AN INTERVIEW WITH LINDA SUE PARK ~R.1ver b ankR ev1ew . ~~~~ ---~ - ~~ --~~ ------­ of l>ook.s foi- Young -readers

Ten Great Alphabet Books

The Picture Book Redefined By Nathalie op de Beeck

John Caddy's Earth Journal

A Profile of ~anet Taylor Lisle By Christine Heppennann

The Charlotte Zolotow Award

New Books for Fall

FALL 2002 2 3>

a 74470 94662 s $5.95 US $7.95 CAN Read with someone you love

ALPHABOAT BOB Michael Chesworth Tracey Campbell Pearson "A delightful sail on the sea of "A rooster with a bit of an identity crisis language lunacy. Full of shameless takes center coop in this lighthearted wordplay and outrageous puns (the picture book about the sounds various best kind). It's insidious, contagious, animals make ... Pearson's kicky pencil­ and funny. Just what a children's and-watercolor scenes give this simple book should be." -Norton Juster barnyard tale a vibrant sense of sound $16.00 I 0-374-30244-8 I Ages 4-8 and movement." -Publishers Weekly $16.00 I 0-374-39957-3 I Ages 3--6 COMIC ADVENTURES OF BOOTS POTCH & POLLY Satoshi Kitamura William Steig "Kitamura expertly storyboards the Pictures by Jon Agee action and encloses all the written "Antisentimentalist Steig crafts a screwball narration in conversational voice Cinderella story about a couple of klutzes bubbles. With their big ears, dazed .. . As in other wacky courtships - Popeye eyes and nonplussed expressions, his and Olive come to mind - the romance is cats are anything but quick thinkers, hard to fathom, but the puckish storytelling and their neighborhood 'adventures' and artful compositions have considerable unfold at a leisurely pace that spark." -Publishers Weekly heightens the absurd humor." $16.00 I 0-374-36090-1 I Ages 4-8 -Publishers Weekly $16.00 I 0-374-31455-1 I Ages 5 up

DAHLIA Barbara McClintock * "A doll story that will win over even confirmed tomboys ... McClintock's detailed tableaux conveying the garb, architecture and furnishings of the era perfectly fit the mood of the story, their delicate lines and coloring belied by the robust action they convey. A timeless charmer." -Starred, Publishers Weekly $16.00 I 0-374-31678-3 I Ages 4-8 Frances Foster Books

Illustration by Barbara McClintock from Dnlilin FARRAR• STRAUS• GIROUX Fall 2002

contents

Essays ~ The Picture Book Redefined ...... 8 The picture book is an inherently adventurous art form. Our friends are often our angels, even By Nathalie op de Beeck when they do not see their own wings. Small Wonders ...... 16 Last fall, such a friend arrived at my Short novels for children can make a big impact. doorstep. I was lost. In the two years fol­ By Mary Lou Burket lowing my mother's death I had not been able to write or create pictures. Reviews Nothing made sense. ~ My friend arrived with a book and New Books for Fall ...... 28 began to read the great Mississippi River tale Huckleberry Finn. As he read, a quiet Features peace prevailed. The leaves falling out­ ~ side the window and the words falling r HE TEACHER'S ART E-Mailing the Wild ...... 5 through the quiet room were joined. A poet's "Earth Journal" connects readers Next we read Tom Sawyer and the falling with the natural world. leaves turned to falling snow. Moby Dick By john Caddy began in the winter and the words came of the PROFILE Janet Taylor Lisle ...... 12 up as tulips by the time Pequod's The truth is never easy to define in this novelist's sinking. The green of summer brought provocative and surprising stories. Melville's short stories and Sherlock By Christine Heppermann Holmes's deductions. Somehow, with the help of my BOOKMARK Ten Great Alphabet Books ...... 15 friend's voice and these stories, the world began to make sense again. Joy The Charlotte Zolotow Award ...... 18 returned, this time within the knowledge Named for a distinguished author and editor, this award honors outstanding picture-book text. that all leaves, and all people, fall. We do this together. It is our amazing story.

INTERVIEW Linda Sue Park ...... 23 This cover is my grateful response to The 2002 Newbery Medalist delves into Korea's past a year of reading aloud-a thank you for to write about the passionate lives of children. all those falling words and the peace By Susan Marie Swanson they brought. -Debra Frasier A POEM FOR FALL "Monarchs Migrating" ...... 26 By Marilyn Singer Debra Frasier's picture books include On the Day Yo u Were Born (Harcourt, 1991) and, )NE FOR THE SHELF Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden ... .. 60 most recent[y, In the Space of the Sky, by By Christine Alfano Richard Lewis (Harcourt, 2002). Riverbank Review

911 Editor Martha Davis Beck Art Director THE BOOK OF HELP Kristi Anderson Two Spruce Design ~ Contributing Editors Christine Alfano, Mary Lou Burket, Christine Heppermann, Susan Marie Swanson Marketing Director Christine Alfano Circulation Manager Jodi Grandy Controller Greg Triplett Bookkeeper Michele Tempel Copy Editor Lynn Marasco House Artist Julie Delton Web Site Manager Mary Beth Hanson

Fall 2002/Volume V, Number 3 Copyright (~ 2002 by Riverbank Review. All rights reserved. AUTHORS RESPOND Please direct correspondence to: TO THE TRAGEDY Riverbank Review 1624 H armon Place, Suite 305 Minneapolis, MN 55403 Edited by Phone: (6 12) 486-5690 Fax: (866) 261-6729 Michael Cart, with Marc Aronson and E-mail: [email protected] Marianne Carus Web site: \vww.riverbankreview.com

"Here are heroic people who show the basic core of goodness in Riverbank Rl"virw (ISSN 1099-6389) is published humanity, here is the anger, here the fear, here the calm, eventual quarterly. Subscriptions are $22.95 for one year, acceptance of tragic events as part of our world. The entire $37.95 for two years (Canada: $32.95/ $52.95). anthology could serve as the basis for seminars, writing classes, Acknowledgments or even a college course." Riverbank Rrview is grateful to the following individu­ -starred review, Kirkus Reviews als for their support during the past quarter: Alice Angell, Avery J. Beer, Inez Bergquist, Rosemary Brooks, Joseph Bruchac, Deborah Bunn Alley, Pamela Burkley, A Book Sense 76 Children's Pick Jay and Page Cowles, John Coy, Sally Derby, Lois EWert, Judy Hawkinson, Jennifer Heldenbrand, Aaron Hsu­ $17. 95 / ISBN 0-8126-2659-1 / Hardcover Flanders, Paula Huddy, Valerie Jndenbaum, Susan S. $9.95 / ISBN 0-8126-2676-1 / Trade paper Kiewra, Gloria C. Kortmeyer, Annie Kuhn, A. Scheffer Lang, Sandra Zelenke Marr, E.G. Olstad, Susan Young Adult •:• Teacher's Guide available •:+ www.911bookforteens.com Rosenthal, Mary Ellen Strupp, Margaret Winters, and Nora Wise. Publication of Ri1.1erbank Rl'1.liew is made possible, in p.1rt, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Ans Council from an appropri,ttion by the Minnesota Legislature, and by grJnts from the Elmer L. Jnd Eleanor Andersen II J. Cricket Books Foundation, the Minnesota Humanities A Mnrcnlo Book Commission, Robins, Kaplan, Miller and Distnhutl•d by Publi~hcr; Group \Vest Ciresi LL.P., Scholastic Inc., and the DeWin ~0~.r;.~W~~ and Caroline Van Evera Foundation. CO"IMISSION

2 Fall 2002

editors note

A year has passed since the terrorist attacks that violently ing. Background on the flag and the Pledge is provided in shook our world. The impulse to mark the anniversary of such manageable snippets that don't bog down the flow of the an event may strike some as arbitrary, but I think it is innate. main text, but effectively offer context. The notes implicitly Human beings have always been conscious of the calendar. reinforce an idea that is appallingly absent from most patri­ We take our cues from the natural world, which, even as it otic books: the notion that individuals must figure out what erupts unexpectedly with fires, earthquakes, and floods, also they think about the world and their place in it, and that the offers regular intervals ofrenewal that many ofus anticipate and freedom and responsibility to do this is one of the most depend upon. In her poem "A Settlement," Mary Oliver important principles underlying American culture. describes the beauty of springtime that turns "last year's A handful of recently published children's books direct­ loose dust" into "soft willingness." The power of new life is ly address the events of September 11. Three are reviewed in inescapable, pushing the poet into as inescapable a resolution: this issue: two poetry books (Naomi Shihab Nye's 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems ofthe Middle East and Georgia Heard's pic­ Therefore, dark past ture-book anthology, This Place I Know: Poems of Comfort) as I'm about to do it. well as a collection of essays, poems, and stories published I'm about to forgive you by Cricket Books, 911: The Book ofHelp. Each is thoughtful for everything. and provocative in its own way. My favorite September 11-related children's book is In this part of the country, each season's arrival is dra­ Maira Kalman's Fireboat, a friendly and moving picture matic and offers its own invitation to start fresh . The cool air book about a refurbished fireboat's helpful role following and bright colors of fall have the power to reinvigorate both the World Trade Center disaster. It's a true story, full of pluck body and spirit. Like many people, I feel special need of and optimism, the fireboat and its crew as engaging as the such an effect this year. human and human-made characters in Virginia Lee Bur­ September 11 has been a reference point in much that has ton's classic picture books (Mike Mulligan and His Steam been written in recent months-for children as well as Shovel, Katy and the Big Snow, The Little House) . adults. As is often the case in the wake of significant events, Like ripples from a cast stone, the literary effects of last children's books serve as a barometer of our cultural mood, September will continue to be felt. Upcoming seasons will and a ground on which contemporary values stand out in undoubtedly bring more children's books about the attacks, as sharp relief: we can learn a lot about ourselves from the sto­ well as books on subjects with new interest: Islam, terrorism, ries and lessons we tell our children. American foreign policy. A related topic, the global distribution In the Riverbank Review office, the most noticeable by­ of resources, is given eloquent treatment in a new picture book product oflast year's tragedy has been a small flood of patri­ from Kids Can Press titled If the World WCre a Village. (This otic children's books. Not surprisingly, most have been book-and Fireboat-will be reviewed in our winter issue.) rather pat, superficial works. In one heavily marketed, visu­ A poem that describes the opening of a flower or a ally appealing volume, the "ABC's" of American history heron's search for food may seem to lie at the opposite end highlights are trotted out in a self-congratulatory fashion of the spectrum from earthshaking political events. Yet the that feels both simplistic and dated. In others, the lyrics to poet's message has potency in that larger context. In the lead patriotic songs are accompanied by bland, pastoral illustra­ essay in this issue, John Caddy describes his Earth Journal tions. One picture book gives the Preamble to the U.S. Con­ project, in which he e-mails a daily poem and comment, stitution a "fun, kid-friendly" treatment that bears no rela­ anchored by what he calls "deep perception" of the natural tionship to its content. world, to readers across America and overseas. One of the The one standout among these patriotic primers is I convictions underlying Caddy's project is that we must Pledge Allegiance, a lively, elegant picture book by Bill Martin learn to pay attention to the world that surrounds us and of Jr. and Michael Sampson, illustrated by Chris Raschka (Can­ which we are a small but active part. It's a simple idea, both dlewick). Each line in the Pledge is accompanied by appro­ harder and more important than it may seem. priately brief-but thoughtful-interpretations of its mean- -Martha Davis Beck

3 ''N o th·tng sh ort o f gorgeous. ''*

When the Root Children Wake Up By Audrey Wood • Illustrated by Ned Bittinger 0-590-42517-X • $16.95 •Ages 4-7 • 32 pages

"An Edwardian classic gets a fresh lease on life with a recast text matched to eye-filling, lushly romantic art." -Booklist

"An engaging, romantic story of the seasons ... quite charming in word and image." -Kirkus Reviews

"Technically skillful (his animals are exquisite), with delicate brushwork and a comely use of light and shadow." -Publishers Weekly

"A gentle but joyous romp through the seasons ....This is a truly lovely offering from a talented pair." -School Library Journal*

www.scholastic.com Scholastic Press .:::::- Fall 2002 the te3cher's art

E-Mailing the Wild

A poet's "Earth journal" connects readers with the natural world. By John Caddy

very weekday morning I begin the day by stepping outside Our task is to embrace nature not in general, but in its particulars. We can and observing for a few minutes, then sit down at the com­ connect to this tree, that chipmunk, Eputer and write a poem celebrating the earth. I complete the this green iridescent beetle more easily process with a prose comment that provides ecological and human than we can love an abstraction called Nature. The problem is, these days context for the poem. most of us have little experience with This is my daily Earth Journal entry, the living world. A daily poem about which I e-mail to some 500 teachers wild doings is my way of trying to and friends on four continents. Teach­ increase that experience. In my forty ers share the poems with their stu­ years of teaching children and adults dents, often as a prelude to student to write poetry, I have been amazed at writing, in Ventura County, Califor­ how powerful their writing becomes nia; Beijing, China; Cornwall, Eng­ when it turns to lives other than land; Zimbabwe, Africa; the Bronx, human lives and environments other New York; Chicago, Illinois; and than the city. There is an inherent communities throughout Wisconsin biophilia in us; we are fundamentally and Minnesota. Other recipients read attracted to the rest of living nature. the daily entries and, I hope, smile. The Earth Journal is about con­ Above, I said something foolish: text. The broadest natural context is "ecological and human context." The the biosphere, the skin of life that and implies a separation that is decep­ envelops the earth. The study of how tive. The perceived split between the biosphere works is ecology. Ecol­ what is human and what is nature is ogists teach us that everything is con­ the root of our great environmental nected and interdependent. We com­ problems. That division is a fantasy, monly repeat this, but often don't grasp for it allows us to define everything it. We can't grasp it without placing not human as "resources" to be used deep ecology reminds us that when we ourselves within it. We don't just however we please, without environ­ love, we identify with what we love. inhabit the biosphere, we belong to it; mental consequences. We must no When we deeply perceive the earth, we human life is one of its processes. Earth longer pretend we are above nature, or recognize that we belong to the earth. Journal writing requires close observa­ that we can manage all life on earth. Our bodies are made of earth. We are tion of processes, not just events, to In the seventeenth century, the earth made conscious-that is our gift learn how lives and forces intertwine. philosopher Baruch Spinoza taught us and our dilemma. If we cherish the Nature is everywhere. As the poet this: wt are as large as our loves. In the earth, protecting the environment will Gary Snyder has said, "Nature is not a present day, the movement known as be as automatic as protecting our toes. place to visit; it is our home." In our

5 Riverbank Review urban societies, we should not require Sharing work that is raw and far from People respond to it, I suspect, because nature to be wilderness. Thoreau said, polished or "worked" often feels risky, we all hunger for news of the earth and "In wildness is the preservation of the but I have found readers to be gener­ reassurance that the wild exists. My world." Distinguish, as he did, between ous. My intent in writing and sharing hope is that the Earth Journal helps wildness and wilderness. Children are without pause is partly to demystify readers and students to feel part of the hungry for the wild. The wild is every­ poetry; the mystique around creating community oflife, from which our cul­ where; it cannot be extinguished. The poems is a foolish barrier to many who ture too often divorces us. wild centers every seed, enters every would like to write. My daily e-mails I am at the age where one "gives garden. Wilderness is memory and are presented "warts and all." back." It's odd how slowly we recog­ myth; the wild is everywhere. Wilder­ One of my goals with the Earth nize that virtually all we have done in ness is distant; wildness is local. Wild­ Journal is to practice a transparent life has been collaborative. Here is an ness is the urge of life to be: the grass poetry that is simple and accessible. early spring collaboration with finches: blade in the blacktop crack, the pere­ grine in the office tower, weeds pio­ neering an empty lot, the patch of brush where kids make forts. Earth Journal Entries The Earth Journal is about celebra­ tion, the most ancient motive for poetry. I ask children to celebrate moments when December 2, 1998 the earth gives us gifts-of beauty, of laughter, of surprise, of connection. On the deck catprints in the frost I also ask them to celebrate the wait for sun's eraser. painful gifts the earth offers, for these experiences teach us much that we Simple gi,fis suggest clear and simple ex­ need to know. We learn about death pression. Write directly from experience early on from dead butterflies, earth­ and stay within the moment as you wn.te. March 31, 2000 worms, and roadkill. From observing animals, >t we witness the terror and ~ All right, small friends, necessity of predation. Who ate the crocus down, Consciousness gives us a great gift. leaf and flower all, We can transform pain and confusion who ate the crocus right to ground? and loss into a thing of power and beau­ What nibbler in the night ty through a poem, a song, a painting, has such a taste for beauty? a dance, a story. When we're done, we Such a tooth so sweet for spring? have not forgotten, but we have learned October 14, 1999 and begun to heal. Making art is a sur­ Jf a mouse pregnant with her first litter after winter decides my crocuses are deli­ vival skill for both maker and sharer. When kittens fall asleep, cious, should I rant? Or should I enjoy The Earth Journal is about sharing. where do their bones go? the fact that beauty can feed life in differ­ Sharing Earth Journal entries is a com­ Their bodies sprawl, a heap ent ways? munal act. When I read something of fur, and flow another person has written that wakes like rivers of warm over emotion in me, I know I am not alone. edges of drawers or chairs May 9, 2000 Is that not the root of community? that will not hold these sweet The Earth Journal is about daily sleepers with no bones. The green heron lifts his crest, writing. When we write, we discover every feather on his head erect Two new kittens bring joy to our lives that we know things we didn't realize as the snake dangles from his beak, right now. Our innate response to the we knew. Writers continually surprise His yellow hunter's eye burns y oung ofalmost any species is one ofthe bright. themselves. My role as a teacher is sim­ most heartening things about us. He stretches high his russet neck, ilar to that of a coach, providing exam­ ples rather than directions.

6 Fall 2002

March 13, 2000 Microcosm/ macrocosm is one of our oldest tools for thinking. Discover the New from This dawn, redpoll finches feed stream of similarities that flows between MILKWEED EDITIONS as the east bums gold- the large and the small. Find and cele­ www.milkweed.org The great living globe of fire brate those connections. Pass the fire on. ignites THE the red caps and ripe beaks RETURN OF A selection of john Caddy's Earth journal GABRIEL of these little fires poems will be published by Milkweed Editions John as they fuel the travel north again next year. A sampling ofchildren's Earth journals Armistead to the place of birth can be found online at http://cgee.hamline author of to pass the fire on . edul see/ SE Egalleries/ see_galpoetry. html. Th e $66 Su1111ner, To subscribe to the Earth journal, e-mailjtcaddy@ a NEWYOR.K unique-sqftware.com with the message "subscribe." PUBLI C LllJR.AR.Y B OOKS FOR. THE T EEN A GE flips up his beak and swallows long. July 8, 2002 When Civil Rights workers come to his Mississippi town, Cooper He folds his neck and crouches Grant is caught between his just above the water on a branch, On stalks of little bluestem, friends and the Ku Klux Klan. and as his crest settles to his head a foot below the seed, hang large His yellow hunter's eye bums bright. hawker dragonflies whose wings "Young people will not be run half-black, half-clear. able to put this down." -Dolphus Weary, DIRECTOR, Predation is hard to watch, but impor­ They watch, zoom to catch flies, MISSION MISSISSIPPI tant; it stirs us up in ancient ways. Jn return to vertical on the same stem, the ecosystem energy and matter contin­ stiff 17.95 he (637-X); 6.95 pb (638-8) ually transfer from life to life, are halftone wings like spread bats always shared. Without death, no life. sprinkled on grass stems through THE BEST But do feel for the snake, and feel the the fie ld. CHILDREN'S BOOKS mystery ifintertwining life and death. OF THE YEAR, 2001 Roadside grasses nod Selected by the Children's Book Committee, panicles of gold and tan, Bank Steet Co!Jege of Education February 7, 2001 timothy in cylinders of gray, all stirred from below by leaping STORIES In leaf litter under snow, the small grasshopper nymphs perfect FROM WHERE WE LIVE­ woodfrog would gleam with ice in their new skeletons. THE GREAT if sunlight glowed so deep. NORTH His raccoon mask is fixed Mullein spears AMERICAN and hard as painted stone, are crowned with dragonflies PRAIRIE for he has become both life and ice. whose four still wings Sara St. Antoine, The eyes are closed, the mouth line are black, thistle blue, mica. editor grins at the trick this frog has played They sit flat and watch NEW YOR.K PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOKS FOR on the winter of the world with geodesic eyes. THE TEEN AGE for wake he will from cold $ 19.95 he (630-2) and hop bright-eyed through In these hot and humid dragonfly days, PARENTS woods, slowed every pond is edged with plants hung WANTED at first but gleaming with a frog's with husks left by emerging dragons George Harrar fine living glow. and damsels, all transformed in chang­ WINNER OF THE ing lovely colors, all with vast new eyes. MILKWEED PRIZE FOR CHILDl1..EN 'S Nurture a sense of wonder (astonish­ These predators, this heat, evoke LITERATURE ment!) at the incredible mysteries ofl ife immense carboniferous swamps of S 17. 95 he (632-9) on earth. First rule ef life: find ways to giant horsetails and tree ferns that cap­ S6.95 pb (633-7) stay alive. tured the sunlight our culture lives on. ISBN prefix 1-57131-

7 Riverbank Review

The Picture Bool< Redefined

To a growing number ofwriters, illustrators, and readers, the picture book is an inherently adventurous art form. By Nathalie op de Beeck

icture books are among the first works of art that children remove the picture book from its nurs­ encounter. Readers who handle a picture book not only ery role altogether. Since his 1952 collaboration with P recognize words and images, but also experience a whole Ruth Krauss on a conceptual picture environment of sensations. They feel the weight of the book, smell book of "first definitions," A Hole Is to the paper, hear the words spoken aloud, and notice the details of the Dig, Maurice Sendak has been among the most provocative author-illustrators warm bedroom or bright library where D. B. Johnson refreshes Thoreau's phil­ -and nowhere more so than in ITT Are the reading takes place. Picture books osophies in his disarming Henry Hikes to All in the Dumps with jack and Guy. This themselves are diverting three-dimen­ Fitchburg and Henry Builds a House, thrillingly antagonistic picture book sional objects whose words, pictures, which combine witty text and shim­ marries two nursery rhymes to comics­ papers, and inks offer more than a lin­ mering cubist illustrations. In their style images of poverty and violence. ear story. They have a visceral impact unsweetened Little Lit anthologies, Art Few conventional cues provide narra­ on readers of all ages. Spiegelman and Franc;:oise Mouly meld tive coherence in this work. Picture books ostensibly belong to picture books, comics, and board games. Sendak's wordless front cover pre­ beginners. But they also appeal to a Nick Bantock, author of the enigmatic sents a threatening half-moon face and hard-to-define readership, drawn to Griffin and Sabine series of missives, wan children; the title and the author's works with sensory presence and visual­ and Edward Gorey, creator of melan­ byline appear on the back. An undeco­ verbal artistry. Plenty of seasoned read­ choly-macabre minivolumes like The rated, textured brown stock, used for ers appreciate near-wordless volumes Curious Sofa and The Gash{ycrumb Tinies, the endpapers, suggests a grocery bag. like David Wiesner's Tuesday, with its meticulous watercolors of gravity-defy­ ing frogs, and Istvan Banyai's Zoom, a series of ever-receding images that begins with a rooster's comb and ends with a view of Earth against a dark sky. Because Tuesday and Zoom leave most of their narration to the audience, nei­ ther tells exactly the same tale twice. Artists with experimental approaches create some of the most distinctive and memorable picture books. Faith Ring­ gold crafts faux-naive quilts about African American history, commemorating a 1930s summer sojourn in Tar Beach and a breathtaking dream-trip in Aunt Har­ riet's Underground Railroad in the Sky. !/!us/rations by Istvan Banyai,from Zoom

