The Duchess of Whimsy

I make it no secret that I adore the artwork of Peter de Seve. Ever since I first saw one of his New Yorker covers, I've been fascinated by his work. So when I found out that he had illustrated a children's book, I knew I had to buy it. The book was written by Peter's very talented wife Randall de Seve and the story is just as much fun as the illustrations.

The Duchess of Whimsy follows a rather steady and some would say dull Duke. The Duke of Norm prefers things to be in order. He's quiet and seriousness and ordinary. And he's in love with the Duchess of Whimsy, a royal who can't stand anything to be ordinary. She loves anything exotic and strange. What she isn't interested in is the Duke of Norm. That is until a royal banquet turns into a catastrophe when the cook becomes ill. All the other royals start making extraordinary dishes, all expect the Duke. He makes a plain grilled cheese sandwich and milk. The Duchess is intrigued and then enamored. That sparks their friendship. The Duke begins to understand how the extraordinary can be fun and the Duchess learns that sometimes quiet and serious can be interesting. And they live happily ever after.

I love this story. It's a simple story but I've known a good number of couples who fit this bill. When I read it I realized how this is not just a children's story. It's a story about relationships, about love, about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Randall has a fantastic imagination. I particularly liked her descriptions of the Duke of Norm's attempts to impress the Duchess. "The Earl of Norm composed sugary poetry comparing the Duchess to a squid, a platypus and a penguin...." Or the fantastic dishes that the rest of the royals are making. "The Duke of Dreams made a velvet midnight cake topped with an entire galaxy of spun sugar stars. But first he had to learn how to spin sugar." This is a wonderful story with a fantastic mix of the ordinary and sublime.

Peter is a master of facial expressions and this might be his best medium for those. The book is filled with interesting faces, beautiful details, and fantastic colors. Each page is more like a glorious painting than a children's book. The scene in the kitchen is one of my favorite images. It mixes Peter's humor with his incredible attention to detail. Using just the few words on the page, he creates a scene filled with life and light. This is pure art. A fantastic book that both children and adults will love. Children will love the silly scene, like where the Duke brings a giraffe to the party or where the duchess hosts her party surrounded by fish in balloons. Adults will love the sweet love story and will identify with the duke and duchess. And everyone may want a grilled cheese sandwich.

Children's Classic: The Biggest Bear

There are some stories from my childhood that I remember vividly. That I can conjure up in my minds eye with just a title. Caldecott winner, The Biggest Bear by Lynd Ward is one of the most vivid for me. Ward's story of a young boy named Johnny Orchard who goes out to collect a bear skin for his family's barn and comes back with more than he bargained for is imprinted in my mind.

Johnny lives in a farming community where his family raises apples. Every other farmer has shot and skinned a bear and Johnny feels the shame of not having a bearskin for the family. So one afternoon he sets off with his shotgun to shoot himself a bear. But the only bear he finds is just a cub. And he's hungry. So Johnny feeds him some of his maple sugar. And then takes the bear home. While his parents aren't happy with a bear for a pet, Johnny promises to feed him. The bear can certainly eat. He is quickly eating the family out of house and home. And growing...rapidly. He quickly becomes one of the biggest bears around.

When the bear starts eating the neighbor's food, the Orchards know that they need to do something with him. Johnny takes the bear out into the woods and leaves him several times but the bear always finds his way home. Finally the boy is told that he will have to take the bear into the woods and shoot it. But as Johnny is loading his gun the bear takes off, with Johnny holding on to the leash. He is dragged along with the bear into a humane bear trap where they are found by men collecting bears for the zoo. So the bear goes to the zoo and Johnny goes to visit him. And bring him maple sugar.

This simple and sweet story touched me greatly as a child. I loved the relationship between Johnny and the bear. I loved the way Ward personified the bear. I loved the maple sugar. But mostly I was touched by a story of a boy who went out to shoot a bear and found a friend instead. Ward's pages are sparse and clean with the illustrations done is soft black and white. Ward created the images using woodblock and they stand off the page like nothing I've ever seen.

The early scenes with the bear rival some of the cutest illustrations ever drawn. I would compared Ward's illustrations to Robert McCloskey but these seem a bit softer and even more detailed. The are also not cartoony in any way. The humans look like humans I've known and the bear looks very much like any bear you would find in the woods. The bear is never anthropomorphized but he is imbued with tons of personality. There is not a ton of text in the book (although a lot of pages) but the story is complete, with a bit of humor, a bit of sadness, and a lot of sweetness. This was one of my favorite books from childhood. And even now, it stands the test of time for me.

Cheerios

I've bought three boxes of Cheerios in the last week. Three large family sized boxes. With the knowledge that I'm the only one who'll eat them. And while I'm a cereal fan in general, this might push me to my oat cereal limit. But I simply can't pass up free books.

