Your pal Mo Willems presents Sam, the most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world

Mo Willems

Book - 2017

When two fearful children are terrified of each other, their respective monsters try to help.

Saved in:

Bookmobile Children's Show me where

jE/Willems
1 / 1 copies available

Children's Room Show me where

jE/Willems
3 / 5 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
Bookmobile Children's jE/Willems Checked In
Children's Room jE/Willems Checked In
Children's Room jE/Willems Checked In
Children's Room jE/Willems Checked In
Children's Room jE/Willems Due Apr 6, 2024
Children's Room jE/Willems Due Apr 2, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Picture books
Published
New York : Hyperion Books for Children 2017.
Language
English
Main Author
Mo Willems (author)
Edition
First edition
Item Description
At head of title: Your pal Mo Willems presents.
Physical Description
1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 33 cm
ISBN
9781368002141
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

most picture books could just as well be shelved under self-help. If so many books for children tend toward the didactic (well, maybe not the ones about beasts consuming tacos), that may be because you're never too young to have problems. But if you're lucky, you'll have an adult who reads to you, an adult who knows that answers to all manner of problems can be found in books. The young protagonist of Shinsuke Yoshitake's "Still Stuck" isn't named and is indeed barely seen, his (though it could just as well be her) little face obscured by the T-shirt in which he finds himself trapped while undressing for a bath. It's a reiatable predicament, and his response is instructive: He learns to cope. Life won't be so bad inside his cotton confines; he can drink from a straw, and learn how to keep the cat from tickling his tummy. The story's moral is elusive - keep a stiff upper lip, look on the bright side or just hope mom will arrive, deus ex machina, to help you. Yoshitake's illustrations are so charming they obviate the need for an obvious lesson - my kids laughed throughout, though never harder than at the poor hero's bare bottom as mom bathes him. Each child is unique, but all children think butts are hilarious. As problems go, getting stuck in a shirt isn't so terrible. But childhood (adulthood, too, but don't tell the kids that) does involve a reckoning with fear. Dan Santat, whose "The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend" won a Caldecott Medal, makes fear the subject of "After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again)." So does the stupefyingly prolific Mo Willems, in "Sam, the Most ScaredyCat Kid in the Whole World," a sequel to his "Leonardo, the Terrible Monster." Willems plays it for laughs and does it well; any child familiar with the author-illustrator's oeuvre - and few, it seems, haven't yet met his Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny, Gerald the elephant and his pal, a pig named Piggie - would expect no less. Sam, the titular character, is afraid of everything (spiders, a jack in the box, the daily paper) though not his friend Leonardo, who as a bona fide monster might be expected to instill fear. Boy and monster meet girl and monster - Kerry and her pal Frankenthaler. The monsters leave it up to the kids to stop screaming and figure out how not to be afraid of one another. They find a way. You'll forgive me for reading into it something deeper: Sam, a boy with pinkish skin, Kerry, a bespectacled brown girl, not just making peace but joining forces.I'm with Sam in that I fear most of these days' news cycles; what a pleasure to be reminded that people working together can vanquish fear. Willems works in a cartoony vernacular, while Santat's aesthetic is darker, near realist, so his Humpty Dumpty is an uncanny fellow, clearly an egg but one decked out in jeans and a skinny tie. The book's illustrations are suffused with fear - scary, in fact. Humpty is quite alone on most of the pages; the urban landscape in which he dwells is one of shadows, plus that looming wall from which he famously tumbles. As the subtitle promises, the story begins postfall, Humpty so afraid now of heights he can't sleep in his loft bed. I was so genuinely surprised by the book's conclusion that I won't spoil it. It's always gratifying to see how an artist can turn even the most familiar tale into something new. The heroines of Barbara McClintock's "The Five Forms" and Liz Garton Scanlon's "Another Way to Climb a Tree" are both adventurers, but even daring souls have their troubles. Scanlon's Lulu - drawn by Hadley Hooper in a beautiful throwback style - has never met a tree she didn't want to climb. So what to do when confined to her room on a sick day? McClintock's unnamed protagonist is similarly game for anything, certain she can master the forms of traditional Chinese martial arts. She ends up in over her head, her body's contortions conjuring an actual crane, leopard, snake and dragon who wreak havoc in her house. "Another Way to Climb a Tree" contains the ineffable thing that makes the picture book so special a form. Over repeat visits, the reader - of any age - will find and savor new details in Hooper's pictures. And the way that Lulu solves her problem and climbs a tree, illness or not, is quite magical. If story is less of interest in "The Five Forms," it hardly matters; There is something irresistible about McClintock's painterly illustrations, which are a departure from the beautiful realist style of her previous books (like last year's "Emma and Julia Love Ballet," an all-time favorite in my family). The new story has a comic strip's construction, and a young reader will naturally find joy in the utter destruction the forms of the title release, as well as in how sensibly the story's heroine deals with that mess. One problem all kids, and people who are no longer kids, can understand is the vicissitude of mood - the way human happiness is fleeting, sadness inevitable. It takes a special writer to grapple with this and still come up with an interesting book, and Lemony Snicket is a special writer. He writes with clarity as well as complexity, and can bounce from silly to serious quickly and easily. Snicket's wit is never at the expense of adult or child, and somehow accessible to both. Yes, Snicket has his shtick: ponderous character names, an air of the old-fashioned, unlikely plot twists. But these are deployed to winning effect in "The Bad Mood and the Stick," which is about a bad mood that is stuck to a girl named Curly, who picks up a stick that falls from a tree. The illustrator, Matthew Forsythe, isn't reinventing the wheel by depicting the bad mood as a cloud, but of course, that particular wheel is perfect as it is; it's remarkable, really, how with only a squiggly outline and a wash of color the artist creates so vivid an antihero. Self-help books (all sorts of books, come to think of it) can almost all be distilled down to one takeaway, a few words of wisdom. To explain the inexplicable (the fickleness of mood) Snicket tells us "You never know what is going to happen." This turn of phrase transcends being a simple moral - the closing coda of his odd story - to become something more like a mantra. Some of us are struggling with getting dressed, some yearning to climb a tree, some stuck with a bad mood, and the truest thing for all of us is that no matter what, we can't know what's coming. We've all got prob- are. If adults lems, no matter how old we can't step in and solve all of a child's troubles, we can at least give them that particular reassurance. You never know what's going to happen; life's joy is in seeing what comes next. RUMAAN alam is the author of "Rich and Pretty." His second novel, "That Kind of Mother," will be published next year.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 12, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review

