Taking on the Classics

HarperCollins sent me a couple of new books that were bound to make me think of some major classics. Can it be that a new generations of authors and illustrators will hold their own against the big guys? Kind of like in professional wrestling? We shall see!

Taking on Richard Scarry

Who dares to challenge Richard Scarry, he of the busy world, cute-without-being-irritatingly-adorable characters, and lots of cars and trucks?

That would be Brian Biggs. I missed his first outing, the 2011 title Everything Goes: On Land. And I’m lacking his forthcoming easy readers, such as Everything Goes: Henry in a Jam. But I’m sitting here looking at Everything Goes: In the Air—with its nice big 10x12 trim size—and I also have two board books under the Everything Goes banner: Stop! Go! A Book of Opposites and 1 2 3 Beep Beep Beep! A Counting Book.

Granted, in Biggs’s book you will find fewer narratives, especially those mini stories Scarry was so fond of telling, e.g., in Cars and Trucks and Things that Go, the Pig Family gets sprayed by a street washer with a broken nozzle and then, on the next page, a load of oranges gets dumped on them and their car because Mrs. Rabbit was yelling instructions to Mr. Rabbit.

Biggs does something similar, though it isn’t as intricate. For example, in Everything Goes: In the Air, the main narrative is following a family that is going on a trip in an airplane The emphasis is on the family’s son, who appears to be six or seven years old. But other things are happening in the airport. Most notably, a woman pushing quintuplets in a stroller loses all five, and readers must help the worried mother find her active babies (who may remind you of the escaped baby in Hilary Knight’s Where’s Wallace).

The young main character asks questions about the airport and planes, and his parents answer. The questions and answers are useful and clear. Airplane history is included, as on the spread showing planes like the Spirit of St. Louis, the Red Baron, and an early passenger plane. One early plane is shown on another spread with the parts labeled. The pilot is labeled, plus there’s a label saying, “Nice mustache” of the pilot’s facial hair. On another page, a stunt plane that’s flying upside down is labeled upside down.

Which just goes to show that the humor is likely to grab you, especially if you’re the parent reading this with a child. A man in the airport holds a sign for an incoming passenger and the name is “Murgatroyd.” Arrivals and departures are listed, but along with ordinary city names we get Dullsville, Outtatown, and Big Apple. Certain characters speak with alliteration: one man says into his cell phone, “Honolulu was heavenly,” and on the next page another man says into his, “I said, ‘I’ll see ya’ll in Yellville!’” Yelling, of course. A stand full of brochures has a sign up top that says Tourist Traps. A pirate at security is told he can’t take his sword on the flight, though apparently he can take his parrot. My favorite funny detail is when a news helicopter is show flying and a reporter looks over, saying, “That’s not a bird or a plane.” A superhero is standing on top of a skyscraper off to one side. The author nicely balances airplane and airport information with humorous details. We even get a nod to feminism with a remark about an airplane pilot.

The board books are similar in style. Their plain colored backgrounds will make it easier for toddlers to interpret what they see. We get touches of humor and cheery, creative renditions of concepts using all kinds of vehicles. For example, one spread in the opposites book shows MANY motorcycles coming up behind a FEW (three) unicycle riders. One of the unicyclists looks back with a worried expression at the onslaught of motorcylists. Then there's the counting book that starts off with 1 bus and 2 RV’s before working its way up to 9 race cars and 10 bicycles. But best of all is the last spread, which shows 1 BIG traffic jam.

Biggs’s artwork is cheery and fun, though it’s not as engaging as Scarry’s work. The style is different, with simpler, larger shapes and stronger lines. The characters are appealing in general and do funny things, but they lack the strong individual personalities of characters like Scarry’s famous Lowly Worm, Officer Flossy, and Mistress Mouse. One reason might be that the characters’ facial expressions are somewhat uniform, particularly the eyes, which are black dots and don’t do much.

I definitely recommend the Everything Goes books for today’s kids. But hang onto your Richard Scarry books. With their marvelous characters, their fine print, their eloquent illustrations, and their diminutive narratives, they make the perfect follow-up to Brian Biggs’s vehicular world.

Taking on P.D. Eastman

Who’s taking on P.D. Eastman, creator of the best dog book ever? We’re talking Go, Dog. Go! here, people.

