Sadness and Hope

The deeply painful events in Connecticut a few days ago make me think about sad books—and about hopeful books. Some books are one and the same. All three of these books have been out for a while, and the second one is out of print. They all make me think, not only about hurt and sorrow, but also about the great goodness in so many people.

Rose Blanche by Roberto Innocenti

The time is World War II. Rose Blanche, who is probably about 8, doesn’t know what that means. She doesn’t understand why soldiers and trucks have come to her town. But after she sees a little boy try to escape from one of the trucks and get recaptured, she follows the truck beyond the edge of town and comes to a barbed wire fence with people inside—including the boy. The people are thin and hungry, so Rose Blanche begins bringing them food, not telling anyone.

Then one day the soldiers start leaving, and soon the townspeople themselves flee. Rose Blanche has gone out to the camp again with food, but no one is there and the fence has been torn down. “Shadows were moving between the trees. It was hard to see them. Soldiers saw the enemy everywhere. There was a shot.”

Next we see that different soldiers have come to town. “Rose Blanche’s mother waited a long time for her little girl.” Spring comes. Flowers begin to bloom where the barbed wire fence and the camp used to be.

The End. Yes, it’s heart wrenching, but it's beautifully done. The author switches from Rose Blanche’s first-person account partway through, when the German soldiers begin to leave. Innocenti’s artwork is realistic and rendered in sober hues. This is a wonderful, terrible book that I think you’ll like very much. Because at some point, kids figure out how awful humans can be, like when they hear on TV that 20 first graders have been shot at school. And children need, we all need, to be reminded that humans can also be kind, even in the midst of dark days on this earth.

Sleeping Boy by Sonia Craddock, illustrated by Leonid Gore

Another war-themed book, this allegory is based on the story of Sleeping Beauty. A family named Rosen is celebrating the birth of their son in Berlin. All of the guests give their blessings to the baby except for poor old Tante Taube, who has dropped her knitting and can’t decide what to say. Then black-cloaked Major Krieg bursts in. He has long been angry at the baby’s mother for not marrying him, and now he puts a curse on the child: when Knabe Rosen is sixteen, he will hear the drums of the army marching by. “Off to war you’ll go—and you will not come home.”

The major leaves, but Tante Taube softens his curse. When Knabe Rosen hears the marching army and its drums, he will fall asleep. “He will sleep through poverty and war, bad times and sadness, until PEACE comes to Berlin.”

The Rosens forbid music in their home and keep marching bands well away, but on Knabe’s sixteenth birthday, he does hear the army marching with its drums. Knabe tries to run outside to join the army, but he and the entire household instantly fall fast asleep. They slumber just as Tante Taube said they would, “through poverty and war, bad times and sadness,” until at last peace does come to the city of Berlin. The wall is torn down, and Knabe and his family wake to celebrate.

This story is for older children and adults. The text is fairly dense, and Gore's illustrations are dark and a little blurred—a stylistic choice, but one that makes them harder to read. However, Sleeping Boy is a book I rather like: it works in its own way. Perhaps it would be best used as a read-aloud for older students who might then write their own allegories or fairy tale variations about some kind of trouble in the world.

Of course, the fact that we can’t magically sleep through troubled and troubling times gives this book a kind of reverse power. What will we do instead of sleep? Is “sleeping” what people are doing when they ignore the social ills that lead to things like war?

The Red Tree by Shaun Tan

I dearly love this book. I own three copies, the most copies I own of any book. (Not even sure how I wound up with all of them!) Here is my post about author-illustrator Shaun Tan from last year. In it, I also talk about his book The Arrival, which astonished me by being even better than The Red Tree. (Truly. It’s one of my Top 5 Books of All Time. And I've read a lot of books.)

But today I want to talk about The Red Tree because it shows us despair and hope. Some have said that the book is specifically about depression. But I feel it has a broader meaning, as well.

The book starts with a girl sitting in her bed. A few black leaves (maple leaf-shaped) are scattered around her room. The text reads: “sometimes the day begins with nothing to look forward to”. On the next page the girl’s room is full of the black leaves. The text says, “and things go from bad to worse”.

Each spread then shows the girl struggling with different symbolic situations. Which makes the book sound dull, but instead it is absolutely gorgeous. For example, “darkness overcomes you” shows the girl and a few other people walking down a city street, and an ugly giant fish hangs over the girl’s head, casting a huge shadow. Other scenes follow, such as “the world is a deaf machine” [page turn] “without sense or reason”. And the artwork for these seemingly abstract statements gives form to the difficulties each of us sometimes faces, whether inside or out.

