A follow-up to last fall’s fabulous A Charlie Brown Christmas app, Loud Crow’s latest story app It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (October 2012) is based on the 1966 animated holiday TV special of the same name. Linus spends Halloween night in a pumpkin patch, faithfully waiting for the elusive Great Pumpkin to appear, while everyone else (even morose Charlie Brown) enjoys “tricks or treats” and a costume party. The app is narrated by Peter Robbins—the original voice of Charlie Brown, now grown up—and features much of the plot and dialogue (including the original character voices) from the cartoon. A user-friendly format in terms of narration, animation, page turns, and word recognition allows readers to experience the beloved tale in a new way.

Unfortunately, this story app relies on its connection to a free supplemental games and activities app called The Great Pumpkin Festival, and the combination is problematic. Whereas the Christmas app did a nice job, in a single app, of integrating easy-to-use activity features into the story, this pair of apps is glitchy, confusing, and cumbersome.

Once users create the required account for The Great Pumpkin Festival app and log in, they choose costumes and accessories to customize their own Peanuts avatars. (Some free options for each item are provided, but the more interesting ones must be “purchased” with either coins or candy bought through iTunes or earned by participating in activities.) Users can carve pumpkins, browse other users’ costumed avatars and decorated pumpkins, and “like” pumpkins and guess what people carved. On Halloween, the pumpkin with the most likes will be crowned “The Great Pumpkin.” Avatars, pumpkins, and achievements may be shared to Facebook. The Festival app itself is pretty fun — for the social media–savvy and for those willing to buy more coins on iTunes (with real money!) to pay for things in the app. My problems concern how it connects to the Great Pumpkin story app.

On the title page of the story app, readers can log in to their Festival app account to upload their avatar. If you have your Festival account turned on, your avatar will appear several times in the story alongside the Peanuts characters. It would make sense for the app to simply ignore the concept of avatars if the user isn’t logged in to their account. And for the most part, it does. However, in one scene, when there is no avatar inserted, a black ghost appears on screen in its place as Lucy directly asks the avatar what it is supposed to be. This pulls the user out of the storyline and makes the secondary app intrusive on the story.

Additional issues in the story app: it occasionally just shuts itself off, at least one of the text balloons appears to be misaligned, and I think there’s supposed to be a candy matching game to play when the kids go trick-or-treating, but it doesn’t work properly. I would have appreciated a how-to section with more information on the activities. Reviews of the app in iTunes reveal that other users experienced similar problems. There is also a redundancy to the scene where users can play three songs (“It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary,” “Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag,” and “There’s a Long, Long Trail”) on the piano, à la Schroeder, while Snoopy dances on screen. First the narration includes each song, then the keyboard appears and the user plays each song, then an animation kicks in and the song is played for a third time.

Some of the features do work well: users can tap objects on the screen to activate additional content, and the animation is generally well timed to the narration. Users also have the option to decorate their own pumpkin, which appears once in the story; turn the narration and/or music off; and navigate using a helpful scene selection guide. Users can discover five more activities in the story to earn rewards (i.e., more candy for the supplemental app).

Are you confused yet? I certainly was after spending an afternoon with these apps. Frankly, the number of drawbacks to the story app as it now stands outweigh the positives. Here’s hoping they improve the story app in later updates. I wish Loud Crow had done a better job of linking the two apps—or had released one all-inclusive app. Since the free Festival app works well on its own (though it’s a bit dull after the initial creation of avatars and pumpkins), I recommend that you download it and forego purchasing the story app.

Both apps are available for iPad, iPhone, and iTouch; Great Pumpkin: $4.99, Festival: free.

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Those who have tattered copies of Perks held together with scotch tape and hope will not be disappointed; Chbosky is largely faithful to his original story. The movie follows Charlie, a suburban teen “wallflower” who recently lost his aunt and his best friend and who struggles with depression, as he navigates his freshman year of high school. Charlie begins coming into his own once he befriends seniors Patrick and Sam, stepsiblings who introduce him to decent music, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, parties, drugs, booze, and a sense of belonging.

First things first, I must absolutely rave about Logan Lerman’s performance as Charlie. Percy Jackson, who knew you had it in you? He stops and starts, slumps and strides, and is overall utterly convincing in playing a damaged introvert with a beautiful soul. If you are not half in love with him by the end of the film, you need to listen to some good songs ASAP. Seriously, stop reading this and go play rock ballads on repeat until you can feel again.