His name is Horvath. James Horvath. In case you aren’t sure about the challenge being on, check out the title: Horvath’s book is actually called Dig, Dogs, Dig. All right, with a subtitle: A Construction Tail. The name matches Eastman's even if the punctuation doesn’t. (How many of you will admit you’ve looked up the title of the Eastman classic at one time or another to figure out if it’s one sentence or two?)

Moving right along, let’s check out Horvath’s construction worker dogs. I like that the author-illustrator introduces his dogs on the front endpaper: supervisor Duke (who carries a bullhorn) and crew members Roxy, Buddy, Max, Spot, and Spike. Then our story begins. We see the aforementioned dogs plus several more in their beds. There's even a cat. Duke calls to them from the doorway:

“Wake up, dogs.

You’re going to be late.

The sun is up.

There’s no time to wait.”

The next spread shows the dogs leaping out of their beds, ready to get to work. Which is an obvious homage to pages 48–51 of Go, Dog. Go! Pages 48–49 show a bunch of dogs asleep in a large bed and tell us that night is not the time for play. But the next spread shows the same room in the morning. Dogs are leaping out of bed, and a dog in charge with a bullhorn calls:

“Now it is day.

The sun is up.

Now is the time

for all dogs to get up.

‘Get up!’

It is day.

Time to get going.

Go, dogs. Go!”

If anything, Horvath’s book was inspired by page 34 in Go, Dog. Go! There we find three dogs at work. It’s a great little scene involving a shovel, a pickaxe, and a jackhammer. (See also page 18.) That said, Horvath jumps off and does his own thing. His dogs really are construction workers, and unlike Eastman’s dogs—who show up everywhere from a ski slope to the top of a giant tree—Horvath’s crew goes to the site and builds, builds, builds. It’s a nice focus. When the dogs get to work, we get a page showing the different machines they will use. The machines pop because they are all yellow with some black on a green background. Each is labeled as part of the text:

“Start up the loader,

dump truck,

and grader,

bulldozer,

backhoe,

and excavator.”

The work goes on with a great twist—as the dogs dig, they discover a huge T-Rex bone! What will they do with it? And why is there a truck full of ducks heading their way?

Horvath rhymes his text, which could have been distracting. But most of the rhymed phrases flow smoothly, and that’s pretty hard to do. Dig, Dogs, Dig is very fun stuff. Like the Everything Goes books, it has great boy appeal. What’s interesting is that I have a similar quibble with Horvath’s artwork. The illustrations are cartoonish, colorful, and active, which is great. However, the dogs are less personable than one might hope. Even on that front endpaper, all of them have their mouths hanging open the same way and—we’re back to the eyes, in this case black ovals with white dot pupils. Look at how someone like Kevin Henkes does eyes and facial expressions and I think you’ll see what I mean. Let's face it: now that more illustrators are using computers to create picture books, this may continue to be an issue.

Still, I can happily recommend Dig, Dogs, Dig. It has real verve, and I think young readers (especially boys) are going to like it. Try pairing it with its mentor and predecessor, Go, Dog. Go!

Note: The dogs in this book complete the whole construction project in just one day. You might want to point out to your child that a construction project normally takes months and months.

Taking on Dr. Seuss (sort of)

Who’s up against Theodore Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss?

Well, no one, actually. Not with the full list of superpowers: crazy-funny drawings, successful rhymes that shouldn’t be, the occasional social commentary, easy readers that made Dick and Jane run for cover, and a generally mad take on life. (Five hundred hats? An elephant sitting on an egg like a chicken? A green guy who’s the anti-Santa Claus?)

We do have contenders when it comes to certain Seussian factors, however, so let’s take a look at them.

The first name that comes to mind is Mo Willems—especially his Elephant and Piggie books. They’re the new classics in easy readers, and I can see why. Humor, not to mention melodrama of the kind appropriately associated with frustrated 5-year-olds, is the name of the game. Elephant and Piggie are marvelous personalities, as is Pigeon. The situations are more commonplace that the ones you will meet in Dr. Seuss’s books, but that makes the humor all the more impressive. It’s like Seinfeld for kindergartners.

Rhyme-wise, who can we go to? It’s very hard to write a great rhymed narrative. The only person I can think of who has pulled it off recently—and in quite a different style—is the late, supremely talented Margaret Mahy with her poem-turned-picture book, Bubble Trouble. Here’s my review from April 2009.

