The Horn Book » Picture Books

Review of Water in the Park

Elissa Gershowitz — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:20:48 +0000

Water in the Park: A Book About Water &  the Times of the Day
by Emily Jenkins;  illus. by Stephanie Graegin
Primary    Schwartz & Wade/Random    40 pp.
5/13    978-0-375-87002-6    $16.99
Library ed. 978-0-375-97002-3    $19.99
On a warm day, just before six a.m., a city park starts to stir: turtles laze on rocks by the pond, and dogs arrive, owners in tow, for an early-morning swim. Next, a few kids and their caretakers show up; at eight, the sprinklers are turned on, and by mid-morning the playground is mobbed. And so the day goes: small children come and go per naptime schedule, grownups take their lunch breaks on park benches, and the ice-cream truck arrives, along with another surge of delighted kids. By five o’clock, people start to trickle home. Six o’clock sees the sprinklers turned off, and by seven, the dogs have returned for an evening swim — until a much-welcomed rainstorm at eight causes the heat to break and sends everyone inside for the night. Jenkins’s introductory author’s note (on the copyright page) sets her story in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where she was inspired, because of “many ninety-eight-degree days,” to think about the various ways the park’s water was used. It’s a very narrow jumping-off point, but one that nearly every city kid will appreciate. (The author’s note also acknowledges Jenkins’s debt of gratitude to Charlotte Zolotow and H. A. Rey’s The Park Book and Alvin Tresselt and Roger Duvoisin’s White Snow, Bright Snow.) Graegin’s pencil-and-ink-wash illustrations (digitally colored and assembled) beautifully reflect the changing light, the shifting population, and the various activities throughout the day; some of the pictures play up the quiet expanse of nature, while others are jam-packed with people enjoying the outdoors. The constant, in both text and illustrations, is water — pond, drinking, sprinkler, puddle — and a subtle message about urban community.

For more on Water in the Park, read “Five questions for Emily Jenkins.”

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Review of The Dark

Cynthia K. Ritter — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:00:10 +0000

The Dark
by Lemony Snicket;  illus. by Jon Klassen
Preschool, Primary Little, Brown 40 pp.
4/13 978-0-316-18748-0 $16.99
Leave it to Lemony Snicket to craft a story personifying “the dark” — an idea all too real and frightening for children afraid of what lurks in the shadows. But they will find a kindred spirit in Laszlo, a scared boy living with the dark in a big house. Though the dark occasionally resides in the house’s hidden places and outside every night, “mostly it spent its time in the basement.” When the comforting glow of Laszlo’s bedroom nightlight goes out one night, the dark comes to visit and speaks to Laszlo: “I want to show you something.” So Laszlo, with his trusty flashlight in hand, follows the dark’s voice downstairs. Though the mood is ominous as the dark lures Laszlo into its basement room, a page of narration about the dark’s function serves to break the tension before the bright, satisfying, and funny resolution. With his command of language, tone, and pacing, Snicket creates the perfect antidote to a universal fear. Klassen’s spare gouache and digital illustrations in a quiet black, brown, and white palette (contrasted with Laszlo’s light blue footy pajamas and the yellow light bulb) are well suited for a book about the unseen. Using simple black lines and color contrasts to provide atmosphere and depth, Klassen captures the essence of Snicket’s story. If you’re reading this one at night, be sure to have your trusty flashlight handy — just in case.

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Five Questions for Anna Dewdney

Roger Sutton — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:00:38 +0000

Llama Llama… author-illustrator and rock star to preschoolers Anna Dewdney will be our special guest at the Fostering Lifelong Learners conference on April 25th, joining in the conversation about making and sharing great books for preschoolers. Here are five questions for her.

1.What did your own children teach you about creating books for preschoolers?

My own children taught me several things about the reality of picture books. First, that a book has to have compelling relevance to a child’s inner world to get picked up more than once or twice. Second, that a picture book should be fun for everyone in the room (if it isn’t fun for the parent, then it is likely not fun for the child). And third, that sometimes kids like seemingly unappealing books simply because those kinds of books address some developmental need; in other words, sometimes a parent will have to read Disney’s version of Cinderella every night for weeks…no matter how painful that is. Most importantly, reading with my children taught me that “reading time” is often the most intimate moment of the day, and that its power in a child’s (or caregiver’s) world cannot be underestimated.

2.I enjoyed playing the Llama Llama game on your website. What are your thoughts about toddlers and iPhones?