Ezra Miller and Paul Rudd are also delightful in their roles as Patrick and Mr. Anderson, respectively. As for Emma Watson’s portrayal of Sam? Well, it’s not, as they said in the 90s, all that and a bag of chips. She is lovely when her acting relies on her facial expressions alone (the scene where her upturned face is lifted toward the night sky as she stands in the back of a racing truck is one of the most powerful in the movie), but some of her lines are delivered like they have weights attached to them. Where is the passion? The spark that makes Sam such an intoxicating character?  With so much directorial attention focused on Charlie, Sam is rendered flat.

Visually, the film is a pleasure. The lighting emphasizes shadows and spotlights, allowing the camera to linger over Charlie’s lonely typewriter or Patrick’s bruised face. But it also captures the smokiness of a dimly lit basement party, the excitement of a Rocky Horror show, and the glaring vulnerability of a fluorescent-lit high school cafeteria.

Chobosky’s latest project is, like the mix tapes Charlie spends so much time constructing, a combination that somehow works together. It’s funny and poignant and romantic and tragic. Perks relays the magic of living in the present and the idea that just the right song at just the right moment can indeed make you feel “infinite.”

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The app, developed by Joyce’s own Moonbot Studios (2011), is a hybrid of the short film and the picture book. As in the film, music and animation move the story along, providing a cinematic flow. But, like the picture book, the app also includes a textual story to follow and still images to view. This combination, with the addition of evenly paced narration and interactive features, sets the app version of Morris Lessmore apart from its companions.

By now the story is familiar to many: Morris Lessmore loves stories and surrounds himself with books. When a terrible storm destroys his home, he is left to wander. He encounters a woman with flying books and follows one of the volumes to a library, where he spends many years caring for the books and sharing them with others. When he finally departs the library, he leaves his own story behind. A little girl finds it and starts reading, bringing the tale full-circle.

The app relies on user participation throughout the story to advance (or enhance) the narrative. Sometimes this interaction is as simple as turning the pages or tapping highlighted images on the screen to make them move, change, or produce sound (i.e., opening a door for Morris to fall through, or having him throw a book in the air to make it fly).

More elaborate activities invite users to play the story’s musical motif “Pop Goes the Weasel” on a piano keyboard, write on the pages of a book, put together a puzzle, or make Morris fly (by tilting their device). This flying activity — meant to represent the theme of losing oneself among the words in a book — is a little awkward to maneuver, and doesn’t quite produce the desired effect of flying through a story (the words don’t move past Morris as you’re flying him around the screen). Regardless, it’s obvious from the app’s variety of interactive features that Moonbot Studios is pushing the boundaries of app innovation and presentation.

My favorite interactive feature involves helping Morris hand out books to library patrons. When a book — either A Christmas Carol, Treasure Island, Frankenstein, or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — is given to one of the three individuals in line, that person changes from grayscale to full color (a metaphor used throughout the story to illustrate how reading can brighten lives). Suddenly dressed like a character from that book, the patron quotes one of the character’s lines; the transformations are humorous to say the least. Other allusions to famous tales occur earlier in the narrative; when Morris enters the library for the first time, users tap the books to hear famous lines by Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Poe, and Conan Doyle.

The easy-to-access settings menu gives control over music, narration, language, and text, making this a very user-friendly app. Some cool extra features: users can watch the award-winning animated short film in its entirety along with an additional “making of” video.

I found this app, like the film and book, to be a story worth telling — I’m happy to have the opportunity to experience it in a range of different formats. I think Morris would be, too. Available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, $4.99 in the App Store.

A separate IMAG-N-O-TRON app (requires later generations of Apple devices  with iOS5 and a WiFi connection; $0.99) allows users to point their device at a page of the print book and watch it come to life on the screen.

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Build a robot by selecting from a gallery of ten brightly colored options for each bot part: torso, head, arms, and “legs” (some of which are actually wheels or rocket blasters). Then “add some flair” with spare parts such as a robot dog, microphone, clock, and bicycle horn. All of the parts differ in design and function, illustrated by a brief animation, so the combinations are virtually endless.