We’ll have to move beyond the easy reader category to find any further comparisons to the great Geisel. How about our latest Newbery award winner, Jon Klassen, with his hat trick duo, I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat. Story pacing, an odd and unique illustrative style, and an equally nutty sense of humor? Klassen, in his own way, has a certain kinship to Seuss. Though for writing, I'm more inclined to select an off-the-wall collaborator of Klassen's, Mac Barnett. Just take a look at Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem, for example.

The new Seuss, ironically, can’t be too much like the old Seuss. It’s been said that no one can successfully imitate Dr. Seuss, and I agree. So maybe Mo Willems really is the new Dr. Seuss. Maybe Jon Klassen can stake a claim, or even Mac Barnett. But let's remember that one of the best things about children’s literature is that it accumulates. "The more the merrier" definitely applies. We have more great books for kids now than we did 20 years ago, and more 20 years ago than we had 30 years before that. I should say instead that children’s books are cumulative—like the refrains in some of the best ones. Say, for example,

“I do not like them here or there.

I do not like them anywhere.

I do not like green eggs and ham.

I do not like them, Sam-I-am.”

A Sad Time for Children’s Books

The last few years have been rough for the field of children’s books—we lost Eva Ibbotson, Brian Jacques, Diana Wynne Jones, and Simms Taback. (See my three posts about DWJ: recent ones about her and her upcoming book of essays plus one from 2009 crowning her the queen of children’s fantasy.) Now, 2012 hasn’t been any better when it comes to this sort of loss. For today’s post, I’m going to list several authors and illustrators who have passed away this year along with some notes about my favorite books they wrote or illustrated. Please leave your own notes in the comments about favorite books by these authors and illustrators and I’ll add your thoughts to the post. Also, let me know if there’s someone I missed that you think should be included.

Jose Aruego—An illustrator whose best-known book is surely Robert Kraus's Leo the Late Bloomer, in which the father tiger spying on his kid has got to be one of the funniest things ever depicted by an artist. Thanks to poet-illustrator Douglas Florian for letting me know about this illustrator's passing. Here is Doug Florian's post about Jose Aruego.

Note that Aruego often worked with fellow illustrator and author Ariane Dewey. He collaborated with her on one of my own favorites, Joseph and James Bruchac's How Chipmunk Got His Stripes, a retelling of an Iroquois legend about bragging and teasing.

Nina Bawden—a British author best known for her book, Carrie's War.

I remember reading her book, The Witch’s Daughter, as a child. I thought it would have a real witch with magic, and it didn’t. I was a little disappointed, but I liked the book anyway!














Jan Berenstain—Everyone's heard of the Berenstain Bears, right? Of course, it feels weird to use Jan's name without her late husband's name, too: Jan-and-Stan. The bear family is cartoonishly appealing and sets out on all kinds of adventures.

I can't say I loved all of the books, mostly because of their didacticism, but when I taught first grade, I really liked one of their simpler books, The Spooky Old Tree.

Remy Charlip—a dancer and choreographer as well as an author-illustrator; he was also the model for Georges Méliès in Brian Selznick’s book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Fortunately is probably my favorite Charlip book with its simple, clever up and down rhythm.

John Christopher—but his real name was Sam Youd. Another Brit, author of the Tripod series and other science fiction.

I remember reading the Tripod books when I was 13 or 14 and being both thrilled and sort of terrified. Aside from Andre Norton’s books, they were the most memorable science fiction books I read as a kid.

Leo Dillon—Here’s my earlier post about the passing of this brilliant illustrator, who worked closely with his wife Diane. They illustrated numerous books and also did many book covers like this one for Garth Nix's Sabriel.

I have lots of favorites, though I’m especially fond of To Every Thing There Is a Season.

 

Jean Craighead George—who won a Newbery for Julie of the Wolves.

I’m rather partial to My Side of the Mountain, which makes you think surviving in the great outdoors is, well, possible.

Ellen Levine—author of books like Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Stories and Rachel Carson: A Twentieth-Century Life.

I love Levine’s beautiful book, Henry’s Freedom Box, which was illustrated by Kadir Nelson and won a Caldecott Honor award.

Margaret Mahy—a New Zealander and one of the best YA writers ever. Yet she also wrote picture books and funny chapter books.