8 Fall 2002

Sendak's spreads picture scrawny chil­ silver frame and understated white books also call upon reader intuition. dren and stunted adults wearing ragged type, suggests a somber memorial The Sign Painter, for instance, describes clothes and living in cardboard boxes. rather than a children's story. Matte an unnamed traveler who apprentices One child wears a ripped T-shirt pictur­ black endpapers set a funeral-march himself to a billboard painter. As the ing a 1963 Sendak Wild Thing, and two reading pace; musical readers could itinerant young man and his boss com­ boys observe a kidnapping by giant imagine a sound track by Steve Reich plete an assignment in the California rats. The cartoonish drawings of the or Philip Glass. Inside, the gleaming­ desert, Say's realist paintings allude to gritty urban camp are outlined in cray­ white lefthand pages offer ambiguous canvases by Edward Hopper, Norman ony charcoal black, and the watercolor text about a lost kayaker, a whitewater Rockwell, and Andrew Wyeth. Even with­ palette is washed out, not saturated; accident, and two groups of children, out grasping every reference, the reader shadowy images of a "Bakery and while the pages on the right present comes away with a chain of classic Orphanage" suggest a crumbling facto­ watercolor desert scenes in shades of American images that usually appear ry or concentration camp. dim yellow, pale blue, and soft gray. in a gallery or classroom context. As it's reread, The Sign Painter acquires layers of meaning concerning art, manual labor, and the Amer­ ican Dream. Peter Sis works in a baroque visual style far removed from Say's, yet his books have a similar dreamlike (and autobiographi­ cal) quality. Reverie is too weak a word for Sis's powerful explo­ rations of the past. In The Three Golden Keys, a hot-air balloonist Illustration by Maun'ce Sendak,.from We Are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy -on a solitary journey, like Say's kayaker-lands in a labyrinthine Dumps combines the comic-strip The polished technique and surreal city and recognizes it as Prague, his aesthetic and food lust of Sendak's ear­ structure of Home ofthe Brave impose a childhood home. The balloonist en­ lier In the Night Kitchen with the uncan­ discomfiting partial understanding on counters ghostly entities, but not actual ny danger and twilit world of his Outside readers, exhorting them to close the people, as he roams empty cobble­ Over There. Contrasting newspaper gaps in the narrative. Say's oblique stone streets and recalls three legends headlines ("Leaner Times," "Invest in prose and haunting illustrations sug­ that connect him to his youth. Sis's Property") confront the reader with the gest imprecise yet disturbing individ­ succinct prose establishes a sense of iso­ suffering that is tolerated in the mod­ ual and national memory; the name lation and provides clues to the puzzle ern, developed world. Dumps gives an tags worn by the tale's children at that the three golden keys will unlock. antiaesthetic account of childhood, in "camp" and the pictures of abandoned The artist scratches, crosshatches, and the unexpected form of a picture book. pueblo and clapboard dwellings evoke stipples his parchment surfaces, lifts Its words and images are legible to the the U.S. government's internment of the gloom by lightening his watercolor experienced reader, but so richly con­ Japanese Americans during World War II tints, and seals off time and space by notative and harsh that they produce and its callous treatment of American enclosing his art in gold-leaf frames. confusion. Indians. The lonely human characters, Likewise, Sis's intricate Tibet: Where Sendak depicts strife in though they stand close together, are Through the Red Box resonates with the bouncy language and phantasmagoric denied community. past. In this account of a man who illustrations, Allen Say employs tenta­ In Home of the Brave, Say broaches opens a box of his father's souvenirs, tive prose, atmospheric imagery, and subjects that are not the customary Sis once again uses a golden-yellow austere design to create his own palpa­ domain of picture books, trusting his border to frame elaborate mazes, maps, ble tension. The mysterious cover of audience to draw their own connec­ and mandalas. As in Keys, Sis suggests Say's Home ofthe Brave, a severe rectan­ tions between the narrative and its his­ the half-clarity of memory by making gular painting of cabins with a steely torical allusions. Say's earlier picture use of semitransparency; in Tibet, a

9 Riverbank Review

a downtown gallery. At once humble and haute couture, Kalman's hip visu­ als and word salads are as much the focus of her books as the narratives she creates. Kalman covers her canvases with ice-cream colors, individualized faces, weird objects, and painted signs. She fills all available space. Vladimir Radunsky, who has an equally unpredictable sense of humor but a comparatively minimalist approach, follows a neodadaist visual aesthetic. Radunsky's maniacal collages and daub-and-dash brushwork-as tidy as finger painting-imply frivolous glee. His compositions require only a few elements, usually strewn almost hap­ hazardly across a white spread; they would not look out of place in an ele­ mentary-school exhibition, and in that Illustration by Allen Say,from The Sign Painter lies their popular appeal. Radunsky's translucent vellum dust jacket obscures much over the decades, but his presen­ picture books celebrate Woody Guthrie's a mandala, body-shaped blank spaces tation has. Where his head-to-toe cari­ amiable lyrics (Howdi Do), feign alle­ suggest people missing from photos, catures once occupied single panels or giance to stodgy etiquette (the sly Table and layered images of figures on mannerly sequences, they now explode Manners, with Chris Raschka), and make inscribed panels make for beautiful but beyond the margins. Where his back­ seriously silly appeals for peace (Man­ bewildering palimpsests. Sis's recent grounds tended to be newsprint white, neken Pis: The Story ef a Boy Who Peed on Madlenka books continue the theme they now can be ominous black or duo­ a Wtzr). Radunsky's absurdism welcomes of imaginary travel, but in a lighter vein. tone, with blasts of color (as in Bobby). readers, while implying deep political As Madlenka traverses a Manhattan Feiffer's children-most of them hair­ and artistic convictions. block, die-cut holes transport the little trigger boys-participate in the anx­ Perhaps inevitably, such surprising girl around the world and fold-overs ious, dynamic, dysfunctional, and picture books remain exceptions to the pop open to surprise her. It's a gentler comic world of adults, not the insular publishing rule. Like independent films account of childhood, but by no means realm of the fictional golden-age child. and experimental novels, inventive pic­ a strictly aesthetic or sanitized one. While some artists take the picture ture books get nixed for economic rea­ Jules Feiffer's By the Side ofthe Road book in a philosophical or anti-illusionist sons or watered down to please a crowd; and I'm Not Bobby! also redefine the direction, others explore the fertile some projects really are too unusual for picture book and remind readers that ground of nonsense and abstraction. the popular marketplace. On the other childhood is not pure bliss. In these It's impossible to categorize Maira hand, innovative artists and editors emphatic accounts of family life, Peif­ Kalman's giddy Max in Hollywood, don't shy away from the picture book's fer explores rites of passage in a blunt Baby or alphabet-chic What Pete Ate, potential to spark opinions and stimu­ manner and never sentimentalizes from A to Z (Really!) at a glance. Only a late strong memories. They craft words youth. By the Sideofthe Road's Richard is leisurely exploration of Kalman's work and pictures that speak to children and stubborn enough to set up housekeep­ yields an appreciation for her witty eye adults alike, and they redefine the pic­ ing on the burm; the exasperated and for color and her ear for parodic, hilar­ ture book in ways we never expect. exasperating Bobby yells at his parents iously affected language. Her spreads and runs from punishment in a true-to­ are graphic fantasias of concrete poetry, Nathalie op de Beeck is an assistant professor at life way. Feiffer's disaffected pen-and­ oddball doodles, and affectionate (not Illinois Stale University. She writes about chil­ ink scrawl, all-caps handwriting, and always pretty) portraits of people and dren's books for Publisher's Weekly and other conversational voice have not changed pets; her books simulate a whirl through publications.

10 NEW FALL STARS FROM HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND WALTER LORRAINE BOOKS

Houghton Mifflin Company • 222 Berkeley Street • Boston, MA 02116 • www.houghtonmiffiinbooks.com Riverbank Review

Janet Taylor Lisle

The truth is never easy to define in this novelist's provocative and surprising stories. By Christine Heppermann

'9 '9 F acts can be understood differently, they can add up to different answers depending on how they are viewed." This powerful realization for the character Hillary in Janet Taylor Lisle's Newbery Honor-winning novel Afternoon ofthe Elves (1989) encapsulates the theme of every one of Lisle's children's novels-thirteen to date. In Hillary's in an essay for the Something about the case, the subject of interpretation is her Author Autobiography Series, gave her friend, Sara-Kate. Depending on how "an identity": "I was 'good in sports,' you look at her, Sara-Kate is either a so I didn't mind asking the teacher to severely neglected child living in explain the mixture problem on the poverty with her mentally ill mother, board again." She remained a dedicated or, as Hillary prefers to believe, a magi­ athlete, branching out from soccer to cal, resourceful elf Or could both pos­ field hockey, lacrosse, and basketball sibilities be correct? As Hillary comes during her high school years at a Con­ to understand, "perhaps being hungry necticut boarding school. and cold and angry and alone didn't A year spent in Atlanta working for mean you couldn't still be an elf. In VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), fact, maybe those were exactly the following her graduation from Smith things elves always were." College in 1969, motivated Lisle to pur­ frustrated her editors but undoubtedly Having grown up in Connecticut, sue a career in journalism. Being a news­ paved the way for the attentively ob­ the oldest of five children and the only paper reporter, she figured, was the best served, multifaceted characters in her girl, Lisle vividly recalls an incident way to let people know about the dev­ novels to come. from her own childhood in which rein­ astating poverty she had witnessed. With her husband and young daugh­ terpreting the "facts" changed her self­ Over time, she found that she enjoyed ter, Lisle moved to New Jersey in 1981 perception. In sixth grade, she had a writing the more "loose-limbed" human and took a writing workshop that sparked difficult time adjusting to a new school interest stories rather than straight news. a fortuitous connection. Her instructor and her grades plummeted. She She explains in Something about the offered to introduce her to a children's became mired in fear and frustration, Author that she "looked out for stories book editor, who turned out to be the taunted by math problems with solu­ covering the 'nonevent.' For instance, if now-preeminent Richard Jackson. Jack­ tions that grew farther out of reach the the church fair was cancelled because son accepted Lisle's first book, The harder she tried to grasp them, until a of rain, I interviewed the workers pack­ Dancing Cats ef Applesap, in 1983, and compliment from a teacher rescued ing up to go home, and wrote about has worked with her ever since.Jackson her. The teacher praised her abilities on the rivalries and the unexpected friend­ says, "Janet Taylor Lisle is drawn to the the soccer field and with that single, ships that spring up behind the scenes mystery of things, to the ambiguity of calculated comment, as Lisle explains of such events." This trategy may have life that books for children often gloss

12 Fall 2002 over or pussy-foot around. She's a keen were more often a hindrance than a help observer of surfaces, a 'social writer' in to her childhood self: that sense; but her interest is in what's hidden. As well as why." The rules and requirements of the The story of a shy girl and a down­ adult world were very often at odds with my child's world and its needs, and-out, cat-infested drugstore with a and so there was friction and resent­ secret attraction that might just save it ment, watchfulness and not a little going under, The Dancing Cats from 'Janet Taylor Lisle is drawn plotting on my side to bring about (1984) inaugurated Lisle's preoccupa­ what might, under ordinary circum­ tion with magic lurking in unlikely to the mystery ofthings, to stances, be unobtainable. places-although the definition of unlikely depends on one's perspective. the ambiguity oflife that So, too, do her child characters often The grown-ups in Afternoon ef the Elves, books for children often gloss need to resort to covert maneuverings. for instance, and even Hillary herself at Olivia listens in on adult phone con­ first, look at Sara-Kate's backyard and over ... her interest is in what's versations since "it was the only way to see a repellent mess: find out what was really happening, be­ hidden. As well as why." cause no one was going to tell her." Where there weren't thistles and -RICHARD JACKSON The quirky trio of friends in Lisle's weeds, there was mud, and in the delectable Investigators of the Unknown mud, broken glass and wire and tantly pawned off on their timid, quartet (The Gold Dust Letters, Looking pieces of rope. There were old black disheveled great-aunt the summer after far Juliette, A Message from the Match tires and rusty parts of car engines their mother dies. Aunt Minty's over­ Girl, and Angela's Aliens) secretly devote and a washing machine turned over the girls' volatile to learning more about the on its side. Carpets of poison ivy grown garden reflects themselves grew under the trees and among the emotional state, which their father has spirit beings known as "invisibles" and bushes. opted to ignore, stifling them with a other "unexplainable things." At the same barrage of false cheerfulness. A book in time, they support one another through Is this really a suitable place for the Aunt Minty's library about evil green various family troubles, generated by exquisite miniature houses, made from fairies who once turned a party of chil­ their often well-meaning but ineffective, leaves and twigs, that Sara-Kate insists dren into flowers captures Olivia's atten­ sometimes altogether absent, parents. were built by elves? Yes, Hillary even­ tion, especially when, cup by cup, she When an adult is taken into confi­ tually decides, because magic needs a and Nellie unearth an old blue china dence, it is usually someone on the little wildness and disarray to help it tea set in Minty's garden. Is this the same fringes, like the old farmer in The Great along. Sara-Kate's backyard opens tea set from the story, the one the fairies Dimpole Oak (1987), a fanciful fable itself up to a kind of enchantment that buried as part of a countercharm? Once about the power ofstorytelling that show­ could never find space to grow in the girls have found all the pieces, will cases Lisle's own storytelling prowess. Hillary's family's carefully maintained the spell be broken-as the story sug­ For generations, the children of Dim­ lawn and flower beds. gests-and the children reappear? It turns pole have listened spellbound while Not only exterior but also interior out that Aunt Minty is not so timid the farmer spun chilling yams about upheaval seems an invitation for magic after all, so perhaps Olivia is right to criminals hanged from and treasure to take hold in many of Lisle's tales. suspect her of burying the tea set herself buried beneath the town's majestic Evidence of elves, fairies, extrater­ in order to rouse her charges out of ancient tree. Now some of Dimpole's restrials, and spirits presents itself to their grief-induced isolation. But, here leading citizens have decided that he is children dealing with serious "real-life" and in her other novels, Lisle wisely at best a nuisance, and at worst "a sick issues, such as a mother's death or par­ holds out the possibility that so-called man who ought to be in a hospital some­ ents' divorce. Far from making light of supernatural forces are indeed at work. where instead of wandering around these painful scenarios, the fantastical Reflecting in Something about the scaring children with silly stories." If elements deepen them, as in Lisle's Author, Lisle says she believes that adults not for the chance interference of two brilliantly woven The Lost Flower Chil­ boys, the farmer might have been dren ( 1999). Nine-year-old Olivia and Illustration above by Salomi Ichikawa, intimidated into silence, although his her five-year-old sister Nellie are reluc- .from The Lost Flower Children unforgettable tales no doubt would

13 Riverbank Review

have lived on through other tellers. In The Art ofKeeping Cool, another ~ A Pac1tk Rim Voices proJed Pac1f1c Rtm ve.ca .org Misunderstood artists also appear in story about World War II, German­ ~ Sirens and Spies (1985) and The Art efKeep­ born painter Abel Hoffman faces con­ ing Cool (2000), winner of the 2000 Scott demnation on a much larger, more O'Dell award for historical fiction. dangerous scale. Set in 1942 in coastal Although these books are a departure for Rhode Island, where Lisle has spent papert19ers.~org Lisle in that they take place solely in the summers since childhood and cur­ .. "real" world, with no otherworldly el­ rently lives year-round, the first-per­ :· ements creeping in, they still revolve son narrative gathers force as it ~ ... around the slippery question of interpre­ demonstrates that "keeping cool"- tation and what it means to know the maintaining a low profile, trying to "facts" about a person or event. pretend that nothing bothers you­ Book Reviews. Miss Fitch, the violin teacher in doesn't always work as a survival strat­ Interviews. Sirens and Spies, has always had an air of egy. In the narrator Robert's family, it the exotic about her, which most people may keep everyone physically alive, Illustrators' Gallery. in the Connecticut town where she but it leaves festering psychological Resources. lives attribute to her being French. wounds with no chance to heal. For Essential Reading . Elsie, Miss Fitch's prize pupil, isn't Abel Hoffman, who escaped persecu­ content with this explanation, so she tion in Nazi Germany only to find Panorama of books. does some sleuthing and discovers a himself accused of spying for the from and about the shocking secret. Decades ago, in occu­ Nazis in America, it won't stop the pied France during World War II, Miss masses from believing what they want Pacific Rim Fitch fell in love with a German soldier to believe about him. and South As ia. and had his baby. Even when Elsie's Back when her first book was pub­ sister, Mary, cajoles Elsie into con­ lished,Janet Taylor Lisle came to terms http://www.papertigers.org fronting Miss Fitch with her findings with what she has called "the great, rather than shunning her without ironic distinction between nonfiction explanation, it doesn't completely and fiction." The young aspiring erase Elsie's bitterness, as this conver­ author in Lisle's latest novel, How I sation between the sisters makes clear: Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive, expresses it this way: "Well, Miss Fitch is no traitor, ... that's one sure thing," [said Mary]. A lot of people think that fiction •• "Who said so?" stories aren't the truth, that a story "She did. That's what she spent isn't worth reading if it didn't really '"•,, this whole night telling us, remem­ happen. But they're wrong. The .. ber? Didn't you hear?" realest stories are the ones that are •••• "I heard everything," answered made up, because if you do it right, Elsie, "including how she collabo­ they go down deep to where the real :'• rated with a Nazi soldier. .. " truth is, below all the fake stuff on •• "She fell in love, you idiot!" the surface . •••,, " ... and slept with him ... " "But she was so lonely. He was Delving into one of Lisle's novels is her only friend." an act of excavation, which leads to the • " ... and how she got him killed ... " •••• thrilling realization that, no matter 'That wasn't her fault! It was the how far beneath the surface one goes, Discover a world of children's war. The war killed him! She was and young adults' reading resources, there's always more to be discovered. from and about the Pacific Rim and South Asia terrified .. . " "It really depends," said Elsie slowly, "on how you look at it." She Christine Heppermann is a contributing editor put her hands behind her head and to Riverbank Revi ew and a regular revil"loer stared straight in front of her. for The Horn Book Magazine.

14 Fall 2002

\>ooktiiark Ten Great Alphabet Books

A Is for Amos Antler, Bear, Canoe: Eating the Alphabet: By Deborah Chandra A Northwoods Alphabet Year Fmits and Vegetables from A to Z Illustrated b y Keiko Narahashi By Betsy Bowen By Lois Ehlert FARRA R, STRA US & GIROUX, 1999 LITTLE, BROWN, 1991 H ARCOU RT, 1989 REI SSUED BY H OUG HTON, 2002 A rhythmic narrative poem, paired with spirited An alphabet ofvegetables and fruits watercolors, tells the story ef a girl offfor a ride Woodcuts and descriptive text journey through a cut from beautiful hand-painted papers from A to Z on a horse named Amos. northwoodsyear. N is "northern lights " at mid­ captures the crispness, succulence, and summer. By U there's been October snow: time to bright color ef a cornucopia offoods. gel boots and jackets stored "upstairs." The Accidental Zucchini: An Unexpected Alphabet The Graphic Alphabet Arf! Beg! Catch!: By Max Grover By David Pelletier from A to Z HARCOURT, 1993 Dogs O RC HARD, 1996 By H arry H orenstein Bright acrylic paintings and clever wordplay Each letter in this absorbing volume illustrates SCHOl.J\STIC, 1999 create a world where "octopus overalls " a word. The top ofA breaks away in an are pinned to clotheslines and a "tuba As every dog knows, G is for "Good dog!" "avalanche"; K is formed with a "knot"; truck" motors cross-country. Large, vigorous photos ofmany breeds have 0 is "ornaments" danglingfrom string. simple labels. For W, a spray ef droplets fliesfrom a dog giving a shake: "wet." Handmade Alphabet Alphabet City The By Laura Rankin By Stephen T.Johnson A Big and Little Alphabet DIAL, 1991 VIKING, 1995 By Liz Rosenberg Hands-large and small, pale and dark­ This wordless alphabet book explores the grit Illustrated by Vera Rosenberry present the fellers ef the American Sign Language and elegance of a cityscape, with letters creatively ORCHARD, 1997 manual alphabet. A dragonfly perches on the embedded in vivid, detailedpaintings,from a index finger raised to form a D, while a yo-yo sawhorse A to afire escape Z. W1Jen "Big T triumphs," so does "Little t." The two are turtles on a trapeze and a dangles from the hand signing Y. tightrope, one duo in a sequence ofwitty The Alphabet Game upper- and lower-case pairs. By Trina Schart H yman SEASTAR BOO KS, 2000 Illustrations by (from left) Lois Ehlert, (ORIGINAllY A LITTLE ALPHABET, 1980) Laura Rankin, and Stephen T Johnson The small pictures in this alphabet recall the decorated initials in medieval manuscripts: a plaid-shirted boy leans against the stem ef P to eat pie while a porcupine perches on the loop overhead.

