The Horn Book » starred reviews

Review of Ask the Passengers

Jennifer M. Brabander — Wed, 01 May 2013 14:00:17 +0000

Ask the Passengers
by A. S. King
High School Little, Brown 295 pp.
10/12 978-0-316-19468-6 $17.99
Astrid would be the quintessential Q-for-Questioning girl in her high school’s LGBTQ support group if her small-town, small-minded school had such a thing — and the gay question is only one of many weighing her down. When her humanities teacher explains that learning the Socratic method “will be a time of asking questions and not rushing to answer them…a time of thinking and not knowing,” Astrid muses, “Perfect for me…I am the not knowing queen.” Socrates himself starts making periodic appearances, visible only to Astrid (who calls him Frank). Frequently driven outside by her nuthouse of a family, Astrid reclines on a picnic table and watches airplanes. She sends her questions and her love (because “it feels good to love a thing and not expect anything back”) to the passengers; each time, readers get a glimpse of a passenger’s own struggle with the question Astrid has asked — plus his or her satisfying epiphany, reached after experiencing a sudden sensation of love. As in Printz Honor recipient King’s previous novels, including Everybody Sees the Ants (rev. 1/12), these moments not only add humor to the book’s societal critique but also provide vivid images that heighten the story’s emotion. Astrid ultimately decides not to live a lie, as her closeted best friend Kristina has done for years, but wonders whether she can handle people’s reactions; she can (evident when she introduces girlfriend Dee to her family), and the book ends with Astrid’s skyward message to a young lesbian being flown to “gay conversion camp”: “Stay strong.” It’s a fine conclusion to a furiously smart and funny coming-out-and-of-age novel.

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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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Horn Book Magazine March/April starred reviews

Roger Sutton — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:12:27 +0000

The following books will receive starred reviews in the March/April issue of the Horn Book Magazine. Incidentally, this is also our annual special issue; the theme this year is “Different Drummers” with a ground-breaking (for us, anyway) cover by Paul Zelinsky (whose absence from the recent Caldecott announcement marks a Dark Day in that award’s history).

One Gorilla; by Anthony Browne (Candlewick)

Have You Seen My New Blue Socks?; by Eve Bunting; illus. by Sergio Ruzzier (Clarion)

My Father’s Arms Are a Boat by Stein Erik Lunde; trans. from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson; illus. by Øyvind Torseter (Enchanted Lion)

The Dark; by Lemony Snicket; illus. by Jon Klassen (Little, Brown)

Benjamin Bear in “Bright Ideas!”; by Philippe Coudray; trans. from the French by Leigh Stein (Toon/Candlewick)

Maggot Moon; by Sally Gardner; illus. by Julian Crouch (Candlewick)

Penny and Her Marble; by Kevin Henkes (Greenwillow)

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass; by Meg Medina (Candlewick)

Midwinterblood; by Marcus Sedgwick (Roaring Brook)

Hoop Genius: How a Desperate Teacher and a Rowdy Gym Class Invented Basketball; by John Coy; illus. by Joe Morse (Carolrhoda)

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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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Review of Pinned

Susan Dove Lempke — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:30:08 +0000

Pinned
by Sharon G. Flake
Middle School, High School    Scholastic    231 pp.
10/12    978-0-545-05718-9    $17.99
e-book ed. 978-0-545-46984-5    $17.99
Ninth-grader Autumn is great at some things — wrestling, for one; cooking, for another. Reading is not one of her skills, due in part to multiple moves during her early childhood and parents who also don’t read well. She tells her story in a forthright, colloquial way: “I don’t wanna go to college. I wanna be a chef.” Her chapters alternate with those narrated by Adonis, whose speech is formal and whose opinion of himself is lofty: “I do not dull my light so other people will feel better about themselves.” Born without legs, Adonis manages the school wrestling team on which Autumn is the star (and the only girl). She unabashedly loves Adonis, despite his prickly superiority and oft-avowed rejection, but she doesn’t know the secret that he and her best friend, Peaches, share. Autumn and Adonis, in addition to the supporting characters — parents, teachers, and friends alike — have distinctive personalities and voices, enhancing the story’s depth and complexity. Additionally, Autumn’s viewpoint on reading (that it’s more trouble than it’s worth), along with the respect given to the sport of wrestling and the book’s touching, tentative romance, may appeal to reluctant readers.

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Review of The McElderry Book of Mother Goose

Joanna Rudge Long — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 19:00:25 +0000

The McElderry Book  of Mother Goose: Revered and Rare Rhymes
compiled by Petra Mathers;  illus. by the compiler
Primary, Intermediate    McElderry    96 pp.
8/12    978-0-689-85605-1    $21.99
e-book ed. 978-1-4424-5314-2    $12.99
Not since Leonard Marcus’s Mother Goose’s Little Misfortunes (rev. 11/90) has there been such a delightfully idiosyncratic selection. Drawn mostly from the canonical Opies (see “Sources”), Mathers’s fifty-seven entries include many lesser-known or longer rhymes (some “sad and scary”), all nicely leavened with such familiar nonsense as “Hey Diddle Diddle.” Here are puzzles (“I Saw a Fishpond All on Fire”); tongue twisters and verbal nonsense (“The Great Panjandrum”); stories tragic (“poor babes in the wood”) and comic (a peddler sells a woman “the piece he’d purloined” from her own petticoat). Several are lyrical (“seventeen times as high as the moon”) or mysterious (“tell my mother I shall never come back”). Vocabulary is unstinted (counting down “Ten Little Penguins”: “One got in chancery”). The delicate wit of Mathers’s watercolors and the generous spaces where her characters appear enable creative interpretation—Cock Robin’s funeral is a cooperative venture amongst the birds; Hector Protector, “dressed all in green,” is green himself: he’s a frog. Dr. Fell’s disgruntled patient, a dog, has a bandaged foot and a plastic Elizabethan collar. Mathers’s expressive figures, in many moods, are effectively counterpointed by touches of dramatic, or pensive, landscape. Pair this with the Opie/Sendak I Saw Esau (rev. 9/92) for a feast of traditional rhymes.