By the way, you’ll find that this is one of the world’s only second-person books that actually works!

Now. Watch. Because in each of Tan's marvelously challenging spreads you can find a small red leaf shaped just like those black ones from the beginning of the book. And when the book ends, that small leaf turns into hope, “bright and vivid/quietly waiting” [page turn] “just as you imagined it would be”.

Sometimes hope does feel small, especially in the wake of overwhelming sorrow. But hope can grow, becoming an entire bright tree.

Let’s hold on to hope.

Note for Worried Parents: Because of their difficult themes, these three books are for the older child, or for teens and adults. They are well worth reading and discussing, however.

The Inimitable Shaun Tan

Did you watch the Academy Awards? If you did, you probably know that The King's Speech won Best Picture and Colin Firth won Best Actor. You might remember that Natalie Portman won Best Actress and Toy Story 3 won Best Animated Feature Film, while Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won for Best Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively. But the burning question would be, "Who won for Short Animated Film?"

The answer, of course, is our own Shaun Tan (along with Andrew Ruhemann). And by "our own," I mean, he's a children's book guy! This would be an author-illustrator who made a short film of his picture book, The Lost Thing, and won an Oscar. Ta-da!

Of course, Academy Awards aside, Shaun Tan has made a name for himself in the world of children's books as an innovator—to the point of being strange. Because isn't that what it takes to really go in new directions?

I first discovered Shaun Tan when I came across his book, The Red Tree. It's a picture book, but you would probably hand it to kids between the ages of 10 and 18, and you should seriously consider giving it to any 23-year-olds, 45-year-olds, and 88-year-olds you know while you're at it. The Red Tree is a riff on dealing with confusion, obstacles, depression, just about anything that makes life feel insurmountable. Like Pandora's box, this book ends on a note of hope. Watch for a red leaf hidden in every spread... Here's one of my favorite images (above right), which is accompanied by the words, "nobody understands."

Lucky, lucky you! Arthur A. Levine Books just came out with Lost and Found: Three by Shaun Tan, a book uniting The Red Tree, The Lost Thing, and The Rabbits in one volume.

The Lost Thing, as mentioned above, is the story that inspired Tan's Oscar-winning animated short. You know all those cute old-fashioned picture books in which a sweet little child finds a lost kitten and brings it home and takes good care of it? Well, this is an out-there reimagining of that type of premise. Think E.T., only without the Bambi eyes. And really, the Lost Thing isn't an alien at all. Here's how the story begins:

So you want to hear a story? Well, I used to know a whole lot of pretty interesting ones. Some of them so funny you'd laugh yourself unconscious, others so terrible you'd never want to repeat them. But I can't remember any of them. So I'll just tell you about the time I found that lost thing.

Our narrator stops "working tirelessly on [his] bottle-cap collection" when he spies the lost thing, which looks like a cross between a giant red old-timey water heater and an octopus. Only not. Naturally, the young narrator takes the lost thing home. Gently weird comedy ensues.

When reading The Rabbits (written with John Marsden), it's probably a good idea to remember that Tan is Australian. The story has universal application, certainly, but my mind flies to an image of the British colonization of Australia—and other lands—before circling outward to picture our planet's domination and industrialization in general by wealthy nations and corporations. Yep, The Rabbits is an allegory, and it doesn't have a happy ending. Call this a precursor to The Arrival, Tan's depiction of the immigrant experience. Only The Rabbits is a much darker story.

Tales from Outer Surburbia is a book of illustrated short stories, all of them odd and more or less allegorical, beginning with Tan's oracular water buffalo (see illustration, right). I'm especially fond of "Eric," a new take on alien visitors, or rather "foreign exchange students." Or "Distant Rain," which sets out to answer the question, "Have you ever wondered what happens to all the poems people write?" "No Other Country" will have you looking for your own inner courtyard, whereas "Alert But Not Alarmed" will have you finding new uses for a backyard missile. As a group, the stories are poignant, even haunting. They will leave you wondering and pondering.

