Review by New York Times Review
DESPITE THE EFFORTS of story-time subversives as varied as Jo March, Tom Sawyer, the Mad Hatter, Madeline, Eloise, Ramona Quimby, the Cat in the Hat, Willy Wonka and the Stinky Cheese Man, namby-pambyism has for generations been a scourge of children's literature. The impulse to force-feed kids the bookish equivalent of steamed spinach is unlikely ever to fade, though our notions about what that should be continue to evolve. But in recent years an opposing virus has also infected the nursery library. You might call it peepee-poo-ism: the anxious, overeager impulse to engage children on what we adults think of as their own terms, lest they believe us uncool - or worse, and more to the point, old. I don't mean to imply that I myself am not always up for a well-turned scatological joke, but I am happy to be reviewing four new picture books that are surprising and subversive in all the best ways, and none of the dumb or easy ones. Is it possible that children's publishing has produced a quartet of classics in a single springtime? Future generations will be the judges of that, but all four books shine with sly spirit, high wit and subtle, non-showy intelligence, and all are crafty enough, as in any good playground design, to leave some wide-open spaces so that readers and listeners can fill in a few blanks for themselves, finding their own rhythms and making their own fun. The parents of the title family in "Meet the Dullards" are true to their surname - wan and dispassionate to an almost perverse degree, except that "perverse" implies some degree of liveliness. The Dullards do have one passion: protecting their three children, Blanda, Borely and Little Dud, from any stimulation whatsoever. The book's author, Sara Pennypacker, tosses them "quite a nasty surprise" on the very first page - the kids are looking at books! Mr. and Mrs. Dullard put a quick stop to that, giving their offspring "some nice blank paper to read instead," then retreat "to discuss the problem in private." Is the neighborhood to blame? "Last fall, remember, some leaves turned color," Mr. Dullard notes. "And now this," he adds, pointing out the window to "an upsetting commotion," which turns out to be a snail crossing the driveway. But moving to a second house is no help, what with scary new dangers such as neighbors who speak in exclamation points and - lurking in one room like the boogeyman in a more conventional spook-house tale - bright yellow wallpaper. With flowers ! "Meet the Dullards" made me laugh out loud, even when reading otherwise silently to myself. Reading it to a 5-year-old might provoke the giggle equivalent of a feedback loop; clearly there is much in this satire of helicopter parenting to which both sides of that divide can relate. I appreciated that Pennypacker resolves her story without forcing Mr. and Mrs. Dullard to embrace spontaneity and imagination and color and all the other things that movies and books always insist make life worth living. (Those things do make life worth living, but it's tiresome to keep hearing about it.) Pennypacker grants the Dullard parents their dignity and integrity, and melancholy too, as does the illustrator, Daniel Salmieri (of "Dragons Love Tacos" fame), who renders the grays in the family wardrobe with richness, texture and maybe even love. The title hero of Jon Agee's "It's Only Stanley" may or may not be a beagle, but he is clearly related to Snoopy, literature's most famous beagle, in spirit if not breed. His story takes place during the course of a single night, as his noisy, increasingly ambitious pursuits keep reawakening his owners, the Wimbledon family, sending groggy dad Walter off in his pajamas to investigate. "It's only Stanley," goes the refrain as Walter reports back to wife and kids. "He's howling at the moon." Or: "It's only Stanley. He fixed the oil tank." Or: " It's only Stanley. He's making catfish stew." The dog's nocturnal banging and clanking seems random, but Agee orchestrates it all toward a glorious, surprising and very funny climax, one in which he wisely decides not to use his words, as they might say in preschool, and lets his pictures take over. Stories with punch lines can grow old; this one, clever and open-ended, will bear repetition, and probably command it. "The Skunk" has an obvious antecedent in Dr. Seuss' "What Was I Scared Of?," the chapter in "The Sneetches and Other Stories" in which a nameless narrator is pursued by an empty pair of possibly malevolent pale green pants. Here, a nameless narrator is trailed by a skunk, even while taking a cab, attending the opera, going to a carnival and visiting a graveyard. Why? The silent skunk isn't saying. As you may remember, Dr. Seuss' tale ends with an implicit moral about reflexive prejudice, the narrator realizing the empty pair of pale green pants are just as scared of him as he is of them; friendship ensues. Mac Barnett's story ends on a more ambivalent note, but a very amusing and psychologically astute one - and who better to appreciate the mutability of obsession than kids? The great Patrick McDonnell's drawings are, as always, perfect down to the last scratchy line, and "The Skunk's" endpapers, whether the work of McDonnell or the book's designer, encapsulate the story with brilliant economy. I'd like to think they'll inspire at least one child to become a graphic designer. The mission in "Special Delivery" is simple: Sadie, the young heroine, wants to mail an elephant to her Great-Aunt Josephine, "who lives almost completely alone and could really use the company." Well, O.K., the mission isn't that simple, especially after a post office clerk explains that it would take a wheelbarrow's worth of stamps to mail an elephant - and how do you stick stamps on an elephant anyway? Not one to give up easily, intrepid Sadie soon finds herself flying a biplane with the elephant in the back seat; befriending an alligator; and enjoying a crime spree with a gang of monkey bandits, which is ended only by ice cream sandwiches. Keeping this kind of whimsy aloft can be tricky, like kite-flying in a variable breeze, and Philip C. Stead's deadpan text, in combination with Matthew Cordell's fanciful but grounded drawings, is a master class in how to make that work: letting out enough string so that the silliness can soar but at the same time keeping the line taut so the whole thing doesn't fly away or plunge back to earth. Happily, Sadie and elephant make it to Great-Aunt Josephine's in one piece, and in a nice little twist, we discover that Sadie has been even busier than we realized. Imagine Madeline escaped from Miss Clavel's supervision, or Eloise out from under Nanny's eye, and set loose in Wonderland in boring old Alice's place. More, please. BRUCE HANDY is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 10, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
