There Really Are Cats in This Book!

There are cats in this book by Viviane Schwarz
Candlewick Press (c)2008

"The cats aren't on this page," the book begins.
"The cats aren't on this page, either. They're on the next page. They'd love to play with you. They're very friendly."

And so begins the charming picture book. The first time I read it I was alone in the library, giggling. (Just in case you saw me, and thought I was insane) I brought it home because I knew my son would laugh out loud when we read it together. I was right!

Playful fuzzballs Moonpie, Tiny, and Andre are as interactive as two-dimensional critters can be as they play with yarn, climb in and out of cardboard boxes, have a pillow fight, and go for a whale of an adventure in a fish tank.

Several die cut pages encourage older preschool age readers to turn the pages gently. Moonpie, Tiny, and Andre are very appurrrciative, too.

"I KNEW you were nice," says Moonpie. The whole book is.

Mighty Nice, Those Queens of Freeville

The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson
Hyperion (c) 2009 225 pages

The Mighty Queens of Freeville is a touching book about a single mom raising a single daughter, with help from her matron-laden family, which apparently accounts for about a third of the gene pool in tiny Freeville, NY.

The "Ask Amy" syndicated advice columnist and NPR contributor skates on trite territory; we've read about mother-daughter relationships, the preschool to pre-college days, many times.

Dickinson's Queens succeeds because it's a good balance of self-effacing irreverence and raw self-reporting. The book also succeeds because it speaks to all mothers (of daughters) rather than specifically to single mothers.

I don't think mothers of boys will relate, however, and certainly, Queens speaks most directly to mothers who have roots in a small town or two. (City chicks may not appreciate the significance of Toads diner, the church barbecue pit, or having encyclopedic knowledge of one's neighbors.)

While I enjoyed Dickinson's light humor and ability to avoid convenient cliches, what I most appreciate is that she steered clear of any man-hating digressions. One can be wronged by a man without blaming the whole gender, but far too many authors bang on the all-girl-band drum.

The Mighty Queens of Freeville is a welcome addition to the shelves full of book-length personal essays on parenting. It could, I think, also serve as something as a liaison between the various factions still (!) fighting the Mommy Wars, by not only illustrating how moms can work together, but how they can work and raise children, which is also work.

Early on, Dickinson explains that divorce "runs through my clan like an aggressive chromosone," but claims she was never exposed to "family ugliness of any sort." [p14] From that perspective, Queens offers some insight into the lives of little girls who grow up knowing little of their fathers. How mom handles dad's absentee status is paramount, of course, and Dickinson provides a rather good example of how to handle life without dad without excessive angst, and how to (possibly) avoid the need for counseling in later life.

My father had limited interest in his children, so there was no question of custody. My mother never pursued him for any sort of financial support - and he didn't offer it. She simply prevailed. Prevailing is underrated. People have the idea that unless they win, they lose. But sometimes surviving is enough. My mother knew this, and I learned it by watching her. [p15]

As an adult, Dickinson acknowledges she maintains a romantic vision of her father, and yet she is clear-eyed about his shortcomings.

My father doesn't see things as metaphors for other things, but I do. As I drove back home to Freeville, I tried not to think about the jobs, the wives, the children he left and the grandchildren he would never know, but about the bees and the honey they make. The honey stands for the sweetness of life, while the bee brings the sting. My father, the self-aggrandizing bear killer, was both the bee and the honey to me. [p195]

Bite Me

Chew On This by Eric Scholosser & Charles Wilson
(c) 2006 302 pages

Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. The cover of Chew On This advises it contains "everything you DON'T want to know about fast food." And it does.

At times a tad didactic, more often hard to stomach (sorry; you know my addiction to puns) Chew On This is never subtle, boring, or vague.

Remember the 1993 E. coli outbreak among Jack in the Box customers? Here's a refresher from page 192:

"One of the first kids to become ill, Lauren Beth Rudolph, ate a hamburger at Jack in the Box a week before Christmas. She was admitted to the hospital on Christmas Eve, suffered terrible pain, had three heart attacks, and died in her mother's arms on December 28, 1992. She was six years old."

She was also a month ahead of the curve. In January, doctors in a Seattle hospital noticed an unusually high number of cases of children being admitted with bloody diarrhea - and shortly after health officials connected the dots, Jack in the Box recalled all of the contaminated ground beef.

The authors don't mince words about the fast food business and the enormousness of its impact on health and the economy, but then again, they also didn't point out that gee, it would have been really nice if Jack in the Box (or McDonald's, in 1982, or, or, or...) could have been more proactive, more careful, less driven to sell burgers at all costs. Maybe the book isn't as didactic as it is just plain accurate.

Sure, I'm biased. I don't like grease and I've been avoiding high fructose corn syrup for several years now. I buy "free range" chicken and even harvest a few vegetables from my own (woefully small) garden each year - knowing it's only a nod at the problem. In other words, Schlosser and Wilson had me before I opened the book. Still, I will never look at fast food the same way again.

It's hard to say how individual kids will respond to the book's blatant message - but at least, I think it's very unlikely to make many of them fans of the very, very successful industry. (And the folks at TeenReads.com apparently agree.

Of course, plenty of folks - not surprisingly, many higher-ups at McDonald's, Burger King, et al - don't agree. The industry reacted by creating its own website (long live the fast food giants, but not necessarily their clientele) and campaigning to keep the authors out and pop and branded fries/pizza/etc. in our kids' schools. Sick, sick, sick.

