Children's book reviews, all age comic books, Kidlit, mglit, movies, entertainment and parenting
I know there’s a golf ball on the moon. I also know that there’s an American flag on the moon. What The Museum on the Moon taught me, among other things, is that the flag was mounted on a metal frame to make it appear that the wind was blowing on the moon, thus providing the illusion that it was flying. The book’s subtitle, The Curious Objects on the Lunar Surface, lets you in on the fact that these tidbits exist, and it does so in the most surprising of ways, via poetry.
Somewhere between the negative space and the darkness lie Orion and the Dark. In other observations, it’s interesting how the publishing world, entertainment, and intellectual property operate. Orion and the Dark was released in 2014, but it’s gained newfound attention thanks to it becoming a show on Netflix. It’s a very cute illustrated book about a young child who has a fear of the dark. It’s a common fear that children have, as well as, some very creative artwork (and layout), allows the book to run with more energy than many of its contemporaries.
There’s a new type of reluctant reader that I put my finger on, and I’m one of them- the dramatic reluctant reader. In the venn diagram of readers, this person crosses over into the realistic fiction persona with ease, but our new moniker avoids books that are overly dramatic. The Things We Miss is mglit that were it not for the inclusion of a tree house that’s developed a time porthole would’ve easily fallen into that category. The odds on it being read by even someone who loves to read, but doesn’t like drama would’ve shrunk at a more precipitous rate than the box office for recent Marvel films. However, include a time porthole, put it in a tree house and include all the middle school angst you can handle and you’ve got a winner.
The sublime simplicity of Can You Catch Me? Tutu and the Vehicles is disarming, immediate and resistance is futile. Tutu is a cute cat with disproportionally big eyes and is dressed like a ninja. The first page starts with a taunt of someone telling Tutu that they can’t catch them, as a black tail wisps away. Then we see Tutu jump on all manner of vehicles as they venture through a setting and onto or into a moving object in gentle pursuit of the black thing. Can You Catch Me? has the timeless graphics that today’s crawlers will find just as interesting as those ages will in 50 years.
Having taught a couple of classes to middle school grades about World War I, I know that the subject can be confusing. The time spent on WWI for most middle school classes is very brief, with more time allowed for the Treaty of Versailles, especially for those lower grades. Those ages know about the mythos of the flying ace, even if they get hazy on who were the Allied Forces and what were the causes that led to it. Above the Trenches is a graphic novel in the Nathan Tale’s Hazardous Tales series. This entry is specifically about the flying aces that took to the skies in WWI and how they came to shape this new form of combat. Ironically, the most famous WWI pilot, the Red Baron doesn’t factor into Above the Trenches that much. Instead, the graphic novel is about the Allied Powers and their build-up of the foreign legion and the men who jumped into this relatively new mode of transportation.
The premise, as well as the hook in The Sinister Secrets of Singe, is very difficult to resist. There is a house that continues to grow, it literally gets larger and larger every night. There’s an 11-year-old kid, Noah, who lives there with his mother and their robot, who is size-wise the same age and stature as him. Noah’s job is to build things for the nearby city of Liberty, which he’s not allowed to visit. His mother keeps him under lock and key, under the watchful eye of Elijah, the robot. There’s so much to potentially love about The Sinister Secrets of Singe that it makes the fact that it didn’t pull it all together all the more frustrating.
Elementary school-aged kids know Mo. Mo Willems’ picture books have a way of gleefully speaking to those young students. His style is immediate and can make them smile as they relax, make them think just a little bit, or it can do both. Are you Big? is Mo Willems at his thinking and relaxing best. At its smartest it’s a book about relative proportionality and thinking about the bigger picture that might contain variables that are outside of your influence. As its happiest and simplest, it’s a silly book with anthropomorphic weather systems, land masses and planets cavorting about a picture book that will do what books like this should do, make em smile.
An entertaining first book does not automatically ensure a series. Quest Kids and the Dragon Pants of Gold was a great book that sure looked like it had legs. Quest Kids and the Dark Prophecy of Doug is mglit that runs with fun. It’s a book that lives somewhere between the graphic novel and chapter book world that incorporates the illustrated manic fun of the former while building upon the text-based latter that kids need to know.
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