When your bot is built, give it a name and place it in one of ten environments such as undersea, tropical island, space, and disco dance floor (fans of Lots of Bots will recognize the scenery). Once situated, the bot will then come to life, happily bouncing, beeping, sproinging, and whirring away indefinitely. All the bots you’ve created can be saved to revisit—even rebuild—later, or emailed to a friend.

The uncredited child narrator reading the text’s sing-songy rhymed couplets (“We’ll need a head to go on top, so go, go, go. No time to stop!”) is overly cutesy for my taste, but kids will be too focused on the robots to pay him much mind. With its quirky bots, fun sound effects, clear instructions, and simple navigation, this app will hold up for several play-throughs. For iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch; $0.99 in the App Store.

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In the living room, Daniel plays with a toy doctor’s kit, which includes a stethoscope, an otoscope (“that tickles!”), and a hypodermic needle (“grr—that stings! But then it goes away”).  In the bathroom, where we “wash, brush, and flush,” users can wash Daniel’s paws and pop bubbles in the sink, brush his teeth,  put toilet paper into the toilet and flush it, and place his stuffed animal Tigey on the potty.

The most involved of the three locations is Daniel’s bedroom, where users help him prepare for bed with the comfortable routines and accoutrements of bedtime: blankie and Tigey, a lullaby, and a bedtime story called Superheroes Go to Bed Too. Users can also darken the sky outside Daniel’s window, turn the lamp on and off, and open and close his bedroom door.

Helpful Daniel offers clear, non-condescending instructions for interactivity throughout. An additional sticker section lets users customize the three scenes from inside Daniel’s home and a view of the neighborhood.

While the app is cute and well-intentioned, there’s not a lot to it. I would have liked to progress chronologically through more of Daniel’s daily routine, and I hope that future apps will explore more of Daniel Tiger’s neighborhood outside his home. Available for iPad, iPod Touch; $1.99.

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Five friends—feeling they “need something different”—secretly challenge the status quo and build the alphabet through a long process of trial and error. The other Numberlys are initially shocked when these experiments come to light, but celebrate when the introduction of the alphabet also brings color (and jellybeans!) to their lives.

our heroes

Some parts of the app function like a movie, automatically advancing the narration and film-caliber animation from page to page. Other sections require user interaction; when and where to touch is indicated with red icons glowing against the gray backgrounds. The bulk of the app invites users to help the Numberlys construct letters by tapping and swiping their device. The letters are formed in various whimsical, often mechanical ways: the Numberlys (usually rotund #3) jump on shapes as though on trampolines to burst them, direct falling numbers against gears to chip off pieces, and wind cranks to pull shapes apart. Producing each letter of the alphabet gets a little long, but turning off tutorials once you’ve got the hang of the activities helps pick up the pace.

Occasionally the text strains to include the featured letter(s), as when the letter U “take[s] considerable ‘umph’ to unfurl.” In other instances the text is unrelated to the means of creating the letter, e.g., the text “A bit of jujitsu at just the right juncture would readjust the I into something more jaunty” introduces the letter J, when to form the J users actually shoot Numberlys like human cannon balls at the letter I .

I wasn’t a fan of the narrator’s faux-German accent, but found the Numberlys themselves (who speak in long strings of numbers, inflected with plenty of emotion and personality) charming. Excellent sound effects and an epic score add to the app’s cinematic feel.

The app is user-friendly; access the settings menu at any point during the story to turn narration, music, all sound, or the activity tutorials on or off. A turning gear in the menu allows users to select from thumbnails of the action on each screen and easily navigate through the narrative. The tutorials preceding each activity are brief and helpful.

There are a few logic gaps in the story—how do the number-minded Numberlys think up the letters’ sounds and names? why does a number-based reality make food unpalatable and the world colorless? what is the connection between letters and color—not to mention jellybeans?—but users will be having too much fun to care. Visit the official website for making-of videos. Available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; $5.99 in the App Store.

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Several YA books, especially Francisco X. Stork’s Marcelo and the Real World and Katherine Erskine’s Mockingbird, deal stirringly with the realities of Asperger’s. But—not to point fingers at many well-meaning authors who have attempted to address this tough topic—this is the first picture book I’ve seen that’s a story lending insight into the complexities and nuances of ASD, rather than an overly didactic teaching tool.

Reynolds depicts scenes familiar to many a kid coping with ASD in sparse, simple text: “They are there. I am here.” is accompanied by a gulf of white space between a group of kids playing and one boy who just looks, well, confused.

