Smart books for all kids

Ellen Raskin was thinking outside the box before most of us even knew there was a box. A writer, an illustrator, a designer -- she combined them all into a profession she called bookmaking. In her novels, the typeface is as much an element as the mystery/puzzle plot, which is as integral as the wordplay, which also shows up in the illustrations....

When Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me won the Newbery Medal in 2010, many critics and readers traced its lineage back not only to the 1963 winner A Wrinkle in Time but also to The Westing Game, a puzzle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a coming-of-age novel, which won in 1979. Now Dutton has brought back into print Raskin’s three remaining novels: Figgs & Phantoms (1974, and a Newbery Honor Book), The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I Mean Noel) (1971), and The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues (1975).

All of them welcome the reader in as a participant in solving the mystery or completing the quest; all of them speak to both head and heart (especially Figgs & Phantoms, one of the most poignant explorations of grief I’ve ever read). They are smart books, but they don’t exclude anybody; they’re for all kids.

-- Martha V. Parravano

Required reading for Women's History Month

We've just put up a list of recommended women's history books on the Horn Book website.

The board Book of Sleep

Knopf recently released a board book version of Il Sung Na's The Book of Sleep. In the original edition, a playful and spare text accompanies sweet illustrations that, upon closer look, contain a multitude of textural and illustrative details (including the protagonist owl as a search-and-find character on spreads where another character takes center stage). An engrossing and calm nighttime read, The Book of Sleep can withstand many re-readings.

The board book adaptation is a somewhat different story. Because the original encourages many readings, the concept of translating this book into sturdy board format seems a good one. The book suffers no abridgment in its new form and remains its whole, satisfying self. What does suffer in the new format is Na's multimedia mastery and tiny details in the illustrations. Compared to the picture book's 10" x 10" trim size, the 6" x 6" size of the new board book significantly reduces the images and, accordingly, their detail. While you might think that the glossy paper-over-board should make the details pop more than does the matte paper of the original, all of the art is instead much darker, forcing a loss of richness in both texture and depth.

A lap-sized edition would have been a better choice, allowing parent and child to share the book for bedtime read-alouds. It's difficult to imagine the toddler who needs a copy of The Book of Sleep durable enough for repeated solitary readings, especially when the tiny details that Na renders so beautifully are nearly invisible.

-- Natasha Gilmore

Keep your friends close, and your frienemies closer

I have to admit that when I slipped Amy Holder's debut novel The Lipstick Laws (HMH/Graphia, April) off the shelf, I was motivated mainly by the jacket summary's similarity to Mean Girls. Packed with cliques, hot boys, revenge, and a tyrannical friendship pact sealed with a bright red kiss, The Lipstick Laws would be ripe for adaptation as a sequel to the 2004 film -- if ABC Family hadn’t already released Mean Girls 2 in January.

The Lipstick Laws lacks all of the wit of Tina Fey’s script and all of the substance of the movie's nonfiction inspiration, Queen Bees & Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. Narrator April Bowers spends most of her time vapidly obsessing over boys and insulting the physical appearance of her classmates, making the reader wonder: what really makes her better than reigning queen Britney Taylor? April is sucked in, chewed up, and spit out by the Lipstick Lawlords, the popular clique headed by Britney. This drives unpopular April to plot a series of humiliating pranks to bring Britney down a notch or two. Though April finds a new group of friends and realizes some of her own shallow faults along the way, by the time she calls off her final prank -- because she realizes it's potentially lethal -- readers will undoubtedly be rooting for everyone involved to sink into high school obscurity.

-- Elizabeth Parks

"It's your Day of all Days! It's the Best of the Best!"

As you may have noticed, yesterday was Dr. Seuss's 107th birthday (and the 14th annual Read Across America Day). I celebrated by drooling over the unbelievable Dr. Seuss-themed goodies over at Cakewrecks and making a birthday card for the good doctor with an app from Oceanhouse Media:

 

I really would have liked to party with Michelle Obama and a gigantic Cat in the Hat, though. How did you celebrate?

-- Katie Bircher

Muppet News Flash!

Need something to tide you over until the new Muppet movie opens in theaters November 23rd? Look no further than BOOM! Kids' two Muppets comics series.

I grew up watching The Muppet Show and the Muppet movies with my family and I’m counting down the days until the movie opens, so I’ll admit I opened the books with the bar set high. Overall, I think the creators manage to capture the spirit of Jim Henson’s original characters and the tone of the Muppet productions.

The adaptations of literary classics (to date: Robin Hood, Peter Pan, King Arthur, Snow White, and Sherlock Holmes) are more successful than The Muppet Show Comic Book stories, which serve as enjoyable companions to the TV show. Sure, literary purists will scoff at the Electric Mayhem rock band portraying the Seven Dwarfs and the Great Gonzo as Sherlock Holmes, but those folks probably won’t pick up these books anyway. Muppet completists, on the other hand, will get a kick out of seeing old friends in these classic roles. The characters retain their own quirky personalities (e.g., Fozzie Bear’s sense of humor, Miss Piggy’s diva temper), humor, and Muppet-centric cultural references.

Most of the illustrators’ renderings of the characters are passable, but a note to Roger Langridge: your Kermit (left) looks like he was stretched on the rack, and the rest of the characters are also frightening versions of themselves. The texts would have benefitted from some fine-tuning, but the venture is one I’m glad BOOM! Kids (now Kaboom! as of February 21) has undertaken. Every book acknowledges The Muppets Studio, which adds an additional level of credibility. What stories should the Muppets and Boom! Kids/Kaboom! tackle next?

-- Cindy Ritter

Blogging women's history books

A full month of blog posts commemorating women's history begins today on KidLit Celebrates Women's History Month. Creators and critics of children's literature (including Anita Silvey, Candace Fleming, Kathleen Krull, and Tanya Bolden) will highlight excellent books about women's history. The blog is off to a great start with a review of Laurie Halse Anderson's Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving, a picture book biography of Sarah Hale.