I’m a die-hard fan of her classic YA paranormal/horror/romance Changeover, but then, her 2009 rhymed picture book, Bubble Trouble, is a laugh-out-loud tour de force.

Jean Merrill—her classic book, The Pushcart War, is out of print, but The Toothpaste Millionaire is still making the rounds in schools. Middle grade fiction about economics and class warfare? Sure!

I know I read The Pushcart War when I was young, but I don’t remember it very well. What I’d love to do is get my hands on a book she wrote called The Elephant Who Liked to Smash Small Cars. Wouldn’t you?

Else Holmelund Minarik—Two words: Little Bear. Such a perfectly sweet-but-not-saccharine capturing of what it’s like to be very young. And the series was illustrated by Maurice Sendak, to boot.

I still like the first book best. My copy has been read ragged from the days I taught kindergarten and first grade. Mother Bear is so cool: “But who is this?” she asks Little Bear when he is playing outer space, “Are you a bear from Earth?”

Maurice Sendak—This is my goodbye post to the inimitable Mr. Sendak.

I love Where the Wild Things Are, especially that wonderful last line: “…and it was still hot.” I'm also very fond of the Nutshell Library!

Donald J. Sobol—author of the Encyclopedia Brown books.

Oh, you know you did it, too, tried to figure out the solution and then sneaked a look in the back of the book for the answer. And then there’s the Moriarty to Encyclopedia’s Sherlock: Bugs Meany. (Actually, Bugs was no match for our boy detective.)






Again, please leave your comments about these authors and illustrators along with anyone I may have missed. We can only hope that's it for 2012—and be glad for the legacy of the books that such generously creative people have left for us.



COMMENTS ABOUT THESE AUTHORS AND ILLUSTRATORS*

I guess we always have our favorites, and I didn't know about Else Holmelund Minarik. Little Bear books are still being read in my house, now to grandchildren. And I love all the Elizabeth Craighead George books; she is a treasure of making us love the earth and all creatures in it. There are many memories here. 
—Linda at Teacherdance


Unfortunately you have to add the talented Jose Aruego to your list. He created more than 60 picture books, many for Greenwillow, where I had the honor and pleasure to meet him. I posted about him on August 22nd at the Florian Cafe:
http://floriancafe.blogspot.com/
His work, mostly with Ariane Dewey, was fresh, original, and very funny. [Ed. See addition above.]

—Douglas Florian


Seeing all these authors and illustrators together brings both sadness at their loss and appreciation for the role their works have played in my life.

I remember the John Christopher books vividly; I read them several times and still own my childhood copies (from the '70s.) Like you, I found them thrilling and a bit unnerving; they served as a gateway to Norton, Heinlein juveniles, and more grown-up SF later on.

At a younger age, I went through an Encyclopedia Brown phase, reading every book I could find (which wasn't that many.)

My Side of the Mountain remains a favorite; I read it to my class as a teacher, then to my daughter's class when she was around 4th grade. In addition to, as you say, conveying the sense that wilderness survival is possible, Sam also provides a great model of capability, self-reliance, and independence.

And I still love Minarik's Little Bear books. Her gentle prose and Sendak's whimsical illustrations are a perfect match. I enjoyed them as a child, and read them to my daughter; we also watched the delightful animated series based on the books.

I will miss all these authors/illustrators, but I'm so thankful their work remains to delight another generation.

—Lark


Ah, it was Margaret Mahy I was thinking of this weekend. When Jerry Nelson died (don't think he ever did anything directly with children's BOOKS), I kept feeling like, "MORE PEOPLE NEED TO CARE AS MUCH ABOUT THIS LOSS AS ME!" and then I remembered that I'd felt the same way about one of the many KidLit losses this year but couldn't remember who it was (it wasn't Sendak. EVERYONE remembered Sendak), but it was Mahy. I felt so "OH NO MARGARET MAHY!" and everyone else was all "Who's Margaret Mahy?" and I was all "HOW CAN YOU ASK THAT QUESTION?!?!" *ahem* anyway...

—Amy of Amyslibraryofrock


Sigh... My Side of the Mountain is an all-time favorite of mine. (Now a librarian myself, I have a renewed appreciation for the librarian who helped Sam!) And, I remember my mother teaching me how to read rhyme aloud without sounding sing-song via The Berenstain Bears' Almanac.

Much loss, to be sure.

—Kimberly


*There are more nice comments, so check them out. I've just put the ones in the body of the post that commented about specific books or about someone I missed.