Tan's masterpiece up to this point, The Arrival, is a lengthy, wordless illumination of what it's like to be an immigrant. The entire book is done in sepia tones, with the occasional use of blacks and grays. A man leaves his country and crosses the sea to make a new home for his wife and daughter. He will send for them as soon as he gets settled. He looks like he's leaving some vaguely Eastern European country and traveling to the United States or, of course, Australia, but you will soon realize that the country he reaches is not any identifiable one on our planet, but a wholly alien landscape. Except, that's what it's like to immigrate. The man's confusion, people's small kindnesses, the reasons others have left their own countries—all these and more are described in subtle, wonderful illustrations (see artwork below left). After I read this for the first time, I just sat on my couch in shock, smiling with the knowledge that someone had created such a thing, a book as touching as it is beautiful.

As an artist, Tan often works in shades of brown or gray, occasionally lit by spots of color. He uses mixed media, including acrylics, colored pencil, and collage. He is fond of depicting machinery that is neither completely contemporary nor steampunk, more like the rusting gears of a mid-priced, elderly space station one or two galaxies over. I'm guessing he wouldn't mind having a drink with Han Solo in that intergalactic bar in Star Wars, but Tan's work isn't straight sci-fi, either. Here are a few memorable details:
—The title page of The Red Tree shows a grandfather clock in a field of cut wheat or yellowing grass. A scattering of small letters is white on the grass background and gray out of frame. If you look again, you will see that the spill of letters includes a handful of red ones. These turn out to be the book title.
—In The Arrival, Tan has invented a whole new language so that you, the reader, will be confused right along with the immigrant when trying to read street signs and other public print.
—The passage of time during the ocean voyage in The Arrival is shown by a gorgeous spread which is essentially a diary of clouds.
—In Tales from Outer Suburbia, the Table of Contents is made up of postage stamps.
—You know that feeling of gloom and depression we sometimes characterize by saying someone has a black cloud over their head? Well, in The Red Tree, Tan illustrates this in the middle of a big city by having a gigantic, ugly fish floating along just over the main character's head. (Only "floating" seems like too light of a word in this context! See artwork, below right.)
—You've never seen sheep like the ones in The Rabbits. You will never want to see sheep like that in real life. And check out how the cows, which have too many legs, are pre-marked to be cut up into meat.
—In The Lost Thing, the main character's bottle-cap collection is only mentioned once, but the endpapers depict row upon row of bottle caps.

Shaun Tan has won numerous awards, including the Hugo and Nebula awards for fantasy art and Australia's 2010 Dromkeen Medal for his contribution to children's books. Check out his biography on Wikipedia for a complete list.

For most people, even the talented ones, creativity is a gentle hum, or maybe a bee-buzz. For Shaun Tan, it's a roar. Not the roar of a waterfall or even a lion or a movie T-Rex. It would have to be the roar of something new, something with gears and tentacles and hair like flowers. There's a lot of great creativity out there, but only a few others strike me as working (or having worked) at this level: Andy Goldsworthy and Itchiku Kubota, for example.

The most obvious gift someone like Shaun Tan bestows upon the rest of us is the work itself, but I'm also grateful for the inspiration I get from seeing the farthest reaches of possibility (AKA Outer Suburbia). Reading Tan's work makes me want to take my own creative life to the next level. To try something new. To give out a little roar of my own.

Note for Worried Parents: Shaun Tan's work is not for small children. It's thoughtful and mature, even a little dark. But it will inspire some rich conversations with older children. My suggestion is 10 and up, or, depending on the child, 12 and up.

Also: I recommend you go to the "Books" page of Tan's website and click on The Arrival, then read his explanation of how he researched and created the book. It really adds to the reading experience to learn about some of his thinking during the process.

Update, 3-29-11: Shaun Tan has won that highly prestigious international book award, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. As well he should!

Update, 4-7-11: Here are Betsy Bird's thoughts on Shaun Tan's win at Fuse #8, along with a link to the author-illustrator's video response.

Update, 4-26-11: Another nice interview, with the rather cool info that Shaun Tan was a concept artists on Pixar's WALL-E. No wonder that movie looked so great!

Update, 8-21-11: Shaun Tan has won the Hugo Award 2011 for Best Professional Artist.

Grabbers: The Best Books I Read in 2008

Alabama Moon, by Watt Key (2006, ages 9-12)

I’m with the crowd asking why Key’s book didn’t get a Newbery, or at least a Newbery Honor. What an amazing read! Its young hero reminded me of Candide crossed with Maniac Magee. The adventure just sings, buoyed up by an underlayer of emotional resonance.

