funny

Mo Willems, Elephant, and Piggie Make a Video to Thank the Geisel Award Committee

by Tom B.

I Broke My Trunk

Hooray for I Broke My Trunk!

I may have mentioned in the past that my family is a wee bit fond of Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books… OK, fine, we’re borderline-obsessed.

So, it should be no surprise – with our psychosis so clearly stated for everyone to judge – that we were excited to hear that I Broke My Trunk, a hysterical E&P book from last year, was named as a Geisel Honor Book at the 2012 ALA Youth Media Awards. (The Elephant & Piggie series previously won the 2009 Geisel Award for Are You Ready to Play Outside?)

And Mo Willems, being the mad genius that he is, decided to make this video to thank the Geisel Award committee. Enjoy.

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Zombie in Love by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Scott Campbell

by Tom B.

Zombie in Love

Aww... isn't he cute?

I’m just going to put this out there – Zombie in Love by Kelly DiPucchio and Scott Campbell might be one of the coolest picture books I’ve ever bought for my daughter. And it’s that great kind of cool where my daughter is really enamored with it – after our first reading, she loudly declared “Put that on my bookshelf NOW” – and I’m really into it too. Yes, it helps that one of my favorite artists of all time illustrated it, but, as a nerdy pop culture guy in his ‘30s, Zombie in Love speaks to a lot of my interests.

Now my daughter has her own definite areas of interest – princesses, astronomy, the music of Debbie Harry and David Bowie, words that rhyme with “poop” – and perhaps my favorite of her latest reoccupations is her growing interest in monsters.

That interest isn’t manifesting itself in a bad “terror-under-the-bed” way or in a cutesy “Sesame Street-making-monsters-safe” way. She’s just become very, very interested in traditional old-school monsters, and we have frequent conversations now about vampires, werewolves, mummies, and zombies, to name a few. And those are fun conversations to have. (They’re a lot more fun than debating if Jasmine or Belle is the prettiest.)

My daughter is a kid who’s prone to nightmares, so my wife and I spend a lot of time vetting what books, TV shows, or other various media forms may or may not be fodder for her potential night terrors. (I’ve come to accept that we’ll never see eye-to-eye on Scooby Doo. I’m pro, my wife is con.) This is a child who sleeps with nightlights, hates loud sounds, and refused to see 3D movies until two weeks ago. (Don’t even mention 4D movies to her. Oh, that was an ugly day at the zoo.)

But she isn’t afraid of traditional monsters. It’s like she was born with a respect for classic movie monsters, in particular, and has the voracious appetite for learning about Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, and, believe it or not, Godzilla. (She’s over-the-moon for Godzilla, so if anyone knows of any good picture books about kaiju or the giant monster genre, please send on your recommendations.)

So, like we vet potential nightmare material, my wife and I started vetting monster-related materials that might speak to her interest without totally freaking her out. Scooby Doo, in my opinion, can great media franchise for the monster-curious. (If your kid is up to it – some of the monsters can be a little freaky. And some SD series are MUCH better than others. My daughter and I are particularly big fans of Cartoon Network’s new Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated show.)

Nightmare Before Christmas costume

Monster-loving three-year-old girls are super, super cool.

There’s the Monster High dolls, which are really popular right now and… sigh, I guess they marry together the “princess” and “monster” interests for young girls and my daughter is besotted with them right now, but… why do their outfits have to come from the Czech prostitute fashion outlet? Their clothes are HORRIBLE. We let my daughter have one for her birthday – after months of pleading – but we insisted on picking out an “appropriate” one (i.e. had most of her clothes on) and that’s the only one she’s ever getting.

The monster property that clicked the most with my daughter is Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. At first, I was afraid the movie would be too dark for her, so I started out showing her some YouTube clips and gauging her interest and comfort level. She got really comfortable really fast and instantly fell in love with both the movie and Burton’s very cool picture book version of his original poem. (When she was three, she went as Jack Skellington for Halloween and, let me tell you, they don’t make Jack costumes for three-year-old girls.) [read the rest of the post…]

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In Praise of Mélanie Watt – Part Three: Leon the Chameleon and You’re Finally Here

by Tom B.