And he is: despite his loneliness, he has no idea what to do to connect with his peers. Ultimately he’s distracted by a paper sailing by. Befriending the paper (“No worries, friend. I am here.”), he folds it into a paper airplane and sends it off. When it returns, it is in the hand of a girl who approaches, ready for friendship.

I love this book. I love, love, love this book. I love it because the boy finds a way to connect, and because it really isn’t so hard for him, after all. I love it because the girl actually wants to be friends, because the pair have found a common interest and not because an adult has explained that she must be tolerant of other kids’ “differences.” I love the airy lines and soft pastels of Reynolds’s  art, his effective use of white space and the natural separation of the gutter.

And as the parent of a child with Asperger’s, I love it because it speaks to my son, to his brother who must deal with him every day, to me and my husband, who don’t understand what it’s like to be him, try as we might. Reynolds manages to speak to us simply and beautifully, without needing many words at all.

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Kenny’s Window written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 1956
For the first time Maurice Sendak’s distinctive sketches accompany his own text. Together they have created a  little boy’s unique world blended of the reality inside and outside his window and the make-believe of his  dreams. Kenny moves in and out of these dreams in wonderfully childlike fashion. In a dream he found a garden. “Half . . . was filled with yellow morning and the other with dark green night” and there was a four-legged rooster  who gave him a paper with seven questions. It is the business of answering these that makes the story, one it is  impossible to outline, for all the episodes are different. Kenny hears a horse on the roof—you can, ” if you know  how to listen in the night “; he takes a sudden trip to Switzerland to find an ” only goat “; he plays and talks with  his toys and his dog. In mood and expression and inner meanings it is all fragile and poetic. The quiet tans and  greys of the drawings effectively suggest nighttime and dream worlds, while their lines bring out humor in the  action.
—Virginia Haviland, from the April 1956 Horn Book Magazine

Where the Wild Things Are written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 1963
This vibrant picture book in luminous, understated full color has proved utterly engrossing to children with  whom it has been shared. As well as the pictorial grotesqueries — both deliciously monstrous and  humorous — they love the idea of a small boy, punished by isolation for his naughty “wildness,” dreaming up  hideous wild things to whom he sails away in a private boat, taming them and then becoming their king. The  situation is entirely composed and childlike—the boy treats them to going to bed without their supper. Then, of  course, he sails back home to find his supper, still hot, waiting for him. A sincere, perceptive contribution which  bears repeated examination.
—Virginia Haviland, from the April 1964 Horn Book Magazine

Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 1967
A daring imagination has woven a simple rhyme into a complex and brilliantly original tale. Jennie the Sealyham  ” . . . had everything. She slept on a round pillow upstairs and a square pillow downstairs. She had her own comb  and brush, two different bottles of pills, eyedrops, eardrops, a thermometer, and for cold weather a red wool  sweater. . . . She even had a master who loved her.” But Jennie the philosopher, convinced that “there must be   more to life than having everything,” packed her black leather bag and went forth into the world. Discovering the World Mother Goose Theatre, she tried to be hired as its leading lady, but was sent away to gain  “experience.” The word was new to Jennie, who confidently trotted off, letting gluttony lead her from one  gastronomic adventure to another. Jennie’s first encounter was with a feline milkman; then she became  nursemaid to a ferocious baby and saved both Baby and herself from the jaws of a lion. Finally, considerably  more sophisticated, she played the lead in the World Mother Goose Theatre’s sparkling production of Higglety Pigglety Pop! The fantasy is ordered and controlled, full of allusion, wisdom, and flashes of wit. Forty children  sat spellbound one day as the book was read aloud; but for an individual reader the story is enormously  extended by the pictures, each one a masterpiece of impeccable drawing, restraint, and emotional depth.
—Ethel L. Heins, from the February 1968 Horn Book Magazine