Moon Blake has been raised in the backwoods by his survivalist father, and he’s learned his lessons well—he can trap, fish, dig for roots, and handle almost anything the wilderness might throw at him. He is less well prepared for the challenges of civilization, however. When his father dies, ten-year-old Moon attempts to comply with his father’s final instructions to go to Alaska and look for other people who hate the government, but he soon finds himself caught up in a system that doesn’t understand him in the least. From the hostility of a rural constable to the walls of a reform school, the traps close in on Moon. But he adapts by applying his survival skills in creative ways, and pretty soon he and two new friends are on the run, back in the woods. Of course, even a capable kid like Moon can’t solve every problem.

One of the greatest strengths of this book is its characters, which are flawed, yet real and likable. Moon is a very compelling young hero, but the secondary characters are of interest, too. For example, Hal is first introduced as a bully, but Moon doesn’t know how to play that social game. He fends off Hal’s attacks, then casually befriends the baffled boy. No one has ever expected anything but trouble from Hal, and Moon’s straightforward respect helps Hal to become a different person.

I should note that this book has rich appeal for boy readers, more than just about anything I’ve ever read.

Since I came a little late to Alabama Moon, which was originally published in September 2006, I’ll note that some reviewers have objected to the book’s happy ending—and to them I say, well, every so often, in actual real life, things turn out right. For example, I know an older couple who recently adopted a six-year-old child out of the foster system. She is now being raised by loving, educated people who deeply care about her needs. So yeah, it can happen.

That said, I think the ending of this book works. It doesn’t seem tacked on so much as well earned by the indomitable Moon. Read Watt Key’s wonderful book and you’ll see what I mean.


The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (2008, ages 9-12)

I’m not generally crazy about horror, but I was a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan because (a) it was essentially fantasy and (b) the writing and storytelling were simply amazing. That’s pretty much how I feel about Neil Gaiman’s work. Coraline wasn’t my favorite book in the world, but it was arguably good. And now, with The Graveyard Book, I leave behind any lingering reluctance about genre to exclaim that Gaiman has written the proverbial tour de force, taking Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book as his starting point and creating something utterly new.

Bod (Nobody) Owens is a toddler when his family is brutally murdered in the middle of the night. He wakes up and leaves the house, meandering over to the edge of the nearby cemetery. There he is rescued from the murderous Jack by Silas and the Owens—a vampire and a ghostly couple. The Owens take the little boy in and raise him in the cemetery, with Silas (AKA Bagheera) providing food and protection. (Note that the word “vampire” is never actually used in the book—readers are left to draw their own conclusions about Silas.)

Bod is educated by other ghosts, and one of the droller aspects of the book is that we understand what Bod does not: that his curriculum is thoroughly antiquated, being taught by tutors who predate him by a century or two. But he learns other useful things in the graveyard, phantasmal skills such as Fading, Haunting, and Dreamwalking. He also befriends a dead witch and a live girl and learns just why ghouls should be avoided.

I first read about Bod in a short story in an anthology last summer. I was utterly riveted and went to Gaiman’s website to beg him to write more about the boy raised in a cemetery. Upon discovering that a whole book was coming out, I marked the publication date on my calendar. When the day finally arrived, I rushed over to the bookstore and waited for a clerk to open up a box in the storeroom so I could get my copy.

As they say (far too often!), I was not disappointed. I think what I like best about The Graveyard Book is the tenderness intertwined with the horror. This book isn’t just a macabre adventure story: it is creative and funny and poignant and scary all at the same time.


The Arrival, by Shaun Tan (2007, Young Adult; I’d add ages 9-12)

Shaun Tan’s lengthy, wordless fable may be the most stunning book ever to emerge from the field of children’s literature. Of course, it is just as easily a book for adults. Having read Tan’s intriguing book, The Red Tree, I had looked forward to seeing what he would create next. It’s an understatement to say that The Arrival surpassed my expectations. I suggest you find a quiet place and block out some time to experience his book uninterrupted.

The Arrival is the story of an immigrant. With its sepia tones and old-fashioned clothing, it appears to be set in the 1940s, its hero leaving Eastern Europe to find a home in America. But readers will soon realize that the tale is set in another world altogether. The language of that new world—as written on incomprehensible signs—is like nothing we have ever seen before. Neither are the pets or the public statues or the mechanisms of everyday life.

If you know anything about Tan’s earlier work, you might ascribe the fantastical machines and animals in The Arrival to his penchant for including such things in his work. But these components take on a new meaning in the context of immigration: readers become immigrants themselves, just as baffled by the things they see as our quiet hero is.