Parents used to hearing This is so boring! might want to show this worst-case scenario to their kids. Mr. and Mrs. Dullard are trying to raise their three children Blanda, Borely, and Little Dud in their own image: dull as rocks. Horrified upon finding the kids reading books (instead of nice blank paper), the family uproots from its lawless neighborhood. (They're still recovering from when the leaves changed color.) Their new house, though, has problems: a neighbor who uses exclamation points in front of the kids, and a room brace yourself painted bright yellow. So the family hurries off to buy some beige-gray paint and, you guessed it, watch it dry. The real story, however, plays in the edges: the three kids taking every opportunity to scurry away from their stultifying parents and cavort, climb, and cackle. Pennypacker packs the pages full of winning jokes (Five vanilla cones, please. Hold the cones. And extract the vanilla), while Salmieri's colored-pencil art creates a perfectly monotonous world of straight angles and nondescript coloring. Rarely has boring been this boisterous. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Both Pennypacker (the Clementine books) and Salmieri (Dragons Love Tacos, 2012) are best-sellers. Dull as it is, this ought to sell well, too.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Are the Dullards worthy successors to Allard and Marshall's Stupids? Not quite. The Stupids are all exuberantly stupid, whereas only the Dullard parents are dull (and rather resolutely so); their children are another matter. As the story opens, siblings Blanda, Borely and Little Dud have been inspired by books to develop fascinating talents (juggler, animal whisperer, and funambulist, respectively), which eventually culminates in their joining the circus. In the meantime, it's a battle of wills as Mr. and Mrs. Dullard try to keep the horrors of an interesting life at bay, such as floral wallpaper or a neighbor's applesauce cake ("Smooth or chunky applesauce?" Mr. Dullard inquires. "Chunks are so unpredictable. So nerve-racking"). Pennypacker (the Clementine series) and Salmieri (Secret Pizza Party) are clearly mining a satiric vein-the Dullards are essentially helicopter parents on overdrive-but even when the visual jokes are working (as when the family is mesmerized by watching beige-grey paint dry) the book doesn't quite achieve the high silliness of its premise. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. Illustrator's agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-In this tongue-in-cheek tale, Mr. and Mrs. Dullard take great pride in being humdrum. Family activities include watching paint dry and savoring vanilla ice cream ("Hold the cones. And extract the vanilla"). The Dullards are horrified at exclamation marks, flowered wallpaper, and sociable neighbors bearing gifts of applesauce cake. They try their best to shelter their children from such colorful influences. Away from their parents' watchful gaze, however, Salmieri's colored-pencil illustrations humorously show Blanda, Borely, and Little Dud breaking out of their mild molds by juggling paintbrushes, climbing on clotheslines, and befriending puppies. There are also plenty of sight gags to chuckle at, from the children gathered around an unplugged, blank television screen to piles of plain cardboard boxes full of "gray shirts." VERDICT This title follows in the quirky tradition of Harry Allard's "The Stupids" books (Houghton), with clever wordplay and subversive fun that will appeal to children everywhere.-Linda Ludke, London Public Library, Ontario, Canada (c) Copyright 2015. 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
The tradition of Bottner's The Scaredy Cats (rev. 3/03) and Allard's Stupids books (The Stupids Die, rev. 8/81) lives on with the Dullards, a family of five engulfed in ennui. The Dullard parents are horrified when they catch their children Blanda, Borely, and Little Dud reading books, asking to go to school, and even trying to play outdoors. Though the parents try to nip this revolt in the bud by moving to an even more boring house, they are challenged when a welcoming neighbor brings over a cake made with chunky applesauce ("so unpredictable") and speaks enthusiastically ("'Please don't use exclamation marks in front of our children,' said Mrs. Dullard"). And so it goes until, while watching paint dry (a mix of beige and gray labeled "Custom Dull"), the children finally escape out a window and make their own fun. Close readers will no doubt notice that the books the children were reading in the first pages of the story inspire both their imaginative play and the final circus scene. Pennypacker's droll, deadpan text is matched by Salmieri's flat and hilarious illustrations; the characters, with their elongated limbs and prominent eyes, might remind readers of Gru in the movie Despicable Me. The big, wide world is painted in bright reds and blues, while the Dullard parents stick to their predictable oatmeal-colored world, "secure in the knowledge that their children were perfect bores." Not. robin smith (c) Copyright 2015. 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
All children wonder, at times, if parents make decisions solely to suppress fun; in this story, there is no doubt. Blanda, Borely and Little Dudtheir gray clothing and straight brown hair resembling their parents'lead an intentionally diversion-free existence. Books are confiscated and replaced with blank paper, television may be watched only when unplugged, and school attendance is denied. When a snail crosses the road, the family moves, because "[i]t's like a circus around here." Observant viewers will intuit from the siblings' contraband reading material and paint-store antics that becoming a juggler, tightrope walker and lion tamer are actually in line with their desires. They will chuckle at the dull adults' absurdity and revel in the children's rebellion. Salmieri's watercolor, gouache and colored-pencil scenes provide just enough texture and color (seen in the outside world) to maintain interest. Small, changing expressions among these oval-eyed, spindly-legged caricatures and amusing details on the cover and title page reward close looking. The difference, however, between this crew and their cousins, the Stupids and Dumb Bunnies, is that those families are ignorant togetherblissfully, lovingly. Here, although there is humor in the home, there is no joy; the children struggle to entertain themselves under extreme demands for conformity. When the siblings sneak out to join the circus, readers may hope that they never return. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