I think that iPhones, iPads, Nooks, Droids, and all those gizmos are simply toys. Whether or not a caregiver chooses to give that type of toy to a child is a personal decision. As a parent, I can understand the use of a toy that has educational and entertainment value…after all, there are only so many car games a person can play on a six hour trip to Grandma’s house, and sometimes everyone (including a parent) needs down time. I can also see value in a child learning some autonomous play skills, if they have a toy that teaches manual dexterity and/or reading. However, if the toy is constantly being used as a substitute for the important stuff (creative play, interpersonal relationships, reading, and a sense of living on the real planet with living, breathing creatures), then I think it is no longer a toy for a child – it is a crutch for a parent, much like driving through McDonald’s instead of cooking real food. I like a Big Mac as much as the next person, but I know it isn’t giving me real nourishment.

3.Why do you think young children accept the concept of animals dressed in clothing so easily?

What? Are you implying that animals DON’T wear clothes? You haven’t met my bulldog! (Just kidding.)

That’s a great question. I think the answer may be that children can relate to animals. Children know that animals are “people” too…they live, breathe, and exist on the planet, just as we do. I don’t think children give a hoot about clothes until they start to see clothes as costumes that define them, and those costumes tend to be just that: costumes. Why can’t dogs and cats (and llamas) wear costumes, too? To children, animals aren’t the “other.” After all, it is easier for a toddler to look right into the face of a lab than an adult; they can be eye to eye.

I think children are far more like animals than they are like adults. In other words, I think that what differentiates an adult from a child is that an adult is often motivated from and controlled by things outside themselves, or by what Freud would call a strong ego and super-ego. Small children are “unadulterated” beings. They experience and recognize feelings in themselves and others much like animals do, without all that other stuff on top.

4.How does a picture book keep the reader-aloud and the read-to equally engaged?

A good picture book has to be engaging to the reader as well as the read-to, as I mentioned before. It should allow the reader to become part of the action, to make the book a performance piece. The reading of a picture book should be a special moment of mutual understanding that the reader, readee, and author all share.

5.Do kids ever ask you why llama has two ls?

Never.

Join us on Thursday, April 25, 2013, for a big day focused on the littlest people.

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Five Questions for Kitty Flynn

Roger Sutton — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:56:28 +0000

At our upcoming Fostering Lifelong Learners: Prescribing Books for Early Childhood Education conference, Horn Book Guide Executive Editor Kitty Flynn will be leading a presentation about how the Horn Book evaluates and reviews preschool books. This is one aspect of her work that also engages her off the clock: Kitty and her husband are parents to two children under five.

1. You were a book reviewer before you were a parent. How has the first job helped with the second?

Two words: review copies. After umpteen years of working at the Horn Book, I’ve amassed a pretty good and varied collection of children’s books. We’re never at a loss for something to read, and thankfully both kids love books (coincidence? Maybe, but having tons of books all over the house doesn’t hurt). There have been more than a few times that I’ve come upon one or both kids sitting (quietly!) and looking at a book—and that’s just the kind of help I need.

2. And how has the second job helped with the first?

Being a parent has and hasn’t informed my job as a book reviewer. What each of my kids likes is not an indicator of what other kids will like or of what makes an outstanding book. For example, Chloe can’t get enough of Blue’s [as in Clues] Sleepover Party, but that doesn’t mean I would recommend it to anyone else (unless that person deserves it).

I do like having my own captive audience to test drive reading books aloud, which helps a lot with reviewing picture books. And when they were infants, I even read some novels aloud to them—working and bonding at the same time!

Living with young children has allowed me to see childhood from a different angle. I recently reviewed Ole Konnecke’s Anton and the Battle, which I think captures perfectly how a four-year-old (boy, especially) thinks and plays. At one point in their proverbial pissing match, Anton and his frenemy, Luke, pretend to throw bombs at each other. I would have liked this book BC (before children), but I wouldn’t have had a clue how completely on-target the cartoony pretend-violent play is.

3. You have two preschoolers, a girl and a boy. Do you see any gender stereotyping in their book preferences?

My first reaction to this is that their preferences have more to do with their interests and temperaments than with their gender, but who knows? Jakob likes information and has a lot of patience; he’ll listen to a 128 page book about space if someone is willing to read it to him. He also likes fiction and nonfiction books about dinosaurs, construction, knights, firefighters, and other typical little boy topics, but he doesn’t limit himself to those things. If someone is reading a book, he’ll usually sit and listen, no matter what it’s about.