15 Riverbank Review

Small Wonders

Short novels for children can make a big impact. By Mary Lou Burket

ust great children's literature be long? Some stirring Most Beautiful Place in the World by Ann novels for young readers show how much can be done Cameron (Knopf, 1988), the story of a seven-year-old Guatemalan boy named in less than ninety pages. M Juan who is abandoned by his parents Blackberries in the Dark by Mavis Jukes (Knopf, 1985) is such a and left in his grandmother's care. Juan's book, though it's not quite a novel: its plot unfolds in a single day tenuous security is summed up by a draw­ ing of him sleeping on a pile of empty as Austin, a not very talkative boy, ity, however, are characteristic of fiction rice bags, covered by the blanket that his arrives at his grandparents' ranch for that stands alone. Allen's careful ren­ grandmother has wordlessly removed his annual visit. Austin's grandfather derings of eloquent details and spacious from her own bed. With its simultane­ has died, and Austin shows his sense of landscapes highlight both the story's ous notes of want and comfort, the pic­ loss through his attention to posses­ turning points and its overarching mood. ture evokes enormous tenderness. sions-the photographs left curling on Allen also did the drawings for The Juan straightforwardly recounts his the wall from previous summers, the tire swing in the yard, his grandfather's knife. (It's a fishing knife, and fishing was one of the things that he and his grandfather did together.) Gracefully, the story builds from quiet contemplation to excitement as Austin and his grandmother revise their expectations of each other and them­ selves. Planning to bake a pie, they meet at the creek and go fishing instead. Unable to find any hooks, they fish with flies. And when, after catching a fish in a frolicsome scene, they throw it back, Austin says, "Grandpa would like us doing this-wouldn't he," which puts the changes they've made in a comfortable light. Dialogue and action are as crucial to Jukes's well-developed story as its images and themes. With drawings by Thomas B. Allen, this gently concentrated work could be mistaken for a picture book. Its layered sense of time (the shadow of the past on the present) and emotional complex- Illustration by Thomf/s 8. Allen,from Blackberries in the Dark

16 Fall 2002 past and present, describing a place­ it's difficult to say who shows the great­ and more than that, a way of life­ est generosity and courage-Little where, "since there aren't many cars, if Willy and his dog, or their opponent­ you want something, you carry it your­ but the actions of all three create an self, no matter how heavy it is." His unforgettable climax. voice is all-important; the poignant facts How do these diminutive books could not be told with such restraint achieve their power? Most noticeably, and dignity from any other viewpoint. the authors have perfected an econo­ At the center of things is his grand­ my of style. They know that in a short­ mother, a woman who struggled to buy er work, there isn't time for tangents or her own home. As Juan explains, "She extraneous detail. Just as crucially, they keeps the papers that prove it in an iron know how to make the tension in a box under her bed, and she's sure of story stretch and snap. what they say because somebody she Nonetheless, there seems to be no trusts read them to her, and nobody, formula for brevity. It might seem wise praise God, can take my grandmother's to trim the count ofcharacters, yet Good­ house and land away from her." Juan bye, Walter Malinski by Helen Recorvits works beside her daily in the market, but (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999) man­ he wonders why he doesn't go to school. ages not to. It profiles an entire family Is his grandmother exploiting him, and Illustration by Lloyd Bloom,from from the point of view of the youngest does she truly care about his future? Goodbye, Walter Malinski member, who tells how the Depression Similar questions bring suspense to stares down her parents and her older Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia that make the children fond of her as siblings, one by one. Wanda has con­ Maclachlan (HarperCollins, 1985), well as apprehensive. siderable problems of her own, yet she the story of a widower-a farmer-and A pet has even more importance in sees the larger picture. She's the sym­ his children, who seek a wife and moth­ Stone Fox (HarperCollins, 1980), John pathetic eye, and by the time a crisis er. Sarah ventures to the prairie from Reynolds Gardiner's rousing story happens, several secondary figures­ her coastal home in Maine to fill this about a boy, a dog, a farm, a debt, a leg­ classmates, neighbors, grocer, priest­ role and make a new life for herself. end, and a dream. When Little Willy's have entered the frame. Will she decide to stay? grandfather takes to his bed and seems While it's hard to think of a book MacLachlan's grave, emphatic style, to lose his will to live, Little Willy has that gives a more compelling picture of with its short sentences, simple words, his loyal dog for comfort. The dog is the toll of unemployment on a family, and scarce contractions, is one of the there again when Little Willy plows the the ending of this elegiac novel offers book's distinctive traits. It mirrors the field all by himself and when he learns confidence and hope. Its eighty-five­ task-seemingly pragmatic, yet pro­ about the taxes his grandfather hasn't page length is finely scaled to a child's found-that the characters face in paid the state. In the end, they train perspective. adding a stranger to their family. Sarah together for a dogsled race, a race they These books belie the view that lit­ herself is rather grave and certainly intend to win so they can spend the erary excellence depends upon a mea­ emphatic: "I am strong and I work hard prize money to save the farm and make sure of abundance: complexity of plot, and I am willing to travel," she writes. the old man well. depth of theme, wealth of style. What "But I am not mild mannered." She The story is full of Western arche­ really matters is proportion. Nothing won't be taken-or let go of-lightly. types: banker, merchant, mayor, and in these books feels meager. Instead, Pets and other animals in fiction country doctor. Little Willy is an inno­ one has a sense of sweet sufficiency, of are a kind of literary shorthand. It's cent, a ten-year-old competing with a elegance, precision, and completeness. quickly established, for instance, that legend (an Indian who makes a life of We should be looking for these traits when Sarah brings her cat from her for­ dogsled racing, to buy back the home­ more consciously when we're reading mer home and insists that it live inside land stolen from his people): "It was children's books. the house, her action suggests a tender true Stone Fox had never lost a race. heart as well as a lingering attachment to But Little Willy wasn't worried. He had Mary Lou Burket is a contributing editor to her past. These are important attributes made up his mind to win." In the end, Riverbank Review.

17 Riverbank Review

The Charlotte

Zolotow Award A Lovely Circle Named.for a distinguished author and editor, this By Margaret Willey award honors outstanding picture-book text. I came to this event with my husband, my daughter, and a very special pic­ picture book works its magic through images and words. ture book- my daughter's long ago These two potent elements engage in a dance to capture the favorite, a soothing lullaby of a book that relaxed and reassured us both Aear, the eye, and the imagination of the reader. Because the whenever I read it to her, which was text of a memorable picture book is often spare, some may assume often. The title of the book is Some Things that it was arrived at casually; that where few words are needed, any Go Together. It is a quiet celebra­ tion of the little things in life that con­ words will do. Nothing could be far- nect us to our homes, to the natural world, and to each other. It begins:

Peace with dove Home with love Gardens with flowers Clocks with hours Moths with screen Grass with green Leaves with tree And you with me

Award, including this year's Honor Some Things Go Together, first pub­ and "highly commended" titles and lished in 1983, was written by Char­ the winners from previous years, can lotte Zolotow. To be able to tell you, at be found on the Cooperative Children's an award ceremony that has Charlotte Book Center Web site (www.education Zolotow at the heart of it, what this .wisc.edu/ ccbc). book meant to a mother and daughter Zolotow Award is the only American -Martha Davis Beck in a small town in Michigan, is my children's literature award to specifical- ly honor picture-book text. Presented annually by the Cooperative Chil­ dren's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin, the award is named for a master picture-book author who also enjoyed a long and distinguished career as an editor of children's litera­ ture. (Zolotow, now retired, was the subject of a profile in the Fall 2001 issue of Riverbank Review.) The 2002 Charlotte Zolotow Award was given to Margaret Willey, the author rr.tnk. .. \\llh bC'anS Kings with qu<'ens of Clever Beatrice, a lively retelling of a French Canadian conte from the Upper l!lustrations by Karen Gundmheimer,from Some Things Go Together

18 Fall 2002

not necessarily unique to this group, but they seemed pronounced in my in­ laws: natural gregariousness, physical hardiness, a sly and sometimes back­ handed sense of humor, the use of rep­ etition and idiom in speech, and a love of storytelling-more specifically, the need to put oneself at the center of a funny anecdote to which everyone must drop everything and listen in order to be properly entertained. My husband's family was close-knit and self-protective, and so for many years they had no idea what to do with me. But like a good writer, I was paying attention and taking notes and waiting for the opportunity to put my own spin on the qualities that I found most charming and distinctive. And gradual­ ly I came to take an interest in French Canadian folktales, which in my opin­ ion are distinct from other folktales of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for their humor and their wonderful insid­ er dialogue and the reckless, almost goofy bravery of their protagonists. My interest grew and progressed quite nat­ urally as a way to celebrate my connec­ tion to an ancestry that seemed more pure and more exotic than my own. All of this led to the creation of a hardy, determined little northwoods girl with my mother-in-law's name. Yet I must confess that the response to Clever Beatrice has been a surprise to me. This is not to be falsely modest or to minimize the work that went into creat­ Margaret Willey with her daughter, Chloe, in 1983 ing this book. I have a vivid memory of finishing Clever Beatrice on a plane, own version ofa lovely circle, to borrow esting. But my more significant con­ coming back from New York City and a term from Zolotow. nection to things French Canadian is deciding on the plane that the story was How did I come to write Clever the result of my marriage into a family finished. I remember thinking that it Beatrice? I know I don't look very that had migrated from Sault Sainte was a nifty little piece, but wondering French Canadian-although my great­ Marie, where my husband, Richard, with great uncertainty whether anyone great-grandfather on the Willey side was born, to Ottawa, Canada, where else would agree, since it was a rather was Joseph Charlebois from Montreal. he grew up, to Detroit, where he set­ old-fashioned story with traditional Like many northerners, I have "habi­ tled as a teenager in the late 1950s. folktale elements and pacing, and it tants" from New France in my genealo­ From my in-laws I came to know wasn't slick or full of mayhem, or gy-a Frenchman or Frenchwoman in firsthand some of the characteristics of girl-powery in that ultramodern, cool­ there somewhere, keeping things inter- French Canadians. These qualities are accessories kind of way. In fact, it was

19 Riverbank Review

several years before I sent it out at all, and several more years before I showed it to Caitlyn Dlouhy at Atheneum with several other picture-book manu­ scripts that I thought she might like bet­ ter. Caitlyn saw the broad appeal of this book more clearly than I did. She became even more excited when she saw what Heather Solomon was up to with the illustrations. Her excitement pleased me, but I retained the wariness of a writer who has been through the ups and downs of a twenty-year pub­ lishing career. I've been especially thrilled by the way that young readers respond to the book. If I had any doubts about whether or not children still crave sim­ ply told, oral-tradition stories, in their multimedia, overly technologized, overstimulated world, the experience of reading this book to children in ure, she was little, but Beatrice loved riddles and tricks and she schools has erased those doubts. could think fast on her feet. "Sharp as a tack," her mother Something S happens-I can see it in their faces-when Beatrice wakes up said. The neighbors would wave to her as she passed by and say to the sleeping giant and takes a step clos­ each other, "She's a clever one, that Beatrice." er to say: "Good afternoon, Mister One day her mother put a bowl of porridge in front of Beatrice Giant, Sir. I have come to make a bet and said, "Eat, eat, my girl, but not too fast. This is the end ofour por­ with you." ridge." Her chin trembled as she sat down to her own small When she holds up her little fist, a bowl. fist "no bigger than a walnut," children Beatrice ate slowly, thinking of how she might help her moth­ often make a fist and look at it, perhaps er. Finally she said, "It is time for me to go out into the far north imagining their own walnut-sized fists woods and get some money." beside the mighty giant's. For they Her mother sighed. "There are only two ways to get money up know already that there are many giants for them to face in their uncertain here," she said. "One way is to cut down the trees with the lumber­ world. They follow Beatrice's wily, per­ jacks, but that is not work for little girls." sistent voice and hear their own wily, "What is the second way?" asked Beatrice. persistent voices in hers and feel brave "There is a giant on the other side of the woods," her mother enough to go farther than they have gone before, and to keep thinking hard said. "A rich giant who loves to gamble on his own strength." She in the face of the great puzzle of life. sighed again. "But you are only a little girl, you." "Is the giant smart?" Beatrice asked. Margaret Willey's young adult novels include "When you are a rich giant," her mother said, "you do not have The Bigger Book of Lyd ia (Harper, 1981), Finding David Dolores (Harper, 1983), and to be smart." Beatrice thought about this. Saving Lenny (Bantam, 1990), all A LA Best Books for Young Adults. She is also the author of From Clever Beatrice, by Margaret Willey, illustrated by Heather Solomon the picture book Thanksgiving with Me, illus­ (Atheneum, 2001). trated by Lloyd Bloom (Harper, 1998). She lives in Grand H aven, Michigan.

20 Mouse airbrushes the A, buttons the B ,carves the C .

IJNl)l~ll (j()NS'l,lllJ(j'l,l()N NISE I1IJl~tlINC• 0 Mouse, the rambunctious rodent first seen in Fleming's Lunch, refums in this concept-book scllute to hands-~n creativity." - Publishers Weekly .

"Here's an alphabet book that's,certainly worth m~king room for." -Kirkus Reviews * ''Fleming offers an .engaging conceit executed in a marvelous medium." -starred review, Boo/dist

0-8060-6848-1 $16.95 "Hits close to home, raising questions of what it means to be human, what is the value of life, and what are the responsi­ bi I ities of a society. Readers will be hooked from the first page. • • •" -PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review

"An inspiring tale of friendship, survival, hope, and transcendence. A must-read." -KIRKUS, starred review

THE HOUSE OF THE SCORPION 0-689-85222-3 • $17.95/$28.50 Canadian A Is for Amos By Deborah Chandra Illustrated by Keiko Narahashi FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, 1999 A rhythmic narrative poem, paired with spirited watercolors, teUs the story ef a girl offfor a ride.from A to Z on a horse named Amos.

The Accidental Zucchini: An Unexpected Alphabet By Max Grover H ARCOURT, 1993 Bnght acrylic paintings and clever wordplay create a world where "octopus overalls» are pinned to clotheslines and a "tuba truck » motors cross-country.

Alphabet City By Stephen T. Johnson VIKING, 1995 This wordless alphabet book explores the grit and elegance ofa cityscape, with letters creatively embedded in vivid, detailed paint­ ings, from a sawhorse A to a fire escape Z.

The Alphabet Game By Trina Schart Hyman SEASTAR BOOKS, 2000 (ORIGINA!LY A UTILE ALPHABET, 1980) The small pictures in this alphabet recall the decorated initials in medieval manuscripts: a plaid-shirted boy leans against the stem of P to eat pie while a porcupine perches on the loop overhead.

Antler, Bear, Canoe: A Northwoods Alphabet Year By Betsy Bowen UTILE, BROWN, 1991 REISSUED BY H OUGHTON, 2002 Woodcuts and descriptive text journey through a northwoodsyear. N is "northern lights» at midsummer. By U there 's been October snow: time to get boots and jackets stored "upstairs.» Arf! Beg! Catch!: Dogs from A to Z By Harry Horenstein SCHOLASTIC, 1999 As every dog knows, G is for "Good dog!" Large, vigorous photos of many bruds have simple labels. For W, a spray ofdroplets flies .from a dog giving a shake: "wet."

A Big and Little Alphabet By Liz Rosenberg Illustrated by Vera Rosenberry ORCHARD, 1997 When "Big T triumphs," so does "Lillie t." The two are turtles on a trapeze and a tightrope, one duo in a sequence ofwi tty upper- and lower-case pairs.

Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z By Lois Ehlert HARCOURT, 1989 An alphabet ofvege tables and.fruits cut from beautiful hand-painted papers captures the crispness, succulence, and bright color ofa cornucopia offoods.

The Graphic Alphabet By D avi d Pelletier ORCHARD, 1996 Each lei/tr in this absorbing volume illustrates a word. The top of A breaks away in an "avalanche"; K isfomted with a "knot"; 0 is "ornaments" dangling.from string.

The Handmade Alphabet By Laura Rankin DIAL, 1991 Hands-large and small, pale and dark­ pment the lellers of the American Sign Language manual alphabet. A dragonfly perches on the indtx finger raised lo form a D, while a yo-yo dangles .from the hand signing Y Fall 2002

Linda Sue Parl<

The 2002 Newbery Medalist delves into Korea's past to write about the passionate lives ofchildren. By Susan Marie Swanson

hen Linda Sue Park won the Newbery Medal last win­ ter for A Single Shard, she was catapulted to promi­ W nence not only in the United States but also in Korea, the country where her parents were born and raised, and that pro­ vides the setting for her four novels for young readers. Seesaw Girl (1999), set in seventeenth-century Korea, LSP: At my school visits, I tell peo­ is a story about the clever daughter ofan ple that I think of myself more as a aristocratic Korean family. In The Kite reader than as a writer. That might Fighters (2000), two brothers befriend sound like a strange thing to say, but if the boy-king of their country while somebody said I could only do one or they pursue the sport of kite fighting. the other for the rest of my life, there's A Single Shard (2001), also set in old no question that it would be reading. Korea, tells the tale of an orphan boy You've done many different kinds of who dreams of making beautiful pot­ writing, including poetry and fiction for tery with the guidance of a master pot­ adults. Do you hope to keep them all going? longer. I'm not sure why. I didn't sit ter in his village. Park's most recent Is that somethingyou're able to sort out in down and say, "OK, I'm going to write novel, When My Name ITTis Keoko the flurry ef this Newbery year? older this time." It's just the way each (2002), is the story of a family living in Certainly the Newbery has estab­ story went. Japanese-occupied Korea during World lished me as a writer for children and Have your research sources changed War II. (All these books have been pub­ young people. But because of my read­ over the years? lished by Clarion.) ing habits and the circuitous writing Korean cultural life was remarkably Park grew up outside Chicago and journey that I've taken, I don't think of stable for the 600 years of the Chosun studied English literature at Stanford myself that way. I sit down with a story period (1300-1880]. Once I'd done University and in Britain. She now idea and I just start writing. It's not the research for Seesaw Girl, which is set lives with her husband and teenage until at least fifty pages in that it starts in the seventeenth century, most of the children in New York State. On her to feel like this might be an adult short research I had to do for The Kite Fighters, personal Web page (www.linda story or a middle-grade novel or a set in the 1400s, had specifically to do suepark.com), Park emphasizes her life novel for young adults. And I'm often with kite fighting. A Single Shard is set in as a reader, offering lists of favorite wrong when I start thinking that. I ini­ the twelfth century, and very little books and annotated lists of recent tially thought Seesaw Girl might be an information was available on that era. reading. This interview was conducted adult short story. There might have been more ifI could by telephone in June. Each ofyour children's books has been read Korean but I was limited to what I for a slightly older, slightly more sophisti­ could read in English, and there was SMS: Yourlffe as a reader is apartefyour­ cated audience than the one before. just not a whole lot out there. The lack self that you share with the public. Certainly each one has gotten of information was a handicap, yet it

23 Riverbank Review also left me freer to say, "OK, I imagine not have enough of a story, that she But words are as powerful as guns in that this is what it was like" or "This is was just a vehicle to fill in the parts of their own way. The first thing any my best guess as to what it was like." I her brother Tae-yul's story. So at one tyrannical regime does is to ban news­ could not say definitively, "This is point, I abandoned Sun-hee complete­ papers and limit assembly. what it was like." But neither can any­ ly, and I have a part of a draft that is Sun-bee has a terrifying experience one else. entirely from Tae-yul's point of view. I when Japanese soldiers discover her diary Researching When My Name Wits am not a writer whose characters talk and burn it. In your other novels, too, chil­ Keoko was completely different because to me. I wish they would, but I guess dren have very intense experiences. there is a lot ofmaterial on World War II­ I'm too aware of the fact that I am One thing I remember from my I couldn't possibly read it all. And telling the story. But this happened childhood is that things were intense. there are still living witnesses to that era, When you're a child, there is less water­ like my own parents. But my father would ing down of emotional experience give one version ofevents and my moth­ I worked hard at through rationalization and self-aware­ er would say that he was crazy and that ness. You feel things very hard. was not how it happened at all. reading as a child, In all four ofyour books, childhood is So you have a novel with two voices. but ofcourse it didn't portrayed as a time efgreat industry. rour Right. young characters are hard at work on pro­ I found it interesting that you chose to feel like work .... ;ects, whatever those pro;ects may be. write When My Name Was Keoko in For me it was reading. I worked hard the first person. I love that in young at reading as a child, but ofcourse it didn't Some readers and reviewers seem feel like work. I notice that in children. to have taken the approach of, "Oh, people. Children who When they are intensely into something, here's another Korean historical novel do not have a passion they don't think of themselves as work­ from Linda Sue Park." Which is true. ing. My son played chess for a long And yet Keoko felt very different to me often seem lost. time when he was young, my daughter as a writer. When I was writing the first drew intensely, my nephew draws 800 three books, old Korea was unfamiliar trains a day. It's actually about what to me. Kite fighting and celadon pot­ with Sun-hee. After I'd made the deci­ they're doing-not the product, but tery were new to me, and that was sion to make the story entirely Tae­ the process. My nephew knows he enough to deal with. A traditional, yul's, and had finished a couple of doesn't need another train; the refrig­ straightforward story structure-third chapters, she came to me when I was erator's already covered. I love that in person, past tense-felt right. half asleep and was really peeved. She young people. Children who do not I started Keoko in the third person. said, "Typical sexist stuff. You're taking have a passion often seem lost. After three or four false starts, I decided it away from the girl and giving it to The word passion describes Sun-bee's it wasn't working and switched to the the boy. This is not fair. I can do this. I reading and writing, Tree-ear's pottery in first person as an exercise. Ifl get stuck, can make this work." So I decided I A Single Shard, jade Blossom's painting I often do this for a page or two, to see would try alternating the two charac­ in Seesaw Girl, the boys making and.fly­ if switching the perspective helps to get ters' points of view. My editor was right. ing their kites in The Kite Fighters. things going again. The first-person Sun-hee did need to have more of a They 're passionately devoted to what version of Sun-hee's chapters began in story. I completely reshaped her early they're doing. that way. To my surprise, those pages chapters, expressing her anxiousness When kids have that kind of pas­ went very quickly. to be involved. This was tricky, sion, so much comes out of it. They One aspect of Sun-bee's character that because of the more traditional role usually get good at something, so seems peifectly suited to first-person narra­ women played in Korean society back there's self-respect. They learn the tive is the depth of her confusion and then-and still do, to some extent. equation of time and work and result. bewilderment as a child in wartime. Being Her perceptiveness with language All of this they learn without some­ inside that struggling girl's head is very makes her an active force in the book. body preaching it at them. They just powerful. Language had to be her vehicle, see it in themselves and what they do. The comment from the editor on because, again, there wasn't much in What, for you, defines the middle­ the early draft was that Sun-hee did the way of action that she could take. grade novel?

