Review by New York Times Review
With the gift of a notebook, Calpurnia discovers she's "a regular naturalist in the making." It's high summer in Texas, 1899, but that doesn't deter Callie, 11, from taking notes on everything from yellow grasshoppers to a dog's eyebrows. Each chapter of this winning if overlong novel opens with a quotation from "On the Origin of Species" - a forbidden book that her own grandfather turns out to have hidden away. Together they study Darwin's masterpiece, leading to a revolution in Callie's ideas of what she might accomplish on her own. HOW TO GET MARRIED - BY ME, THE BRIDE By Sally Lloyd-Jones. Illustrated by Sue Heap. Schwartz & Wade. $16.99. (Ages 4 to 8) The in-charge voice here will be recognizable to fans of "How to Be a Baby - by Me, the Big Sister." The sage advice is wittily illustrated ("You can marry someone who is just like you, or someone who isn't" goes with a picture of Baby Brother admiring himself in the mirror) and full of ideas for playing wedding make-believe, involving cake, presents and pets. THE ETERNAL SMILE Three Stories. By Gene Luen Yang. Illustrated by Derek Kirk Kim. First Second. $16.95. (Ages 14 and up) Yang's new stories work the borders between reality and imagination in comic book style. In one, a boy is either a warrior or having nightmares in a hospital bed; in the next, an "eternal smile" descends from the sky to confound a miserly frog; in the final story, e-mail messages from a Nigerian prince seeking bank account information lead in an unexpected direction, in sudden full-color panels, for a lonely young woman. Funny and darkly surreal. SERGIO SAVES THE GAME! Written and illustrated by Edel Rodriguez. Little, Brown. $15.99. (Ages 3 to 6) A sequel to "Sergio Makes a Splash!," about a penguin who is afraid to swim, this new story has an equally universal message. Sergio (cuddly-looking in Rodriguez's pleasing woodblock pictures) is a soccer star in his dreams, while in real life he's "always the last one chosen" for a team. His parents are encouraging; "It's not you, it's all this ice!" his mother says when he falls. But finally the upbeat message is that only practice stands between Sergio and perfection, or as close to perfection as a slightly accident-prone penguin can get. MOTHER POEMS Written and illustrated by Hope Anita Smith. Holt. $16.95. (Ages 8 to 13) Illustrations in torn-paper collage of a small girl, then a grown teenager, accompany the affecting poems in Smith's latest collection. Scenes of intimacy with a mother, fixing hair or soothing sadness - she "lifts me out of/ sorrow /and rocks me in her arms" - give way to stark grief when the mother suddenly dies. Smith makes simple drama out of the void she leaves ("I took a picture of her/ and slapped the word 'WANTED' . . . across it") and of the daughter's acceptance of life with others she learns to love, while not forgetting. GENTLEMEN By Michael Northrop. Scholastic. $16.99. (Ages 15 and up) Micheal (his parents couldn't spell) is a high school sophomore who finds his crowd among the "hard cases." When one of the friends disappears, suspicion points to the English teacher, who has assigned "Crime and Punishment" and gets the boys to dump something heavy and wrapped in a blanket in his MG. As the mystery grows, the boys are pulled down into vicious violence themselves, and Micheal has to choose sides. Northrop's first novel is creepy, yet it has what can pass for a happy or at least satisfying - ending. JULIE JUST
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This dream-team matchup of Yang (American Born Chinese, 2006) and Kim (Same Difference and Other Stories, 2004) brings together three strikingly different graphic short stories. Which is accurate to a point, because in reality (or fantasy, depending on how you want to look at it) there are six stories, as each tale wends its way into a world-shifting denouement that reveals a mirror narrative. In the first, a comic-fantasy adventure, a plucky young knight vanquishes monsters to win the princess's love. In the second, a wacky cartoon spoof on Uncle Scrooge, a tycoon frog's latest wealth-grabbing scheme leads him to create an entire religion around a mysterious smile in the sky. In the last, a lonely peon trapped in a humdrum working world falls prey to e-mail fraud. Revealing what each of the stories is really about would kill the fun, but suffice it to say that what unites them all is escapism, and not as a negative connotation. You can escape into creativity, flee the limiting confines foisted on you by others, or dream of a sunnier world to inhabit. Visually, each story is a world unto itself, drastically different from the others but defined by a well-polished sensibility that works wonders in concert with the multi-layered themes being explored. Absolutely not to be missed by anyone who welcomes the leaps available solely to graphic storytelling.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This collaboration between multiple-award winners Yang (American Born Chinese) and Kim (Same Difference and Other Stories) is an eagerly awaited event that actually pays off. Yang writes and Kim illustrates in a medley of different styles united by meticulous detail, almost throwaway beauty and riveting storytelling. All three stories deal with levels of fantasy and how humans use it to escape or transcend everyday tedium and suffering. In "Duncan's Kingdom," a fairy tale about a brave youth, beautiful princess and dastardly frog king is played out; the fantasy is so note perfect that the truth of the situation comes as a shock. In "The Eternal Smile," Gran'pa Greenbax is an avaricious frog whose moneymaking schemes are first boosted then dashed by the appearance of a mysterious, peaceful smile in the sky. Riffing off classic Disney comic books and evangelical cliches, it's a sharp satire far more complex than it first appears. In "Urgent Request," Janet, a schlumpy drone at a tech company, answer a Nigerian scam e-mail to liven up her drab life. However, her motives are not as they originally appear. Shattering the borders between our real and fantasy lives, these bold, masterfully crafted fables have real staying power. