Penny and her song

"AS my ideas get bigger," my 6-year-old son once told me, "you get smaller." Needless to say, this was a startling assessment for a parent to hear. It also reveals the utter stab in the dark an author makes when writing a children's book, trying to guess backward at just how knowing young readers might be. It seems, in light of my son's mystical warning, all too easy to underestimate your audience. Describing the creative process to children then, as these four new picture books do, seems an even more daunting challenge. Creativity, after all, is one of the things that kids tend to have in boisterous abundance, unlike their weary elders, who struggle to gain access to what they once tapped into freely. But the authors of these books - "The Obstinate Pen," "Penny and Her Song," "Magritte's Marvelous Hat" and "I'll Save You Bobo!" - have wisely finetuned their narratives, counseling children in the art of harnessing creativity and aiming it with purpose. "The Obstinate Pen" by Frank W. Dormer, the author and illustrator of "Socks-quatch," is the most original of the lot. In telling the clever story of a pen with a mind of its own, Dormer bridges the gap between youthful precocity and adult sophistication, and makes a very good point about artistic inspiration along the way. When Uncle Flood unwraps his new pen and tries to put down his first sentence, "The following story is all true," the pen instead forces him to write, "You have a BIG nose." (And indeed the Great Pyramid of Giza does seem to be rising from the middle of poor Uncle Flood's face.) From this point on, the irreverent pen travels from one grown-up to the next - all whimsically drawn in ink and watercolor - impelling each one to write something more honest, and frequently more insulting, than the writer intended. These impish remarks are certain to elicit gleeful belly laughs from young readers throughout. At last, when the opinionated pen meets its match - a child who, unlike the adults before him, both knows and is not afraid of his true creative impulses - it surrenders with grace. Kevin Henkes is the creator of such famous mice as Lilly ("Julius, the Baby of the World," "Lilly's Big Day" and "Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse"); Wemberly ("Wemberly Worried"); and Chrysanthemum (who stars in the book and short film - charmingly narrated by Meryl Streep - of the same name). Henkes, in short, knows mice. In "Penny and Her Song," his latest, a small mouse learns the importance of instinct and timing. Penny has a song to sing, one she wrote herself, but her parents are worried she'll wake her baby siblings. When she is relegated to her bedroom, Penny discovers that there is no pleasure in performing without an audience. Finally, when her parents, well meaning (as so many of the adults in Henkes's fictional world are, always conveying a kind of genial authority), allow Penny to put on her show, the whole family join in, donning costumes and dancing along. These are the book's best illustrations: Henkes's reassuringly familiar mice, with their happy pointy faces, giving it all they've got, sunglasses, feather boas and all. There is no trace of irreverence - just pure innocent fun. IN "Magritte's Marvelous Hat," D. B. Johnson, best known for his series of children's books inspired by the life of Henry David Thoreau, introduces the concept of Surrealism to young readers by telling a fantastical story about the Belgian artist René Magritte. In this book, however, Magritte appears as a dog. (Johnson also transforms Thoreau into a bear.) In a story seemingly fashioned after Albert Lamorisse's classic short film "The Red Balloon," Magritte the dog discovers a magical black bowler much like the one often portrayed in the artist's paintings. Magritte and the hat become fast friends, wandering playfully through the city streets. As long as the hat hovers over his head, it emboldens Magritte as a painter: "His brush danced and the colors sang." The book's greatest appeal, however, is its appropriately wondrous artwork - large mixed-media illustrations with dreamlike details modeled after Magritte's own paintings (an orange obscuring a shopkeeper's face, the ocean reflected from a doorway). On some pages, Johnson has added a clear plastic overlay with just enough illustration to alter the preceding page's picture, along with the narrative, when it is flipped. The resulting trick effects, provoking a sense of mystery from the everyday, pay fitting tribute to the artist brought to life in the book's pages. "I'll Save You Bobo!," written by Eileen Rosenthal and illustrated by her husband, Marc Rosenthal, is the stand-alone sequel to "I Must Have Bobo!" in which the same three characters - Willy, a boy who looks as if he could be a cousin of Ludwig Bemelmans's Madeline, with his big round head and primary-colored outfits; Bobo the stuffed monkey; and Earl the mischievous cat - act out the drama of trying to live peaceably under one roof. In both books, Willy must fend off Earl and his furtive efforts to snatch the monkey. In "I'll Save You Bobo!" Willy wrestles with his emotions, particularly his rage at Earl, by writing books about the three of them getting trapped in a jungle with poisonous mushrooms, menacing tigers and an enormous green snake that in the end eats guess-who for dinner? Yes, Earl. The story sets the world right for Willy - that is, until Earl absconds with Bobo again in real life. My son was right. As children learn and grow, the adults in their lives shrink in proportion, even if only to their rightful size. But there is no such calculation for creativity, a power we're all granted so long as we can find our way to it and, when we're lucky, let it out. Nell Casey is the editor of "The Journals of Spalding Gray" and "Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression." She is a former books columnist for Cookie magazine.

K-Gr 2-In this mild, two-chapter tale for beginning readers, Henkes once again touches on the challenges of being an older sibling. Penny is a young mouse bursting to sing a song to her parents that she has just learned at school. But disappointingly, every time she begins to sing, her parents ask her to stop. "'Your song is beautiful,' said Mama, 'but you will wake up the babies." Singing to herself in the mirror or to her glass animals just isn't the same, so Penny tries again at dinner. "'Not at the table,' said Mama. 'After dinner,' said Papa." Finally, before bed, Penny gets her chance to perform. The whole family joins in and soon discovers that the youngster's song has helped lull the babies to sleep. The narrative here is light on drama and character growth. Penny is neither as charismatic nor immediately lovable as some of Henkes's other, well-known protagonists. However, families seeking easy vocabulary and an old-fashioned story with positive, sass-free family interactions will appreciate this gentle read. Pastel-hued watercolor and ink illustrations of Penny and her smiling mouse family (done in classic Henkes style) brighten each otherwise clean, white page. Fans of the author who have graduated to independent-reader status will be glad to see his familiar hand at work on the easy-reader shelves.-Jayne Damron, Farmington Community Library, MI (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.