I’ve spent two posts so far lauding the comedic storytelling talents of author-illustrator Mélanie Watt – apologies again for the delay in getting the third part of the trilogy online – and now it’s time for us to take a look at what’s left. And by “what’s left”, I mean, what other Mélanie Watt books I’ve read with my daughter. Let me warn you – my exposure to Watt’s works is achingly incomplete. At the Kids Can Press website, Watt is listed as the creator of 18 different picture books and my family has read about 8 of them. Granted, we have read most of Watt’s two most acclaimed and widely-known series, Scaredy Squirrel and Chester, so we’ve covered most of the big hits, but there are still a lot of deeper album tracks that we still haven’t explored yet. (We particularly want to check out her Learning with Animals series and the picture book Augustine.)

Leon the Chameleon

Leon the Chameleon: Watt's first picture book

However, we have read two of those “and the rest” titles – Leon the Chameleon and You’re Finally Here – and, let’s get this out of the way up-front, both are really strong titles that you definitely should pick up at your local library, if you can. You’re Finally Here is definitely the better of the two books, but there’s a reason for that. And that reason is… there’s a ten-year gap between the publication of Leon and You’re Finally Here. Leon the Chameleon was the first picture book that Watt ever published – she originally created it as part of a design class assignment at the University of Quebec – and You’re Finally Here was published in early 2011. So, Leon was the product of an up-and-coming artist experimenting with the picture book format for the first time and You’re Finally Here is that same artist checking back in with almost a decade of publishing experience under her belt.

Can you tell the difference between the two books? In a word, yes. Leon is a fun book, but it’s very straightforward, very predictable. Now, predictable isn’t always bad. Listening to someone sing “Danny Boy” is predictable – you know how the song goes – but that doesn’t stop you from tearing up when someone really, really talented sings the heck of the song and brings down the house. Leon the Chameleon doesn’t bring down the house, but it’s earnest and fun and shows a TON of promise. [read the rest of the post…]

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In Praise of Mélanie Watt – Part Two: Scaredy Squirrel

by Tom B.

Scaredy Squirrel

This is Scaredy.

In my last post, I discussed how, thanks to the picture book Chester, my daughter became a big time fan of Mélanie Watt, a seriously talented author-illustrator from Quebec. The hook of Chester is that a the title character, an ego-driven fluffy cat, absconds with a red marker and starts editing the book to favor himself, which kicks off a minor war between Chester and the book’s author, Mélanie Watt. It’s a nice slice of high-concept fun that turned Watt into a minor celebrity in our house and permanently placed the author on my daughter’s book-finding radar. We now know, when we hit the library or a bookstore, if we encounter a Mélanie Watt book, my daughter is going to latch onto it like an alien facehugger.

With that in mind, it was probably inevitable that my daughter would discover Scaredy Squirrel one day, another picture book series by Watt and the literary creation that she’s probably best known for. We actually first encountered Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach, the third Scaredy book, at our local library – “Dad! DAD! Mélanie Watt’s name is on this book, Dad!” – and it got such a big reaction at home that we quickly knew that we’d eventually be reading the entire series.

And I have to say reading Scaredy Squirrel books is a pleasure, particularly for adult readers. Because they’re funny. Really funny and they’re a total blast to read aloud. Every adult – parent, relative, friend – who has sat down with my daughter and read one of her Scaredy Squirrel books has loved the experience and asked for more. In fact, when I first launched this blog, my awesome sister-in-law, Erin, immediately sent me an email – subject line “me want scaredy squirrel!” – asking me when was I going to write about Scaredy Squirrel. (Hey Erin, the answer is “now.”)

There are five Scaredy books so far – Scaredy Squirrel, Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend, Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach, Scaredy Squirrel at Night, and Scaredy Squirrel Has a Birthday Party. We’ve read all of them, except for Scaredy Squirrel at Night, and have seriously enjoyed them all.

Scaredy Squirrel

Scaredy is concerned for your safety.

