ONE COOL FRIEND by Toni Buzzeo

Buzzeo, Toni. One Cool Friend. Illus. David Small. NY: Dial Books, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-80373-413-5. $16.99.

If One Cool Friend, by Toni Buzzeo (Penelope Popper, Book Doctor) and David Small (Imogene’s Antlers, So You Want to Be President?), is any indication of the quality of picture books that will be published in 2012, then we are in for quite a treat. This one is clever, silly, and surprising, and young readers will love this tale of unlikely friendships and hilarious misunderstandings.

Buzzeo writes that “Elliot was a very proper young man,” which all readers can see from his quiet disposition, elevated language, and a black & white wardrobe (complete with bow-tie) that would make Edgar Allen Poe proud. While visiting the aquarium with his father one day, unruffled Elliot becomes quite taken by the Magellanic Penguins, “In their tidy black feather tuxedos with their proper posture, they reminded Elliot of himself.”

Elliot identifies with the little dapper dudes so much that he decides to take one home with him… only after first asking his father for permission, of course.

Unfortunately, Elliot’s turtle-obsessed father, distracted by his latest copy of National Geographic Magazine, misunderstands Elliot’s request and believes that the boy would simply like to take home a plush penguin from the gift shop. Hilarity ensues, as the young boy turns his room into an Antarctic wonderland for his new friend, Magellan, and Elliot and his father continue to misinterpret one another. Readers will be laughing out loud when all comes to light at the end of the story.

David Small’s illustrations for One Cool Friend are absolutely charming. His celebrated mixed-media artwork is full of creative details, interesting snippets of newspapers & maps, and fabulous pops of color. He has also drawn speech and thought bubbles around Elliot & his father’s dialogue, as well as their inside thoughts, which adds a creative and slightly comic-strip feel to the text. Readers will find themselves looking back through each page, searching for the small details that hint at the book’s silly conclusion.

One Cool Friend is imaginative, hilarious, and an absolute joy to read.

Caitlin Kennedy

MY HEART WILL NOT SIT DOWN by Mara Rockliff

Rockliff, Mara. My Heart Will Not Sit Down. Illus. Ann Tanksley. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. ISBN: 978-0-375-84569-7. $17.99 US/$19.99 CAN.

Historical fiction picture books are unusual to begin with, but Mara Rockliff’s text takes an even more uncommon approach—she depicts the American Great Depression from the point of view of a village child in Africa.

When her teacher tells them about the plight of children in the (contemporary) Great Depression, Kedi’s “heart stands up and it won’t sit down.” She understands the hunger of those New York children because she, too, has gone to bed with a grumbling empty tummy! Her mother’s initial reaction to Kedi’s desire to help is to let the American people come to them; they can share their dinner. And when Kedi asks her mother and the other villagers for monetary aid, the African villagers wonder, “Why send money to people whose faces we haven’t seen?”

On her way to school the next day, Kedi’s mother gives her one coin—their only coin—which seems puny and useless, until all the villagers arrive at the school bearing their coins. Finally, Kedi’s heart can sit down.

As described in the author’s endnote, the fictionalized tale is based on a true event, in which the city of New York received a donation of $3.77 from a small Cameroon village to aid the hungry of the city. Such generosity, Rockliff points out, is not solitary, as similar instances occurred in Papua New Guinea and Santa Domingo, Guatemala.

The text offers a very interesting opportunity for discussion, even with students whose reading level would be above and beyond the simplicity of a picture book. What prompts us to want to help those far away, even if we ourselves have little? What can we do to help those in need and what is the effect of our donation beyond its actual monetary value?

The art is brightly colored and chunky, reminiscent of other picture books of African folklore. My Heart Will Not Sit Down carries an interesting and heartwarming message of human generosity, and the accessibility of the illustrations packages that message with candor and simple honesty.

Marisa Behan

LIBRARY MOUSE: A WORLD TO EXPLORE by Daniel Kirk

Kirk, Daniel. Library Mouse: A World to Explore. New York: Abrams, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-8109-8968-9. $16.95 US, $21.95 CAN. Ages 5 - 7.

Every person has that friend who plunges headlong into life, approaching all obstacles with a no-holds-barred fearlessness. For Sam, the library mouse who lives behind the children’s reference books, that friend is Sarah. The tug-of-war between Sam’s pragmatic reluctance and Sarah’s enthusiasm forms the impetus for their adventures. Each time Sarah hurtles herself clumsily into adventure, Sam points out the danger and encourages her to do more research first. She pushes his boundaries to help him “see the world without ever leaving the library.”