Chloe isn’t girly at all—she won’t look at a dress; her favorite color is black—but she does gravitate toward fiction rather than her big brother’s information books. She loves Curious George (like any self-respecting three-year-old), Leslie Patricelli’s board books, and any book with Humpty Dumpty in it. She likes folktales; Feodor Rojankovsky’s The Tall Book of Nursery Tales has been at the top of her morning story time pile for a few months now.

4. What are their current favorites?

Chloe and Jakob

Their favorites change from day to day, week to week. I asked this morning and they both said, “That superheroes book with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman [a.k.a. DC Super Heroes Storybook Collection].” Last week the answer would have been, “Traction Man!” (that’s Traction Man Is Here by Mini Grey). They were obsessed with that book for a few days. We read it over and over; we acted out the story (with improvised Traction Man outfits and a pet scrubbing brush); we made a special trip to the library to borrow the other two TM books. But this week Traction Man is off the radar. Jakob has been studying The Usborne Official Knight’s Handbook. Chloe wants us to read “Puss in Boots” (and only “Puss in Boots”) from Anne Rockwell’s collection, Puss in Boots and Other Tales.

Oh, and I probably shouldn’t admit this, but for the last year (or maybe it just feels like a year), Jakob’s #1 favorite? The thirty-two page 2012 Playmobil toy catalog.

5. What, in your opinion, is the most misguided choice for a baby shower book?

Along with a Playmobil catalog, any book that speaks more to new parents and their experiences/wishes/hopes than to a baby or a child…that is if the gift giver’s intention is really and truly to give the baby a gift. I’m sure many parents would like those books’ sentiments (in fact, I know many parents do like them), but kids themselves won’t give a poopy diaper about them.

Join us on Thursday, April 25, 2013, for a big day focused on the littlest people.

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Review of Building Our House

Betty Carter — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:15:21 +0000

Building Our House
by Jonathan Bean; illus. by the author
Primary Farrar 48 pp.
1/13 978-0-374-38023-6 $17.99 g
Drawing on childhood memories from his own family’s house construction (see author’s note), Bean creates an engaging story as well as a glimpse into a warm family setting. A little girl narrates, and her childlike voice provides an immediacy that removes any hint of nostalgia. She relates her contributions not as they are but as she perceives them in all their exaggerated glory; illustrations tell a different tale. For example, when she observes that “bad weather slows our work but doesn’t stop it,” readers see Mom and Dad trudging through the snow with building supplies while the little girl and her smaller brother go sledding. Similarly, once the frame is completed, the narrator indicates a flurry of activity: “We start our work inside. Our plans show us where to place walls that will make the rooms.” Here youngsters will see the girl curled up asleep beside a newly installed woodstove. Other details, such as Mother’s pregnancy and the birth of a new baby, appear only in the muted watercolors outlined in pen and ink. Detailed steps in the process are broken down into one- or two-sentence captions for half-page, unframed panels, while moments of greater import, such as setting the corners for the foundation, receive full- and double-page spreads. The circular shapes of trees, hills, and even the Airstream-like trailer the family lives in during construction clearly show that this is not just a house but a cozy home.

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Counting Down Caldecott

Roger Sutton — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:47:01 +0000

As K.T. Horning embarks on her decade-by-decade Caldecott Medal retrospective (Mei Li in January; Prayer for a Child coming up in March) in the Horn Book Magazine, I’m reminded of Leonard Marcus’s own Caldecott Celebration, a book for kids (but you’ll like it too) in which he similarly looked at one winner from each decade, focussing on each book’s genesis. ( I wish Peter Sieruta were here to do a similar series about the Newbery–he knew all the stories.)

And back in the present, get ready for Calling Caldecott’s Mock Caldecott Poll, coming next week.

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Review of The Man from the Land of Fandango

Kathleen T. Horning — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:30:15 +0000