Scaredy Squirrel as a character is simple yet complex. He’s a squirrel with a laundry list of phobias, anxieties, and unbreakable daily routines. To quote Scaredy’s prologue in the first book (these prologues are the only place where the squirrel speaks in first-person): “I NEVER leave my nut tree. It’s way too dangerous out there. I could encounter germs, poison ivy, or sharks. If danger comes along, I’m prepared. I have antibacterial soap, Band-Aids, and a parachute.” And, in each book, Scaredy is confronted with some normal social situation – leaving home, going to the beach, trying to make friends – and we get to watch while Scaredy goes to absurd lengths to remove all variables or sense of risk from each situation, which, as we all know, is totally impossible. [read the rest of the post…]

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In Praise of Mélanie Watt – Part One: Chester

by Tom B.

We have a lot of affection for Mélanie Watt in our house for several reasons. To start with, she’s the first children’s author-illustrator that my daughter really became a fan of all on her own. Now, on a whole, I think my daughter has not-bad taste when it comes to kids books – with a few notable exceptions – but I also realize that my wife and I do a fair bit of work to make sure that she has relatively higher-class material to choose from. I’ve essentially spent the first five years of her life whispering in her ear, like her own personal Screwtape, directing her towards the books I want her to read and making her feel like she has a choice in the matter.

Melanie Watt

This is Mélanie Watt. But I didn't add the red marker edits. She did it to herself.

“Oh, OK, I guess you’ve got to pick between this Tomie dePaola or this Roald Dahl book… you know, these ones that you picked out. YOU did. All by yourself. No. No, I don’t know what happened to that princess book. No, forget about that, I think someone else took it. No. And it was ripped, so we’re not going to buy it. So, between these two, the two that YOU picked out, which one are we going to get? Great choices, by the way.”

Don’t get me wrong. I give in to her reading preferences A LOT and I try to listen, but I’m not going to stop fighting the good fight when I’ve spent this many years gently manipulating her for the greater good. (I wish that sounded less sinister, but, eh, what are you going to do? Welcome to parenthood.)

But I have to give my daughter credit. She found Mélanie Watt all on her own. On a trip to our local library around two years ago, she emerged from the stacks grasping onto a copy of a picture book called Chester by Mélanie Watt. She plopped it down in front of me and said, “I want this one. It’s funny.” And, with an impassioned plea like that, we just had to take it home.

And my daughter was right. It WAS funny. And she absolutely loved it. Chester has a very funny premise, which Mélanie Watt executes exceedingly well. The gist is that an author and illustrator named, coincidentally enough, Mélanie Watt is trying – operative word: trying – to draw a picture book about a mouse who lives in a house in the country, BUT a big, ego-driven cat named Chester has swiped a red marker and is editing the story to make himself the star. Chester is constantly arguing with Watt via his red marker – they bicker on the jacket flap copy, Chester edits her author bio, the cat even changes her dedication on the copyright page.

(Also, since my day-job is being an editor at a publishing company, the idea of someone wreaking that much havoc with a red pen is just inherently funny to me.)

Chester

This is Chester. Blame him for the red pen.

The set-up is deliciously meta, but not in an inaccessible way. Sometimes when a kids book plays around with the idea of actually being a book, it can either get a little too cutesy with the premise OR it can get obsessed with parent-skewing in-jokes that fly right over your kid’s head. Some of the best examples of a meta kids book done right are The Three Pigs by David Wiesner, We Are in a Book by Mo Willems, and Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I think Chester would make that list too.

Chester eventually ignites a war with his creator, which is an extremely fun sequence to read aloud. When he redraws a page, she fights back with her omniscient author powers and changes the scene or dresses him up in a pink tutu. It turns into this large-scale argument with a fictional character refusing to listen to its creator – which is a really hilarious concept – but, since the creator becomes such a big part of the story, she becomes a character as well. [read the rest of the post…]

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Press Here by Hervé Tullet

by Tom B.