The implied time setting serves to remind us that our ancestors were all immigrants at one point or another. And so The Arrival succeeds in its quest to universalize the immigrant experience—a feeling reinforced by the tales that the main character and his new friends share about the kinds of oppression they fled in their former homes.

Funny how such a pointed tale doesn’t seem didactic. Instead it is a rich, heartfelt read, with details such as the contents of the man’s suitcase juxtaposed with sweeping vistas such as the clouds overlooking his journey by boat to a new land. In Shaun Tan’s work, everything becomes fraught with symbolic meaning, yet none of it seems heavy-handed. Tan’s book is a gift, and it is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Note: I’ve been telling people about this book all last year, so I was very pleased to see it win a 2008 Special Citation for Excellence in Graphic Storytelling from the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards committee.


Forever Rose, by Hilary McKay (2008, Young Adult; I’d add ages 9-12)

I’m a big fantasy fan, but Hilary McKay’s five books about the eccentric Casson family are my new favorites when it comes to realistic contemporary fiction for children. Like her predecessors—Beverly Cleary, Louise Fitzhugh, and Cynthia Voigt—McKay has created a group of characters that simply can’t be compared to any others.

You really, really need to read all of the books in order: Saffy’s Angel, Indigo’s Star, Permanent Rose, Caddy Ever After, and Forever Rose. You’ll meet the ineffectual Casson parents—a dreamy mother who is usually painting in a shed in the backyard and a vain artist father who spends most of his time in the city trying to impress people. Then there are the children, each of whom is named after a paint color. Each also has a book, though irrepressible Rose eventually takes over the series. First Saffy (Saffron) tries to find out about her adoption and befriends a non-stereotypical girl in a wheelchair. Then musician Indigo faces bullies with some help from his sister and her friend. Artist Rose, who is the youngest, paints on the walls and deals with her father’s defects and defection, among other adventures. Eldest Caddy (Cadmium) is crazy for animals, falls for her driving instructor, and leads the troops because of her parents’ absentminded absences. These plots might sound typical, but as you read the books they become something new. You fall in love with these characters and they seem completely real—one of the greatest compliments I can give to any book.

For the record, Saffy’s Angel won all kinds of recognition from reviewers and award committees, starting with the British Whitbread Award for best children’s book of 2002. The other books have also been well reviewed.

I will note that I loved the Casson books so much I went looking for McKay’s earlier work, but I was a little disappointed. Although her older stuff is fun, it isn’t nearly as compelling as the newer books. Suffice it to say that the author came into her own with her stories about the Casson family. I implore you to add them to your shelf of books!


Diary of a Wimpy Kid, by Jeff Kinney (2007, ages 9-12)

In the same way that Mo Willems has shot to the top of the picture book world, Jeff Kinney seemingly came out of the blue to write the quintessential book for and about middle school boys. Which is a real relief because, as Jon Scieska has pointed out, there aren’t that many great books for and about boys out there, partly explaining why boys don’t read more.

A latecomer to Kinney’s books, I don’t feel I need to discuss plot in detail, except to say that the books make you want to tell someone about different scenes in order to make them laugh. Coincidentally enough, this is the same way a boy the age of main character, Greg Heffley, might come home from seeing a funny movie and retell scenes in limpid, clear language along the following lines: “And then [stop to snort with laughter], and then [laugh some more] he did this thing, and then [laugh-laugh-laugh] it was just so funny!” Which reminds me that a very nice pothead in one of my high school English classes used to recounts scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in a similar fashion when we were supposed to be listening to the teacher.

Okay, so my favorite detail is the Cheese Touch, which alludes to the way that any kid who accidentally touches the decrepit piece of cheese lying on the outdoor basketball court at Greg’s school since time immemorial is said to have the equivalent of leprosy, or at least the cooties, until someone else is touched by him and it’s passed along.

I did find myself telling my nephew, when I got him the first book for Christmas, “Now, the main kid in this story is kind of selfish, but he doesn’t know he’s selfish.” Which makes it, not necessarily okay, but all the more funny, for some reason. My nephew and I were both happy to learn that the third book, after Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules (2008), is coming out at the end of this month: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw. You should read it. Because it’s really [snort, snort, chortle] funny!