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Review of Dodger

Sarah Ellis — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:01:40 +0000

Dodger
by Terry Pratchett
Middle School    Harper/HarperCollins    360 pp.
10/12    978-0-06-200949-4    $17.99
Library ed. 978-0-06-200950-0    $18.89
e-book ed. 978-0-06-219015-4    $9.99
Who would have the skill, the sensibility, and the sass to put Charles Dickens into a novel and then proceed to write that novel in full-octane Dickensian style? Terry Pratchett, of course. Like his namesake in Oliver Twist, Dodger is a street urchin (“if you wanted to be a successful urchin you needed to study how to urch”) who makes his way in early-Victorian London as a tosher, a sewer gleaner. One rainy night he gallantly rescues a young woman who is being beaten up, and a complicated plot is set in motion. The cast includes Dickens, minor European royalty, Disraeli, Sweeney Todd, Charles Babbage, a philanthropist named Angela Burdett-Coutts (who alone is worth the price of admission), and Queen Victoria herself—but none of them upstages Dodger, a young man on the make and on the brink, with his own highly developed moral code. His original take on the world and his deft way with language make him a wonderful guide through sewers, morgues, theaters, drawing rooms, pea-soup fogs, and barbershops and a story of espionage, romance, action, skullduggery, double-dealing, and heroism. It’s a glittering conjuring act, but there’s real heart here, too, as Dodger’s horizons expand to include nature, art, and love.

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Review of Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

Betty Carter — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:00:06 +0000

Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
by Robert Byrd; illus. by the author
Intermediate Dial 40 pp.
9/12 978-0-8037-3749-5 $17.99
With a jacket showing Benjamin Franklin as a cross between a mad scientist and a superhero standing amid wild lightning bolts and surrounded by all manner of electrical devices, this book shimmers with excitement, begging to be read. Byrd divides Franklin’s life into seventeen often whimsically labeled double-page spreads, beginning with his childhood and ending with his death. Two such spreads (“Coaxing Sparks from the Sky” and “The Wonderful Effects of Points”) deal with his fascination with electricity, with the remainder covering topics ranging from his ideas for social progress (such as a lending library and fire department) to his diplomatic roles before, during, and after the American Revolution. An informative, exploratory, nonpandering text (“Franklin’s expertise lay in making the most of the printed page, delighting those who agreed with him, and disarming those who did not; always keeping all parties anticipating his next move”) is set amid an attractive page layout. Nicely developed and designed spot art and larger illustrations on every page serve as internal end notes, explaining tangential information, giving more detail to certain ideas, and providing a visual record of Ben’s life and times. An author’s note, timeline, bibliography, and recommended readings complete the book.

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Gary D. Schmidt on What Came from the Stars

Deirdre Baker — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 16:20:36 +0000

From the September/October issue of The Horn Book Magazine:
Reviewer Deirdre F. Baker asks What Came from the Stars author Gary D. Schmidt about the function of elevated language in the novel. Read the full starred review of What Came from the Stars here.

Deirdre F. Baker: For the book’s fantasy elements, you hark back to biblical, Old English, and Tolkienesque language, imagery, and style. How do these inform the story’s contemporary-realism scenes?

Gary D. Schmidt: What we know about our world—and ourselves—is mediated through language, so when I decided to try a fantasy, it seemed right to enter that alternate world through a fitting medium. And since I wanted a high, noble, epic world for some chapters, I turned to Old English, which, as C. S. Lewis rightly noted, sounds like castles coming out of your mouth—an apt contrast to Tommy’s everyday life. The two languages’ representations of their worlds create the conflict—which is echoed in the story’s events.

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Review of What Came from the Stars

Deirdre Baker — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 14:20:48 +0000

What Came from the Stars
by Gary D. Schmidt
Middle School Clarion 293 pp.
9/12 978-0-547-61213-3 $16.99 g
Schmidt brings high heroic fantasy and contemporary realism together in this novel of a bereaved family. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, Tommy grieves for his mother, who died eight months ago. And on a distant planet in “Weoruld Ethelim,” Young Waeglim invests all the Art of the destroyed Valorim—his culture—into a chain necklace, sending it into the universe to keep it safe from evil Lord Mondus. When the chain falls through worlds and lands in Tommy’s lunchbox, it brings Tommy vivid memories of the Valorim—and gives him superhuman abilities, including the power to create paintings that move and to conjure alien creatures from sand. But Lord Mondus wants the chain himself, and Tommy is caught up in a fight that mingles humdrum real estate chicanery with cosmic greed; the school bully with an epic warrior; and human consolation with celestial triumph. Schmidt gives us two parallel stories, one told in the formal, archaic style of epic Tolkienesque fantasy, with Old English and biblical resonances; the other in down-to-earth contemporary language. Gradually, the two styles merge, underscoring that inner change is itself the stuff of classic heroism. The life and power of Art is central to this artful interplanetary story in which a boy misses his mother “like he would miss the planet.”

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