24 Fall 2002

I often think about it in more of a negative sense, in terms of what I leave out. I don't put in sex or a lot of terri­ ble violence. Because of the age of the protagonist and the subject matter that's left out, the book is suitable for elementary school-age children. Other than that, within the writing itself, you do whatever the story needs, which is of course liberating for an author. I'm not aware that I have to do anything with the writing to make it A new companion novel age-appropriate. I'm just writing and the story is leading Gathering Blue One of the things that I find diffi­ by Lois Lowry cult in a lot of fiction for adults is the emphasis on psychological introspection. * "Lowry returns to the metaphorical We spend pages and pages inside some­ future world of her Newbery-winning body's head. What they're thinking, what The Giver to explore the notion of foul their motivation is-pages and pages reality disguised as fair .... Readers will where nothing happens. I get impatient find plenty of material for thought and with that. I think that in a few genera­ discussion here .... A top writer, in top tions, that will be seen as the great form." -Kirkus Reviews, Starred weakness of the fiction of our age. Ultimately, what is in somebody's * "Lowry has once again created a fully head does not matter. It's what some­ realized world full of drama, suspense, one does that is going to make a differ­ and even humor. Readers won't forget ence in the world. This is true with these memorable characters or their people in public life, and it's also true struggles in an inhospitable world." on a smaller scale, in our personal rela­ -School Library Journal, Starred tionships with our families. It doesn't ISBN: 0-440-22949-9 matter what I'm thinking about my kids-how much I love them, how wonderful I think they are, or how And available for the first time awful I think they are and why don't in a Readers Circle edition they get their act together. It's what I do "A powerful and provocative novel. "-The New York Times that matters. In the middle-grade novel stuff has to happen. You don't want to spend pages and pages in somebody's head. Young readers don't want that. They want to know what's happening. They want to know what the story is . The middle-grade novel is much closer ISBN: 0-440-23768-8 than the modern adult novel to what life is actually like when we're living it. What happens when you rub up against Readers Circle editions include a Readers Companion another person? What are you going UHtfMIOUf(_A_ ~ireI with discussion questions, Q&A with the author or u1m!N 'f saou to do? How are you going to react? a main character, and an author biography. www.randomhouse.com/kids A character's response to a given set of

25 Riverbank Review circumstances is what moves them­ book called Tales of a Korean Grand­ The people of my parents' genera­ and the reader-on to the next page. mother, by Frances Carpenter, a child­ tion did not learn their own history. I There is an ongoing discussion in this ren's writer who casually interpreted many remember asking about a story that I country about authors writing across cul­ cultures in books for young readers. What used at the end of The Kite Fighters, about tures. Has your work influenced your is your adult perspective on that book, and a general who tied a lamp to his kite to thoughts on this subject? others like it, that shaped the ideas ef so inspire his troops, which is why the young As a writer, I do not ever want any­ many American children? boy-king makes lantern kites at the end one to say what I should and should She presented certain details of of the festival in my novel. I said to my not be writing. When you write about Korean culture, for example, the fact parents, "Can you tell me more about another culture, the key is respect. that girls had to stay shut up in their this? I've read about it, and I'd like to When I write about old Korea, my ini­ houses all the time, as a dreadful thing. know more." They were total blanks. It tial response as a twenty-first-century So my ten-year-old response was "Yes, was just not something that they had American reading about some of the wasn't this a dreadful thing." My job as learned. People who grew up from about ways that they lived is "How could an adult writer is getting past that 1910 on did not learn their own histo­ they have done that?" or "Isn't that response to "What would it be like if ry. Because of the Japanese occupation, noble?" The step that, unfortunately, that was your life and you took it for World War II, and then the Korean some writers don't take is to move past granted?" Ifit wasn't an amazing, awful War, there were generations who spent such judgments, accept the things that thing, but just the way life was. those years just trying to survive. are a part of a culture, trying to under­ I'm imagining a young woman in Before I got the Newbery Medal, stand how they fit into the whole of Korea, who was not raised with an out­ Korean publishers were not interested life. This kind of taking for granted is sider's view ef her culture. What might be in translating my work. Their response actually a measure of respect. some crucial differences-or commonali­ was very pointedly, "A book about Korea When you were a little girl, you read a ties-in your perspectives on Korea? by an American-we're not interested." Now, with Korea experiencing a degree of prosperity it hasn't known before, people are saying, 'We need to learn a poem for ra11 about this history." I just got an e-mail from a Korean gentleman who was look­ ~- ing for my books in Korean because, he Monarchs Migrating says, "I can't find books about World War II in Korean for my kids, about Sitting on my roof what happened here in Korea." one shining September day But now your books are going to I thought some tall tree appear there? You are planning a trip to had gotten tired of summer early Korea this fall. and sent its orange leaves The plan right now is that my first into the sky three books will come out in the fall, to coincide with my visit there in Novem­ Then I stared as one sailed by ber. I'm excited about my trip. I feel A leaf with wings- some trepidation, in not being sure a butterfly what I'm going to be asked, but mostly A whole flock of monarchs heading south I'm excited. I can't wait to see the before the birds "Thousand Cranes Vase." I probably before the fall will just stand there and cry. feeling winter's distant call

-Marilyn Singer Susan Marie Swanson went to find celadon pot­ tery in museums ajier she read A Single Shard. From Sky Words, illustrated by Deborah Kogan Looking at the colors andforms that Linda Sue Ray (Macmillan, 1994). Reprinted with permis­ Park had so vividly described in her novel sion from the author. inspired Swanson to interview Park.

26 mag1ne. e e rate. iscover. Picture Book Favorites from Debra Frasier

Miss Alaineus A Vocabulary Disaster In the Space of the Sky lRA-CBC Children's Choice • Storytelling World Award Honor

Richard Lewis A touching story of loving-and mistaking---0ur glorious language. IlluS[[ated by Debra Frasier * "This enchanting book is ingenious .... There are delightful A poetic journey through the surrounding spaces of the surprises on every page of this charmer. "-Kirkus Reviews (starred review) natural world and the inner spaces of the imagination. 0-15-202163-9 • $16.00 "A rhythmic ode to nature. "-Publishers Weekly

"In the Space of the Sky is a true and synergistic collaboration between language and collage. It will feed children's need for color, for myth, for hope, for belonging to the whole of the earth. "-Riverbank Review 0-15-253150-5 . $16.00

Out of the Ocean ABA's Pick of the Lists • NAPPA Honors Award Minnesota Book Award • SEBA Children's Book Award

"This book ... delivers the salt smells and sea sounds that On the Day You Were Born accompany beachcombers right to readers' laps. "-Kirkus Reviews ABBY Award Nominee • ABC Children's Booksellers' Choice 0-15-258849-3 . $16.00 Hungry Mind Rcwew Book of Distinction 0-15-216354-9 pb . $7.00 NCSS-CBC Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies NCTE Notable Children's Trade Book in che Language Ans NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book for Children Parents ' Choice Award • Reading Rainbow Feature Book * "A book filled with reverence for the natural order of the world and the ~Harcourt place of the individual within it. "-School Library journal (s carred review) www.HarcourtBooks.com 0-15-257995-8 . $16.00 525 B Street, Suite 1900, San Diego, California 92101 0-15-200234-0 oversize pb • $24.95 0-15-201709-7 Spanish-language pb • $7.00 Prices and availability are subject to change without notice . Prices are higher in Canada. 0-15-202172-8 photo journal • $9.95

0-15-216693-9 welcoming blanket and book • $22.95 lllus1rauons copynghc C 2002 by Debra Frasier from In tht: Spau of Ilic Sky , wnnen by Richard Ltw1S ?.7 revie. ~s

Picture Books and-ink illustrations are stunning in Both the art and the prose in detail and line. Shifting perspectives Angelo are infused with subtle humor. ~ add energy and interest: at times Mac­ As Angelo walks home with the help­ aulay moves in close to his subject, like less bird in his hat, Angelo we are given a a camera on a movie set, choosing the bird's-eye view of his meanderings By David Macaulay angles that will best exemplify through H OUG llTON MIFFLIN character the city. Then a close-up 4 8pages, Ages 3-7, $16.00 or cover the action. In a particularly shows him reaching his destination: appealing double-page vignette, Ange­ fully ISBN 0-618-16826-5 absorbed, he crosses the busy, lo is shown examining, cleaning, mix­ narrow street, while behind him a bus While master plasterer Angelo is resur­ ing, and applying wet plaster. The and a motorcycle narrowly avoid col­ facing an old church in the heart of attention to detail that Angelo applies lision, creating a jumble of upended Rome, he chances upon an injured to his craft is mirrored by the care people, dogs, and balls. pigeon and takes her home with him. Macaulay gives his own. Midway through the story, the point At first Angelo is a reluctant ofview temporarily shifts from healer. "I restore walls, not Angelo to the pigeon, who pigeons," he declares. But soon reveals human thoughts and he is devoting all his spare emotions: it seems she longs time to the pigeon's recovery. to become an actress. This So begins David Ma­ interlude distracts and slows caulay's tale of an unusual the story somewhat. Angelo friendship between a man works best when it remains and a bird. Once the pigeon the plasterer's story. heals, Angelo takes her with Old Angelo dies once he him to work and on excur­ has finished resurfacing the sions into the country, and church, but not before sculpt­ even introduces her to his ing a permanent home for his favorite music. The small bird feathered friend. The story's softens the edges of the gruff, end brings the comforting crotchety old man. message that life goes on, as As an architecture student, the pigeon and her brood Macaulay once spent a year in look out across the city, nes­ Rome studying classic design. tled safe in Angelo's nest. Ever since, the city has been a Many years later, when the favored setting, inspiring his church again needs refinish­ award-winning City (1974) and ing, a pair of young plasterers Rome Antics (1997), in which a come upon the sculpted nest. pigeon is not only featured as They pay homage to the plas­ a character, but also provides terer of long ago by leaving the freewheeling point of view. his creation intact. In Angelo, Macaulay's pen- Illustration by David Macaulay,from Angelo - Bobbi Miller

28 Fall 2002

The Birdwatchers Things do happen in the woods, as the surface, like buried power lines. By Simon James Granddad says, but nature isn't Disney Three hours later the car returns, CANDLEWICK World. Just the same, Jess insists that but Richard stands his ground. The sec­ 28 pages, Ages 4-8, $15.99 she saw dancing penguins. Didn't ond time, he is cold and ready to climb ISBN 0-7636-1676-1 Granddad notice? in, but his father botches the deal with "I must have been looking the his confrontational tone: "Learned With his walking cane, beret, and other way," he says. With those dryly your lesson yet, wise guy?" "The way he tweedy coat, Jess's granddad is an old­ spoken words, the bond between them said it made me unlearn the lesson I world type who tells intriguing tales of deepens. was right then in the middle of learn­ walking in the woods and watching -Mary Lou Burket ing," says Richard. birds-and being watched by them in In Feiffer's fantasy, the boy's situa­ turn. "Things happen," he says sugges­ tion is determined, in large part, by the By the Side of the Road tively. Some ofhis reports are less reliable ineptitude of his parents. Yet they don't By Jules Feiffer than others: there may be a dawn cho­ abandon him. They stop by frequently, MICHAEL DI CAPUA/HYPERION rus, but do songbirds make recordings? 64 pages, Age 6 and up, $15.95 bringing provisions and offering their services-perhaps more involved in his Jess decides to go and see what ISBN 0-7868-0908-6 watching birds is really like, and she life than they were before. Love winds expects amazing things. Ironically, on Jules Feiffer is a master at tracing entering the big, wide woods, she can't the roller-coaster course of human see "anything at all." It isn't until she emotion. His expressive cartoon goes inside a special birdwatching hut drawings and honest, free-flow­ that she observes an abundance of ing text take readers up and over ducks, snipes, and grebes. the steep rise of life's crises, spi­ Simon James, the author of such raling beyond the realm of logic picture books as SaUy and the Limpet and and control, careening into the poetry collection Days Like This, absurdity and out the other side. says of his work, "I like to capture a large In By the Side of the Road, the world and at the same time give the starting point is the mayhem in reader the sense of being drawn in to an the backseat of a family car as Illustration by Jules Peiffer, intimate moment or place." By pairing two brothers' tussling drives from By the Side of the Road scenes of soaring woods with small their parents into an equivalent vignettes ofJess alone and talking with frenzy. The imposition of order comes through this existential narrative like the her granddad, this book achieves his goal. in the familiar form of a bright yellow line down the center of a threat from the father to leave black road: Richard's father builds him a his (by that point) one stub- little house to live in; his mother brings bornly unruly son by the roadside. clothing, ice skates (when the nearby (What former mischiefmaker doesn't stream freezes), and his younger brother remember this fierce, frazzled, fed-up (for visits). They even hire a tutor to make ultimatum?: "You can just get out and up for the school Richard is missing­ walk from here!") and he studies hard, to please them. Logic and illogic, order and chaos, An odd thing happens: the story perform an uneasy dance as stubborn becomes warmer and less frightening as Richard chooses to be let out of the car. it arcs deeper into fantasy. As Feiffer's "Who likes to be pushed around?" he plot becomes more far-fetched, the story asks. Who indeed. One of the many inter­ begins to describe, in a metaphoric esting things about Feiffer's book is its sense, the reality of growing up. Initially willingness to show the "stuckness" of scary, the wide gray roadside comes to each family member-the boy who calls feel like a necessary way station between Illustration by Simon James, his father's bluff, but also the mother and security and independence. Appalling at from The Birdwatchers father, whose emotions lie just beneath first, Richard's situation may begin to

29 Riverbank Review seem familiar. Many families are not unlike his: they survive fierce emotions, struggle with interaction, and some­ times create unorthodox arrangements that, when all is said and done, serve their basic needs and offer comfort. By the Side ofthe Road is more like a little movie than a picture book-in fact, the road that runs through it resembles a filmstrip. Those who fol­ low it to the end will find that it ulti­ mately tells a rather encouraging story. -Martha Davis Beck

Dahlia By Barbara McClintock FRANCES FOSTER/ FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX by 32 pages, Ages 4-8, $16. 00 Illustration Barbara McClintock,from Dahlia

ISBN 0-374-31678-3 The doll, whom Charlotte names old." Charlotte learns the classic lesson We know immediately what kind of Dahlia because she resembles her that appearances can be deceiving. girl Charlotte is when we meet her in mother's flowers, goes placidly along McClintock beautifully creates the Barbara McClintock's charmingly on the adventures, gradually losing her atmosphere of the early twentieth cen­ understated Dahlia. She is hunkered primness and taking on courage and tury through the characters' clothing down on a dirt path, making mud pies new challenges. She comes to look and the games Charlotte plays, and with her constant companion, her more like Charlotte as the story pro­ through the delicacy and gentle colors teddy bear Bruno. It's only morning, gresses. Her cheeks and chin turn of the book's illustrations. Charlotte but her hair is already coming undone brown; her dainty mouth blurs into a herself, however, is a strong and singu­ and her white pinafore is dirt-stained. smile; her clothes grow crumpled and lar heroine by the standards of any era, So we understand her dismay when a torn when she falls from a tree. Strick­ including ours. package arrives from Aunt Edme: a en, Charlotte tends to her injured doll, -Krystyna Paray Goddu porcelain doll clothed in lace and deli­ for whom she has come to feel affec­ cate silk, with a prim painted mouth. tion as a result of their shared adven­ I Stink! Charlotte's reaction is conveyed in tures. After bathing, bandaging, and By Kate and Jim McMullan McClintock's telling illustration: she reading to her new friend, Charlotte H ARPERCOLLINS holds the doll by her dress, at a dis­ makes an effort to tidy herself, Bruno, 40 pages, Ages 4- 8, $15.95 tance, and examines her with narrowed and Dahlia for presentation to Aunt ISBN 0-06-029848-0 eyes. Before her, the house's front door Edme, who has come to dinner. is open, and the alluring outdoors To Charlotte's surprise, Aunt Edme, How would a trash truck sum up its awaits. Bruno looks on, unhappily herself wearing lace and silk, in an philosophy oflife? If it followed in the puzzled by this intruder. uncomfortable reminder of Dahlia's tire tracks of Kate and Jim McMullan's The spare story that follows is beguil­ original perfection, proclaims herself latest creation, it would proclaim loud­ ing in its nuanced language and muted greatly pleased by Dahlia's disheveled ly, proudly, and way too early in the illustrations. Charlotte warns the doll that appearance. She tells Charlotte: ''When morning: "I stink! Therefore I am!" she will have to fit in with the games I saw your doll in a shop window, I The parking lot ofchildren's literature is she and Bruno play: "We like digging thought she needed to be out in the crowded with large vehicles come to in dirt and climbing trees ... . No tea sunshine, and played with, and loved. I life-little engines that could, energetic parties, no being pushed around in knew that is just what you would do for tugboats, friendly steam shovels-but frilly prams. You'll just have to get used her. I only wish I could make mud pies never before has a lowly garbage truck to the way we do things." and be tossed in the air, but I'm too made such an eye-opening entrance

30 Fall 2002 onto the scene. This picture book's Readers ride along through the dra­ chaos-which is not what Coltrane arresting visual energy and command­ matic course of one night's garbage sounds like. ing wordplay pack a wallop. haul until the truck's final unloading Raschka treats this collision of ele­ The bright orange and yellow glare onto a river barge and a winding-down, ments as a rehearsal gone awry, an of headlights illuminates the book's dawn-lit trek back to the garage. Jim occasion to stop and regroup. The opening hook ("Who am I?") and from McMullan's thick, muscular watercolor rehearsal director gives everyone cor­ there on we are captives of a brusque brush strokes and pulsing purples and rections-quite a page of text, with red and lively narrative voice, complete oranges give the book a fitting rough­ arrows employed as in the diagrams of with an in-your-face New York accent and-tumble quality. The hungry, bright­ football plays. He wants "rich color but (I'm hearing Danny DeVito). "Know eyed truck in I Stink! hauls at least as not muddy color" from the snowflake. what I do at night while you're asleep?" much personality as it does trash. He wants "a shower of notes .. . strong it asks deliciously. "Eat your TRASH, -Christine Alfano and vivid" from the kitten: "I know that's what. See those bags? I SMELL you're just a kitten drawn on a page, BREAKFAST!" But it isn't all bravado. but see if you can be more like Mr. John Coltrane's Giant Steps Like any good picture book about Trane." They start again. Following a By Chris Raschka "things that go," I Stink! imparts some smoother performance, each visual­ A THENEUM/ SIMON AND SCHUSTER solid information: we learn that a 34 pages, Ages 4-7, $17.00 ized element of the music arrives at its garbage truck has "ten wide tires," what intended finish and takes a bow. ISBN 0·689-84598-7 "dual op" means, and how trash gets Introducing young children to the "way compacted." What a clever and ambitious idea: a essence of a jazz composition without For the sheer fun of it, the brag­ visual rendering of the complex music using sound is a tricky proposition that ging vehicle recites an alphabet of all of John Coltrane for young children. hobbles both writer and reader. The he eats. The concerned environmen­ Chris Raschka's text invites us to see ultimate success of the book depends talist may raise an eyebrow at the Coltrane's famous composition "Giant on the reader's connecting these inclusion of apple cores, banana Steps" performed by "a box, a snow­ abstract images with that specific song. peels, and jam jars: Don't they have flake, some raindrops, and a kitten." (A looser approach might use such compost heaps in New York City? Blue raindrops "start us off with a nice images to freely illustrate the elements (Probably not.) Don't they recycle tempo." Orange and yellow boxes super­ of jazz.) For this reader, the specific glass? (I hope so!) The book stops just imposed on the raindrops provide "our aims of Chris Raschka's Giant Steps short of celebrating garbage, though, base, the sound foundation, the bot­ muddle an otherwise interesting idea. with its not so subtle message: Some­ tom." Then multihued snowflakes rep­ -Mary Moore Easter body's got to deal with all the trash we resenting the piano part land on top of make or "you're on Mount Trash-o­ these forms, making it hard to tell The Lost Ball I La perlota perdida rama, baby." The illustration showing where one colorful image ends and By Lynn Reiser begins. Once the charcoal kit­ the top of the Chrysler Building peek­ another G REENWILLOW ing out from a mountain of garbage ten (melody) joins in, despite the pret­ 32 pages, Ages 4- 10, $15.99 makes a vivid point. ty pastel mix, there is true visual ISBN 0-06-029763 -8

Two boys circle the park with their dogs, one clockwise, one counterclockwise, each looking for a lost ball and trying to find the owner of the ball he's found. No i!.unk •"•' itunk They almost meet halfway round, but THllBAO! stand distracts them. Co ott the ice cream ~.,~ "Is this your ball?" one of the boys asks, holding up a green ball perfect for playing fetch with a dog. A pitcher calls out in the middle of his windup, "No, our ball is a baseball." When the other Illustration by Jim McMullan,.from I Stink! boy, an orange ball in hand, encounters

31 Riverbank Review the same game on his way around the In spite of all the time it takes the park, someone has just cracked out a hit. iQue What a boys to find one another, the two real­ buen perrito! good dog! "(Es esta tu pelota?" he calls out. "No, ly do speak the same language in the nuestra pelota es una pelota de beisbol." end: the language of play. This isn't the The two boys don't find one another first time author-illustrator Reiser has until they've traversed the entire 360 taken communication as her subject: degrees, back to their starting point in her Best Friends Think Alike is an espe­ the dog exercise area of the park. "Yo cially effective and entertaining look at me llama Ricardo," says the boy with the obstacles and bridges to communica­ green baseball cap. "My name is Richard," tion, and Margaret and Margarita I answers the boy with the orange cow­ Margarita y Margaret is another clever boy hat. "iBusca!" "Catch!" Mi perro My dog's melding of English and Spanish-and While the visual and textual paral­ se llama name is play. Richard's dog says "bark" and Cometa. Comet. lels in The lost Ball I la pelota perdida Ricardo's dog says "guau," but of make for a lively language lesson, the Yo me llamo My name is course the two understand one another Ricardo. Richard. rewards of the book go much deeper wonderfully well. than a Spanish-English vocabulary les­ -Susan Marie Swanson son. Lynn Reiser is working squarely Illustration by Lynn Reiser,from within a picture book tradition in The Lost Ball / La perlota perdida Matthew A B. C. which such patterns have been known By Peter Catalanotto to work special magic, as in classics like both in Spanish and in English-the RICHARD ) ACKSON/ATHENEUM Blueberries for Sal. This new book is story is memorable for its humor, 32 pages, Ages 4-6, $14.95 remarkable for the way it combines an warmth, and realism. Line drawings ISBN 0-689-84582-0 ingenious and carefully developed with green and orange touches are structure with a joyful take on the punctuated by collaged photos of vari­ This funny alphabet book plays with wacky, unpredictable world of physical ous colorful balls, including scoops of both the wild mannerisms that chil­ play. While the book's structure is ice cream as well as balls for juggling, dren like to try out and the differentia­ quite strict-every sentence is spoken tennis, and miniature golf. tion needed for schoolkids with the same first name. In Mrs. Tuttle's kinder­ garten class, all twenty-five children are named Matthew. Each Matthew, lucki­ Celebrate ly, has a different last initial. Through bright, amusing watercolors and text Children's Book Week that looks handprinted but isn't, we see how Mrs. Tuttle tells them apart, one November 18-24, 2002 Matthew per page. This exciting annual event, sponsored by The Children's Book Coun cil Presiding over the Matthews with a (CBC), highlights trade books for children and yo ung adults and calm, happy air, Mrs. Tuttle notices and encourages everyone to read them-in childcare centers , classrooms, appreciates their various attributes. These libraries, homes, and bookstores. are alternately unusual, silly, and absurd. Visit the CBC Web site at: (One Matthew is slightly gross.) In the www.cbcbooks.org/html/book_week.html unusual category, there's affectionate for more information on how Matthew A., who hugs Mrs. Tuttle at to celebrate Book Week. every opportunity (in fact, he seems permanently attached); Matthew B., (11!'1 is a nonprofit trade organization that encourages the use and who loves Band-Aids; and Matthew V., enjoyment of books and related literacy materials for young people. who constantly volunteers. As for silly, there's the ketchup-loving Matthew K. JoAnn Sabatino-Falkenstein, VP, Director of Marketing and the always-yodeling Matthew Y. The Children's Book Council 646-354-1005 The absurd Matthews are an unflap-