Every time I read a new book to my daughter at bedtime, there’s always this unspoken hope that the book will really connect with my small, trapped-under-her-covers audience and maybe become a recurring favorite. At the most, I’m hoping for a big smile, a “that was good!” affirmation, or perhaps even the highest compliment she can pay – a pre-emptive request to read the book again tomorrow night. But, very, very rarely do I get a really BIG, really explosive reaction to a bedtime book, and, when that actually happens, it is a rare and wondrous thing to behold. And I got that precious over-the-top reaction just the other night when we sat down to read Press Here by Hervé Tullet.

Press Here

If you're using an iPad, go ahead and try pressing this to see if anything happens. It won't, but give it a shot.

It was a monster hit, a sensation. We literally had to read it three times before she’d even let me take it out of her hands.

And it’s a fairly amazing book because it doesn’t wow its audience with a story or with particularly flashy illustrations, but rather it draws readers in with interactivity, with humor, and with that drive that comes with all printed books – the drive to see what happens next, to see what’s happening on the next page.

While discussing Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret a few years ago (which is another astonishing read that you should definitely include in your home library), Roger Sutton, the editor in chief of Horn Book Magazine, wrote this eloquent description of the power of page-turns that has stuck with me ever since.

A page-turn can be a surprise sprung by the reader, a powerful narrative element that physically involves us in the story. It tells us what power is particular to books. As far as I can figure, the printed book is the only medium that requires such a manipulation of gravity and that asks us, repeatedly, to go on.

Hervé Tullet definitely understands the power of the page-turn surprise, and Press Here utilizes page-turns exceedingly well, using every post-turn reveal to transform his picture book into a living, breathing interactive experience. [read the rest of the post…]

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Paul Galdone and James Marshall: Two Great Animated Folk Tales

by Tom B.

Little Red Hen

Hey, have you guys read a version of "The Little Red Hen" that was better than Paul Galdone's?

As I mentioned yesterday, if you’re looking for excellent editions of classic folk tales to share with your kids, you can’t do better than the works of Paul Galdone and James Marshall. Both are prolific author-illustrators who have published multiple retellings of some of the most famous stories in the world, but they’ve always found ways to present those stories in really compelling and clever ways.

Trust me. These books will very clearly show you the difference that a skilled author brings to retelling a “classic” tale, even something as familiar as Little Red Riding Hood or The Billy Goats Gruff. Since most folktales are in the public domain, you can find a lot of really cheap, poorly executed picture books of these stories all over the place. (Your local dollar store is probably full of them.)  Take any of those PD versions and hold them against the works of Galdone and Marshall and the difference will be as glaring as the difference between a potato and an iPod.

As a brief sample of the amazing folktale awesomeness that these authors so consistently deliver, sit back and enjoy these animated presentations of Marshall’s The Three Little Pigs and Galdone’s Little Red Hen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPFPWFjY_kE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr-yQGD9eAA

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Do You Have the Right Kind of Interrupting Chicken?

by Tom B.

As I described earlier, having an interrupting chicken in your child’s library can be a humorous and fulfilling experience. However, you DO have to make sure that you have the right kind.

For example, THIS is the perfect kind of interrupting chicken for your child:

THIS is not. (Be sure to wait until the end, though):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbGoGLOSPSE

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Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein

by Tom B.

In my post about Imogene’s Antlers the other day, I mentioned how rare it is to find a book that can make your kid really laugh out loud. It’s fairly easy to find your kid a book where, upon reflection, they’ll say, “yeah, that’s a funny book.” But finding a book that inspires pure, spontaneous laughter, those titles are few and far between.

That being said, Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein doesn’t just make my daughter laugh, it makes her lose her mind.

Interrupting Chicken

Finally. A book that teaches kids the joys of interrupting their elders...

Honestly. She goes bonkers for this admittedly very, very funny picture book in a way that I’ve never seen her react before. And the funny thing is – Interrupting Chicken should be an ideal bedtime book. It’s about a father chicken trying to put his young daughter down to sleep and read her a final bedtime story, but, as the title suggests, she keeps interrupting him. It’s a book built around the bedtime ritual, so, originally, I thought this would be a perfect new bedtime book for our family.