The Man from the  Land of Fandango
by Margaret Mahy;  illus. by Polly Dunbar
Preschool, Primary Clarion 32 pp.
10/12 978-0-547-81988-4 $16.99 g
When it comes to contemporary nonsense verse, no one wrote it better than the late Margaret Mahy (see Susan Cooper’s reminiscence of her friend). With this latest offering, Mahy places herself right up there with the nineteenth-century masters of the form, Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. Here she uses an enclosed rhyme scheme, alliteration, assonance, and internal rhyme with such precision that it feels as though there is not a word out of place — even though they are completely nonsensical. Most like her famous Bubble Trouble (rev. 5/09) in spirit, The Man from the Land of Fandango is less complicated in both its twists of tongue and story. After describing the main character, Mahy tells us what will happen when he pays a call: “Oh, wherever they dance in Fandango, / The bears and the bison join in, / And baboons on bassoons make a musical sound, / And the kangaroos come with a hop and a bound, / And the dinosaurs join in the din.” Next comes juggling with jelly and jam, dancing on ceilings and walls, jingling and jangling, tingling and tangling — all activities that would make the Cat in the Hat seem fairly tame. The quirky exuberance of Dunbar’s playful watercolor illustrations is a perfect match for Mahy’s verse; they show two young children reveling in a zany visit from a man they themselves created as a larger-than-life painting that flew off the page.

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OUR Liza with a Z

Roger Sutton — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 15:40:59 +0000

PW‘s Elizabeth Bluemle (who, by the way, has a wonderful article coming up in the March/April Horn Book Magazine) visits our own Liza Woodruff, who unaccountably left work as a circulation assistant at the Horn Book to live in Vermont with her lovely husband and children and dogs while she pursues a full-time career as an illustrator. I know. What was she thinking?

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Review of Bailey at the Museum

Robin Smith — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 15:40:52 +0000

Bailey at the Museum
by Harry Bliss; illus. by the author
Primary Scholastic 32 pp.
9/12 978-0-545-23345-3 $16.99
In his second adventure, the irrepressible titular hound from Bailey (rev. 11/11) — the only dog in Mrs. Smith’s class — is excited about the field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Though his classmates are well behaved, Bailey can’t contain his enthusiasm: he crawls up (and gnaws on) the T. rex skeleton’s spine, sneaks into a teepee for a quick snooze, and wanders away from the group. Even though his actions repeatedly land him in the doghouse, his confidence and charm (along with his keen sense of smell) win the day. He also makes a lifelong friend of the patient security guard tasked to corral the rambunctious pup. Told in straight narrative and with speech balloons, the text provides readers with a clear view into childlike Bailey’s active mind, along with his classmates’ (and bystanders’) pithy observations. Bliss’s varied illustrations, switching from close-ups to pigeon-eye-views, keep the tone light and the action moving; Bailey’s tail is moving, too — all the time. Enthusiastic fans will beg to see Bailey in other familiar school situations. Good dog, Bailey…and great book, Bliss.

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O Come All Ye Faithful?

Roger Sutton — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:37:34 +0000

Don’t miss Leonard Marcus’s latest column about picture book covers, and speaking of that, SLJ stalwart Rocco Staino reports on a gallery of ‘em that would make Judy Blume blush. Or would they? The pictures were created by several well-known picture book artists in service of raising money for the National Coalition Against Censorship.

They are hilarious (see the link for the gallery), far funnier than the lists of “fake dirty children’s books” that periodically meme their way around the Internet, but I wonder about the, um, blowback. At least in regard to intellectual freedom for children, the argument promoted by the American Library Association is less about the freedom of expression than it is the freedom to read. And the reason for the freedom to read is that reading itself has value, and that those who seek to ban or restrict Forever, Harry Potter, or Goosebumps are misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the fundamental good of these titles: Forever speaks honestly about sexuality, Harry Potter celebrates the power of the imagination, Goosebumps provides safe thrills and encourages reluctant readers to take up the habit. I don’t think the ALA has ever met a book for kids that didn’t have redeeming social value.

But what if Holiday Hummers were real? Would we still stick up for it? I put the question to NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin and she responded (entirely sensibly) that “the whole thing is completely hypothetical and unlikely in the extreme. However, in general our position is that we defend the right to publish legal non-obscene content of any kind. It’s up to individuals to decide if they want to buy/read it.” That makes perfect sense when you approach intellectual freedom from the First Amendment rights of writers, but I wonder if when we defend books for their case-by-case value to readers (which is what ALA does), what we do when a book seems indefensible? A lot of fifth-grade boys would find a book called Holiday Hummers (not to mention Blow Me: A Book About Whistles, not to mention the real-life Go the Fuck to Sleep) irresistible, so we can’t argue that such a book would not be of interest to kids. My point is that a defense of books on the basis of their worthiness will only take you so far and is ultimately thin: “IS worthy!” “Is NOT!” A fair percentage of the population already thinks Daddy’s Roommate IS Holiday Hummers without the choir robes, anyway; are we prepared to defend both?

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