The story models some wonderful viewpoints about libraries, particularly the idea that libraries, and by extension, books, can be fun. In addition to the benefit of simply meeting a new friend, the pair learns to make their research a reality by dressing up and play-acting the reference books. Also, since the two mice do so much “traveling” through their research, the story demonstrates the potential of books to transport the reader to new worlds.

Kirk’s illustrations employ dense, opaque colors that often fill the page. The library books, all very brightly colored and complete with call number stickers, look inviting and sturdy. Flipping through the pages, I want to pull them off their shelves to look at the covers! The mice have lifelike fur, interesting facial expressions, and colorful outfits. The library posters, upon closer examination, feature the mice themselves, as well as other whimsical critters.

Used by a teacher, this book could be an excellent introduction to a trip to the library (…or the internet), perhaps to inspire students to bring “reference” to life.

Marisa Behan

DOGS DON'T DO BALLET by Anna Kemp

Kemp, Anna. Illus. Sara Ogilvie. Dogs Don’t Do Ballet. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010. ISBN: 978-1-4169-9839-6. $15.99 US.

Biff, an adorable pug who “is not like other dogs,” has one mission—he wants to do ballet. He is not interested in normal doggy stuff. In fact, he has no interest in characteristic canine behaviors like weeing on fire hydrants, scratching his fleas, or playing fetch. He’d rather watch ballet. Not only does Biff want to watch ballet, he wants to be a ballet dancer. This desire sends him on a journey. He follows his owner and sneaks down the street, aboard a bus, and then finally peeks through the window of a dance studio. Unfortunately, the ballet teacher, Miss Polly, sees Biff and he is thrown out. Biff, though, doesn’t give up. When the Royal Ballet comes to town, he again follows his owner and her father all the way to the symphony hall. It’s a beautiful evening, but suddenly there is a terrible accident and the prima ballerina trips, falls off the stage, into a tuba, and can’t go on. Biff though, comes to the rescue in pink tutu-ed glory and saves the performance to great applause and yells of bravo. This delightful story ends with, “Dogs DO do ballet. Bravo, Biff!

I had more fun reading this book than I have had in a long time. After all, there is a pug who wears a pink tutu and takes theatrical ballet poses at any opportunity: “Plie! Jete! Arabesque! Pirouette!” Angela Kemp’s smartest move, though, is that Biff’s owner is not named. This allows another reality to take place where the reader (or listener) imagines what it would be like to have a dog who wants to do ballet. It personalizes the book.

Testifying to the success of Dogs Don’t Do Ballet is the way readers consistently try to see the next page before it is turned. Most words are easy to recognize but there are a few that pose an enjoyable challenge to the early reader. Dogs Don’t Do Ballet is a success—a book I haven’t minded hearing more than once!

As much as Kemp’s storyline is enjoyable, it’s possible that Sara Ogilvie’s illustrations are what make the book. They are painted with beautiful hues in a loose, sketchy style that adds greatly to the movement throughout the book. Biff and his owner’s personalities bubble off the page in their large imploring eyes and lively postures. One of Ogilvie’s greatest strengths is her ability to portray believable expressions throughout. I found myself reacting to Biff’s hopefulness, the father’s disinterest, and the orchestra, audience, and father's shock at seeing Biff dance away on the stage. Other delightful details are Ogilvie’s attention to fashion, which I started to notice on my third reading. Biff’s owner is often wearing red galoshes and a red knit cap with a little bit of a dress peeking out beneath a brilliant blue coat. Also, keep an eye out for details such as little purses, buttons on boots, the father’s comfy slippers, and, of course, tutus throughout the pages. This is a book I look forward to guiding future students through.

Stephanie Ashley

Classic British Fantasy: THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS by Kenneth Grahame

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. Illustrated by Robin Lawrie. London: Puffin Books, 2008. ISBN 978-0-0141-32113-4. $4.99.

Reading Wind in the Willows is like a comfortable chat at home with friends: many times the reader vicariously sits down to a cozy hearth or home-cooked meal as we join Mole, Ratty, Mr. Badger and their companions in the simple events that mark the turning of the seasons along the river, and the not-so-simple escapades of the wealthy and reckless Toad of Toad Manor. Robin Lawrie’s whimsical, unpretentious sketches suit the book perfectly. Although in contemporary times the book is frequently abridged to just the plot that involves Toad’s infatuation with, and theft of, a motorcar, his subsequent imprisonment and escape, and the routing of the hooligan weasels from Toad Hall, the first two thirds of the book address life along the river. These chapters are written more reflectively and much more poetically than the Toad chapters, for example when Mole heads to the Wild Woods at the beginning of winter:

The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and so intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, till they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old deceptions.