Interrupting Chicken

So cute when she's not interrupting...

I was WRONG. I find I can’t read Interrupting Chicken to my daughter at bedtime anymore because it has the opposite effect of a good bedtime book – it actually wakes her up. It doesn’t just wake her up. It makes her hyper. She loves it SO much and she’s created such a weird, funny little ritual surrounding the book that, while we read it, she becomes such an active participant that she freaks out a little bit. Which, don’t get me wrong, is HILARIOUS to witness. However, when it’s already past 8:00 pm and it’s a school night, it gets to be a bit much. So, full disclosure, Interrupting Chicken is a book about bedtime that we only read during daylight hours at the moment, but it is still one of our favorite semi-recent additions to our home library.

This is the first David Ezra Stein title that our family has read, and he’s a major talent, both as a writer and as an illustrator. Interrupting Chicken has a fantastic visual style that brings together various different mediums – the main spreads with the chicken and her father are watercolor paintings with a great palette of reds, greens, and browns; there are sepia-toned storybook pages interspersed throughout the story; and we even get the chicken’s own attempt at making her own picture book that’s illustrated in crayons. The sheer design of the book is really impressive.

[read the rest of the post…]

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Imogene’s Antlers by David Small

by Tom B.

There are artists and illustrators that, I will admit, I have completely pushed on my daughter. When picking out books for her, I default to my own personal preferences far too often and the results of this editorial bias on my part are usually mixed at best. Sometimes she connects with my hand-picked selections and embraces them as her own; other times, she rebels against them fully and, as punishment, makes me read her a Disney Princess book. We fall into these roles fairly often, but every now and again, like the best children always do, my daughter throws me a curveball, just to mess with my equilibrium. One of the most pleasant of these unexpected surprises was the way that my daughter, very independently, claimed David Small as one of her very favorite children’s book creators and claimed Small’s Imogene’s Antlers as one of her very favorite picture books.

Imogene's Antlers

Imogene's Antlers, a laugh-out-loud library title

Small is a fantastic illustrator and author, who’s illustrated over 40 picture books (many of which he wrote himself), but he first got on my radar thanks to his searing 2009 memoir, Stitches, which stands as one of the best graphic novels I’ve ever read. I was actually at the 2009 National Book Awards ceremony in New York when Stitches was nominated in the young people’s literature category – it’s wonderful, but definitely not appropriate for most kids younger than high school age – and my main regret from the evening (aside from accidentally knocking a tray of drinks onto an old woman) is letting someone else grab the free copy of Stitches from our table’s centerpiece before I could.

I loved Stitches, but I hadn’t heard of Small before reading it. And, when my wife came home from the library one day, touting that she found a David Small picture book to read to our (at the time) 3-year-old, I was skeptical. And I don’t really have a good reason why. One theory I have is that I’ve seen lots of illustrators who typically create adult-themed material completely fall on their faces when they tried to create a “kids book.” Sometimes their works talk down to their audience, sometimes they’re just showcases for their art (with no semblance of a story), sometimes they’re achingly ironic, sometimes their attempts to reach kids just don’t work. The irony, of course, is that Small had been a successful and award-winning children’s book creator for YEARS before he published Stitches, but my limited exposure to his work gave me COMPLETELY the wrong idea about who Small was. And that’s my fault and yet another prime example of one of the most recurring themes here at Building a Library – I am wrong a lot. A LOT.

So, I didn’t push David Small on my daughter. In fact, I did the opposite. I presented the picture book my wife had found at our local library – titled Imogene’s Antlers – to her with an enormous indifference. I assumed that the book would be over her head or just wouldn’t connect with her and let my wife read it to her first, totally expecting that the book would flop. Once again, just to restate an important point, as a father, I am wrong A LOT.

My daughter went nuts for Imogene’s Antlers. NUTS. We have bookcases full of kids books in our house, but you could probably take all of the books that actually made my daughter laugh out loud, made her cackle like a madwoman while she read them, and those books would take up about a shelf and a half. Imogene’s Antlerswould definitely have a place on that shelf. [read the rest of the post…]

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