Kitten’s First Full Moon

Kevin Henkes has written and illustrated so many children’s books, and they are all great (Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and Owen, while slightly dated, are frequent reads in our house), but his Kitten’s First Full Moon looks and feels nothing like the others. It’s done in four-color, but feels like black and white, and the lines are simple, computer-enhanced, almost Japanese–and they match the exceedlingly simple story beautifully. The text is a cross between an Asian fable and Todd Parr.

This is by no means a perfect book, but it’s fun to read and kids like it. (My daughter has wondered out loud why there are no colors, and whether she can color in the empty spaces–I think to her eye it does look a little like a coloring book–so it’s also good entree to talk about artists’ choices and different ways we can draw and illustrate, as well as a chance to search for other books that rely on simple line drawings instead of color illustrations.)

The Snowy Day

Pulled this classic out over the weekend to commemorate the first snow of the winter, and have read it three nights running. Every time I see it again, I admire it more and more. It’s deceptively simple at first. But stare for a while at those illustrations–they are really first class. And think about the few actions the main character takes–they are perfect, they are universal, they are exactly what a kid alone might do.

My son dragged me out of bed this morning to stand at the window with him and watch the snowflakes fall. Can we make snow angels, he asked, and can we throw snowballs, and can we do to the park and make a snowman? All these things, straight out of The Snowy Day.

Gallop

Having read a bit about this new “scanimation” technology, I was excited to see what it was and how it worked. I have to say: I’m a little disappointed. It’s sort of cool, but not REALLY cool, and not exactly revolutionary jump beyond the old line-art animation I remember from Spy versus Spy–you know, the one where you put your thumb on the corner of the page and let the pages flip quickly by to create animation. Actually, scanimation feels closer to what you get with 3D images, where you rock the page back and forth to make the picture “move.” Cool for a moment or two, but then… 

In Gallop, Rufus Butler Seder puts a separate “scanimation” image on each spread, with a sort of superfluous story running through the book to link the images together. There’s a running horse, a running dog, a running chicken, a flying bird, etc.–you get the idea.

My kids had pretty much the same reaction: Gallop was cool for a few minutes when I first brought it home, but they had forgotten about it by bedtime and they never mentioned it again. 

And I thought it would be such a hit! Seder has brought out a follow-up called Swing plus at least one spin-off product, some individual scanimation cards based on Gallop images. I’m going to pass.

Franny Rules

Jim Benton’s Franny K. Stein books can be a nice segue from picture books to chapter books; indeed, they are so well-illustrated that there is something new to see on nearly every page. Franny is a little girl who also happens to be a bat-keeping, monster-loving mad scientist. Benton’s prose stays clear of the mannered Lemony Snicket approach and presents Franny as a fairly normal little girl, or at least as normal as a little mad scientist could be–someone who wants to be liked by her friends, who feels lonely and afraid sometimes, who can be sweet and caring when not creating monsters or practicing ancient spells. I’ve lost track of how many are in this series now, and Benton has begun merchandising Franny so your child may actually encounter her in a keychain or lunchbox before reading about her in the books. Don’t dismiss the series because of that: these books are fun, easy to read aloud, and, despite the semi-scary appearance of the covers, not bad bed-time reading.

The Midnight Unicorn

Neil Reed’s illustrations are so breathtakingly gorgeous that I sometimes forget to keep reading (until my daughter turns the page). Each spread is a single illustration, beautifully and elegantly rendered; the colors are controlled and the images so realistic some pages resemble photographs (really really great photographs). The story is fine: little girl loves to visit a unicorn statue, one day the unicorn statue comes to life and carries her away for a night full of travels and adventures, at the end of the night the girl and unicorn fall fast asleep on Unicorn Island, and finally the little girl’s father wakes her and tells her she just took a nap and must have dreamt the whole thing. (Yes, the Wizard of Oz/Newhart ending.) But the pictures are lovely enough to carry the story. And actually, the story doesn’t feel recycled at all; there’s something slightly different about it, like the expression on the father’s face and the girl’s final look back at the unicorn–that feels sad and romantic and moving. You are rooting for the girl to be right about her night, and her dad was wrong, you just know it. 

Okay, not to be completely sappy, but I think I may love this book even more than my unicorn-crazed daughter. I usually let my kids pick out their favorites for me to read to them, but I have to confess, I do occasionally slip this one into the stack every now and then. It’s just that pretty.

Fancy Nancy Etc.

The first Fancy Nancy book works on every level.  Visually strong, with a consistent tone and a great lead character, the story arc mirrors a good short story: Nancy’s efforts to fancify her unfancy family intensify until, at the last moment, they fall (literally) apart, with a single-spread denoument that puts her and her family in a whole new light. It’s a delight to read aloud, the illustrations contain multitudes of small jokes and clever ideas, and the ending feels satisfying to adults and kids alike.  Jane O’Connor’s text repeatedly employs the technique of having Nancy use a fancy word, then translate it to a word a child would know; my four-year-old daughter now thinks she speaks French, because she’s mastered some of Nancy’s fancy words. And Robin Preiss Glasser has done her finest work, hands down; the opening spreads of Nancy’s old and new bedrooms sets the tone for the whole book, and tells you boatloads about her personality before word one of the text.

 

 I wish I could say the same for the follow-on Fancy Nancy titles. Each subsequent Fancy Nancy book feels slightly longer, slightly less coherent, and ultimately is slightly less fun. The latest, Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy, describes Nancy’s latest dilemma: convincing her unfancy family that a papillon will be the perfect dog for them to adopt. The story sort of meanders, there are spreads that, while entertaining, feel disjointed, the illustrations feel almost fussy in places, and the end result is a story that nobody is asking me to “please read that one again.”

Long Strange Trip

RedPsych Productions, a small press located in Fairfax, California, was kind enough to send along the galleys for a cool new picture book called Monkey and the Engineer. If that rings a bell, you might know the Grateful Dead song–and if you do, you’ll recognize the lyrics in this book. It’s actually a Dead cover of an original tune by Jesse Fuller.

Fuller was a bluesman, inventor, folk artist, and occasional one-man band, born in 1896, who found fame late in life in the early ’60s folk/blues scene in San Francisco and ultimately recorded a number of albums in the ’60s and ’70s after having been nearly unknown for most of his life. His lyrics for the song “Monkey and the Engineer” are typically spare, evocative blues:

Once upon a time there was an engineer

He drove a locomotive both far and near.

He was accompanied by a monkey who’d sit on a stool,

Watching everything the engineer would do.

And so on. As the text of a picture book, the lyrics become abstract, providing just the bare bones of a story but enough of one for any three-year-old to understand and enjoy: monkey steals train, engineer and friends panic, monkey drives the train all around the countryside without incident.

The illustrations, by David Opie, fill in some of the gaps in the text and add some visual humor. They aren’t exactly lush or awe-inspiring, but they get the job done.

There are trains, engines, freight cars, tracks, etc. on every page of the book. My Thomas the Tank Engine-addicted son loved them. And it’s a fun change of pace to have the monkey driving, instead of Thomas’s nameless driver or Sir Topham Hatt.

I recommend this book for parents or relatives who love the Grateful Dead and who’d get a kick out of giving their child a book built around a Dead cover. And beyond that, I recommend this book for any kid who loves trains (or who loves a good monkey story).