Review by New York Times Review
IT'S funny when, as a relatively well-adjusted woman in your 40s, you read two fine novels about intelligent girls who are curious and daring and good-hearted. There is a wrench in your belly - of recognition, or nostalgia. It's appreciation for careful attention paid to a short, mostly underrated phase in the life of women. Suddenly the body armor you've built and polished feels leaden and even cowardly. What seem bold are the characters of Jacqueline Woodson and Pat Murphy, who in their new novels render the knotty friendships of girls with gravity, whimsy, intimacy and melodrama. Both novelists, with their tendency toward straightforward, spare sentences (especially Woodson), create rich worlds with relentless attention to emotional detail. In both books, there are prickly allusions to not fitting inside one's own body. But "After Tupac and D Foster" and "The Wild Girls" aren't novels about first menstrual periods or the cute boy in first period. Instead, the girls in these books encourage one another to write fanciful fiction and tramp through woods, or to take a secret train trip to the big city and back. "It's all quiet now," the unnamed narrator says to her friend Neeka in "After Tupac and D Foster." "You can start working on planning your Big Purpose." These girls have lives. And both books are luscious and dangerous with brand-new moments of self-rule. The girls' rebel fearlessness is without affectation, and tempered by sturdy family ties; they have just begun to realize that the loosening of such cords is even possible. The authors depict the in-between moment - do we still wear matching clothes because we're best friends? do we still play outside? - as the girls' focus on one another, and on their families, becomes sharper and more nuanced with almost every page. The title "After Tupac and D Foster" is more about time frame - the novel takes place between the time the rapper Tupac Shakur was shot and lived in 1994, and then was shot and died in 1996 - than subject matter, which converges around the narrator and her friend Neeka, both girls from solid, if imperfect, families in Queens, and D, their new friend. A lonely, adventurous foster child, D tilts her friends' lives in small but transformative ways. The narrative mostly skips hip-hop's beats and rhymes for the lyrics and loudness of brusque girlhoods, especially the sibling-on-sibling parenting that happens in big families. Youthful parenting, the book murmurs, makes kids grown-ups too soon. At one point, Neeka says to her mother, Irene, "Nobody told you to have all these kids." The narrator is afraid that Neeka will be popped in the mouth by Irene right on the train platform. But Irene cuts to the quick with words. "I guess I should have stopped before I got to you, huh?" Toward the end, D goes away to live with her real mother; the friends don't even learn her real name until she's about to catch the bus. The narrator, though coming to terms with the fact that D's life is not so much romantic as it is complicated, could still agree with something Neeka says early on: "D's cool. She's like from another planet. The Planet of the Free. ... I'm gonna go to that planet one day." "The Wild Girls" winds through a Northern California suburb plush with creeks and culverts. Joan, 12, has just arrived from sedate Connecticut with her parents (quietly selfish father; strong yet depleted mother) and 15-year-old brother, and on a hike into the woods meets a motherless girl named Sarah who calls herself the Queen of the Foxes (her father, created, like so many characters in both novels, with fullness of detail, is a startlingly charming tattooed biker). The girls, responding to each other's lonesomeness, immediately begin catching newts and playing make-believe, and soon graduate to keeping journals and writing stories together that catch the attention of an intense writing instructor at Berkeley. WOODSON, with her tale of three pseudo-tough girls in Queens, cares less about plot than does Murphy, with her longer, more traditionally paced novel about two girls who toughen up by painting their faces with tribalesque "war paint" and learning by the end of the novel that part of growing up is living by one's own axioms, the ones that come from experience: "Sometimes, you gotta believe something crazy," Sarah says, to explain why she obstinately holds on to the idea that her mother, who left the family when she was 2, has turned into an actual fox. "Because all the other things you could believe hurt too much." Joan and Sarah, like the girls of "Tupac," are at the age when ideas like sneaking off alone, especially in the dead of night to stand in a moonlit amphitheater, are an irresistible twitch. There is whooping and squirrel-watching and rock-throwing - on au courant tomboyism that remains free of mocking contemporaries for wearing lip gloss. They are deep in the romance of growing up. Could both these novels, in terms of setting, be more impressionistic and vivid, like those years are? Is there in both a lack of suspense about what will happen? Yes. But in their books Woodson and Murphy have both created moments of humanity that the girls respond to with whole hearts. They wear innocence like polished armor, and it shines. These girls encourage one another to write and tramp through woods, or to take a secret train to the city. Danyel Smith, the editor in chief of Vibe, is the author of "More Like Wrestling" and "Bliss."