A Review of The Magician of Hoad by Margaret Mahy

I like serendipity, and I like Margaret Mahy. Put the two together, and I'm a very happy camper! So on Veteran's Day, I made the pilgrimage to Pasadena to cruise Vroman's, one of L.A.'s best bookstores. When I walked up the YA aisle all unsuspectingly and saw a new book by Margaret Mahy, I grabbed it with such an ecstatic smile that a passing mother with a toddler probably thought I was having a religious experience.

Later that day, I plopped myself down in my favorite reading spot and read The Magician of Hoad from cover to cover.

Just finding the book felt like serendipity to me, but there's more. First of all, I had just finished writing a new book, and the one and only literary reference in it is to a Mahy classic called Changeover.

Then the day after coming across Mahy's new book, I got my Horn Book Magazine in the mail and discovered that the lead article is an interview with—Margaret Mahy! HB's review of The Magician of Hoad follows in the review section. Fate obviously intended that I write about Mahy this week...

In all fairness, I will attempt to explain my current state of delirium. That is, some writers are good, some are really good, and some are Writers. Margaret Mahy is a Writer.

Her style reminds me of Cynthia Voigt's work, if you'd like a comparison.

Mahy's mastery of language is stunning. Read some of her work, and a lot of the books you thought were well written suddenly won't seem quite that strong anymore.

The author also has an intricate way of looking at the human heart, and at human interactions. I like the way she thinks about story, as quoted in the Horn Book Magazine interview:

[T]here's no end to story. The world suggests stories as you go along. You see things happen or you hear something said, and sometimes these things extend themselves into stories. It's partly because of being a reader, I think. Reading is very creative—it's not just a passive thing. I write a story; it goes out into the world; somebody reads it and, by reading it, completes it. [Horn Book Magazine, November/December 2009, 606-607]

The Magician of Hoad has an epic feel to it. It has that whole hero-and-friends-defeat-villains thing going. But it's really the biography of a magician, which is a fairly bold move in the world of fantasy. We are accustomed to having magicians and wizards dropped on our heads randomly, as a matter of course. We don't often explore the nature of their evolution as people who contain magic. (Books about training, e.g., the Harry Potter series, don't count in this regard.)

Margaret Mahy traces the experiences of a boy named Heriot Tarbas who must find his place in the world. He knows his place in his family, or thinks he does, and when he is carried off to serve the king, he quickly learns his place in the castle. But that isn't enough for Heriot, who feels his different selves shivering through his bones like ghosts and wants to make sense out of them.

In her Horn Book interview, Mahy mentions that this book was originally some 800 pages long; it ended up at a mere 300 or so (on her computer, not in print, it seems). Which explains occasional transitions in which five years pass in a paragraph. But I didn't find this bothersome—the scale of the book simply swept me forward.

Like much of Mahy's work for older readers, The Magician of Hoad is not an easy book. It's markedly mature: it's a fairly dense read that expects us to think and even feel. It also has some violence, as well as a little sex.

Mostly the book is about people. In addition to Heriot, we meet various conflicted characters: a reluctant king who must enforce his desires for peace, three princes whose longings tend to be destructive, a noble girl who clashes with her politically minded father, a corrupt hero, and a street urchin who will become Heriot's closest friend.

None of these relationships are simple. For example, Heriot and the youngest prince have a magical connection, but are they using each other, or are they good for each other? Or both?

Perhaps the most intriguing characters here are the villains. The Hero is ambitious and untrustworthy, but why? And eldest prince Betony Hoad is an odd counterpart to Heriot. The prince wants, not political grandeur and power, but magic at the very least. He demands that the entire world become more exciting than it is, stranger and more glamorous. This is one of the oddest achilles heels you'll ever come across in fiction, but it finds echoes in a modern world in which the lures of celebrity and heightened experience call to so many people, promising the impossible.

When The Magician of Hoad begins, Heriot is a twelve-year-old farm boy living near the island which is the demesne of the King's Hero, Carlyon. Heriot is considered semi-crippled because of the fits he has had growing up. These make him sound as if he were epileptic, but there is another explanation, as we learn later in the book. Heriot has an experience which begins to free his magic, but next he has a vision, and people start gossiping about his abilities. Soon Lord Glass comes to take him away. Heriot flees, only to have a frightening encounter with Carlyon.

