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October 26, 2007
Forthcoming in March 2008
Thanks to Patty, I have a big ol’ stack of sweeeeet f&g’s that I’ve been reading a bit at a time. I know March is five months from now, but knowing is half the battle, so I thought I’d give you a preview of some of what you can expect to see hitting the shelves in March 2008:
LaRue for Mayor: Letters from the Campaign Trail by Mark Teague
I have written before about books I love for their vocabulary, and this is a series that always surprises me with wonderful words. In this title, it’s a perfect use of the word “scurrilous.” When Mrs. LaRue is injured in a shady incident involving a hot dog cart, her dog Ike again proves himself an unreliable correspondent. Ike’s formally-written, woe-filled letters are contrasted with images of him eating hot dogs and rallying his friends to support his bid to become mayor of Snort City. This isn’t quite as much fun as when Duck ran for president, but it sure is better than a textbook. I enjoy the way the words and pictures play off one another in this series, all irony and understatement and matters of perspective. I like the original, Dear Mrs. LaRue, the best, but this is still very good. I can’t help myself; I like Ike.
Timothy and the Strong Pajamas by Viviane Schwarz
Every once in a while, MotherReader will ordain something a Weird-Ass Picture Book. Schwarz’s work fits in this category. Have you ever read Shark and Lobster’s Amazing Undersea Adventure? I love that book, but I can’t deny that it’s really freaking weird. Timothy and the Strong Pajamas is also weird, and I love it even more than I love Shark and Lobster. Timothy Smallbest (a mouse) worries about being a weakling, so he starts doing a lot of work (including drinking fortified milk, doing sit-ups, and meditating) in an attempt to find strength. In the process, Timothy ruins his favorite pajamas. His mother wants to toss them, but Timothy manages to sweet talk her into mending them with, as Timothy’s sock monkey later informs us (I swear I am not making any of this up), “the PATCHES of POWER and the BUTTONS of BRAVENESS.” Well, after that, Timothy goes around saving elephants and ships and damsels in toppling towers—until his super strong pajamas get ripped. (Cue dramatic music.) What, oh what, will Timothy do? This is a fresh treatment on the perennially popular theme of finding your power. I think I’m going to buy two.
What Pet to Get? by Emma Dodd
When I interviewed for my sweeeeet job at WPL, I had to “perform” a storytime piece for the people who were interviewing me, the director and the assistant director. Let us not discuss how uncomfortable it is to do storytime for people in business attire. Let us instead discuss that I chose to use the flannel board I made from Emma Dodd’s Dog’s Colorful Day, a story about a Harry-esque canine who gets dirty in full color instead of black-and-white. Needless to say, I am fond of Dodd’s work, and I am fond of this book about a boy contemplating a new pet. He suggests, among other things, an elephant, a lion, a polar bear, and a Tyrannosaurus Rex—ideas his mother calmly vetoes. (This is the most unrealistic part of the book. Any normal mother would have been telling the kid to go outside and play by the time he got to the polar bear.) After several pages of imagining the disasters that would develop after adopting, say, a rhino, Jack finally settles on an animal that will work. Yes, it’s true, we’ve seen this story before (The Best Pet of All by David LaRochelle and Hanako Wakiyama pops to mind, as does Hoodwinked by Arthur Howard). Dodd’s wacky wide-eyed animals are worth the price of admission, though, and Mom’s dry responses while she’s trying to go about her day (“An elephant would be nice, dear, but not very practical. How would we take it on vacation?”) provide extra fun for the adults in the room.
Posted by adrienne at October 26, 2007 08:08 AM