Savvy, by Ingrid Law (2008, ages 9-12)

Mibs Beaumont’s relatives on her mother’s side all have unique magical gifts called savvies, and now it's her turn—almost. Mibs is about to turn 13, which is when a savvy manifests itself. One of her brothers channels electricity and another creates storms (not always conveniently!). Her mother’s intimidating savvy is to do things perfectly, while her grandfather can create new land where there wasn’t any before. I like how her great-aunt would go back in time 20 minutes every time she sneezed, but my favorite savvy is the one that belonged to Mibs’s grandmother—she collected snippets of old radio music in jars to play back later simply by taking off the lids.

The whole family is gearing up for Mibs’s 13th birthday and the onset of her savvy when disaster strikes: her father, who is out of town, gets in a car accident and hovers near death. With the wild hope that her soon-to-be savvy will allow her to heal people, Mibs sets out to see her father—only she doesn’t have permission to go. Soon she and a little entourage of fellow runaways have commandeered the bus of a traveling Bible salesman and are making their unexpectedly circuitous way to her father’s bedside.

The savvies, Mibs’s interactions with her sibling and friends, and odd bits and pieces of plot such as the salesman’s trouble selling a shipment of pink Bibles all combine to make Law’s book a fresh contribution to a genre that too often consists of a stultifying blur of swords and magic portals. (An agent once told me he simply refused to read even one more attempted fantasy featuring kids going through a magic portal!) It just won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award, and there’s been some talk about it getting a Newbery nod. Whether that happens or not, Savvy is helping to reshape a genre that, by its very nature, calls out for continual reshaping.


The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories, by Joan Aiken (2008, ages 9-12)

In my first riff (soon to post!), I’m going to talk about people getting a little tired of British fantasy, but the fact remains that the best of it is simply outstanding—I’m thinking of two of my favorite authors, Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, among others. The Serial Garden is a somewhat old-fashioned book, a collection of stories Joan Aiken wrote over the course of many years, and yet it’s utterly compelling and fresh.

Think about it: who wouldn’t want the chance to raise a baby griffin? One reason for Aiken’s success her is that none of the outlandish scenarios are treated by her characters as if they were shocking. Whether Harriet and Mark are kept up late doing assignments by a ghostly governess while supposedly on vacation or their parents are turned into ladybirds (ladybugs), they see the situations as handy adventures or problems to be solved. The parents are especially stoic about all of this random magic.

Aiken is sometimes poignant and often funny. Yes, if the golden apple is in your house, the three Furies are likely to move into the coal cellar and cast an aura of gloom over the whole place. If miniature people live nearby, they are simply another set of neighbors, and fairly troublesome ones, at that. Living in a magical spot can also mean your home will be co-opted by wizards or cursed by witches at some point. And if you’re an Armitage, you really must keep an eye out for elderly druids fighting over a bathmat made of beard hair in your backyard.


Paper Towns, by John Green (2008, Young Adult)

I finally decided to see what all the fuss was about and read one of John Green’s books. So hey—he’s a really good writer! That just might kind of possibly explain all those awards and glowing reviews. At any rate, I would say that John Green has claimed the crown as the new voice of YA fiction for boys, with Rachel Cohn as his counterpart for girls (a sort of anti-Homecoming king and queen, considering the outsider status of their key characters). Put it this way: Green and Cohn’s books are the ones I usually recommend to people who want to know what YA is all about these days.

If you want to be convinced that Green is good at what he does, read the first chapter of the dreadful Daniel X by overly popular writer James Patterson. Then read the first chapter of Paper Towns. Now, and this is tricky: which character do you care about? Please mark Q or—if you’re from the distant planet Who Cares—X.

Yes, folks, it’s all about the characters. Okay, well, plot matters, but plot without characters who matter is simply a waste of your valuable page time, especially when it comes to Young Adult fiction. In Paper Towns, we find that main character Quentin has been watching his bold neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, from afar for a long time, so when she comes to his bedroom window asking him to take her on a vengeful series of midnight adventures, he quickly caves. Then Margo disappears, leaving Q to solve the mystery of her whereabouts and plans.

John Green uses the odd device of a paper town as the key symbol in this book; he also incorporates Walt Whitman’s poetry. A review I read complained that Quentin and Margo are one-dimensional and fail to ring true—like the paper towns. I would say instead that Green makes a point of showing us that Q thinks he knows who Margo is, and she thinks she knows who he is, but both are wrong. They eventually begin to move past their flat views of each another to catch glimpses of dimensionality. Which is what’s supposed to happen in real life, let alone in a book for and about teens.