Yep, Cheerios is again doing their Spoonfuls of Stories giveaway. Each year the company (in connection with Simon and Schuster) gives away millions of free books included as prizes in their family sized boxes. And I have to admit that I'm working to collect all five. This year the company has picked five fun titles to give away. I picked up Scott M. Fischer's Jump! at the beginning of the week. New Years Eve I picked up All the World, written by Liz Garton Scanlon and illustrated by Marla Frazee. When we stopped into Target today I picked up Chaucer's First Winter, written by Stephen Krensky and illustrated by Henry Cole. Three down, two to go.

I love the idea of books as prizes and even more I'm happy to have gotten copies of the books. I already owned All the World but I love the miniature version written in both English and Spanish. What a wonderful idea to promote literacy. I have to admit that while I never ever buy cereal for the cheap plastic prizes, these books get me every year. I simply have to collect the whole set. I'll be eating Cheerios for weeks.

The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon

The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon

By Mini Grey

I have to admit that I’ve never had the change to read Mini Grey before. Somehow I managed to miss her numerous books. But after reading The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon, I’ll be looking for more of her creative titles.

The book follows Dish and Spoon after their very famous running away. They start a career doing vaudeville and become incredibly popular. The money rolls in and the duo become used to the finer things in life. When the money runs out they turn to knife gangsters to borrow more. The gang soon want their money back and intimidate the pair. The couple turn to a life of crime to pay back the debt and end up on the lam. In their hurry to escape from the cops, Dish becomes broken and the Spoon allows himself to be captured when he finds that she can’t go on. He serves his time and is finally released. He gives himself to a crockery and silverware shop, only to run into the recovered Dish. They run away (again!) and live happily ever after.

I love reinventions of classic stories, and this one has to be one of the more inventive ones that I’ve seen. Grey tells a subversive tale, that takes a sweet and silly nursery rhyme and makes it into a darker tale about greed and crime. Grey does it very tongue in cheek, never taking the story too seriously. “Someone put a record on the new record player. It was playing our tune. How could we resist?” The words swoop out the window along with the dish and the spoon, as you see two cat paws putting Hey Diddle Diddle on the record player. In fact the cat, the fiddle, the cow, and the moon appear throughout the book, even showing up in the crockery shop at the end or the lost cow sign posted after Spoon gets out of prison. In fact not only does the whole story play around with the nursery rhyme, but Grey spends most of the book playing around with us. There are little jokes throughout the book.

Grey uses a mixture of collage and paint to create frenetic images. With the mad caper going on, these illustrations are simply perfect. There are tons of things to look at, to read, and to savor. I found myself going back through the book over and over to try to catch all the little visual jokes. And each time I saw something new. The running away image is the perfect example. The scene includes collage cows jumping over a painted silver dollar moon. The dish in the spoon float in a painted sea. On either side, there are panels that show the pair’s dive into the ocean and their arrival in New York. Most of the book is told in two or three panel spreads, showing how frantic and wild this story really is. Things feel crowded and rushed but at the same time wonderfully silly. You want to linger on these illustrations but the story forces you to move faster. I’ve reread this little book at least six times since I first picked it up. And I’m sure I’ll read it again and again. A wonderfully subversive tale, filled with humor and fantastic illustrations. I must find more of Mini Grey’s work.

Angelo

Angelo

by David Macaulay

Angelo is a plasterer. He has spent most of his life high above the city re-plastering buildings and cleaning up pigeon droppings from the facades. So when he finds an injured pigeon in one of the crevices of the buildings, he only agrees to take it home and nurse it back to health for a day or so. After all, he hates pigeons. The days turn into weeks and the two become friends. After the pigeon, named Sylvia, gets better she flies away but comes back to keep an eye on the old man. The two become inseparable, eating and working together. Sylvia notices that Angelo is slowing down on his work. He rests more often. And Angelo notices too. After he finally finishes his building job, he decides he needs to do something for Sylvia. Something that will last forever.

If I was looking for a book where I cried with both happiness and sadness, this would be it. I'm so in love with this book. I love Sylvia, I love Angelo, but most of all I loved the friendship between them. This is no simple story about a man rescuing a pigeon. Angelo is rescued just as much. The friendship between the two is well built, based on hard work and time spent together. We get to watch it develop from the moment Angelo builds a makeshift hospital bed for the bird until the very end. Angelo is hardworking and caring. He works to do a good job even as he gets too old to work. Sylvia is sweet and caring, and worried about the old man. The ending though, is what cements this book as a new found favorite. I cried at the end of this book, the story was so touching. I was happy and I was sad. In only a couple words Macaulay creates a final image that will stick with me for a very long time.

David Macaulay's illustrations are filled with rough lines and warm colors. In only a few simple pen strokes, he creates beautiful Mediterraneans buildings and expresses great character emotions. He uses terra-cottas, creams, browns, and light blues to bring out the Italian feel for the city and to make his unassuming character of Angelo come to life. Here is a plain man presented plainly. But we still get a feeling for the great love and tenderness he has. A beautiful book, both in story and in illustrations. And a new favorite of mine.

