopher, Physicist, Galileo Galilei (Foster/Farrar, 1996) by Peter Sís

Cars on Mars: Roving the Red Planet (Charlesbridge, 2009) by Alexandra Siy

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream (Candlewick, 2009) by Tanya Lee Stone

Planet Hunter: Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths (Boyds Mills, 2010) by Vicki Oransky Wittenstein

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Imagine a picture book world where such principles governed, a place where artists, publishers, reviewers, librarians, and teachers kept this proclamation pinned to their walls and close to their hearts. To my mind, however, they largely already do. So why, then, did these twenty-two authors and illustrators put together their pennies to buy a full-page ad in The Horn Book? I think it is because there is a disconnection between what is in our hearts and what we are publishing for children. And let me urge you back to page 57 again. This is not just about picture books: I challenge you to find anything there that is not equally pertinent to fiction and nonfiction published for youth.

I was lucky enough to spend a day in September with Maurice Sendak and his “Sendak Fellows,” four illustrators nominated unawares and selected by Sendak to spend a month with him, and given studios, support, and advice. Here was the Proclamation in action. The four artists—Ali Bahrampour, Denise Saldutti Egielski, Frann Preston-Gannon, and Sergio Ruzzier—had a month to work on what they wished, whether it was a painting, a portfolio, a new book, a contracted manuscript, a resurrected project, or nothing at all. I saw tentative sketches and nearly complete dummies. The light-filled house where they stayed and worked, the presence of enough peers for camaraderie, and the example of Sendak, someone who was living the principles of the Proclamation since before its signers were born (I peg signer Jon Scieszka as the token old guy, and he’s my age), were prods to both freedom and industry.

Over lunch with the Fellows and me, Sendak described how his career grew, from illustrating picture books and chapter books by other people to books of his own, the first of which (Kenny’s Window) was not commercially successful but whose promise nevertheless encouraged his publisher to sign him up for another one and another one, with Where the Wild Things Are not appearing until seven years later. “Are illustrators still allowed this kind of growth?” he asked. Glum faces around the table answered him. I was reminded of what my friend Elizabeth Law once told me, that while there is support for and attention paid to first books, it’s the second ones that really need the help.

But if we all agree that a book “should be fresh, honest, piquant, and beautiful,” then why are “imitation, laziness, and timidity poisoning a great art form”? (If in fact they are—safe and formulaic books have always been with us.) Who is allowing this to happen? It’s easy to blame greedy-guts publishers, but I can’t think of one house that doesn’t publish something each season out of sheer love. Yes, they should do this more often. But we—librarians, teachers, parents—have to do our part. We may pride ourselves on our ability to find for a young reader “another one just like it!” but if we stop there we’ve left the job half done. If we want artists and writers to take risks, and publishers to do the same, we have to read, and promote reading, with the same spirit.

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