32 Fall 2002 pable bunch, including Matthew F., to help it." What does a tender and holds a worm above the open beak of who always has a cat on his face; Mat­ resourceful fellow do in such a situa­ the hungry bird. thew R., whose freckles form the out­ tion? Mole takes the little bird home in Accessories humanize the enter­ line of a rhinoceros; and Matthew X., his wagon, builds a nest in a box, and prise at the heart of the story. Mole has who has swallowed a xylophone and proudly shows the new houseguest to a pencil jauntily stuck in the fur of his doesn't seem the least bit bothered by his parents. head as he begins the dubious project it. Then there's Matthew L., who leaks Their response has the pat irrele­ of assembling a cage from scraps of green goo from his nose. Much of the vance of parental advice. "It's very, very wood. Father Mole carries a striped book's pleasure lies in the unpre­ hard to take care of a baby bird," says his mug of tea in his hands as he looks on, dictability of the roll call. mother. His father's comment is more attempting to dissuade his son from In contrast to this wildness are the blunt: "They usually die." Their discour­ his undertaking. kindergarten activities, which couldn't agement is a challenge thrown down. The bird, of course, is sad in his be more normal: show and tell, arts Once Mole declares his intention cage. Mole's notion of love, creatively and crafts, story time, recess. There's to forge ahead as a caregiver, everyone mimicked from his own parents' care, harmony in the classroom, and an rallies. Mole's friends-a raccoon and involves reading a stack of picture inclusive mood, particularly in the last a bunny who help him gather food for books to his feathered friend, who pages when a twenty-sixth student is pokes his head out through the slats of welcomed into the class. In a sweetly the cage to listen. predictable moment, the new addition A grandparent can make headway to the class is crazy about zippers. where a parent has no luck. Mole's This is, coincidentally, the twenty­ grandfather, who sports bifocals, a cane, sixth book that Peter Catalanotto has and a fedora, comes to visit and sizes up illustrated (the seventh that he also the situation. Without a word of advice wrote). The style is warm and simple, or reprimand, Granddad takes Mole for almost cartoonlike, a departure from a walk to the top ofa hill, where birds are the more atmospheric, portrait-orient­ flying free in all directions. The climax of ed flavor of his earlier works. Matthew the story draws power from its simplici­ A . B. C. has a friendly abstract quality, ty. The three consecutive spreads that with two contrasting blocks of color show the two of them underneath the forming the background for most of immense blue sky illustrate the fre~dom the Matthew paintings, and borders illustration by Patrick Benson that Mole feels-and that his bird lacks. painted with visible brush strokes. Of from Mole and the Baby Bird Mole learns a valuable lesson through course, each page also features the experiencing, himself, the desire to run upper- and lower-case versions of its the foundling-are reminiscent of and be lifted by the wind. letter in the top corner. Catalanotto Garth Williams's furry friends. Patrick Marjorie Newman's story is one has minded his p's and q's in his own Benson's watercolor and pen-and-ink that, in its essentials, has been told quirky way. illustrations exude that magic combi­ before. In her telling, it is particularly -Abby McGanney Nolan nation of tenderness and clear sight­ engaging and memorable. edness that Williams was a master at -Martha Davis Beck conveying in his animal characters. Mole and the Baby Bird About to be rescued, the baby bird By Marjorie Newman Mrs. Biddlebox turns his small black eyes to the reader Illustrated by Patrick Benson By Linda Smith as if to say, "Now what?" Mole-a BLOOMSBURY USA Illustrated by Marla Frazee 32 pages, Ages 4-8, $16. 95 small creature-is given monumental H ARPERCOWNS ISBN 1-58234-784-0 stature in relation to his charge. His 32pages, Ages4-8, $15.95 straight back, bright eyes, and expres­ ISBN 0-06-028690-3 A young mole out for a walk comes sive hands make him seem both upon a baby bird fallen from its nest. earnest and capable. The love of Mrs. Biddlebox, a witch with the build He waits patiently, hands behind his Mole's mother for her determined son and scowl of an ill-tempered truck dri­ gray, furry back, "but no big bird came is expressed in the patient way she ver, has gotten out of bed into a horri-

33 Riverbank Review

end with rays of moonlight and pin­ wheel stars. Mrs. Biddlebox is no saccharine lemonade-from-lemons story, but a sweetly tart exploration of how one confronts real problems (especially dreary little funks) and works through them. It is perhaps significant that Smith, who died of cancer in the sum­ mer of 2000, wrote this while she was struggling with the nausea induced by chemotherapy. The illustrations are equal to the weight of the story's provenance. Between the two of them, Frazee and Smith have concocted a work as light and as satisfying as the bad-day cake itself. -Kathryne Beebe

The Year I Didn't Go to School By Giselle Potter A NNE SCHWARTZIATHENEUM 40 pages, Ages 4-8, $16.95

ISBN 0-689-84730-0

The fascination of this autobiographi­ mustration by Marla Frazee,from Mrs. Biddlebox cal picture book begins with the title (irresistible to those who still en­ ble day, which even tea (dark and bitter) comes into her own as a poet of humor counter desks and pencils daily) and and crumpets (hard to chew) cannot and skill. The rhymes and rhythms of continues even to the endpapers. In improve. Fortunately, Mrs. B is not Mrs. Biddlebox are just irregular enough this, the first book she has both written one to let a dank, dreary little funk to imbue the familiar four-line stanza and illustrated herself, Giselle Potter defeat her. She marshals her consider­ form with freshness and energy, and (illustrator of The Brave Little Seamstress able cooking talents to whip the day Smith's language flirts with whimsy and Kate and the Beanstalk, among oth­ into ... cake. One by one, she and a without descending into fatal cuteness. ers) tells the story of the year she was friend (a droll, mutely eloquent goose) Mrs. B's bad day is described with seven, when she traveled throughout pluck, snatch, yank, and gather the ele­ gravity within the lilt, and a great deal ments of the bad day (gloom, dirt, of truth underlies the witty illustra­ shadows, and fog) to make into dough: tions. Marla Frazee (Everywhere Babies) makes Mrs. Biddlebox's frustration When the dough was finally and anger manifest in the lines of her finished, entire body and her crazy plume of curls. When it rose up fat and light, Watching the determined lady and her She stomped it down into a tin goose roll, beat, bake, and dance the With witchety delight! horrible day into tasty culinary art is as satisfying as a good shouting match or The result is a light and lovely cake a pillow-punching session. With deli­ that soothes the starry night (and Mrs. B). cious watercolor-and-ink spreads, Frazee With her second picture book, gradually sweeps away the claustropho­ JUustration by GiseUe Potter, Linda Smith (W'hen Moon Fell Down) bia and gloom of the opening pages to from The Year I Didn't Go to School

34 Fall 2002

Italy as part of her family's wandering to that particular illustration reflects puppet theater company, the Mystic the great charm of the book as a whole, The Cooperative Children's Paper Beasts. which attempts to convey the reality Book Center announces the Potter kept a childhood diary of this and excitement of foreign travel. year (reproduced in part on the book's The plot, such as it is, tends to be nnual endpapers), and much of the appeal lies desultory-understandable in a travel R.ftlh. in the fact that this is a true story. Leav­ narrative. But Potter provides a wel­ ing her grandparents (whom the chil­ come frame to her story by introducing CHARLOTTE dren call by their first names, Alice and Fuller and Alice at the beginning of the ZOLOTOW Fuller) behind, Giselle, her mom and trip, showing them greeting their fami­ dad, and her little sister, Chloe, head ly at the end of it, and reporting LECTURE for Italy, buy an old wooden carnival Giselle's emotions during both these truck, and begin performing in town events. Overcoming her initial anxiety, squares in their papier-mache cos­ first of leaving home, then of having featuring tumes: "Tiny cars filled with big fami­ been changed by the new place into K EVIN HENKES lies zoomed every which way, big men someone her grandparents will be drank coffee from tiny cups, and the air unable to recognize, the seven-year-old "An Equivalent Happiness: was full of new smells." To the accom­ Giselle frankly addresses many of the Making It Out of paniment of tarantellas on the accor­ concerns we all have about starting Childhood" dion, adventures ensue. Potter effec­ new things and returning to old situa­ tively conveys the excitement of a new tions. The J-ear I Didn't Go to School also Wednesday, October 2, 2002 place, with its pleasures (&uitwrapped in shows readers that despite initial 7:30 p.m. pretty papers) and dangers (in Assisi, uneasiness, the pleasures of new places Wisconsin Union T heater Chloe is bitten by a dog). Through it and of a loving family provide rich 800 Langdon Street all, the sense of an offbeat family who compensation, indeed. Madison, Wisconsin truly enjoy one another's company­ -Kathryne Beebe whether they're lining up their shoes side by side on the truck's dashboard each night, learning new acrobatic skills in a house full of circus performers, or pitching in to free the wedged truck 12 Again from a tight alley-remains strong. By Sue Corbett In her recognizable nalf style, Potter D UTION employs gesso, watercolor, and pen 160 pages, Ages 10-14, $16.99 Kevin Henkes' many picture and ink to render all the freshness and ISBN 0-525468994 immediacy of a child's diary and expe­ books include Owen, a 1994 Caldecott Honor winner, rience with the added layer of an adult Here's a refreshing change of pace: a Wemberly Worried, and Lilly's perspective. Once the young Giselle book with two twelve-year-old protago­ Purple Plastic Purse. His novels scribbled the new Italian words she had nists-one a boy, one a girl. Though incfude Words of Stone, Sun and learned on a restaurant's paper table­ the characters, who alternate as the nar­ Spoon, and The Birthday Room. cloth. It is interesting to compare the rative's focus, are related, they aren't Established in 1998, this lecture original seven-year-old's word list, pre­ twins. Bernadette is Patrick's mother. was named to honor Charlotte served on the endpapers, to the adult Teetering on the brink of a midlife Zolotow, distinguished children's Giselle's presentation of it. Potter the crisis, Bernadette returns to the home of book editor and author of more illustrator steps back from her usual her recently deceased mother to seek a than sixty-five picture books. wide-perspective views of entire scenes brief reprieve from her husband and For further information about for a moment to paint only the plate, three sons. That's when it happens: she CCBC or this lecture, contact fork, and tablecloth (with corrected is transformed. As the narrator matter­ Kathleen T. Horning at Italian!), as if the reader sat in the din­ of-factly explains, "On the morning of (608) 263-3930. ing chair. The immediacy and interest her fortieth birthday, Bernadette McBride

35 Riverbank Review woke up twelve again." This unusual Though her old home is trapped in might be many adults' worst nightmare story slides back and forth, following 1972 (the year Bernadette turned twelve), -a return to seventh grade-ends up Patrick as he tries to deal with the dis­ the outside world moves forward, forc­ being an invigorating and enjoyable appearance of his mother, and Bern­ ing Bernadette to navigate today's mid­ experience for Bernadette. She discov­ adette as she seeks a way to return to dle school, from computer literacy class ers the joys ofeducation. She delights in her forty-year-old self. to clothing labels. As it turns out, what the camaraderie of twelve-year-old girls. She even learns to see Patrick in a new light, and to depend on him, as she would on a friend. The book's movement between protagonists and between the realms of the magic and the real is fluid, and Corbett skillfully renders the view­ points of both characters and the details of each world. Particularly effective is her portrayal of Bernadette as the forty-year-old stuck inside a twelve-year-old's body, the grown-up who's given the chance to be a kid again. Bernadette's predicament-and her adult perspective, especially in the P' c7-uR.Es sv presence of other twelve-year-olds­ PE~ MA'I']f_e~S gives Corbett ample material for humor. Bernadette is horrified when ~~~'"~ "The prolific poet is back, ,I she's forced to think about her son's with an illustrator who matches interest in girls: "Did Patrick have a him in freshness and simplicity .... type? She didn't know. ... Don't go there, she told herself." A superb choice." In the end, Patrick and Bernadette's -Starred review I School Library journal role reversal allows Bernadette to return ~\II~ ~~ "Ranging from sweetly poignant to goofy to the present. Patrick is forced to culti­ vate adult skills, to be the dependable nonsense, each of the 28 short poems about people and responsible one, while Bernadette and animals [is illustrated with] subtly whimsical must develop and rely on a childlike pictures [that] add details to the rhyme and enliven the meter sense of trust. Ultimately, each charac­ with perfect piquancy and lilt. A brilliant match of talent that's ter comes to a greater appreciation for guaranteed to make a hit." -Starred review I Kirkus Reviews the other and a better understanding of ~\I/~ the challenges that go along both with ~-:::.. "The rhymes flow easily, set to a consistently bouncy adulthood and with being twelve. beat that makes reading them effortless ... Mathers's watercolors - Jenny Sawyer exude a puckish charm well-matched to the nimble wordplay. There's plenty of zip in this nifty outing." Feed -Starred review I Publishers Weekly By M. T. Anderson Ages 5 up. ·.L CANDLEWICK $16 .95 Tr (0-688- 16719-5) : 240 pages, Age 14 and up, $16.99 $16 .89 Lb (0-688-16 720-9) MGreenwillow Books ISBN 0-7636- 1726- 1 An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1350 Avenue of the Americas. New York, NY I 0019 The scariest part of Feed's brilliantly www.harperchildrens.com conceived futuristic dystopia is that much of it isn't futuristic. While beef

36 Fall 2002 tissue farms, spring break on the moon, up with any meaningful ways to spend he sits alone in his room, naked, order­ and Abraham Lincoln clones may be the short time she has left to live: ing pants and more pants through the more than a few years away, rampant feed until his line of credit runs out. consumer profiling is already as common Everything I think of when I think -Renie Victor of really living, living to the full­ as Gap khakis. In Feed, corporations have all my ideas are just the opening cred­ strategies to discover "everything you its of sitcoms. See what I mean? My Georgie Lee want and hope for, sometimes even be­ idea of life, it's what happens when By Sharon Phillips Denslow fore you know what those things are." they're rolling the credits ... .Oh, you Illustrated by Lynne Rae Perkins At least that's how Titus, M. T. Ander­ and I share a snow cone at the park. G REENWlLWW son's teen narrator, puts it, speaking as Oh, funny, it's dribbling down your 96 pages, Age 7 and up, $15.95 one of the 53 percent of Americans chin. I wipe it off with my elbow. ISBN 0-688-17940-l who has the feed-a transmitter "Also starring Luma Ginty as Violet." Sharon Phillips Denslow could have implanted in his brain. The only differ­ Oh, happy day! Now we go jump in named this book after one of its main ence between the feed in Titus's era the fountain! We come out of the characters-the boy,]. D., or his grand­ and the feed today is that we still need tunnel of love! We run through the mother, Elda. Or she might have tried merry-go-round. You're checking clunky computer screens to access it. to impart the overarching theme with a the park with a metal detector! I'm What are the ramifications of per­ dullish title like "A Summer Well Spent checking the park with a Geiger vasive consumerism, especially on teen­ counter! We wave to the camera! in the Country." But she named the agers, that golden "target market"? novel after a Holstein cow, a peripheral Anderson attacks this question with And how does Titus express his grief, character (and I do mean character­ staggering breadth. His teen characters anger, and frustration about Violet's Denslow lets us know the depth of this behave much like those from any de­ situation? A true symbol of his society, bovine creature). cade. They communicate in their own language- null meg, unit, da da da. Except now the whole vocabulary-defi­ cient universe seems infected with teen speak. Titus's dad says like and dude, promoting, educating, and even the president of the United and informing States falls back on vague, informal those in the Upper Midwest terms in his speeches. Teens are still trendy, and thanks to instantaneous who have a feed updates, styles change faster, professional interest sometimes every hour. The only look in children's books .. . with staying power revolves around the lesions inexplicably developing on reading, teaching, everyone's skin. (It really took off after writing, and illustration the stars of Titus's friends' favorite feedcast, Oh? Wow! Thing!, appeared on camera with it.) Apparently, what Americans wanted without knowing it were oozing wounds. Children's Literature Network To list all the prescient details in this novel would require taking some­ thing from nearly every page. They add We invite you to join us. up to a chilling, too-possible world in which all experience filters through advertising. Titus's girlfriend, Violet, Please visit our website for membership information. realizes the magnitude of the feed's www.childrensliteraturenetwork.org impact when hers develops a fatal mal­ function, and she can't seem to come

37 Riverbank Review

Georgie Lee is a slim, sat­ decision. Should she let isfying book with a big him play the role of kid­ heart. Its story unfolds dur­ napper to facilitate a return ing the course of one hot to the idyllic farm life she's summer when we enter the longed for since her mother days of a boy and his grand­ spirited her away to the city ma and get a feel for their eight years before? Or steady relationship and the should she forgo the fulfill­ nature of their life together ment of her dream in favor in the country. Time seems of duty and her mother's to slow down in these pages, emotional well-being? but our eyes open a little Like Holly, readers of wider with each of the five Illustration by Lynne Rae Perkins,from Georgie Lee this novel are asked to grap- chapters. The vignettes they ple with difficult issues present seem crisp and freshly picked tifully shapes our days. And in this such as the meaning of loyalty, the from a tree full of savory family tales. case, it is a cow named Georgie Lee. nature of love, and the question of In an understated, unhurried style, -Christine Alfano when it's all right to put self-interest Denslow narrates her quietly remark­ ahead of familial obligations. Berlie able story. Nothing much happens, but Doherty probes the emotions and Holly Starcross the ambling pace and attention to motivations of Holly's parents, draw­ By Berlie Doherty intriguing detail let us in on all that is ing readers into the minds of two G REENWIU.OW happening. So we happily read about 192 pages, Age 12 and up, $15.99 adults whose decisions and actions fre­ Georgie Lee and her disappearing fly quently evade the seemingly clear-cut ISBN 0-06-00134 1-9 trick, and the trip to the haunted farm­ categories of"right" and "wrong." house, and Uncle Early and the release Fourteen-year-old Holly wants answers. As Holly's father's stories slowly of the giant catfish-or how about the She has more than her fair share of reveal a past Holly has never known, chapter in which Grandma's old neigh­ questions. In addition to the usual she begins to make sense of who she is bor Effie lies out in the field the entire teenage angst surrounding the queries and where she belongs. But that doesn't night because she fell and can't get up, "Who am I?" and "What am I doing mean that the choice she's ultimately and all the dogs from miles around here?" Holly is troubled by far more asked to make is any less difficult. stop by to visit her, and she just watches personal questions like "Where is my Indeed, there are no easy answers in the stars move through the black sky? father?" and "Who is the mysterious Holly Starcross, but that is, in large part, Lynne Rae Perkins's pen-and-ink draw­ stranger who keeps following me?" what makes this novel unique and ings, generously scattered throughout Trapped in a life where she feels she compelling. Packed with mystery, the book, enhance the stories' quirkiness doesn't belong and yearning for a life moral dilemmas, and true British fla­ and plain sweetness. One small draw­ she barely remembers, Holly Starcross vor, Doherty's book is for thinkers­ ing shows the fallen neighbor's hand seems destined for discontent and and for anyone who's looking for a reaching up out ofa field of tall grass, as unhappiness, as her name implies. coming-of-age story filled with heart. if to greet a passerby. Though her TV news anchor mother - Jenny Sawyer Too often novels for newly inde­ and producer stepfather mean well , pendent readers rely on broadly drawn neither one entirely understands Holly The House of the Scorpion characters and a shallow comic appeal or her dissatisfaction with their "per­ By Nancy Farmer to propel them over a hurdle of words. fect" city life. Only her cello lessons RICHARD j ACKSON/ A THENEUM Georgie Lee offers a magic combination and an e-mail correspondence with the 400 pages, Ages 11 - 14, $J Z95 of simplicity, substantial characters, enigmatic and wise Zed, a friend she ISBN 0-689-85222-3 and humor that strikes close to the finds in cyberspace, keep Holly from heart. Denslow understands that some­ becoming completely disconsolate. Nancy Farmer's books always hold sur­ times it's not so much what's at the cen­ When Holly discovers that the prises, and The House ofthe Scorpion is no ter of our lives, but what pokes in from mysterious stranger is her long-lost exception. Set in the mountains and the sidelines, that truly and most beau- father, she's forced to make a tough desert along the sliver of the Colorado

38 NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED INTHE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 29980 MPLS MN

POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE

Riverbank Review 1624 Harmon Place, Suite 305 Minneapolis, MN 55403-1963

1.1.1 •• 1.1 •• 1•• 111 ..... 11.1.1 .. 1•• 1.1 ••• 1••• 111 •• 1.1

NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED INTHE UNITED STATES BUSINESS REPLY MAIL FIRST-CLASS MAIL PERMIT NO. 29980 MPLS MN

POSTAGE WILL BE PAID BY ADDRESSEE

Riverbank Review 1624 Harmon Place, Suite 305 Minneapolis, MN 55403-1963

1.1.1 .. 1.1 •• 1•• 111 ••••• 11.1.1 •• 1.. 1.1 ••• 1••• 111 •• 1.1 \ch 'l llick ! \. 't For a wealth of information about children's 6 e literature, subscribe to Riverbank Review.

Yes! I would like D one year (4 issues): $22.95 D two years: $37.95 (For Canadian subscribers: D one year: $32.95 D two years: $52.95)

Name (please print) ------Address ______Apt. ____

City------State/ Province ___ Zip _____

D Check enclosed. D Bill me later. Drop this card in the mail or send with a check to the address on the back. For more information, call (612) 486-5690, or visit www.riverbankreview.com. Riverbank Review e tb~ wealth ... c_,I\,.. ~f ... with a teacher! Buy a special teacher's ~ \). gift subscription at 15% off the regular price.

