Offill, J. & Carpenter, N. (2011). 11 Experiments That Failed. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books. Appetizer: A curious troublemaker goes through the scientific process to answer wonderful questions; like if a kid can survive on snowballs and catsup, if dogs like to be covered in glitter, if a piece of bologna will fly like a frisbee or if seedlings will grow from perfume instead of water. The results of her experiments, as you can probably gather from the picturebook's title, are not exactly ideal. But the scientific process must continue!
The illustrations of 11 Experiments That Failed use the same mixed media of photographs and drawings that are featured in the author and illustrator's other book, 17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore!
While I imagine that some would argue that this book could encourage troublemaking, I prefer to think that it encourages curiosity. Adding awesomeness to that sense of fun and curiosity is the fact that all of the questions the young scientist explores are structured in the scientific method. This structure makes this picturebook ideal to share with students just learning about the scientific process in an accessible way.
I'm actually teaching a literacy course right now and am bringing the book in to describe logical intelligence.
Here's a nice gift for dads and sons who are already hooked on Star Wars.
Appetizer: Containing 60-ish illustrations by cartoonist and father Jeffrey Brown, Darth Vader and Son shares imagined portraits between Darth Vader and a four-year-old Luke Skywalker.
Here's the introduction from the book in Star Wars style, of course:
As a long time Star Wars fan, I was really excited when I first saw this book mentioned on the internetz. As with The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, I needed nothing more than a glance at the cover to know I needed the book now.
While still enjoyable, when my copy arrived and I read Darth Vader and Son, I was a little disappointed to see that there wasn't a cohesive plot throughout the picturebook. Rather the book shows vignettes of real father-toddler moments with a Star Wars twist.
My favorite illustrations tended to be the ones that were twists on famous lines from the movie series:
Darth Vader and Son is a fun quick read that parents can appreciate. In terms of young Star Wars fans, I have no doubt that there are four to seven-year-olds who will love staring at and examining some of the illustrations. It could be a very powerful experience jumpstarting some wee-little ones' imaginations to see such a young Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars universe:
Also, on a slight tangent, according to his mini-autobiography on his website, Jeffrey Brown and I hail from the same hometown: Grand Rapids, Mi. *waves at a fellow Grand Rapidian*
Handler, D. & Kalman, M. (2011). Why We Broke Up. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
354 pages.
Why We Broke Up isn't your typical book. Instead of the usual author blurbs describing how awesome a book is, the back cover is covered (haha) with quotations from famous YA authors (like Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Sarah Zarr, MT Anderson, Carolyn Mackler, David Levithan etc.) describing the first time their hearts were broken.
What a wonderful touch to demonstrate that 1. a potential heartbroken reader is not alone and that 2. such pain is survivable. Because that's what Why We Broke Up is: an honest look at the problems and joys of a relationship between people from different cliques.
Appetizer: Min has arranged to deliver a heavy box to Ed's front door. The box contains everything from their less than two-month (Oct. 5-Nov. 12) relationship. Everything.
As Min writes about the meaning of each object, the details of her and Ed's star-crossed relationship and why they broke up is revealed.
Including paintings of each object, Why We Broke Up is a loooong, slooooooow post-mordem of the relationship between 11th grade, movie-buff Min and her 12th grade, basketball co-captain, Ed.
From the beginning of their relationship, the two had almost nothing in common. As their relationship develops--both emotionally and physically--this tension mounts and the novel serves as a very honest look at a doomed relationship.
The more I read Why We Broke Up, the more I was reminded of the Youtube video Dramatic Reading of a Break-Up Letter:
And not just because of the video's similar subject or the fact that the entire novel is told in the second person, with Ed being the intended audience. Min's run-on sentences (which I occasionally stumbled over) started to remind me of the grammatical slip-ups in the above video. Admittedly, Min's voice has much more poetry to it. Plus, Min can spell.
I enjoyed Why We Broke Up a lot, but it didn't rock my world. While there are still some darkly humorous touches one could expect from the author of A Series of Unfortunate Events (a bitter sixteenth birthday party, anyone?), the book wasn't as enjoyable as I would have expected. I think it was the subject matter. It's one thing to hear a brief retelling of all the hints of what contributed to the end of a relationship, it's quite another to read a 354-page play-by-play.