In the Night Kitchen written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 1970
As in Where the Wild Things Are, the author-illustrator tells a simple story of a young child running the gamut of a psychological fantasy, until he returns to everyday reality. Disturbed by “a racket in the night,” Mickey “fell  through the dark, out of his clothes . . . into the Night Kitchen.” Unresisting, he was mixed into the batter of a  cake by three monstrous, yet comical cooks dressed in white and only came to himself when the cake was about  to be put into the oven. From then on, Mickey decided that he was not a mere ingredient, and escaping in an  airplane of dough, which he had hastily constructed, “he flew up . . . over the top of the Milky Way in the Night  Kitchen” and diving into a gigantic white bottle full of milk, he was able to supply the bakers with the  ingredient — the milk — that they needed. Joyful and triumphant, Mickey returned to his bed. Accompanying the  story in the form of an elaborate obbligato is the vision of a city—obviously New York—transformed by night  into an interestingly composed collection of labeled bottles, boxes, and jars, some topped with utensils  decoratively finial-like. The receptacles are pierced by lighted windows, and the sky above them is  star-spangled. The transformed city, looking like the flat backdrop found in old vaudeville performances, becomes the eerie setting for the Night Kitchen. The line drawings of the juxtaposed geometric forms are washed with subtly darkened tones of delicate color, and the bold whites and yellows add an element of luminosity; in strong contrast are the caricatured red-nosed cooks; the crude, loppy airplane made of dough; and Mickey himself, with large measuring cup on his head, looking like something out of Brueghel. The story is carried forward pictorially by a skillful adaptation of the comic-strip format. The pages are frequently divided—into three parts as well as into two, horizontally as well as vertically—and occasionally spill over into double spreads. Only adults will recognize the advertisements and hardware contemporary with the artist’s childhood, although some children may recognize the genesis of the Night Kitchen from the commercial slogan “Baked while you sleep.” And psychologists — and others — will discover where subconscious elements may appear to impinge on storytelling and picturization. It will not, however, be the first time in the history of mankind that a work of art will have had a disturbing effect.
—Paul Heins, from the February 1971 Horn Book Magazine

Outside Over There written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, Harper, 1981
Of his “self-styled picture-book trilogy” Maurice Sendak says, “‘They are all variations on the same theme: how children master various feelings—anger, boredom, fear, frustration, jealousy—and manage to come to grips with the realities of their lives.’” Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen (both Harper) are boldly conceived fantasies, but in the long-awaited third volume the artist-writer pushes the frontier of reality farther back and moves into the realm of the fairy tale. The setting of the book is eighteenth-century rural—pastoral, really—appropriate for a story that reverberates with overtones of Grimm, Mozart, and German romantic poetry. “‘My stories come in bits and pieces of memories that don’t seem related for a very long time . . . . But something in me determines they will be related.’”

“When Papa was away at sea, / and Mama in the arbor, / Ida played her wonder horn / to rock the baby still—/ but never watched.” Behind the girl’s back, infant goblins clambered in through the window and kidnapped her baby sister, leaving a changeling made of ice. But Ida climbed out of the window and, now aloft, whirled away in hot pursuit—but in the wrong direction. At last she heard, magically, “her Sailor Papa’s song” telling her to turn around and “‘catch those goblins with a tune.’” Tumbling down to the little creatures, she first captivated them by playing her horn; then, after dancing the five goblins into a frenzy, she found the real baby—her sister—”crooning and clapping as a baby should” and carried her home to safety.

Outside Over There — a book for all ages — is living testimony of the artist’s view of the picture book as “‘a beautiful, poetic form.’” The story is haunting and evocative; the artwork mature and masterly. Although Sendak has never produced anything like the new book, echoes of his previous work will be perceived: a preoccupation with the transformational quality of windows, through which the goblins arrive and depart; Ida’s floating in the air, which recalls the levitating child in such books as Macdonald’s The Light Princess, Jarrell’s Fly by Night (both Farrar), Ruth Krauss’s Charlotte and the White Horse, and her I Want to Paint My Bathroom Blue (both Harper); and most of all, his magnificent obsession with babies, whom he has never portrayed with more truth and beauty.