Yes! I would like Done year (4 issues): $21.95 D two years: $32.25 (For Canadian subscribers: D one year: $27.95 D two years: $44.95)

Name of teacher (please print) ------School ______Address ______

City ______State/Province ___ Zip _____

D Check enclosed. D Bill me later. Drop this card in the mail or send with a check to the address on the back. For more information, call (612) 486-5690, or visit www.riverbankreview.com. Riverbank Review Fall 2002

River that separates the southwestern tip ofArizona from Mexico, this science fiction novel explores issues that sur­ round cloning, questions about what it means to be human, the age-old struggle between good and evil, and the effects of power and money, all set within a world in which mind control is the norm and drugs support the social system. The story raises questions right from the beginning. In the three pages that constitute the first chapter, an active reader would ask: Why are human F"\J.l{ge, Pe\er, ahq Sheila are Lac~­ embryos being implanted in cows? ih a Lrahtl heW aqvehb1re! wnh Why is a needle used to blunt the intel­ hewly qilco'Verecl co'\J.Sihs Flora, ligence of the babies born to these Fa"\J.ha 1 ahc:i four-yea.r-oJq Farley cows? Why are there implants in the Drexel (\hat's right, ahother Farley cows' brains to keep them happy? What Drexel!) the s\age is set for a wilc:l is a "Matteo Alamin" and why are they "always left intact"? Where is this all tak­ ahci wa.dty Legihhihg to a hew ing place? In short order, Farmer intro­ school year. duces Matt, almost six, curious about the world but not allowed to leave his house. As Matt ventures out, he and the If yo-u. Jrlisserl Fiif:fge' s reader begin to understand how special earl1er arl'Veh\-u.res he is and how dangerous is the world in . . . which he lives. Matt discovers that he is the clone of El Patron, drug lord of a country called Opium and ruler of the Alarnin empire; that is why "Property of the Alacran Estate" is tattooed on Matt's foot, and why most people around him consider him a beast rather than a human being. The reason for Matt's existence is simple: he promises eternal All J,001&1 •l'e Age.s 8-1'2, life to El Patron, for he is the perfect 115.99 ea.ch source for the transplants that El Patron will need to stay alive. The world that Farmer creates is a brutal one, full of ugliness, horrifying to contemplate. Contrasted with that world is the friendship between Matt and Tam Lin, one of El Patron's body­ guards, who introduces Matt to the beauty of the mountains just beyond the estate. Matt himself also stands in contrast, as his soul seems indomitable, enabling him to survive the brutality of body and spirit that he has to endure.

39 Riverbank Review

The beast is, ironically, the most street by himself. Dad would've gone rized Autobiography, for how the final human of them all. The novel's ending ballistic. ... I was happy for Oggie, scene ofSnicket's wildly popular Series ef provides a perfect solution to the con­ that's why I didn't stop him. From the Unfortunate Events will play out: Snicket flicts that propel the plot. way he was handling the car, I figured and his archenemy, Count Olaf, will I read this book in one sitting­ he'd been out there before, probably have a duel, and the valiant author will four hours of being unable to put it lots of times." Through that voice, strike a fatal blow. As Olaf lies dying, down. Then my fourteen-year-old son Janet Taylor Lisle has written a book his conqueror will squat down to carried it with him everywhere, includ­ about writing that is serious yet unpre­ remove the evil one's hulking black ing car trips to soccer games, until he tentious, and a book about two young mask, only to hear him rasp with his finished it. Why the enthusiasm? The brothers coping with divorce that is last breath, "Lemony, I am your father." protagonist is engaging and real, the both harrowing and funny. Archie is So it's a little derivative, but the evi­ setting vivid, the plot packed with thrilled when he realizes that his broth­ dence is there. Readers knew long ago action, the themes relevant to today's er understands that "the Mysterious that Olaf was no garden-variety villain. adolescents. Mole People weren't really there, living Now there can be no doubt (well, at -Lee Galda under the ground, slurping bad guys. least not much doubt) that he is a man BUT HE DIDN'T CARE! He still wanted who has succumbed to the dark side of to hear about them. They meant some­ V. F. D. (The meaning of this acronym, How I Became a Writer and thing to him that realness didn't come or of numerous other looming hypo­ Oggie Learned to Drive into. That got the writer in me pretty theticals, is not something the author is By Janet Taylor Lisle excited. I could see I was on to some prepared to divulge just yet.) PH JLOMEL hot stuff." The airtight shtick ofSnicket's mock­ 155 pages, Ages 9-12, $16.99 Midway through the book, the gothic middle-reader saga remains ISBN 0-399-233 94-6 boys get mixed up with an edgy gang puncture-free in this enlightening-or Archie (age 11) does become a writer, of teenage toughs who rob Oggie of should that be confounding?-com­ and Oggie (age 6) does learn to drive. his precious red wallet on his way panion volume. It extends from the That is, against the odds, two brothers home from day care. Archie, trying to book's front matter, which includes the make it through the difficult first make everything right, rashly promises disclaimer "Ifyou recognize yourself in months of their parents' breakup, to get it back. The realistic story that any of the photographs or illustrations while their overworked mother and Archie is telling begins to read more in this book you may find yourself in hard-driving father are wrapped up in like the fantasy he is writing in his spi­ Very Frightening Danger and/ or slight­ their own lives. Archie's novel about ral notebook, but by now Lisle, the real ly embarrassed but there is nothing you the Mysterious Mole People begins in wizard of the narrative, has got us can do about it," through its absurdly tales that he tells Oggie to help him set­ hooked. We care what happens to detailed, cryptic index. The reversible tle down when life goes haywire, but these boys, and the getaway car that dust jacket, an especially pleasing gim­ the story soon becomes such a sanctu­ Oggie drives at five miles an hour mick, acts as a disguise to fool "the ary for its author that he's up filling offers up the excitement of a high­ wrong people" into thinking the reader pages in a spiral notebook in the middle speed chase. Archie's triumph comes at is innocently absorbed in The Pony of the night. He is as absorbed by the the end, when he realizes that he wants Party!, the first book in the Luckiest logistics of narrative as his little broth­ to write a novel called How I Became a Kids in the World! series by Loney M. er is fascinated by cars, and one night Writer and Oggie l earned to Drive. Setnick, instead of this "objectionable he's startled to learn that Oggie has -Susan Marie Swanson autobiography." Most of the deceptive­ been sneaking out in the dark to the ly random-looking black-and-white family's parked car to practice signal­ photographs might have come from Lemony Snicket: ing and revving the motor. antique store bins. But the legions of The Unauthorized Autobiography As the title suggests, one of the pri­ diehard Snicket fans will thrill to dis­ H ARPERCOWNS mary features of the novel is the narra­ 240 pages, Ages 8- 12, $11.99 cover genuine clues- or at least entic­ tor's voice. Archie's is the voice of a kid ing red herrings- behind the archness. ISBN 0-06-0007 19-2 trying his darnedest to get at the truth: As in the series itself, the autobiog­ "Mom would've had a heart attack if Here's my prediction, based on a close raphy pokes fun at conventional beliefs she'd known [Oggie] was out on that reading of l emony Snicket: The Unautho- about children's literature. The truth,

40 Fall 2002

Mr. Snicket suggests, is exactly what concerned adults have always feared: there are secret messages encoded in children's fiction that will lead young readers into destructive, even deadly, behavior. Think E. B. White was sim­ ply waxing poetic in Charlotte's Web when he wrote about the crickets singing to mark the end of summer? Hey You! C'mere: Think again: there may be a dark code lurking in that pastoral refrain. And it's A Poetry Slam probably not a benign coincidence By Elizabeth Swados that all the sailors on the Prospero, the Illustrated by Joe Cepeda ship reported to have mysteriously left * "Vibranr ... slangy.. . upbeat." Daedalus Dock-with malicious intent -Publishers Weekly, -three hours early, are identified in a starred review photograph as having the same last "Rowdy. ..gleeful."-Booklist names as prominent children's book authors ("Sailor Gantos, Sailor Eager, Arthur A. Levine Books Sailor Kerr, Sailor Whelan"). Ages 6-12 • 48 pages With a movie in the works and 0-439-09257-4 • $15.95 steady dominance of the best-seller list, Snicket risks reaching the oversatura­ Splash! tion point, where R. L. Stine and other Poems of Our Watery World popular series authors have sunk before By Constance Levy '- Poc .... s: ef O"r W11..tc"'/ Werld him. Still, he unfailingly maintains the Illustrated by David Soman (I CCJNST:ANC6UW impression that he has more pressing "34 poems celebrate water's mystical, metamorphic threats. He might be murdered at a propercies in nature and our daily lives ... an accessi­ masked ball, for instance, or unable to ble, charming collection."-Booklist prove himself innocent of arson. If the stimulating information-or misinfor­ Orchard Books mation-in this volume is an indicator, Ages 8-12 • 48 pages he is more likely to die under question­ 0-439-29318-9 • $16.95 able circumstances or be permanently incarcerated than to lose his ability to If I Were in Charge the captivate his audience. Rules Would Be Different! -Renie Victor Poems and drawings by James Proimos

"Packs a wacky punch .... Sure to inspire The Letters laughter."-Kirkus Reviews By Kazumi Yumoto "A zany journey." Translated by Cathy Hirano - ~ 0"' -School Library journal FA & .c RRAR, STRAUS GIRO UX u 176 pages, Age 12 and up, $16.00 "' Scholastic Press ISBN 0-374-34383-7 G f:: Ages 5 & up • 80 pages <( "'...J 0-439-20864-5 • $16.95 Like The Friends, Kazumi Yumoto's 0 :I: first novel, The Letters is about death, u "' -e AHTllLR A. Lt:Vl \ E 8001\S CJ9 ORCHARD BOOKS Scholastic Press = but it is also about somnambulism. Soon after six-year-old Chiaki's father USCHOL AST lC www.scholastic.com died, her mother went through a phase

41 Riverbank Review of aimlessly riding Tokyo commuter nursing job and accumulated enough mysteries of the universe, or even of her trains: "It was not as if she was going sleeping pills to knock her out each family, she is alive and, finally, awake­ anywhere. She just boarded whatever night, or, if she gives in to the urge, for­ and that, she realizes, is enough. train happened to come along, then ever. But the death of Chiaki's child­ -Renie Victor rode and rode until she decided to get hood landlady, Mrs. Yanagi, who had off." Now the adult Chiaki finds herself her own theory about sleepwalking, My Heartbeat in a similar stupor, having quit her rouses Chiaki to attend the funeral By Garret Freymann-Weyr and recall a time when, as a young H OUGHTON MIFFLIN child, she wrote letters bound for "the 160 pages, Age 12 and up, $15.00

Opening November 22, 2002 next world." ISBN 0-618-14181-2 in Amherst, Massachusetts In keeping with her subject matter, Yumoto's contemplative prose evokes What happens when you fall in love a bewitching stillness, thick with with your brother's boyfriend? THE repressed emotion and shot through Fourteen-year-old Ellen adores her ERIC CARLE MUSEUM with flashes of humor. The bulk of the older brother, Link, and his best friend, OF story takes place when Chiaki is in first James, and they adore her. Link and PICTURE BOOK ART grade and paralyzed by a host of unfa­ James include Ellen in most everything miliar fears. The world outside her they do. Their triangle of friendship apartment suddenly seems strewn with seems perfectly balanced. But some­ "open manholes," like the darkness her thing is shifting in a way that no mem­ father disappeared into when he died. ber of this trio can anticipate, and Gruff Mrs. Yanagi senses Chiaki's Ellen's innocent question-whether or unease and lets her in on a startling not Link and James are more than secret. In Mrs. Yanagi's apartment sits a friends-leads to a reshaping of per­ drawer slowly filling with letters that ceptions and relationships. she has been paid to deliver, upon her As Ellen learns to relate to Link and death, to people's loved ones in the James as individuals rather than as a Conceived and built with the aim of great beyond. Just because so many couple, things change even more radi­ celebrating the art that we are first others believe in an afterlife doesn't cally: Ellen finds herself distanced from exposed to as children and that we mean Chiaki becomes convinced that, her brother and romantically involved carry with us throughout our lives, the as the landlady insists, her father is with James. After the three of them Museum features the art of Eric Carle somewhere watching over her. Still, it have spent so much time together, as well as the work of such nationally intrigues her into writing to him. A sin­ Ellen worries that her new entangle­ and internationally known picture gle letter turns into a stream of them as ment with James will permanently (and book artists as Maurice Sendak, Nancy Chiaki tries, without really realizing it at negatively) alter her relationship with Eckholm Burkhert, Mitsumasa Anno, the time, "to understand some secret I her brother; even worse is the suspicion and Leo Lionni. could not unravel on my own." that Link welcomes the new twosome One might compare the subtle shifts because it allows him to avoid the con­ Come explore the Galleries; create fusion and societally imposed shame your own masterpiece in the Art of mood in Yumoto's sophisticated, Studio; visit the Reading Library; finely crafted narrative to the poplar tree that accompany a gay relationship. attend a performance, film, or lecture outside the young Chiaki's window. She The most noteworthy aspect of in the Auditorium; stop for a snack in spends many hours watching the light Garret Freymann-Weyr's novel is the the Museum Cafe; and browse the and shadows shift across its leaves, but it intelligence and depth of her character­ Museum Shop. never loses its ability to surprise her. izations. Lovestruck and introspective Years later, at Mrs. Yanagi's funeral, the Ellen, artistic and intellectual James, and tree inspires another new perspective: Link, the enigmatic genius, are believe­ For more information, please "The poplar never bothers to think that able teens struggling with real-life issues, visit our website: it has no place to go. It simply is where it and Freymann-Weyr perceptively and www.picturebookart.org is now. And I, too, I am here now." sensitively explores both who they are Though Chiaki hasn't solved all the and what they are experiencing. From

42 Fall 2002 sexuality to problems with parents to fast ride into the backcountry of Ver­ old Grandma learn to live with one fitting in at school, the thematic com­ mont and leaves them with their another on Grandma's scant pension. plexity fully renders three characters father's grandmother, Angel faces what Grandma seems at first to be simply who must simultaneously make sense she thinks is her worst fear-her moth­ crotchety and old, but Angel and the of themselves and of the world's often er has deserted her. reader soon discover that she is a person inaccurate perceptions of them. With great trepidation and much who feels beaten down by life, having My Heartbeat is, above all, a book anguish, Angel, Bernie, and eighty-year- failed at the only things she ever tried to about learning to look at and under­ stand the world from different angles. As James teaches Ellen to see the world the way an artist would, she sharpens her view of herself and of others, using notions of distance, background, and the unseen world to help her form a truer mental portrait of each person she loves. For the reader, this results in a greater appreciation for the novel's quirky ensemble of characters, each of whom has, as Ellen's father puts it, "a mind with its own heartbeat." -jenny Sawyer

The Same Stuff as Stars By Katherine Paterson CLARION 256 pages, Ages 10- 13, $15.00 ISBN 0-6 18-24744--0

Although she's not even twelve years old, Angel has learned to worry like a grown-up. After all, someone in her family has to worry about such things as -9- "'See 1hose bags? I smell breakfast!' The garbage 1ruck Wio too much television, a balanced diet, narrates 1his down-and-dirty piclre book is not a de rrure ~Lre. and wearing seat belts, and her parents His job descrption, whid'l he outlines with healthy mad'lismo, don't shoulder that responsibility. Her requres him to roar troug, the s1reets, doire work mo& people dad is in jail for armed robbery, and her md rep.qlant. Jim McMJllcn's [fi.Jl~color] depiction of the mother, well, Verna certainly loves her tukire beast on his n~httt rounds arrpliftes the text's brash tone. two kids-after all, she fought hard to hld fans of g06s-out tumor wil I aJ+)l'eciate the ga~ge 1rudc's get them back from welfare when Bernie personal recpe for alP'labet ooc..p . ... ' was just a baby-but she isn't very ~arm ~ew 1~ HcmSccl< responsible. Someone has to mother Bernie, who has already flunked first • 'lAJ thorou9"1ly e1gagire narrator ... [a] hilcrious homage grade, and Angel tries her best. to an unsure hero.' ~JMd ~ew1 ~~~ A totally unstable family life and ~ "An appeal ngtt groos padws blaming herself for them. And when m 1~ A\leNl.e~theA~N~~,NY10019 •WWW~~ Verna takes Angel and Bernie on a wild,

43 Riverbank Review do: farming and raising her children. When Angel and Bernie arrive, unin­ vited, they bring her a second chance. Angel, torn between sadness and anger, tries to take care of Bernie and, now, Grandma. The only brightness in her life comes at night, when she joins Meet the Melendys a mysterious stranger in the meadow to look at the stars. As he teaches her The Saturdays neering bent of mind; Miranda, about the universe, she begins to put By Elizabeth Enright called Randy, is ten and a half, with herself and her life into perspective. H EN RY H OLT plans for a lifetime of dancing and She feels herself to be insignificant, 192 pages, Ages 8-12, $16.95 drawing; and six-and-a-half-year-old viewed against the entirety of the uni­ ISBN 0-8050-7060-5 Oliver is described as a calm and verse, yet she is made of the same stuff thoughtful child. as stars. This helps her to realize that Fiction creates a landscape where un­ The bored children come up she is able to handle her seemingly fulfilled dreams can come true, as often with a scheme to pool their weekly insurmountable problems because of for the writer as for the reader. An allowances, enabling each one to her inner strength, a brightness within only child who harbors a wish to be part have a solitary adventure on a dif­ her. When Verna takes Bernie and dis­ of a cheerful, warm, and rowdy fami­ ferent Saturday. Randy goes to an appears, Angel needs that light more ly may nurture that dream by creat­ art gallery; Rush attends the opera; than ever. ing a fictional family. So it was for Mona makes for a beauty salon, Like Katherine Paterson's Gilly in Elizabeth Enright (1909-68), among where she has her long hair cut styl­ The Great Gilly Hopkins, Angel, it seems, whose memorable books is The Satur­ ishly short. Even little Oliver finds will precipitate her own disaster, bring­ days, now being reissued with its com­ his way to the circus. In each case, ing the welfare woman out to check on panion volumes in the Melendy an unexpected adventure comes her situation. But Angel has allies-the ~artet: The Four-Story Mistake, Then along with the planned one. Their eighty-year-old town librarian, and an There Were Five, and Spiderweb for Two. experiences not only create a solid emboldened Grandma. She also has "The Melendys," wrote Enright sense of each individual but also, courage and resolve, which help her to in 1947, "have and do all the things I taken as a whole, present an appeal­ cope with the death of her stargazing would have liked to have and do as a ing portrait oflife in New York City mentor, stand up to her father, and let child_ There are plenty of them, for one sixty years ago. her mother know that she, Angel, thing, and I was an only child .. _. They The final book, Spiderweb for Two, should not have to be the responsible are made out of wishes and memory focuses on Randy and Oliver, by now one. But Angel is who she is: a respon­ and fancy." The Melendy ~artet several years older and left alone in sible, bright, caring almost-twelve-year­ reflects this innocent mixture, spin­ the country (mid-series, the Melendys old. At the end of the novel she passes ning tales of a relentlessly loving fam­ abandon city life) when the older on to Bernie some of the grace that she ily of four motherless children, tend­ children go off to school. What herself has been given. ed to by a gruff but kind housekeeper, promises to be a dull winter quickly Paterson's signature is all over this a good-natured hired man, and an turns into a season of mental chal­ book- in the quirky, wonderful char­ often-absent, scholarly father. lenges and exciting escapades. The acters, the exploration of family and In the first book, The Saturdays, two of them follow a series of myste­ responsibility, the lyrical descriptions the Melendys inhabit a five-story rious clues, planted for their enter­ of the stars, the figurative language brownstone in New York City. There tainment, as they discover in the last that brings the setting to vivid life, and is a sibling for every reader to identi­ chapter, by their departed siblings. the metaphor that holds the story fy with. Mona, the budding actress, is Sandwiched between these two together. Those who love her work will thirteen; Rush, with his "look of mis­ volumes are the relatively mild The celebrate this latest addition to her chievous wickedness," is twelve, an Four-Story Mistake, in which the oeuvre; those who aren't familiar with accomplished pianist with an engi- Melendys discover the joys of country it will have discovered a new star. - Lee Ga!da

44 Fall 2002

Stand Tall By Joan Bauer PUTNAM life, and Then There Were Five, in even a fairy godmother, wealthy old 192 pages, Age JO and up, $16. 99 which they befriend a neighbor Mrs. Oliphant, who always comes to ISBN 0-399-23473-X orphan boy (Enright's alter ego?), the rescue: with a lighthouse resi­ who by the book's end is invited to dence for a summer vacation in The Tree-as his name implies-is tall. become a member of the family. Saturdays, ice skates at Christmas in Too tall for his liking, anyway: six feet, The Melendys are the quintes­ The Four-Story Mistake, and splendid three and a half inches, and still grow­ sential storybook family. At their decorations for a fair in Then There ing. It's tough being twelve and feeling worst they grumble and fall into Were Five. like an oddball, and life's been even lakes. Their faults are commendable Some might wonder whether tougher than usual for Tree since his ones, like taking on too big a cha!- this decidedly old-fashioned set of parents' divorce. With two older broth­ children's books will draw ers away at college, his Vietnam vet modern readers. Certainly, grandfather in the hospital following a many of today's readers will leg amputation, and parents struggling have to adjust their expecta­ to deal with their own emotions, Tree tions of what constitutes an must navigate many of his jumbled adventure or a crisis in an and confusing feelings on his own. involving story. But shifting As it turns out, Tree the invincible into the slower gear Enright's surfaces during this rough time. With books require brings rewards, some help from his indefatigable grand­ for the Melendys' ardent father, who's also trying to rebuild his approach to living is eternally life, Tree weathers family changes, chal­ relevant. Each character has a lenges at school, and a flood that feel for the miraculous nature destroys his home and much of his of the ordinary and the pre­ neighborhood. As his grandfather ex­ ciousness of life's mundane plains it, "I think you and I have a lot moments. Mrs. Oliphant in common. We're both learning to walk voices this in The Saturdays a different way, and we're both going to when she tells Randy: "You be geniuses at it. " Learning to stand have 'eyes the better to see tall (or stand at all) in the face of diffi­ with, my dear' and 'ears the culties is a theme that runs throughout better to hear with.' Nobody Joan Bauer's novel, and the parallels who has them and uses them she draws between Tree's adjustments is likely to find life humdrum and his grandfather's rehabilitation are very often." Enright's tales both intelligent and fitting. Illustration by Elizabeth Enright, may be, by today's standards, The theme of building and rebuild­ from The Saturdays somewhat "humdrum." Yet, ing resonates throughout the novel. as modern readers slip into Taking objects apart to see how they lenge, as when Mona and Randy the life of the Melendy family, they work and then putting them back to­ decide to can the garden's vegetables may find themselves breathing gether, a hobby inspired by his grand­ and fruits in Then There Were Five. more slowly and deeply, and after­ father, offers Tree a cathartic release Any villain who dares to appear in wards they may savor a daydream of from the stress and strain of events these pages promptly meets a bad building a tree house, finding a occurring around him. Tree admires end; witness the nasty Oren Meeker puppy in the street, or discovering Mr. Cosgrove, the school janitor, who in Then There Were Five, who burns to an arrowhead in the forest. can "fix anything," whereas Tree is death as he is plotting evil. There is -Krystyna Paray Goddu more adept at disassembling than at reassembling. Tree discovers that there's more