Note for WPs (Worried Parents): There is enough talk about sex, drinking, and body parts in Paper Towns that you may not want your child to read it, especially if he or she is at the preteen end of the spectrum.


Traction Man Meets Turbodog, by Mini Grey (2008, Picture Book)

I am, quite simply, in love with this book, and with its predecessor, Traction Man Is Here! It represents action figure play better than anything I’ve seen since Pixar’s Toy Story. The child who owns the titular toy hovers just outside the edge of the story telling as Traction Man takes center stage, along with his faithful pal, Scrubbing Brush (cleverly drawn to act like a little dog).

In this second book, Traction Man and Scrubbing Brush get dirty playing, so much so that the kid’s father apparently attempts to throw Scrubbing Brush away and replace him with a snazzy new sidekick, Turbodog. Not only does Turbodog make a lousy Robin to Traction Man’s Batman, but Traction Man is worried about his missing friend. He sets out on a quest to find Scrubbing Brush, accompanied by the obnoxious one-note Turbodog.

Deadpan humor is the name of the game here, but I’m going to stop trying to describe these books and just tell you—step over all the action figures in your kid’s room and read the Traction Man books with him!


The Flim-Flam Fairies, by Alan Katz (2008, Picture Book)

Could it be that there is too much bathroom humor in this picture book? Of course not! Yet I don’t hear much talk about The Flim-Flam Fairies on the Web. I’m telling you, this one should be the new gold standard for potty humor. Forget Walter the Farting Dog; Flim-Flam Fairies is the book for any child who likes to say “poo” and then fall apart laughing!

In this cumulative tale, the sweet Tooth Fairy actually ends up losing her temper. But first the young reader is addressed by a series of fake fairies who interrupt each other to offer outrageous deals. All the child has to do is tuck certain items under his (or her) pillow: we meet the Earwax Fairy, the Dirty Underwear Fairy, and the Clipped Toenail Fairy, to name just a few. Rendered in a nice graphic style by Michael Slack, the fairies are a parade of goofy thugs, each with a slightly different wing style. The Flim-Flam Fairies is such a great, icky book for little boys—and also for small girls who aren’t obsessed with pink! (In fact, if Fancy Nancy ever had an opposite number, this would have to be it.)



AND TWO MORE...

The next two writers are in my small writing group, so I’ll just confess my bias up front. But here’s why you should check out their most recent books:


Death by Latte, by Linda Gerber (2008, Young Adult, though I’d add Tweens)

Aphra Connolly is gearing up to be the tween and teen girl’s answer to Alex Rider, especially in this second book. (At first I thought Aphra was going to be the new Nancy Drew, but there’s too much international travel and suspense for such a small-town, albeit classic, model.) The first book, Death by Bikini, was a lot of fun, but Gerber really hits her stride with Death by Latte.

Aphra fools her father and flies to Seattle in search of her mother, who has her reasons for not having been in touch—she’s CIA, in search of a rogue agent. The bad guys would love to use Aphra against her mother, but it’s still a shock when Aphra realizes her mom is not happy to see her. Aphra also has another encounter with Seth Mulo, whom she met in the first book, and discovers he has his own agenda. Soon an agent is murdered and Aphra and Seth must find the information he hid before he died—while avoiding a swirl of danger and double crosses. I look forward to the next chapter in Aphra’s adventures, Death by Denim, which is due out in May 2009!


Daughter of War, by Marsha Skrypuch (2008, Young Adult)

Historical fiction isn’t usually my first pick, but you should know what this Canadian writer has been up to: she’s telling the kinds of stories most people don’t know about or think about, and yes, she’s gotten death threats. She was also given a medal of honor by the President of Ukraine for her work. Skrypuch primarily writes books about dark chapters in history, such as the Ukrainian and Armenian genocides.

Daughter of War continues a story begun in Skrypuch’s 2003 book, Nobody’s Child. Marta has managed to escape the genocide, but she is virtually a slave and even becomes a concubine while living in Turkey, pretending to be Muslim. Amid shifting politics and threats, she struggles to locate her sister and her friend Kevork. Even if she can find Kevork again, will he accept what has happened to her since they were separated by the war? Teachers who’ve been concentrating on the Holocaust should seriously consider rounding out their curriculum with Skrypuch’s painfully moving books from the hidden corners of history.