Public relations is about spin more than facts, however, and Schlosser and Wilson did a beautiful job of documenting their facts in a 31-page notes section proving (warning, bad pun coming) meat can be beautiful.

I promise, no more today. Chew On This is highly recommended for readers (12 and up) and contains very, very few puns.

--Can you handle it? More info available here or just buy a copy and dig in.--

Infamous Characters Off to a Great Start

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko
(c) 2004 225 pages

Seventh grade isn't easy for anyone (remember?) so when the Flanagan family moves to Alcatraz in 1935, you know it's going to be a rough year for twelve-year-old Moose.

Moose is gangly, he misses his dad (who is pulling double duty as an electrician and a prison guard) and has his hands full watching his sister, who is autistic.

But that word doesn't appear in the first two-thirds of the book. Choldenko's characters are almost all show, no tell - her characters are real from page one; they drive the story.

Readers, both male and female, will enjoy this book, but you don't have to take my word for it. Al Capone Does My Shirts was a Newbery Honor Book, a New York Times Best Seller, A Kirkus Editors' Choice, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and a People magazine Best Kid's Book.

And I could go on, but I won't. Readers ages 12 and up will love Al Capone Does My Shirts. If they don't, I'll eat my shirt. (But only if it's clean.)

-- To learn more about author Gennifer Choldenko, visit her website. --

Editor as Floral Arranger

- - - This post also appears on my writing blog - - -

If you've read one entry you know my bias: I think journalism is here to stay, it's a worthy, beautiful profession, and it's absolutely necessary to a civilized society.

Biased as I am, I think (good) editors are artists; I see an Op-Ed spread, or just about any section of the paper, as a carefully constructed work of art. Balanced, and if not lovely, at least interesting to a variety of viewers. It's not always a floral arrangement; sometimes it's just a collage. But it's art, baby. Art. (Of course, it's not all editing - a good page designer sure helps.)

Consider a recent two-page at a recent two-page book section in The Plain Dealer. Because you won't see the layout online, try to imagine...

Two equal but very different three-column reviews sit front and center: one on the weighty Cheever, a biography by Blake Bailey is balanced by a look inside the lighter Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee. The "grownups" hover over reports on two tales for teens - it's as if the arrangement knows that the kids are growing up fast. Fiction and nonfiction reviews hold up the edges of the spread.

It's big-headed hydrangeas and graceful young buds, a bright spray here, and bit of greenery there. A fresh look at some new-in-paperback books and a few recommendations from the NYT Best Sellers list poke up from the bottom of the page like baby's breath.

There's something for everyone.

Keep reading.

Advice for Magazine Readers

The Home Office Organizer has some good advice for magazine readers at her blog. Her opinion is that five mags a month is enough for anyone. Well, that gives me permission to feel overwhelmed. Thanks, HO-Organizer!

3 Cups for Young Readers - or Not

Three Cups of Tea
for Young Readers (c) 2009 209 pages

We’re all busy, it’s true. In case you’ve been so busy that you haven’t heard Greg Mortenson’s story – the riveting nonfiction Three Cups of Tea – well, OK, I’ll tell you. But I’ll wager you haven’t been quite as busy as Mortenson.

Mortenson served as a US Army medic before surviving years of what most would consider successful mountain climbing. Then, when he failed to reach the summit of K2 (he was about 600 meters short) and got himself badly lost, by the grace of God, or Allah, or Mohammed, or all three, he found himself in very good company, in the village of Korphe, in the Baltisan region of Pakistan.

There ended his climbing adventures and began a much more heroic journey.

Sincerely wishing to repay the kindness of those who nursed him back to health in Korphe – and probably, with a climber’s bravado – Mortenson promised to return to the village and build a school for its children.

How he fulfilled that promise is a great story, and after years on bestseller lists, it is now available in a young reader’s version (Puffin pb 2009). There's also a lovely picture book for the lapsit set. (More on that later.)

Weighing in at 209 pages, the young readers edition about two-thirds as long as the original – so adults who want to read Three Cups but just haven’t made time will have to come up with a new excuse. The Young Reader’s edition is better than a Readers’ Digest Condensed version, but the fact that it is so true to the original story is why, IMHO, it will not resonate with teens the way Three Cups did with adults.

For one reason, by teen standards, it’s a very slow-moving story.

There's little action, aside from some wild drives through Baltistan's Hushe Valley, which is quite dramatic. The rest of the book's drama is social, interpersonal, conversational. It's in the strange and protracted negotiations about concrete and nails. Trust me, it's a lot more exciting than it sounds, but it'll never grip kids like Twilight or (pulling out the obvious here) Harry Potter.

What could be done about it? That's a good question. Three Cups will probably never be a graphic novel. But the writing needs to be a little sharper, a little more pointed to get to kids, I think. It needs to move a little bit faster.

And the conundrum is, well, the book is about slowing down. That's the lesson of the three cups of tea. So a graphic novel or book with more action-packed dialog probably isn't the answer.

I hope I'm wrong in my assessment, and that tweens and teens will pick up and finish Three Cups, because it's an amazing story with an important message that kids - heck, all of us - would do well to grasp.

Click here to read my review in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, which also highlights the picture book, Listen to the Wind.