45 Riverbank Review than one way to repair something of Korea, while the Japanese replace that's been broken, and that often the them with cherry trees. Perhaps the best choice is to build something new. worst indignity of all is that they must Tree finds he has the strength and spir­ give up their Korean names; thus Sun­ 911: The Book of Help it to do this, whether it be a friendship hee becomes Kaneyama Keoko and Edited by Michael Cart, with Marc with a girl at school who's being ostra­ Tae-yul becomes Kaneyama Nobuo. Aronson and Marianne Carus cized or a fresh sense of family amid The plot follows the action of the CRJCK.ET BOOKS like to live the rubble of divorce. The conclusion war, illuminating what it was 192 pages, Age 12 and up, of the story finds him standing tall­ as the son and daughter of a Korean $17.95 (hardcover), $9.95 (paperback) during this time, revealing the emotionally, mentally, and physically scholar ISBN 0-8126-2659-1 -not just in front of those he knows small, quiet triumphs and the abiding and trusts, but also within his entire fear of an oppressed people. Set within Following the terrorist attacks of last community. the larger historical context of the war, September, writers, like the rest of us, -Jenny Sawyer the struggles of Sun-hee and Tae-yul have struggled to find ways to respond. are revealed in alternating first-person This anthology brings together the When My Name Was Keoko points of view. These two perspectives, reflections of a number of individuals, By Linda Sue Park of older brother and younger sister, most of whom are well-known authors Cu.RION allow readers to learn more about the of young adult literature. Participating 208 pages, Age 12 and up, $16.00 culture of occupied Korea than they writers include Katherine Paterson, ISBN 0-618-13335-6 would through one perspective alone, Walter Dean Myers, Russell Freedman, Like Linda Sue Park's previous novels since the lives that boys and girls led at Virginia Euwer Wolff, Nikki Giovanni, -including last year's Newbery Medal­ that time were quite different. The dual and Sharon Creech. Their contribu­ winning A Single Shard-When My points of view also enable Park to effec­ tions vary in tone, form, and aim, which Name wtis Keoko is a work of historical tively portray the tight bond between a is a strength of the book. The Collec­ fiction set in Korea. Once again, Park brother and sister, and between each of tion acknowledges the multifaceted recreates a specific time and place so them and their parents. nature of the tragedy and its aftermath vividly that it seems as if the reader is While story and characters are para­ and offers, by example, a testament to actually there. At the same time, this mount, historical details heighten the the healing power of words. story ofoccupation during World War II novel's realism. Woven seamlessly into Healing is a prominent theme. In resembles other stories of war, set in conversations between characters or his introduction, Michael Cart ex­ different times and places. There are into the private thoughts of Sun-hee or presses the hope that the stories, essays, collaborators and freedom fighters, Tae-yul, these details shape but do not and poems contained in 911 will help those who overtly speak out and act intrude on the story. What is happening young adults "to think-and talk­ against their oppressors, and those in Korea is mirrored in the family's life. about the otherwise unthinkable and who work clandestinely, participating As their country is tom apart by the unspeakable. That's how healing begins." in an underground resistance. What­ war, so is the Kim family. As the Kore­ Several of the contributors take a per­ ever people's roles, their everyday an people respond to occupation in sonal approach, sharing their visceral lives are fundamentally altered by the varied ways, so do the Kims. And the responses to the events of September occupation. healing that begins for the country 11-responses of grief, bewilderment, This is certainly the case in the Kim when the Japanese flee is also mirrored and anger-and drawing connections household. Kim Sun-hee, her mother in this family. The final scene, in which to other cataclysmic events in their and father, and her brother, Kim Tae­ the Kims replant the Rose of Sharon personal past and our shared history: yul, have lived their lives under Japan­ tree that has been hidden in the garden earthquakes, floods, World War II ese occupation. They are not allowed shed for years-and also bring out the bombings, the Cuban missile crisis, to speak Korean in public; indeed, long-hidden Korean alphabet-shines President Kennedy's assassination. The Sun-hee and Tae-yul cannot read or with hope only slightly dimmed by the personal and political spheres slide into write in Korean-only in Japanese. communist threat in the north. This is a potent collision in this anthology. They cannot fly the Korean flag. l11ey a beautifully crafted story that engages For some readers, the more person­ have to uproot and bum all of their and delights as it informs. al entries may not be the most affect­ Rose of Sharon trees, the national tree - Lee Galda ing. When truly horrifying world events

46 Fall 2002 occur, the stories directly emanating young Afghani girl. In Bauer's "Chil­ the characters in Staples's story, who from those events have enormous dren of War," a Brooklyn high school gaze up at the stars at the story's end power, and little editorializing is need­ student struggles with the fact that her (arguing about the science versus the ed. September 11, 2001, gave birth to college application essay-on whitewa­ omens of meteor showers) and those in some of the most gripping journalism ter rafting-suddenly seems trivial in Bauer's story, who look out from the ofour time: who could read the thumb­ the wake ofSeptember 11. The beauty of Brooklyn Heights Promenade at the nail sketches of the people who died in this anthology is that it makes clear that lights of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Staten the World Trade Center towers or on those airplanes, the accounts of the events themselves, and the stories of the ensuing rescue work at Ground Zero, without having the newsprint in their hands smear with tears? It shouldn't be surprising that one of the most power­ ful entries in 911 comes from Russell Freedman, the clear-eyed author of so much engrossing history for young read­ ers. Here he offers a moving account of Fiction and Poetry Award history-in-the-making, describing the WINNER Lord of the Deep vigil held at the Fireman's candlelight by Graham Salisbury (Delacorte) Monument on New York City's Upper West Side three days after the attacks. HONOR BOOKS Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart written and illus. by Vera B. Williams (Greenwillow) Editor Marc Aronson and his wife, writer Marina Budhos, contribute a Saffy's Angel bold essay that explores the motiva­ by Hilary McKay (McElderry) tions and political factors behind the attacks. Margaret Mahy offers an inter­ esting counterpoint to the "stories Nonfiction Award heal" mantra, pointing out that stories WINNER This Land Was Made for You and Me: can also mislead. The simplified vision The Life and Songs of Woody Guthrie of America that motivated the actions by Elizabeth Partridge (Viking) of the September 11 hijackers-and, HONOR BOOKS Handel, Who Knew What He Liked for that matter, the crude images written by M. T. Anderson and illus. by Kevin many Americans have of the Middle Hawkes (Candlewick) East-are examples of the "partial Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People truths" Mahy feels too many people written and illus. by Bonnie Christensen (Knopf) prefer. "I never forget just how dan­ gerous stories can be," she says, "when the simple truth of the story is made to Picture Book Award stand for the complicated truth of the WINNER "Let's Get a Pup!" Said Kate everyday world." written and illus. by Bob Graham (Candlewick) Two satisfyingly nuanced stories­ HONOR BOOKS I Stink! one by Suzanne Fisher Staples, the written by Kate McMullan and illus. by Jim other by Joan Bauer-create com­ McMullan (Cotler I HarperCollins) pelling fictional scenarios on both sides Little Rat Sets Sail of the Atlantic: Staples's "Under the written by Monika Bang-Campbell and Persimmon Tree" takes readers into illus. by Molly Bang (Harcourt) Afghanistan, where an American TheHorn teacher (whose Afghani American hus­ BooK 1nc. 56 Roland St., Suite 200 • Boston MA 02129 • www.hbook.com band is fighting the Taliban) befriends a

47 Riverbank Review

Island Ferry, and the Empire State apparent in this work, too. integration of all its elements: text, Building, stand under the same sky. In a backwoods, folksy tone, Cohn illustration, and book design. David A. -Martha Davis Beck and Schmidt relate the familiar anec­ Johnson's clever ink-and-watercolor dotes (now grown almost to the pro­ illustrations manage to make this famil­ portion of folk legends) of Abraham Lincoln the life of a iar territory seem fresh. Rendered in country boy who grew up to become soft, grainy watercolor By Amy L. Cohn and Suzy Schmidt washes defined president. It's all there, in one form or by thin, confident Illustrated by David A. Johnson black lines, John­ SCHOLASTIC another-the rail splitting, the self­ son's Lincoln is both angular and 40 pages, Ages 9-12, $16.95 taught lover of books who walked miles approachable. The unusual format of ISBN 0-590-93566-6 to borrow one he hadn't read, the pres­ the book (shaped like Lincoln himself) ident who wrote an executive pardon allows for creative illustrations, and A tall book for a tall man, Abraham Lin­ for his sons' pet turkey, rescuing it from Johnson takes full advantage. The coln will not give readers any radically becoming Thanksgiving dinner. Simi­ opening spread, one of the simplest, new insight into our sixteenth presi­ lar works retell these well-known sto­ shows nothing more than long, tall Mr. dent, but it will introduce him to young ries; here the authors pepper the text Lincoln standing the full length of the readers in a way he might have appreci­ with quotations from the man himself. long, tall page, in profile, his head and ated: in his own words. Amy L. Cohn They let Lincoln's own wit come out, as shoulders encircled by a copper-col­ and Suzy Schmidt are familiar with in the description of his marriage to ored halo and the word Liberty, just as American themes through their work Mary Todd: "Lincoln towered over his on the penny. This clever visual joke on From Sea to Shining Sea: A Treasury of tiny bride. 'We're the long and the short sums up the compelling mix of man American Folklore and Folk Songs (Cohn of it,' the proud groom quipped." and myth Abraham Lincoln offers: Lin­ compiled, Schmidt contributed), and But what will draw readers to this coln's stovepipe hat and long coat their interest in folklore and legend is book will be the attractive, harmonious extend above and below the circle, con-

48 Fall 2002

fronting us with the imposing stature of the real man, while the saintly halo of the penny reminds us how tall Lincoln has grown in our national imagination. A limited time line of important dates in Lincoln's life appears on the final page, but Abraham Lincoln is not so much a biography as an exploration of our popular conception of Lincoln. While they bring meticulous research and Lincoln's own words to this pro­ ject, the authors do not dispel, but per­ petuate and glory in, the legend. (Lincoln's words themselves con­ tribute to this-he knew what image he cultivated when he told his "down home" stories.) At the end, the massive Illustration by Robert Andrew Parker, from Action Jackson marble statue of the Lincoln Memorial fills the page, and the authors ask: "He feelings into art. The authors manage Action Jackson features a two-page looks like a giant, doesn't he?" Their to demystify Pollock's seemingly ran­ photographic reproduction of Laven­ answer: "He was." dom process of spattering paint onto der Mist as well as a close-up showing -Kathryne Beebe the canvas by revealing the paint as the work in greater detail. The authors "ordinary house paint," describing don't shy away from the fact that many some of Pollock's influences (Native people have failed to understand Pol­ Action Jackson American sand painters and improvi­ lock's work: "Some people will be By Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan sational jazz musicians), and follow­ shocked when they see what he has cre­ Illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker ing him ROA RI NG BROOK PRESS to the beach as he takes a ated. Some angry. Some confused. 32 pages, Ages 6-10, $16.95 breather from his work. Some excited." Action ISBN 0-7613-2770-3 Jackson's illustrator, Robert Supplementary notes at the end of Andrew Parker (whose Cold Feet won the book are keyed to each page and fea­ Sandra Jordan and Jan Greenberg's the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award) ture selected photographs from Pollock's Action Jackson is a substantial departure faces a tricky task: how to honor Pol­ life. The notes are very readable, some­ from previous collaborations. These two lock's abstract expressionist style with­ times containing quotes from the artist's authors are known for carefully re­ out imitating him. He chooses fluid wife, his friends, and his colleagues. searched biographies of artists and watercolors with loose, sketchy out­ While the main text focuses solely books about art for older children and lines. One especially effective painting on what Pollock might have been young adults. Action Jackson is also well shows Pollock stretching out with doing and thinking while he was creat­ researched, but it's a picture book paintbrush in hand. The painter's body ing Lavender Mist, a more convention­ -and a work of imagination-about and the blobs of paint he flings from al biography appears at the end. the American painter Jackson Pollock's his brush form a graceful arc against a Children will discover that Pollock was process of creating one of his most plain blue background. (The image seems a rebellious student, lived without heat famous works, Lavender Mist. inspired by a 1950 photograph of the or hot water until his work started sell­ The reader can see Pollock putting artist by Hans Namuth, which appears ing, and was an alcoholic who strug­ on his paint-spattered boots, smell the at the end of the book.) Parker's illus­ gled with depression. Action Jackson is rusted machinery that used to fill his tration is accompanied by Greenberg valuable without this biography, but barn-turned-studio, and hear the and Jordan's words: "He swoops and for older children, it lends weight to silence of the huge, blank canvas leaps like a dancer, paint trailing from a the main story, which in its own way spread out on the floor. The text carries brush that doesn't touch the canvas." demonstrates the struggle any ground­ tension as the reader wonders how The reader can't fail to feel the grace breaking artist faces. Pollock will turn his thoughts and and motion in both words and art. -Lisa Westberg Peters

49 Riverbank Review

appeal to a young audience. A Cool Drink ofU/ater, with superb Cool, Clear Water National Geographic Society pho­ tographs, is likely to appeal to all ages. Barbara Kerley's text makes clear that A Cool Drink of Water would die. Without water, the animals our need for water unites us. The By Barbara Kerley would die. Without water, people author of the 2002 Caldecott Honor­ NATIONAL G EOGRAPHIC SOCIETY would die." These blunt observations winning The Dinosaurs of Ulaterhouse 32 pages, All ages, $16.95 are accompanied by dry landscapes Hawkins writes a spare text: ISBN 0-7922-6723-0 rendered in parched earth tones. Illustrator Anne Moller uses paint Somewhere, right now Precious Water: for the early domestic scenes, shifts to someone is drinking water... A Book of Thanks scooped from the river a textured, tom-paper collage style By Brigitte Weninger drawn from a well for the middle scenes, then mingles Illustrated by Anne Moller caught as it drips both styles at the story's end. There is N ORTH-S OUTH BOOKS from the roof a sponged or watermarked appearance 28 pages, Ages 3-7, $13.95 to many of the water images. The In many of the full-color pho­ ISBN 0-7358-1513-5 illustrator's choices create an incon­ tographs, people drink water directly For Americans, who use water at twice sistent mood and somewhat diminish from streams, rivers, and lakes. Adult the rate of people in other industrial­ the book's impact, but the intimacy readers, as well as some children, ized nations, books about this valuable and directness of Precious Ulater will might wonder whether the water in resource can provide an important lesson. Precious Water: A Book of Thanks and A Cool Drink of Water take two very different approaches to deliver the same message: water is a vital necessity. Precious Ulater, written by Austrian author Brigitte Weninger, starts and ends on a personal, domestic level. The young narrator instructs the reader to examine the glass of water in her hand and notice its clarity. She waters her plants, offers her cat a drink (the same green-eyed cat that appears on the cover), and drinks a glassful herself, arriving at a simple conclusion: "I am so thankful for this precious water." Sandwiched between these domes­ tic scenes is a world tour. We see ani­ mals drinking from an inviting stream, a contented frog in a downpour, pen­ guins at home on an iceberg, and trop­ ical creatures in a salty sea. The narra­ tor interrupts the tour to offer words of warning: "Without water, the plants Photograph by Robert M aass,Jrom A Cool Drink of Water

50 Fall 2002

Lapin Plays Possum: American South, he's become a "vague Trickster Tales from dog-wolf character" through the alche­ the Louisiana Bayou my of storytelling. And, as the foil to Adapted by Sharon Arms Doucet Lapin, he hasn't learned much through Illustrated by Scott Cook the years. In the three tales of Lapin M ELANIE KROUPA/ FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX Plays Possum, they are out of the swamp 64 pages, Age 5 and up, $18.00 and in the fields; big Bouki works ISBN 0-374-3 4328-4 while Lapin plays and then plots how to have himself a good dinner at Bouki's In Sharon Arms Doucet's first book expense. about a trickster rabbit, Why Lapin's The look of Doucet's Lapin tales Ears Are Long (1997), the bayou bursts has changed along with the cast of char­ Illustration by Anne Moller,Jrom Precious with wild creatures large and small, acters. Although Scott Cook's pictures Water: A Book of Thanks from snapping turtles and hawks to are lovely in their sun-dappled pink and wildcats, alligators, and the "lastest orange hues, they stay in a narrow range the photographs is clean enough to grizzly bear in Loosiana." Lapin plays and keep these two playful figures at a drink. Kerley's text, combined with practical jokes on everyone, whatever distance, the emphasis on gesture rather the book's powerful photographs, their size, but he doesn't always come than expression. Because Lapin is so invite us to imagine what it would be out ahead. In Doucet's new collection, much the smaller of the two, his facial like to have lakes and streams so clean it's just Compere Lapin versus Com­ expressions are often indistinct; it's a we could scoop up their water and pere Bouki-Brother Rabbit versus shame because one wants to see the drink it without fear of harm. Brother Hyena-and it's hardly a fair roguish twinkle in his eyes. Especially compelling are photo­ fight. But that doesn't mean that it Fortunately, Doucet's lively story­ graphs of a mother in India carefully isn't entertaining. telling will carry young readers along. dripping water into her baby's Compere Bouki is described by Her down-home similes inspire plenty mouth; a group of Cambodian chil­ Doucet in an author's note as descend­ of mental pictures, as in Lapin's belly dren drenched with the water from a ing from a hyena in centuries-old being "stuffed fuller than a squirrel's new well; and a man in a gas mask African tales. Now, having been trans­ cheeks," while his sack is "as empty as a offering water to a horse lost in the ported with enslaved Africans to the hatched egg." Spiced with French and desert (in the background, an oil well dynamited in the Persian Gulf War burns with towering flames). All of the book's photographs appear again in a two-page spread at the end of the book, accompanied by extended captions that contain facts about such things as the desalination of sea water, the growing necessity for bottled water, the water content of the human body, and lncan Empire canal building. The same spread also fea­ tures a map pinpointing the spots on the globe where the photos were taken. Precious Wtzter and A Cool Drink of Wtzter both convey a sense of urgency about the need to conserve and pro­ tect our sources of fresh water. -Lisa Westberg Peters

Illustration by Scott Cook,from Lapin Plays Possum

51 Riverbank Review

Cajun expressions, Lapin's exploits meaning of the language. The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler have a swaggering air: he spins out Lapin can't resist having treats or By James Cross Giblin exaggerations and elaborate half-truths playing tricks. Even those who long to CL.ARION at every turn. The glossary and pronun­ see Bouki turn the tables on the pint­ 256 pages, Age JO and up, $21 .00 ciation guide at book's end will help size hare once in a while will find it ISBN 0·395-90371-8 readers decipher unfamiliar phrases hard to resist these stories. and appreciate the full flavor and -Abby McGanney Nolan At the end of his biography of Adolf Hitler, James Cross Giblin notes that this book was meant to answer his own "youthful questions" about the raging RUMINATOR REVIEW figure who seemed to be everywhere, THE INDEPENDENT BOOK MAGAZINE even in the United States, during World War II-on recruitment posters and war-bond advertisements, in Children's Book Section movies, and in his parents' heated dis­ cussions. The author most recently of a for Young Minds to (hew On nuanced account of the life of Charles Lindbergh, Giblin has succeeded This fall, Ruminator Review examines world literature admirably in producing a book that and works in translation. On newsstands September 13! explains Hitler to young people. Making judicious use of the vast literature about the dictator, highlight­ FEATURING ing unusual facts instead of getting bogged down in details, Giblin traces ABCs in Surprising Plae Hitler's life from his birth in Austria to his suicide in a Berlin bunker. Complemented by illuminating, often How I Became an America disturbing archival photos (including (Winner of the 2002 Batchelder Award) one of Hitler's victorious tour of Paris), the informative narrative explains how Hitler succeeded in wreaking the havoc Cultural Tales • World Snacks of World War II and the Holocaust. Middle Eastern poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye Why he pursued his barbaric policies is given as much attention as such an Plus reviews of: unanswerable question can bear. In compact, readable, and well­ Lise Erdrich Robert D. San Souci documented chapters containing a Aziz Nesin Eve Merriam breadth of information that may over­ Siyu Liu & Orel Protopopescu tax the younger readers in the book's target audience, Giblin provides back­ ground on Hitler's family and birth­ place, the effects of World War I, the Don't miss a single issue of Ruminator Review­ political structure of Germany, and Subscribe now and get one year (four issues) for just $14! the course and scope of World War II. He presents Hitler not as a mysterious, R UMIN A T OR R EV I E W unknowable dark force but as the 1648 Grand Avenue • St. Paul, Minnesota 55105 angry, frustrated human being who phone 651-699-2610 • fax 651-699-7190 pushed the unstable society of Weimar www.ruminator.com • [email protected] Germany over the edge. Readers will learn that this man loved his mother,

52 Fall 2002

wanted to be an artist, was attached to his dogs, and was a brave soldier. That he began to believe himself "more A compelling contemporary novel godlike than human" was what made about a girl whose spirit, like the him so dangerous and eventually caused him, and Germany, to self-destruct. His stars, cannot be extinguished desperate urge to determine the fate of all Jewish people and his push for greater and greater land and power for his own countrymen put the whole world in jeopardy. "We may go down," The Same Stuff as Stars he said when he realized that Germany by Katherine Paterson would not prevail against the Allies. "But we'll take a world with us." Indeed, by Giblin's estimation, 50 mil­ *"Few authors explore the lion lives were lost in World War II. In his last chapter, Giblin points theme of what defines a out that the lessons learned from World family with more compas- War II about the futility of appease­ ment can help prevent "another Hitler" sion and sensitivity than from triggering so much destruction. He makes clear the threat behind the Paterson, as she demon- misplaced anger and frustration of neo­ strates once again in this Nazism and other supremacist move­ ments around the world. contemporary novel set -Abby McGanney Nolan in rural Vermont.