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The Truman Show meets Bill Willingham's "Fables" series. Two top-notch graphic artists tell three very different stories. In the first, a young and valiant knight slays a giant and discovers that the real battle is still ahead. In the second, the froggy star of a popular children's show makes a grand escape. And in the third, a meek office worker imagines life as a Nigerian queen when she answers an email spam by offering her life savings to the sender. Why It Is for Us: Who is the Great Oz behind the curtain? In each of these deftly illustrated stories, reality is not what it first appears to be. The front cover of this graphic collection features a sunshine-y smile, a promise that light will be shed on the human condition in a warm and satisfying way. -Angelina Benedetti, King Cty. Lib. Syst., WA (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 School Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Gr 9 Up-Yang and Kim are expert storytellers and work well together here to present three tales with fablelike takeaways. "Duncan" seems to be a hero story set in a lush medieval Europe, with the titular character embarking on an iconic quest to win the hand of the fair lady-except for odd visual details that crop up, such as the frumpy and definitely modern woman holding her bespectacled head in her hands and the apparently magic Snappy Cola bottle. The turn from fantasy to Duncan's reality is made smoothly and doesn't ask readers to appreciate its cleverness so much as to recognize how fantasy can, indeed, aid real healing. The volume's title story starts off as a riff on capitalism and religious gullibility involving talking frogs and then makes a hairpin turn with the revelation that a broadcast tycoon has blended America's tastes for Saturday morning cartoons and reality shows. In "Urgent Request," a contemporary cubicle inhabitant allows herself to fall for the fraudulent Nigerian royalty email plea for cash, but thereby gains the strength she needs to confront her abusive boss. Artwork in each of the stories is stylistically different and wholly appropriate to the theme of the specific tale. Smart teens will enjoy this thoroughly and will push it into friends'-and hopefully even adults'-hands for discussions around topics ranging from political insights to how narrative creates personal identity.-Francisca Goldsmith, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia (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
(High School) In three graphic novellas, Yang and Kim explore the power of dreams and, more to the point, the power of waking up. The lowly monk Duncan, in "Duncan's Kingdom," is determined to win the hand of the princess by beheading the dreadful frog king and storming his pagoda fortress -- wait, what? Why is the king hiding a bottle of...Snappy Cola? In the title story, Gran'pa Greenbax (another frog) uses the appearance of a giant smile in the sky to reinvent himself as a flock-fleecing preacher. But then the smile turns into an opening, and Gran'pa is plucked through the "sky" by a human hand and revealed to be a frog installed with a microchip, living in the Truman Show-like world of a children's television show. Oppressed Janet Oh, in "Urgent Request," finds respite from her dead-end job by answering the e-mail of a Nigerian prince who has $350,000,000 that "must be immediately transferred to the United States for safekeeping." Janet loses all her money -- but takes back her life. Kim gives each tale a different mood: Classics Illustrated noir for "Duncan's Kingdom"; "Song of the South" for "Eternal Kingdom"; and "Urgent Request" drawn in small screen-shaped panels that televise the banal reality and Technicolor dreams of Janet's existence. It's an optimistic volume, with big questions growing out of superbly inventive storytelling. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A rousing and thought-provoking exploration of fantasy versus reality from the much-lauded comics veterans Yang and Kim. Three tales evince very different realities and viewpoints, though all are tied together by this common thread. Duncan, the hero of the first, is desperately seeking the approval of the Princess, though something in his kingdom doesn't seem quite right. In the next, an anthropomorphized, avaricious amphibian named Gran'pa Greenbax seeks to be the richest frog in the land, only to discover that his domain isn't quite what he thought it was. In the last, a painfully shy office worker distorts her own perceptionand judgmentto create a reality more pleasing. Readers looking for another American Born Chinese (by Yang, 2006) may be pleasantly surprised: While a very different format both visually and thematically, this book offers similarly plotted ingenious twists. Begging for multiple readings, this exceptionally clever examination of fantasy and perception is one to be pored over and ruminated upon. (Graphic fiction. YA) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