I was still very impressed by how honestly Handler managed to portray his female protagonist. I liked Min's references to made-up old movies. I found myself wishing some of those movies were real, because I would totally watch them. I also don't think I'd mind living in the city where Handler set Why We Broke Up. Min shopped at so many awesome and quirky stores. If I lived in this town, I'd also be very poor. Due to all of the shopping. (The more I reflect on this, the more I start to realize that this novel has almost a quirky Gilmore Girls feel to it.)
The mystery of what happened between Ed and Min did carry me through. I also liked seeing all of the paintings. Plus, there was a lot of wonderful dialogue. Yeah, the witty dialogue between Min and her friends definitely made the book worth-while.
Also, I want to frame some of the artwork from the novel and put it on my walls.
Dinner Conversation:
"Dear Ed,
In a sec you'll hear a thunk. At your front door, the one nobody uses. It'll rattle the hinges a bit when it lands, because it's so weighty and important, a little jangle along with the thunk, and Joan will look up from whatever she's cooking...You won't even know or hear what's being dumped at your door. You won't even know why it even happened." (p. 1)
"I'm telling you why we broke up, Ed. I'm writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much." (p. 1)
"Every last souvenir of the love we had, the prizes and the debris of this relationship, like the glitter in the gutter when the parade has passed, all the everything and whatnot kicked to the curb. I'm dumping the whole box back into your life, Ed, every item of you and me." (p. 3)
"'He asked you out. Ed Slaterton.'
"He's not going to call," I said. "It was just a party."
"Don't put yourself down," Jordan said. "You have all the qualities Ed Slaterton looks for in his millions of girlfriends, come to think of it. You have two legs."
"And you're a carbon-based life-form," Lauren said.
"Stop," I said. "He's not--he's just a guy." (p. 21)
"I gave you an adventure, Ed, right in front of you but you never saw it until I showed you, and that's why we broke up." (p. 31)
Over the last several months, I'd been thinking about famed picturebook author Maurice Sendak.
It bagan with the two-part Grim Colberty Tales on the Colbert Report. I both admired Sendak for how brutally honest he was and feared ever meeting him and falling under his scrutiny.
So, after hearing of his passing, I bought two books in his honor.
The first was his recently published Bumble-Ardy.
It's the rhyming story of a pig named Buble-ardy who has never had a real birthday party. So, when he goes to live with his Aunt Adeline and turns nine, he decides to have a costume part.
To be honest, I wasn't crazy about this picturebook. While the rhymes were fun and the illustrations were delightfully old-school, nothing about the story really struck me.
The other book I bought, while not exactly appropriate for children *cough* a page on stripper poles *cough*, did prove to be an enjoyable tribute:
I Am a Pole (and So Can You!) is the book that Stephen Colbert published after his interviews with Sendak.
From the "Caldecott Eligible" sticker on the cover, Sendak's blurb of "The sad thing is, I like it!," an illustration of him to the illustrations that Sendak and Colbert made together prove to be fitting tributes to Sendak's personality.
Anthony, J. & Corral, R. (2012). Chopsticks. New York: Razorbill.
No page numbers....but, I'd guess it's more than 300 pages. Since most of the stories is told in images or small bits of text, it's a great read.
Appetizer: In December of 2009, 17-year-old Glory Fleming, a piano prodigy, disappears. But, much of the story of Chopsticks focuses on 18 months earlier, when Glory was still performing and an Argentinian boy named Francisco moves in next door to her house on Usher street in the Bronx.
A romance soon begins.
But the question is, can their romance survive as Francisco struggles with racism and bullying at school and Glory with her controlling father/manager who insists on touring. Can the two teens find a way to be together?
This novel is shared predominantly in images, with much of the plot being pieced together by found objects like newspaper clippings, programs, family albums, text messages, etc.
And it is wonderfully done. A relatively simple story, I found that a lot of details--like Francisco's anger with his ESL homework (pictured below) to add deeper layers and criticism.
I also loved the different forms of communication. Throughout the text messages Francisco and Glory exchange are urls to youtube videos that, while a little inconvenient to set down the book and type into my laptop, provide a lot of secondary depth. I liked the references to Sylvia Plath and Pablo Neruda. The book also includes playlists of songs that the two exchange, really providing a lot of focus on music. This story does an amazing job of using a lot of different forms to tell a story. I approve. I approve strongly.