Saladin: Eleven-year-old Angel Noble Prince of Islam By Diane Stanley Morgan, despite her youth, H ARPERCOLLINS is the head of her family . ... 48 pages, Ages 8-12, $16.95 ISBN 0-688-17135-4 Angel's intelligence and

Diane Stanley's biography of Saladin, abiding trust in the direst the twelfth-century Muslim warrior and statesman, skillfully tells the story of situations will convince readers . . . that she will rise of a medieval hero who, for a time, above her circumstances." united his people and freed his home­ land from the oppression of Christian -Publishers Weekly, starred invaders. Following current trends in history for adults, Saladin presents the history of the hero-king Saladin and Ages 10-13 • 0-618-24744-0 • $15.00 the Crusades from the point of view not of the Crusaders, but of the cru­ saded-against. Included are a map of the Middle East, a glossary, and a bibli­ Clarion Books a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint ography. 215 Park Avenue South New York, N.Y. I 0003 Saladin opens with an author's note detailing the course of the Crusades up

53 Riverbank Review

to Saladin's birth in 1138. From then on, ever, does not necessarily make for good helping them to understand (without Stanley offers a portrait of a champion history. In unraveling and explaining a necessarily condoning) societies on whose qualities would shine in any age: knot as complex as the Crusades, some their own terms. a noble, brave, intelligent boy whose simplification is necessary, but it is The most sobering lines in Saladin fairness and wisdom, generosity and dangerous to judge members of a past come at the end: "Two hundred years of kindness stand in contrast to the often society by modern standards. In one Frankish invasion, senseless slaughter, cruel behavior of the Christian knights. passage, Stanley describes how the and religious fanaticism left a tragic Stanley's illustrations echo medieval Christian patriarch in Muslim-occu­ legacy. A shadow of hatred and mis­ Islamic art, with intricate patterns in rugs pied Jerusalem chose to carry away the trust had fallen over this great land, and clothing, on floors, and even in the treasures of the Church rather than use holy to three faiths. A thousand years stylized wisps of clouds. Rather than the wealth to free Christian hostages: later, it is still there." The applicability relying on traditional Western perspec­ to today's headlines brings a chilling tive and depth of field to define areas of It would be nice to write here that gravity to the work. importance, she uses color and line to [the patriarch] did all he could ... to -Kathryne Beebe help these unfortunate Christians," create interest and to teach the eye what she writes. "But sadly the patriarch to see. Stanley not only creates attrac­ Poetry paid only his own ransom, then car­ tive spreads, she conveys the tale in a ried off cartloads of treasure from ~ style integrated with the culture por­ the church ... which, if sold, could trayed. The mostly unpatterned dress have ransomed thousands. The 19 Varieties of Gazelle: of the Frankish Crusaders highlights Muslims were appalled by "this Poems of the Middle East the difference between the two cultures unholy man." By Naomi Shihab Nye at the time: the riot of color, pattern, G REENWIU,OW and texture of the Islamic society on By modern standards, preserving 160 pages, Age 9 and up, $16. 95 one side, the comparatively plain, unso­ wealth in lieu of lives is reprehensible. ISBN 0-06-009765-5 phisticated culture of the Crusaders on Western medieval society did not see it the other. in this light-especially when, as in this There has never been a better time for a What makes for well-written, well­ case, wealth took the form of chalices, book like this, revealing the hopes, illustrated, well-meaning history, how- altar cloths, and other religious para­ dreams, and sorrows of the Palestinian phernalia, viewed as precious people. Naomi Shihab Nye, whose instruments of salvation. Reli­ father is Palestinian and who was raised gion, considered by both sides in St. Louis and Jerusalem, has been writ­ to be more important than this ing clear-eyed poems about the Middle life on earth, likely played a East for years. This Collection gathers significant role in the patri­ these poems and current work together arch's decision. and offers a plea for understanding. Stanley's aim is to correct Nye's focus is mainly people: her past wrongs (of history and of Palestinian grandmother, whose hands historiography), to bring atten­ "recognize grapes, I the damp shine tion to a great man, and to of a goat's new skin"; her Uncle explore the melancholy inher­ Mohammed, who lives a hermit's life in itance of the Crusades, and she the mountains; her father, who forever does so with admirable rhetor­ dreams of fig trees and gave his children ical skill. But her history is the greatest gift of all: "freedom to be biased and simplified in the fools I if we needed to." There are also opposite direction of those that delicate, moving portraits of people have dominated up to this time. met in passing-a man who makes If we truly wish to free our brooms, a father holding his bleeding children from hatred and mis­ son, a woman making soup from noth­ fllu stratio11 by Diane Stanley,from trust produced by destructive ing. Nye's strength lies in letting her Saladin : Noble Prince of Islam prejudices, we must begin by beautifully carved images speak for

54 Behind the Mountains Edwidge Danticat

Celiane and her family escape from politically unstable and impoverished Haiti only to find a new set of challenges in the harsh concrete landscape of New York.

Acclaimed author of adult novels Edwidge Danticat received an American Book Award for The Farming of Bones and a National Book Award nomination for Krik? Krak!

Ages l 1-1 5 • l 7 6 pages 0-439-37299-2 • $16. 95

Flight to Freedom Ana Veciana-Suarez

Yaras moving account tells her familys story of exile from Cuba and adjustment to life in a less traditional country.

Ana Veciana-Suarez is the author of two critically acclaimed adult books. The Chin Kiss King and Birthday Parties in Heaven.

Ages l 1-1 5 • 208 pages 0-439-38199-1 . $16.95

www.scholastic.com

•• SCHOLASTIC SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. Riverbank Review themselves. Here is the world, she While these topics might seem seems to say. This lies next to this­ old hat to a generation raised isn't it odd? Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it on Shel Silverstein and Jack heartbreaking? Now, place it in context Prelutsky, Fisher achieves time­ and feel the depth charge of meaning. lessness with her light hand and These poems span two worlds, Amer­ unerrmg ear: ica and Palestine. Nye takes pains not to take sides or point fingers in the Hideout Arab-Israeli conflict, but her mission is They looked for me clearly to lay bare the suffering in her and from my nook own cultural background-a people inside the oak who, in the poem "The Clean Rinse," I watched them look. have been trodden underfoot too long: Illustration by Jennifer Emery, Through little slits ftom I Heard a Bluebird Sing Each time you go through this between the leaves you lose a little less color I saw their looking legs and sleeves. grandmother, in the wake of September the water is less pink, blue, or gray 11, spurred her to create this book: "It's They would have looked your job. Speak for me too. Say how all over town this is what i try to say: much I hate it. Say this is not who we except- don't let them wring it out of you are." Nye's new book succeeds in this ! threw some acorns down. because they like starch, task, providing us with the rich tapestry don't let that apply to your neck of a world in which love, beauty, war, and Each of the book's five sections vengeance exist, every day, side by side. (Family and Friends, Pets, Clever Crea­ you are real, 100% cotton, -Joyce Sidman tures, Wild Ones, Weather and Seasons) you can wrinkle, accept that as a gift begins with an informal paragraph or and accept these rinses, I Heard a Bluebird Sing: two from the author. Fisher tells us of they are tedious Children Select Their Favorite her "lucky childhood" in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, with horses they will come Poems by Aileen Fisher skins" again and again Edited by Bernice E. Cullinan "that knew how to twitch their Illustrated by Jennifer Emery and cows that turned "green grass into

after awhile, you will have W O RDSONG/ BOYDS MI U.S P RESS white milk." She also discusses her nothing more they can take 64 pages, Ages 5- 12, $18.95 writing process and encourages writers­

ISBN 1-56397- 191-7 to-be ("Open yourself to whatever A beautiful book to hold and peruse, means the most to you, and ideas will 19 Varieties ofGazelle is small enough to Aileen Fisher has been writing poetry flow in"). Jennifer Emery's appealing carry along. Scarlet textile patterns pro­ for children since 1933, and has pub­ but rather sedate black-and-white illus­ vide a vivid background for Michael lished more than thirty-five books. trations spotlight a snail's trail, a host Nye's cover photograph of an Arab girl This retrospective work compiles her ofladybugs, a child climbing a tree. holding a tablet inscribed with her own "most popular" poems, chosen by a Love of the outdoors infuses Fish­ poem. One design quibble: the poem panel of teachers and then voted on by er's work, and her voice-always fresh titles are set vertically in the margins, children across the country. The result and immediate-links us with the child instead of at the top of the page-and is a remarkably balanced collection of she once was. Her most engaging poems are thus easy to overlook on first read­ Fisher's gentle, rhyming missives from use an irresistible combination of rhythm ing. While this layout is interesting the heart of childhood. and sensory detail to build mood: visually, it hampers meaning when Forty-one poems explore the pro­ titles are important to set a poem's cesses of living, learning, and wonder­ How would it be scene or point of view. ing that children eagerly participate in on a day in June In her introduction, Nye explains each day: the joy ofbirthdays, the mys­ to open your eyes that the voice of her dead Palestinian tery of cats, the wonder of snowflakes. in a dark cocoon,

56 Fall 2002

And soften one end and George does not disappoint. Dun­ While Duncan is a fetching character in and crawl outside, can, all legs and tongue, arrives with his own right, he wreaks big-dog havoc: and find you had wings "spend-the-night I Duncan things I in to open wide, a bag I bigger than I Little Dog." The larger Sit! Oh, gosh. And find you could fly dog eats Little Dog's food, and naps in Duncan to a bush or tree Little Dog's bed (his head is all that will squashed or float in the air fit), and begs for Little Dog's treats. the petunias. like a boat at sea .. .

How would it BE?

In her introduction, Bernice Culli­ nan (editor-in-chief of Wordsong, the poetry imprint of Boyds Mills Press) describes this book as a companion volume to Ajar efTiny Stars: Poems by NCTE Award-Winning Poets (1996), which included Fisher's work. The Deliciously sly photos by National Council of Teachers of Eng­ photographer Valorie Fisher lish Award for Poetry for Children­ reveal how dazzling, funny, and won by Fisher in 1978-is presented enormous a big brother can be. every three years to a poet with "a dis­ tinguished body of work." "Valorie Fisher's My Big Brother is Fisher may be distinguished, but she the most winning and original is never stuffy: "In the evening I in the picture book in ages."-VANm FAIR thickets I There are orchestras I of crick­ * "A captivating debut [by] a ets, I And you never I need buy tickets." talented photographer." Don't be put off by this book's lacklus­ -PUBLISHERS W EEKLl', starred review ter cover and design. Pick it up and start * "A fine read-aloud."-ScHOOL reading aloud. Children will gather. 0-689-84327-5 • $14.95/$22.95 Canadian LI BRAR\' J OURNAL, starred review After all, they've chosen these poems. -Joyce Sidman

Seven-year-old Giselle toured Little Dog and Duncan Italy as a member of an all-in-the­ By Kristine O'Connell George family theater troupe. Now her Illustrated by June Otani delightful depictions of that CLARION magical year have grown into this 40 pages, Ages 4-8, $12.00 latest Giselle Potter masterpiece. ISBN Cki 18-1 1758-X * "Captivating." Suppose you're an adorably cute little - PUB LISHE/lS W EEKLY, starred review dog with a completely devoted little­ * "Fans ofTomie dePaola's girl owner. What happens if a huge, ongoing autobiography .. . will enjoy hairy houseguest comes to stay? In this this glimpse of a decidedly delightfully illustrated sequel to Kris­ unconven ti onal childhood sojourn." tine O'Connell George's Little Dog -KIRKUS, starred review 0-689-84 730-0 • $ 16.95/$26.50 Canadian Poems, Little Dog must share his space -and the affection of his owner An Anne Schwartz Book • Atheneum Books for Young Readers (the Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing • A Viacom Company book's narrator}-with a visiting Irish "" w.Si m<>n SaHs:}(;Js:.c<>m wolfhound named Duncan. The premise is rich with possibility,

57 Riverbank Review

Little Dog has moments of pique, bination of intimacy and wry humor. with school-children in New York City defending his treasured lap spot and George has a winning way of convey­ who witnessed the attacks. This lovely hiding his toys beneath the bed where ing much feeling in few words, often book was an outgrowth of that project. Duncan can't reach them, but also with a humorous twist: "A goodbye Eighteen poems are included, some learns the joys ofbuddyhood. Together hug I for Duncan I needs to be I very by famous "adult" poets (Emily Dick­ the dogs roll in the grass, fetch sticks w i d e." Perhaps because the author inson, Walt Whitman, Gwendolyn (Duncan's is a log), and track mud. In has expanded her cast, this collection Brooks, Langston Hughes), others by "No Way!" the two dogs are on the lam: as a whole seems more loosely con­ children's poets such as Karla Kuskin, structed, at times teetering on the Lillian Morrison, Eloise Greenfield, and Little Dog and Duncan edge of prose. Duncan's arrival adds Riverbank Review contributor Susan saw me coming new interest, but it also dilutes some of Marie Swanson. with the brush ... themes of The juniper bush the intensity of the bond between the The poems explore the has grown little girl and Little Dog. George trouble and comfort in different ways. a tail. returns to that bond in the final Some touch on issues in the larger world poem: "Duncan is gone. I Little Dog that impinge on the world of a child. In Illustrator June Otani is at the top runs I to me to be sure I I'm still Gwendolyn Brooks's "A Little Girl 's of her form with this incongruous duo. here- I and ... I I am." Poem," the narrator declares: "I do not In simple, expressive watercolors, she -Joyce Sidman want I fire screaming up to the sky. I I vividly captures each dog's changing do not want I families killed in their personality. The ungainly Duncan moves doorways." Other poems speak more This Place I Know: from moping bewilderment (as his generally to the feelings of loss, sad­ Poems of Comfort family leaves) to utter contentment ness, and fear that all children know. Selected by Georgia Heard (sprawled on the little girl's bed). Little As in many of the poems, the nat­ Illustrated by Eighteen Renowned Dog, on the other hand, seems to hover ural world offers solace in Wendell Picture Book Artists pos­ Berry's "The Peace of Wild Things": like a canine Tinkerbell-jealous, CANDLEWICK "When despair for the world grows in sessive, ecstatic, but always eagerly pre­ 48pages,Age6andup, $16.99 The constant in these pictures is me I and I wake in the night at the least sent. ISBN 0·7636·1924·8 the smiling little girl, who plays a sound I in fear of what my life and benign, almost parental role (Otani In the past year, as adults have searched children's lives may be, I I go and lie wisely leaves out the grown-ups). for ways to help children make sense of down where the wood drake I rests in The best poems in Lillie Dog and a darker, more confusing world, many his beauty on the water, and the great Duncan recall the unique haiku-like have spoken about the power of poetry heron feeds." In "Stars," Deborah voice of Little Dog Poems, with its com- to play a healing role. It's not a surpris­ Chandra's young narrator draws peace ing idea to regular readers of poems. from the remote but constant stars at Poetry identifies the often elusive terri­ night: "I like the way they looked down tory that human beings share. Even the from the sky I And didn't seem to most difficult fee lings weigh less when mind the way I cried." The loving we know they belong to others as well. contact between parent and child is The language of poetry-like music, or sought in Georgia Heard's "Lullaby": prayer-can soothe the ear and the "Will you soothe away my worry? I heart. We know this pleasure as young Will you sing the sweetest song? I Will children; it's a shame that many of us you chase my fears away, I And rock forget it. me all night long?" Georgia Heard knows the power of This book would be powerful if it poetry. A nationally respected poet contained poetry alone; the volume's and teacher based in New York, she is art makes it spectacular. Each poem is the author of several books both of and accompanied by a full -page illustration about poetry. Following the events of by a different picture-book artist. Some was asked to of the images are abstract, some realis­ 11/uslralion by June Olani, la st September 11, she j;om Little Dog and Duncan gather "poems of comfort" to share tically rendered; some images have a

58 Fall 2002 gravity and power that conveys the weight of trouble while others express the ten­ derness and whimsy of a child's dreams. In each case the art imagina­ tively extends the text. Eloise Green­ field's "This Place" imagines a refuge where children can explore their feelings freely. Holly Meade's cut-paper illus­ tration shows a restful park rendered in soft blues and greens, where children walk on the grass, share a bench quiet­ ly, or lie down and look at the sky. One of the most powerful images in the book is Peter Sis's cover illustra­ tion, which accompanies an excerpt from Walt Whitman's "Song of the Broad­ Axe." (It's a questionable inclusion, despite its reference to a city under attack -few children will know what to make of, let alone pronounce in their heads, "chef-d'oeuvres of engineering, forts, armaments.") Sis shows a man's head in profile. The man's hat is an aerial-view maze of New York City streets, the city's skyline forming its crest. A red heart at the city's center sends a delicate foun­ tain of blood skyward, into a now familiar gap between the buildings. -Martha Davis Beck Illustration by Shane W. Evans,from This Place I Know

Reviewers in This Issue Lee Galda, coauthor of Literature and the recent book is Cold Little Duck, Duck, ~ Child, is a professor of children 's literature at the Duck (Greenwillow, 2000). University ofMinnesota. Christine Alfano lives in Minneapolis with Jenny Sawyer is an editor andfreelance her family. A former bookseller, she writes Krystyna Poray Goddu is the author writer living in Boston. about children's books/or Borealis and ofA Celebration of Steiff: Timeless Toys Ruminator Review. for Today (Portfolio Press) and coauthor of Joyce Sidman teaches as a writer-in­ The Doll by Contemporary Artists residence in the Twin Cities area. Her most Martha Davis Beck is the editor of (Abbeville Press). recent children's book is Eureka! Poems Riverbank Review. about Inventors, illustrated by Kristen Bobbi Miller has a master's degree Chavez (Millbrook, 2002). Kathryne Beebe is currently studying medieval in children's literature.from Simmons history at Oxford University. College. She teaches children's literature and Susan Marie Swanson works as a writing to both children and adults. poet in school classrooms across Minnesota. Mary Lou Burket 's book reviews have Her most recent children's book is The First appeared in Publishers Weekly, The Five Abby McGanney Nolan has reviewed chil­ Thing My Mama Told Me, illustrated by Owls, and other publications. dren's books for the New York Times Book Christine Davenier (Harcourt). Review and the Washington Post Book World. Mary Moore Easter is a writer, choreog­ Renee Victor is afreelance writer based in rapher, performer, and professor ofdance Lisa Westberg Peters is aformer newspaper Minnesota. A former teacher, she writes about at Carleton College. reporter and a children's book author. Her most literature/or a variety ofpublications.

59 Riverbank Review

I

1 one for the she\f

Next time you go out your back door, Tom's Midnight Garden into late Victorian England. There we stop and imagine what your view By Philippa Pearce find a rolling, tree-filled lawn, and might have been, standing on that Illustrated by Susan Einzig Hatty, the little girl who once played in same spot, in the late 1800s. Would OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1958 that garden. She can somehow see Tom, your house or apartment have been Harprr Trophy paperback edition and she meets him there throughout there? How would the yard have 240 pages, ages 8-12, $5.95 the summer. looked? Who, at that time, thought of ISBN 0-06-440445-5 Intricate construction is needed to your backyard as their own? hold such a complex, fantastic plot There is an ordinary-looking back door in Tom's Mid­ together, and Pearce gracefully pulls it off, building sus­ night Garden that does an extraordinary thing: it opens to pense and momentum throughout the novel. She writes just such a past. On successive nights, a dull, paved driveway beautiful sentences, luxuriating in physical descriptions of area, surrounded by a fence and cluttered with trash cans, is British landscapes that she obviously knows well and loves. mysteriously transformed into the spacious, fabulous gar­ Even if you've never seen a yew tree, her descriptions will den that bloomed there many years before. The door's magic make you long to climb one. has to do with an old, formidable grandfather clock that Her true achievement, however, is the creation of Tom occasionally chimes thirteen times. And Tom, the pajama­ Long. He is a boy with emotional range, irritated and petu­ clad boy who opens the door, finds himself drawn into a lant one moment, bursting into tears the next. He stub­ time and place that he is loath to leave. Some fantasy writ­ bornly seeks to solve the mystery of the garden. Is he a ers take pains to create strange new worlds in a far-flung ghost? Is Hatty? How can time overlap? With willful inten­ future. In Tom's Midnight Garden, Philippa Pearce quietly sity, Tom embraces every moment inside his beloved gar­ ponders the slippery nature of time and imbues a not-so-dis­ den, and he tries to understand the enchanted and tenuous tant past and place with wonder. She finds the strange new friendship he's found. Eventually, Tom and Hatty tumble world in her own backyard. headlong into the novel's bittersweet conclusion. Pearce published the novel in 1958 (it won the Carnegie Tom's Midnight Garden is the story of a boy who falls in Medal that year), and reading the book now gives the story love with something he cannot have. That's the story of the effect of a stone skipping lightly across water. From our growing up, isn't it?-realizing that some things are out perch at the cusp of the twenty­ of your reach, that others were first century, we hop to the mid­ never meant to be, that all things twentieth century and meet Tom end. When the story ends, we Long, a ten-year-old boy living in feel the force of Tom's grief in Britain. To his utter dismay, he is knowing this. It's like awakening being shipped off for the summer from a beautiful dream: we may to stay in "a poky flat" with his try to capture it again in sleep, aunt and uncle-his younger but the dream won't return. brother Peter has the measles Pearce writes that "nothing (remember quarantines?), and so a stands still, except in our memo­ season's worth of tree climbing ry," but she isn't entirely right. and intrepid exploration must be We can't return to the past or to put on hold. During his stay at his our dreams, but her luminous aunt and uncle's home, a big, story stays exactly as it was writ­ oblong house that's been divided ten .We may return to visit the into apartments, Tom happens garden and Tom and Hatty across the threshold of the noto­ wheneverwe like. rious back door, making the leap -Christine Alfano

60 *"A soaring achievement."*

Written and illustrated by ]o n j Muth

The Three Questions Based on a story by Leo Tolstoy Written and illustrated by Jon J Muth Ages 6-9 • 32 pages• 0-439-19996-4 • $16.95

* "Muth (Come On, Rain!) recasts a short story by Tolstoy into picture book format .... The tale sends a simple and direct message unfreighted by pomp or pedantry."-Publishers Weekly, starred review * Muth has created a magical work of depth and beauty. The deceptively simple plot is written in language that is filled with visual and auditory imagery, and yet remains accessible to young readers. The delicate watercolor paintings are exquisite." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review*

"Muth's large-size paintings are open and beautiful." -Booklist

www.scholastic.com CT ••SCHOLASTIC Scholastic Press SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. 1-58234-778-6 $16 .95 September Ages 4-8 ury '

BLOOMSBURY USA CHILDRENS BOOKS distributed Children's Books are Bloomsbury . by Hotzbrinck Pubhs;~~s77 or fax 800 .672.2054 To order call 888.33 . . •see our entire harvest ~nl~e at www.bloomsbury.com us

PRSRT STD U.S. Postage PAID Riverbank Review