Grahame’s gentle, pastoral world is, from a more detached perspective, a gender-bending oddity. The sympathetic characters are all animals (humans are “other”), and all of the animal characters are male. No wives, no sisters, no daughters, no lovers, and no female friends enter their homes, their adventures, or their conversations. Not only that, but all the sympathetic male characters, with the exception of the selfish and irresponsible Toad, are domestic and kind. They appear to have no professions whatever (although they don’t suffer from want), and they busy themselves with food stores for the winter, pots and plates for tea, and spare beds and clothes to lend to their friends. They take comfort in the same domestic joys, and feel the same domestic restrictions, that usually are attributed to females. The driving action of almost every chapter is around the same conflict: the desire for freedom and adventure vs. the wisdom and contentment of “staying home.” With one notable exception (the framing story of Mole, which will be considered later in this review), every conflict is decided in favor of staying home. Even the best known story of Toad and the stolen motorcar ends with an implied moral lesson from Toad’s prison ordeal, his terrifying and humiliating escape, and his final restoration to Toad Hall, where he at least makes a show, however unconvincing, of contrition and future commitment to be content at home. Other stories are variations of the same moral: Mole sets out to visit the Wild Woods and encounters fierce cold and terrifying weasels until happily Ratty recues him, leads him to Mr. Badger’s safe domicile, and then back home to the riverbank. A little later, Otter’s son Portly disappears on a river exploration; Ratty and Mole find him and bring him safely home. In a chapter titled “Wayfarers All,” Ratty has an encounter with a seafaring rat and feels the stirrings of wanderlust, until his friend Mole, seeing that Ratty is ill and “not himself,” restores the Rat to home and hearth, safe and sound.

Grahame’s eloquent writing waxes almost as romantic in descriptions of longing for adventure as it does in depictions of the natural beauty surrounding our friends. Indeed, the adventure of Portly, told in the sequence “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” suggests that one coping mechanism for confining domesticity is escape into Nature in the transcendent sense, a spiritual adventure that takes place in another dimension while physical boundaries are maintained. After increasingly ethereal passages, such as “breathless and transfixed the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly,” an enraptured Rat and Mole find Portly in the lap of the demigod Pan. Pan magically erases their memory of the incident so that they won’t forever find their ordinary lives disappointing, “lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before.”

A second commendable outlet for inappropriate wanderlust is suggested by Mole’s considerate rehabilitation of the infatuated Rat, when the Rat’s imagination still thrills to the tales of the seafaring rat: Mole leaves a pen and paper beside the stunned Rat, and later peeks in to see Ratty scribbling poetry. “It was a joy to the Mole to know that the cure had at least begun.” If poetry is an acceptable “cure” for wanderlust, suddenly our reading experience is reflected back to us like an image rippling on the river, as we read Grahame’s poetic tales from the comfort and safety of our own hearths.

The single exception to the better-at home-than-adventuring message happens in the framing story of Mole. The book opens with Mole poking his nose out of his dear underground home during spring-cleaning. Mole discovers the river, Ratty, and emancipation; he never returns to his home except for one brief, deeply sentimental visit. If we believe the protagonist of this story is the character who undergoes change, then it is Mole (since no one believes Toad’s contrition). Mole morphs from a timid, naïve, protégée of Ratty to a courageous and strategic fighter, a companion with initiative and confidence—for example, in his tactics to drive the weasels from Toad Hall. A reversal of roles is also apparent when Mole calms the over-excited Ratty after the seafaring rat episode. Perhaps, given that Grahame wrote the story for his son, Mole represents the child who will grow up to be a companion to his father-friend, Ratty, after having learned the proper boundaries of responsible adulthood: out of the mole hole, but not past the river. In which case, if Ratty represents the poet-father Grahame, the seafaring rat episode takes on a curious hue—but this is more tedious analysis than Grahame’s lyrical, friendly, comforting tale deserves. Better we readers just drift in the boat with Ratty and Mole, rock with the lapping river waves, and listen to the whispers through the water reeds and the wind in the willows.

Alexandra Boyer