Despite his best efforts to stay at home, Heriot ends up being taken to the King. When he meets Prince Dysart, who is considered mad, Heriot learns that this is the boy he has seen in dreams over the years—and who has seen him in return. Dysart is comforted to find out that he's not crazy, after all, and he latches onto Heriot with great need and fervor.

Heriot becomes Magician to the King, which means he must act as a human lie detector and occasionally puts on magical shows for honored guests. He feels that his gifts are meant for a different purpose, but life conspires to keep him in the castle. He does make friends with Cayley, a young thief from the city streets.

In time Heriot and his friends face great treachery, and Cayley's own secrets and goals are revealed. But mostly, we as readers watch over Heriot, wondering if he will lose his mind—or find his truth.

I said that Margaret Mahy is a wordsmith. Here's a description of Prince Dysart, as Linnet (the nobleman's daughter) first sees him:

He had rough, wavy, mouse-colored hair that stood on end like a puppet's wig, a big nose, and a wide smile. His right eye was a light clear blue, while his left was hazel, so it was as if two different people were looking out of the same head. As she came into the tent, he caught her expression and burst into wild laughter. Later she was to think someone had stolen part of Dysart's life, and he filled the empty space by laughing, and that she had been able to tell this from the first moment she ever saw him.

Then there's the quote shown on the back cover, describing a moment when Heriot has just performed a great act of magic:

A wind composed of light and the breath of dragons beat through the company, rustling carefully assembled clothes and tangling hair, and there in the dimness Heriot began to shine. The broad planes of cheek and forehead remaining dark, the lines from nose to mouth and the creases of his eyelids etched on the night with fine lines of fire, each hair a thread of silver, lifting with reluctant grace when the wind blew. He appeared to be not so much contained by the air as embroidered on it.

If you are a serious reader, and especially a serious reader of fantasy, I suggest you take the time to meet Heriot Tarbas, the Magician of Hoad.

Note: Other books by Margaret Mahy you might want to take a look at include Carnegie Medal winners Changeover and The Haunting, as well as The Tricksters, Catalogue of the Universe, Memory, 24 Hours, Alchemy, and Maddigan's Fantasia. The author has also written many marvelous picture books, most recently this summer's Bubble Trouble, which further demonstrates her amazing facility with language.

A Review of Bubble Trouble by Margaret Mahy and Polly Dunbar

New Zealander Margaret Mahy is one of those rare authors who writes cross-genre with incredible skill: picture books, humorous chapter books, and dark, sophisticated books for teens. Before there was ever such a character as Edward Cullen, I fell in love with the troubled witch boy in her classic supernatural tale, Changeover. But today I’m reviewing something at the other end of the spectrum, Mahy’s latest giddy picture book, Bubble Trouble.

The story is fairly simple: a little girl named Mabel is blowing bubbles and one bubble lifts her baby brother into the sky, where he floats along, chased by a growing crew of would-be rescuers as colorful as that chain of goose-grabbing people in the old fairy tale about making a sad princess laugh. As her brother is faced with increasing peril late in the story, Mabel manages to save the day.

This is all very nice, but what it doesn’t tell you is just how amazing the rhymes are. We’re talking page after page of near-tongue twisters. The internal rhymes in particular are works of genius. If Bruce Degen’s Jamberry went to Oxford University, I’m thinking it would graduate as Bubble Trouble.

In fact, enough of the vocabulary words in this book are rather elevated that some people might be a tad intimidated by them:

In her garden, Chrysta Gribble had begun to cry and cavil at her lazy brother, Greville, reading novels in his bed. But she bellowed, “Gracious, Greville!” and she groveled in the gravel when the baby in the bubble bibble-bobbled overhead.

I’m here to tell you that this book is worth it—your child won’t need to understand every word to follow the story, and the rollicking sounds of the words will be a pleasure to adult readers and lap listeners alike.

For their part, Polly Dunbar’s lively illustrations contribute great good humor to the narration. Watch for the innovative use of a Scrabble board in both the art and the story telling, for example. I also really liked Dunbar’s work on Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters’s terrific poetry collection, Here’s a Little Poem. She’s one of those British illustrators we need to import more often.

If you want an upbeat read as well as a workout for your tongue, get your hands on Margaret Mahy’s Bubble Trouble and share it with the nearest small human!