Despite Sendak’s long, painstaking labors with the writing, the story is more fully realized in the illustrations than in the three-hundred-fifty-word text, slightly elliptical and a bit idiosyncratic with its occasional touches of rhythm and rhyme. For the paintings show the severely disciplined work of a modem master and implicitly acknowledge the lineage of his art: the vistas and composition of classical painting; the fantastic, almost mystical landscapes (like those he did in black and white for Randall Jarrell’s books) influenced by the nineteenth-century artists he admires so much; the fully refined, dazzling technique; the subtle gradations of color. The more it is enjoyed, the more the book yields up its secrets: For instance the mysterious little cottage is actually the pavilion in which Mozart composed most of The Magic Flute; Ida’s drapery in flight is astonishingly reminiscent of El Greco; and the faceless robed and hooded goblins bear an uncanny resemblance to the statues on fifteenth-century Burgundian grave monuments.
—Ethel L. Heins, from the June 1981 Horn Book Magazine

Dear Mili written by Wilhelm Grimm, trans. by Ralph Manheim, illus. by Maurice Sendak, Michael di Capua/Farrar, 1988
In 1983 the discovery of a new story, written in 1816 by one of the foremost contributors to the canons of folklore, aroused international interest. Five years later, that story, set in picture book format, is translated into an artistic statement by an illustrator whose reputation is equally acclaimed. Whatever the tale’s origin, Its genesis in legends of the saints is immediately recognizable in structure, style, and content. Preceded by a letter, indicating that the story was written by Wilhelm Grimm to comfort a little girl he had never met, the text follows the direct plot line of the traditional tale. An innocent little girl, the sole remaining child of a poor widow, is sent by her mother into the dark forest to protect the girl from the imminent dangers of a terrible war. She is sheltered by the kindly Saint Joseph and accompanied at play by her guardian angel. At the end of three days she is told that she must go back to her parent but is given a rosebud as a talisman that she will return to the loving care of the paternal saint. When she arrives at her former home, she learns that thirty years, not three days have passed as she is reunited with her mother, now aged and feeble. After a happy and peaceful evening together, they retire. The next morning the neighbors find that the two have died. In translating the story into visual images, the artist has elected to underscore elements of universality through use of a personal idiom for a particular interpretation. The result is provocative, impressive, and complex: landscapes hearkening back to the realism of Jacob van Ruisdael and his followers are dramatically overlaid or interspersed with expressionistic elements from a later, more emotionally flamboyant period. The precision of execution is nineteenth century; the perspective is twentieth century, both in treatment and content. There is a theatrical quality suggested in the scenes: the detailed backgrounds are like stage sets; the postures of the characters recall the movements of ballet figures; a roseate glow, like stage lighting, suffuses happier scenes. Familiar Sendak motifs appear in another and more terrifying context, for he has transformed a story from 1816 into a commentary on the Holocaust: the flames behind the gathering war clouds reach out like the claws of Wild Things run amuck; in a dramatic double-page spread, the child, a reincarnation of Ida from Outside Over There (Harper), sits dejectedly in the forest, leaning against a Golem-like tree; a recumbant Mozart conducts a chorus of old-young children who observe the little girl as she wanders happily in the serenity of Saint Joseph’s garden, bordered by ancient tombstones, one of which bears the Star of David. Ultimately, we are presented with a picture of innocence preserved but childhood lost—a theme as presented quite likely too intricate for the traditional picture story and picture folk-tale  audience. In all probability the true audience for Dear Mili is comprised of the adults who discovered the art of the picture book through Sendak’s works and who will be forever indebted to the artist for his particular genius — however controversial it might at times appear — piquing sensibilities as it enlarges perceptions.
—Mary M. Burns, from the March/April 1989 Horn Book Magazine

We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, di Capua/HarperCollins, 1993
In his latest book, a passionate plea for social responsibility, Sendak has created some of his most gripping and powerful images for thoughtful reflection; the illustrations include references to homelessness, AIDS, famine, and violence. Adult fans of Sendak’s work will be challenged to decode and identify references in the pictures — from New York landmarks to a Mozart-like angel, and from classic pieces of religious art to images from the Holocaust. The message about the need to care is not just for adults, because young people see, know, and worry about more than we realize. Honest and open discussion of this book with the help of an imaginative and caring adult could help speak to children’s secret fears. In the end, however, the message is ambivalent. Though the news headlines on the cover read “Kid Elected President” and “Children Triumph,” we know that children are politically powerless; and, th0ugh Jack and Guy are going to care for the abandoned child, they are still living in a dump. The story in the pictures bears only a slight relationship to the text of the two little-known nursery rhymes which run through the pages. In a setting of a dump, where figures of scantily-clad homeless urchins shelter in shacks and cardboard boxes, a pathetic third-world child asks questioningly for help as Jack and Guy glance at him over their shoulders and tell him to “beat it!” When two terrifyingly large rats steal the child and all the kittens in the area, the characters follow after them, and Jack and Guy are challenged to play cards for “the kittens and the poor little kid.” The rats hold the trump card, and the kittens and the child are carted off to St. Paul’s Bakery and Orphanage. The moon, whose expressive face has been responding emotionally to all the preceding actions, now looms large in anger and snatches up Jack and Guy, dropping them down next to the crematoria-like Bakery and Orphanage, where they find the little child. Transforming herself into a gigantic cat, the moon eliminates the rats, rescues the kittens, and carries them, along with Jack, Guy, and the child, back to their dump, where all are shown sleeping peacefully together. The double-page spreads with large images right at the surface pull us into the action and bombard us with emotion. Though readers will be alternately moved and repelled, this book should be studied and discussed. A truly significant addition to Sendak’s body of work.
—Hanna B. Zeiger, from the January/February 1994 Horn Book Magazine