Hoot

When I think of children's book authors, Carl Hiaasen is not the first name that springs to mind. I've read a number of Hiaasen's books and never once did I think to myself, this man should write children's books. In fact, normally his zany and gritty tales of Florida are the exact opposite of a classic kids book. Hiaasen writes about crime and dirt and corruption. And when it comes to Hoot, a Newbery Award honor book, he does it perfectly for the young adult audience.

Hoot follows Roy (or Cowgirl as his not-quite friends call him), a young boy who's just moved to Florida from Montana. Roy has problems and he has them in spades. He's the new kid in school with all that implies, he's attracted the attention of the school bully who wants to beat him to a pulp, and he's just discovered a mysterious boy named Mullet Fingers who's involved in a personal crusade against a national pancake company. A huge pancake company has decided to open a restaurant in the small town that Roy lives in. That should be cause for excitement and is until Roy finds out that there are endangered burrowing owls who have made a home on the site that the restraunt will be built on. Roy, Mullet Fingers, and Mullet Finger's sister Beatrice decide to stop them, using some rather unusual means. If you have read Hiaasen before, you know what kinds of antics his characters can get into. If you haven't...well what are you doing. Why aren't you at the library picking up one of his books?

As an environmentalist and a believer in animal rights, I was completely in love with this book from the beginning. Hiassen's message of anti-development rings so true with me. Hiassen often talks about corporate greed and its impact on the environment. Here he offers us a couple of heros that are willing to stand up against corporate greed, even if it means no pancakes. The kids get their point across through a wonderful mixture of vandalism and law-abiding routes (Mullet Fingers on the vandalism side and Roy on the law abiding). This is a book about standing up for what you believe in no matter how unpopular it is.

But it's not as preachy as that sounds. Instead Hiaasen uses humor to get his point across. From the opening scene, where Roy first sees Mullet Fingers while having his face smooshed against the glass by the school bully, you know you're in for a story that's both touching and humorous. Roy is not a violent kid and he goes about helping Mullet Fingers (and dealing with his bully), in funny ways. The pranks that Mullet Fingers pulls on the construction contractor are hilarious with just a slight touch of danger. The contractor and the police officer dealing with the case start off as charactures and become real people during the course of the book. But they are still the bumbling idiots of the tale. And in the end (after all the humor is done) you come away with a great environmental message. I have to take back my earlier words. Hiaasen can write children's books. And he'll do it with humor.

Auntie Claus

With nearly record high heat indexes and constant rain, I needed a reminder that there is something called winter. So when I was in the library last week, I stopped to check out the books on Christmas. The cover of Auntie Claus drew me in so I dropped it on my stack to check out. And I'm so glad I did. The rest of the book was just as sweet and enjoyable as the cover.

Auntie Claus by Elise Primavera tells the story of the Kringle family who live in New York City. Every year, Auntie Claus disappears on a "business trip" from October until Valentine's Day. One of the younger members of the family, Sophie, is curious about where her aunt goes each year. She's determined to find the secret. So when Auntie isn't looking, Sophie stows away. As most readers have already guessed by now, she finds herself deposited at the North Pole. One of the head elves mistakes Sophie for an elf and puts her to work. She starts in the mail room and finds herself unhappy sorting mail all day. When Santa needs someone to go get the naughty list from the basement (the worst job at the North Pole), Sophie volunteers. She finds her spoiled brother's name on the list, so Sophie makes a choice. She erases her brother's name, and replaces it with her own. The moment her name is signed, Sophie is summoned to Santa's side to help deliver packages. She falls asleep in the sleigh and wakes up Christmas Morning at home, with a very special gift.

Elise Primavera's story is sweet and fun, but with a moral. Adults will not be surprised by Auntie Claus's job, nor by the rest of the family's connection to Christmas, but children will be drawn into the world. Sophie is a great character, half rebel, half sweet caring girl. I loved her curiosity and her spunk. She is spoiled at the beginning of the story but we see her make sacrifices later in the book. We watch her grow. In a way we watch Sophie discover her more adult, mature self. Auntie Claus starts the story with the idiom "it is better to give than to receive" and that is displayed at the end in wonderful form. The moral is not pushed hard but readers will leave with it firmly in their mind. The subtle message fits beautifully with the idea of Sophie growing up. I was actually a bit surprised by the ending of the story but I found it much more satisfying than a more Hollywood-style ending. It is a mature, sensitive, and fitting ending. I left the book with a huge smile.

Primavera's illustration are simply gorgeous. Auntie Claus is elegant in a movie star type of way. Her home, along with Sophie's home, are luxuriously drawn. Everything is rich and elegant. Once Sophie leaves the house and heads to the North Pole, the colors become even more rich. Filled with reds and blues, these gouache and pastel illustrations wrap you in warmth. Sophie is presented very plain compared to her famous aunt and the beautiful world she inhabits and then visits. Primavera gives everything a soft focus, adding to the unreality of the situation. It was a world I loved visiting, with sweet characters and an even better moral. A great book for Christmas and one I'll be adding to my collection.