Plus, there's an app version of the book. (But alas, after already spending $20 on the book, I'm too cheap to spend another $7 on the app. Somebody else buy the app and tell me what you think!)
If a teacher wanted to find a way to include Chopsticks into a classroom, he or she could focus on looking at a section of a text as an anthropologist, studying a person or culture through the objects they have.
Selznick, B. (2011). Wonderstruck. New York: Scholastic Press.
629 pages.
Appetizer: Set in Gunflint Lake, Minnesoa in 1977, Ben is missing his mother who recently died in a car accident. During a stormy night he walks to his old home from his aunt's house. Among his mother's stuff, he finds her rainy day fund and a book called Wonderstruck with a hand-written note that mentions a man named Danny and a bookstore bookmark of a store in New York City. With these few clues, Ben hopes that he may finally find and know his father. Just as he picks up the phone and try to call the number for the bookstore, lightning strikes the house and Ben's life is once again changed.
This picturebook/novel is also the story of a lonely girl named Rose in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1927. She admires an actress in a silent film named Lillian Mayhew. After learning that Lillian will be in a play in New York City, Rose decides to run away to see her.
Both of their quests will take Rose and Ben to New York City and to the American Museum of Natural History.
Ben's story is told almost entirely in text and Rose's story is told almost entirely in illustrations. Despite the differences in settings, there are moments when the tales connect and (eventually) unite.
When I began reading, I was frustrated because of the seemingly wide gaps between the two stories. Initially only images like stars and lightning connect the two. My brain was desperate for the two stories to unite. Part of what made me fall totally and completely in love with Selznick's previous giant-picturebook/novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, was the way the setting, medium and content all worked together to add meaning to the story. By the third or fourth time that I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret, I was still finding new meanings and connections among the different aspects of the story.
I can't say the same will happen with Wonderstruck.
Don't get me wrong, this novel is still impressive. It has a E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler feel to it. It just didn't *capture* me the way Selznick's Hugo Cabret did.
As a book, it does demonstrate a love of astronomy, dioramas, wolves, and museums, expresses a sense of loneliness and searching that I found very relatable and shows examples of the experience of being deaf in different times.
But still, Wonderstruck didn't capture my imagination or impress me the way The Invention of Hugo Cabret did. (Not that books should always be compared. But since these two stand alone in terms of their form, it's hard not to make comparisons.)
I'd be curious to know what some of you thought of the book, Few But Dear Readers. Am I alone in my stance?
For the time being, here's one of the early moments when the stories overlap for you to enjoy. Mary is watching a movie of a storm and Ben is in his mother's house, looking through her stuff as a storm approaches. Enjoy.
(pp. 120-126)
Dinner Conversation:
"Something hit Ben Wilson and he hopened his eyes. The wolves had been chasing him again and his heart was pounding. He sat up in the dark room and rubbed his arm. He picked up the shoe his cousin had thrown at him and dropped it on the floor.
"That hurt, Robby!" (p. 16).
"Ever since the accident, the wolves had appeared, galloping across the moonlit snow, red tongues wagging and white teeth glistening. He couldn't figure out why they were stalking him, because he used to love wolves. He and his mom had even seen one once from the front porch of their house. The wolf had looked beautiful and mysterious, like it had stepped out of a storybook" (p. 17).
"He had believed his mother when she told him he'd never be lost as long as he could find the North Star. But now that she was gone, he realized it wasn't true.
The mysterious quote from his mom's bulletin board echoed again in his mind. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" (p. 27).
"Was it days later or only a few minutes when his aunt Jenny appeared? Her eyes were red and watery. She sat on the bed and stroked his hair. He thought he could smell the food she'd been cooking at the lodge as she ran her fingers down his cheek just like his mom used to. He watched her lips move. He looked at the nurses talking to each other. His head felt like it was full of leaves. He opened his mouth to say he couldn't hear but nothing came out.
The nurse handed Aunt Jenny a piece of paper and a pen. She wrote a note and handed it to Ben. "I know you can't hear. Don't try to talk. Just lie still."