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Muth follows his Caldecott Honor Book Zen Shorts (2005) with another quiet, contemplative story about Stillwater the giant panda and his three young friends, siblings Michael, Karl, and Addie. This title introduces Stillwater's young nephew, Koo, who arrives for a visit and quickly befriends the neighborhood kids. Together, the group accompanies Stillwater to the home of an elderly neighbor, Miss Whitaker, who has always terrified the children: She hates us! . . . Every time we walk past her house, she shouts! says Michael. Gradually, with Stillwater's kindhearted example, the kids come to enjoy spending time with Miss Whitaker, who, in turn, helps Michael prepare for a spelling bee that he has been dreading. Unlike Zen Shorts, this meandering story doesn't include Zen koans, but the overt messages about compassionate action knit smoothly into Buddhist teachings. Koo, whose name makes a pun ( Hi, Koo! ), speaks in poetry that sometimes feels distracting and forced, but the gorgeous watercolors, full of depth and expression, will draw children back into the gentle tale of intergenerational (and interspecies) friendship.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Stillwater, the giant panda who taught Zen parables to siblings Karl, Addy and Michael in Zen Shorts, continues to combine his slow-moving grace with genuine spiritual tranquility. This time, Michael faces a daunting spelling bee, and Stillwater, first seen wearing a necktie, introduces the three to Miss Whitaker, an elderly neighbor whose crabby outbursts have frightened them. Stillwater's inward eye sees through her anger to her fear and loneliness. She turns out to be a marvelous spelling coach ("Just like plants, words have roots," she tells Michael. "Roots of words can teach you to spell"), and when Michael wins a red ribbon, the pictures show the whole group sharing his victory with their own red ribbons-the "Zen ties" of the title. (Zentai is Japanese for "the whole" or "the entire," as in "all of us together.") A subplot featuring Koo, Stillwater's nephew, drifts a bit; he's a cute little panda who punctuates the action with Zen-influenced haiku (and allows Muth another pun: "Hi, Koo!"). Muth's brush is as sure as ever; Stillwater's big, blunt paws and hunched-over listening posture are irresistible, and Miss Whitaker's delicate face and snow-white hair beautifully counterpoint the vignettes of youthful play. From a religious tradition that makes no theological demands and that will be unfamiliar to most readers, Stillwater offers a model of pure saintliness, and children will instantly respond to him. All ages. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-5-Giant panda Stillwater introduces Addy, Michael, and Karl, first encountered in Zen Shorts (Scholastic, 2005), to his young nephew, Koo. After playing together, he suggests that they make soup for ailing Miss Whitaker. The children initially protest because she shouts at them whenever they pass her house, but they comply. Even when they deliver the soup, tidy her house, and draw her pictures, the old woman doesn't soften substantially. Stillwater, who is insightful enough to recognize harshness as a sign of Miss Whitaker's loneliness and fear, encourages Michael to approach her for help preparing for a spelling bee. It turns out she was a talented English teacher and when he follows her advice, he wins a ribbon. Much more is going on here than Stillwater's quiet message that there is more to people than outward appearances. Koo speaks in loosely structured haiku, and as explained in his author's note, this affords Muth an opportunity to engage in wordplay. Miss Whitaker's change of heart is foreshadowed in a close-up of her examining Karl's painting after she had previously dismissed the children's efforts. All of the characters are "tied" together in the Zen wisdom they have attained and symbolically in the red ties they wear to celebrate Michael's spelling success. From the lovely large watercolor illustrations that include Stillwater and Koo doing Tai Chi on the endpapers, to the lesson presented without sentimentality, this is a rich and wonderful offering.-Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
In this companion to Zen Shorts, giant panda Stillwater, his haiku-spouting nephew Koo, and some neighborhood children help a crabby elderly neighbor, who, in turn, helps one of the kids cram for a spelling bee. Tranquil watercolors cover lots of logistical and emotional ground. The do-goodism is heavy-handed, but repeated readings reveal a complexity to the book. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this companion to Muth's Caldecott Honor-winning Zen Shorts (2006), the wise and gentle Giant Panda Stillwater and his young friends are joined by Stillwater's young nephew Koo. This time, the friends tackle two problems: Michael's nervousness over an impending spelling bee and an irascible elderly neighbor, Miss Whitaker. The plot is predictable: With some friendly attention from Stillwater and the children, Miss Whitaker will turn out to be more vulnerable than nasty and, as a former English teacher, will help Michael overcome his spelling anxiety. The pleasure, as always, is with Muth's irresistible storytelling, both visual and textual. In most of the delicate, finely detailed watercolor paintings the towering figure of Stillwater dominates. In others, the frail figure of Miss Whitaker dressed in red and purple with a magnificent fluff of white hair carries the most visual weight. The story's theme of intergenerational kindness is tender, and the text is infused with bits of haiku, wordplay and small lessons that charmingly avoid didacticism. A welcome return. (author's note) (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