Bumble-Ardy written and illus. by Maurice Sendak, di Capua/HarperCollins, 2011
Bumble-Ardy made its first appearance back in 1971 as an animated short on Sesame Street featuring a boy who invited pigs to his ninth birthday party. Forty years later, the story makes its picture book debut, and Sendak has made some significant changes: all the characters are now pigs, and a prologue describes how Bumble-Ardy’s family neglected him for his first eight years and then “gorged, and got ate.”

Adopted by his sweet aunt, Adeline, Bumble-Ardy has been instructed not to allow anyone in while she’s at work, even though it’s his birthday, but he’s already sent out party invitations to nine grubby swine. Although he is defying authority, his own invitations impose more rules than Aunt Adeline ever would, including the directive that the guests should be neither late nor early, bring gifts, and come in costume.

At Bumble-Ardy’s party, it seems, everyone must come dressed in their own version of a wolf suit; like Max, they are ready to make mischief of one kind or another, with all the freedom anonymity promises. Some costumes are subtle references to Sendak’s earlier work—wild things, night-kitchen chefs, Really Rosie, and even, as if Sendak is taunting his critics, the all-around alligator “imitating Indians.” Some costumes pay homage to the work of others, including Dr. Seuss, William Steig, and Garth Williams—all of whom disturbed critics at one time or another. In fact, the two-year-old Bumble-Ardy is shown before the title page reading a newspaper with the banner headline “We Read Banned Books.”

Interestingly, two characters recur throughout: Death, represented by a macabre skeleton; and a prim and proper lady who wears a sheriff’s badge. Neither one steps in to stop the fun, although it feels as though one of them easily could at any minute. Amusing as it might be for children’s literature buffs to identify all the allusions, the book as a whole speaks to the sensibilities of young children in the same way Sendak’s earlier classics Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Outside Over There did. But the art itself is more reminiscent of later works, such as Brundibar and The Nutcracker, that draw as much from his experience in designing stage sets and costumes as from his picture book illustrations. Sendak deals with the psychological reality of a good time gone bad, of anarchy unleashed, all the while acknowledging that breaking the rules can be fun, and perhaps even necessary, whether one is a child or an artist.
—Kathleen T. Horning, from the September/October 2011 Horn Book Magazine

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The illustrator’s animation work is obvious in his congenial cartoony style, and it’s no surprise that Bizzy Bear now stars in a Nosy Crow app, Bizzy Bear on the Farm (December; based on the board book, Fun on the Farm). The app features Bizzy on a visit to Sunny Farm, where he helps Farmer Joe (a tiger) with such chores as feeding the pigs, putting lambs in their pen (“Those lambs are very jumpy!”), gathering eggs, and putting the tractor away.

The app has the standard Nosy Crow features, including pulsing blue dots that signal users to tap the screen and make a character speak or make something happen. You can choose to read the text and speech-balloon dialogue yourself or be read to by a cast of seemingly professionally trained British children. Their perky voices are a good match for the perky text, but the kids start to sound pesky after a while (again, kids won’t notice). The upbeat background music adds to the sunny atmosphere, as do bird songs and other animal noises.*

The app is simple enough for toddlers to use along with a grownup and engaging enough to hold their attention over multiple viewings.

*NB: I’ve been asked by nearby co-workers to add a warning about the musical quacking ducks. Bizzy may “like to hear the ducks quacking,” but they seem to make more sensitive (on edge?) adults go quackers.

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