Ben's head throbbed. How did she know what he'd been thinking? "You've had an accident. You're going to be okay, but you were hit by lightning." (p. 175)
Several weeks ago I picked up the wordless picturebook Chalk by Bill Thomson. And it is amazing and imaginative. As an illustrator, Thomson amazes me with the way he shares different perspectives and shows people in motion. To see some examples of the way he powerfully portrays some young athletes you can look at a couple of the previous books that he illustrated.
He's kind of a rock star.
Chalk shares about three children out on a rainy day who discover a bag of chalk. By drawing on the wet pavement they realize that the things they draw can become real. Of course, the kids realize there can be a bit of danger to this process when they draw a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Here are a couple of the illustrations:
It's kind of like a new, shorter, wordless version of Harold and the Purple Crayon.
But what I want to focus on today, is this one image:
What a crazed-looking little girl.
I've seen similar expressions on *real* children. I don't deny that in excitement, kids make the psychopathic faces. I'm sure I've made some similar expressions of my own. (Don't post them, people who have known me since I was six. I know how to hunt you down!)
But it's so unusual to actually see such expressions on children in illustrations.
But I think 2010 is the year of the vaguely psychopathic looking child. Because when I look at this historical mystery novel (which I'll admit, I haven't read yet, but is also getting some excellent reviews. It re-imagines the youth of an amazing author), I can only assume that if this were a full-body illustration of Zora Neale Hurston or her fictional best friend, Carrie, from the story, it would reveal this girl to be wielding a knife at the reader:
Kinney, J. (2010). Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth. New York: Amulet Books.
217 pages.
Appetizer: When I think about The Ugly Truth, the fifth installment in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, I'm probably just going to refer to it as "the puberty one."
Greg seemed more concerned with aging in this book, as he had to attend a sex-ed lesson in school, received a book on puberty and a stick of deodorant gift wrapped from his mother and his father pressured him to try to take on more responsibility.
The book begins with Rowley refusing to be Greg's friend (once again). As to what they were fighting about I had no idea. I probably would have looked it up in Dog Days, but that book was all the way over there in my office at school and I was reading The Ugly Truth all the way over here in my home. So, I had to start out confused. (Side note--I'm also too lazy to check my own review for Dog Days to see if I left any hints about what happened. This is why I fail as a book blogger.)
Luckily, there was a lot of other stuff going on with Greg to keep me distracted: Greg's mother has decided to go back to school, meaning Greg, his older brother, Rodrick, and his dad have to help around the house and that they have to hire a maid (who may not be doing the best job ever).
My favorite scene was where Greg's dad had to help him with his math homework instead of his mom:
Greg also tries out for a role in an ice cream ad campaign, stays at a school overnight lock-in, have a role in a family wedding and receive "the talk" from his grandmother.
I enjoyed the book, but I have to say that my appreciation was back down to how I felt about the first two books. Greg was still a selfish character (but I'm not holding my breath for that to change. Besides, it's kind of nice to have a character who never learns his lesson). The Ugly Truth also lacked the critiques of classic children's books and authors that I had found so hilarious in a couple of the past books.
Plus, I (again) had some trouble with the way gender was constructed. When Greg's mom decided to go back to school, I was super excited. But then Greg has a conversation with another student, Chirag Gupta, and there was kind of this expectation that it's better for a mom to stay at home (p. 120). (Where are the stay-at-home dads?!) Then, *spoiler* at the end of the book, after one semester Greg's mom decides to put "her academic career "on hold" for a while and spend more time with the family" (p. 214.).
Sigh.
I know it's just one character. But there's never really been much of the way of dynamic female characters in the series (which is why they had to awkwardly insert Chloe Moretz into the movie version after her success as Hit-Girl in the movie Kick-Ass.
If only she'd still been playing the same character.
"What's that, Greg? Fregley is chasing you around his house, threatening to touch you with his booger? Well, he won't have boogers, a nose, an arm or feet to chase you with ever again after Hit-Girl is done with him."
Dinner Conversation:
"It's been almost two and a half weeks since me and my ex-best friend, Rowley Jefferson, had our big fight. To be honest with you, I thought he would've come crawling back to me by now, but for some reason, that hasn't happened.
I'm actually starting to get a little concerned, because school starts back up in a few days, and if we're gonna get this friendship back on track, something needs to happen quick" (p. 1).
"So, it's only been a few days without Mom, and things are already starting to fall apart. We've got one serious injury so far, and who knows what's in store down the road" (p. 60).