Willems' stable of elephants and pigs cede the stage to a slightly more nuanced take on the changeable nature of friendships. Meet Sam, a bespectacled, overalls-clad kid who chatters his teeth at the slightest provocation: raindrops, spiders, ominous news headlines, you name it. He's not scared of Leo, though, a horned, Sendak-style monster. They encounter Frankenthaler, a purple, brace-faced beast, and Kerry, who, tiny text informs us, is the second-most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world. Weirdly, the human kids are scared of each other. The monsters, having better things to do, take off, telling the kids, Figure it out. That they do, cavorting across single-color, starkly framed Elephant and Piggie-style pages, quickly becoming friends who share many wonderful fears, as well as a few unique to only one of them. It's a peculiar book, overtly about the shifting alignments of friendships, but also, more subtly, about fears of the other. The characters are a little less cute than most of Willems', though intriguingly so. An oddball offering, for sure Willems in a minor key. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: It's Willems' world; we just live in it. Expect the usual outrageous demand.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Twelve years after Leonardo, the Terrible Monster, Willems brings back Leonardo the monster and Sam, the boy who's afraid of everything (except Leo). Sam grabs the spotlight in this sequel, but he has competition: after running into a girl named Kerry and her monster pal, Frankenthaler, both of the young humans start screaming, terrified of each other. Annoyed, the monsters ditch the kids. "Figure it out," says Leonardo, strolling off the page with Frankenthaler. And they do: Kerry and Sam's timidity gives way to appreciating their differences and similarities-including a mischievous streak. Visually and narratively, this story is a lovely bookend to Leonardo; Willems makes use of the same sketchy cartooning, drab palette, distinctive fonts, and expanses of open space as he demonstrates that starting a new friendship-scary as it might seem-is worth it. Ages 3-5. Agent: Marcia Wernick, Wernick & Pratt. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 1-Sam is scared of everything! Everything besides his wonderful friend Leonardo the Terrible Monster, that is. One day Sam makes a particularly terrifying discovery-Kerry and her monster friend Frankenthaler. Kerry just so happens to be the second most scaredy-cat kid in the world (after Sam, of course). Left alone together, Kerry and Sam are forced to face their fears and each other. Together they discover that they have more in common than they think. In addition to being scaredy-cats, they both hate romantic movies and love ice cream. They also learn a lot from their differences-Sam likes to play the flute, while Kerry prefers to rock out on her electric guitar. The pair soon realizes that perhaps other children aren't so scary after all. In the end, much to their monsters' surprise, the two scaredy-cats are replaced with two new friends. In this follow-up to Leonardo, The Terrible Monster, Willems has done it again. He makes the most of the oversize pages, which are sometimes filled with big, bold, text, and sometimes left nearly empty with tiny text or pictures for emphasis. The combination of capital letters and expressive illustrations is classic Willems, and will have young and the old laughing the whole way through. VERDICT Highly recommended for all library and at home collections. A perfect storytime read-aloud.-Elizabeth Blake, Brooklyn Public Library © Copyright 2017. 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

As fans of Leonardo, the Terrible Monster (rev. 9/05) will remember, monster Leonardos buddy Sam is the most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world. In this sequel, Sam and Leonardo meet another monster named Frankenthaler and his own BFF, a girl named Kerry who is the second-most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world. Leonardo and Frankenthaler are already pals, but the children are too scared of each other to even think about becoming friends (Im not scared of that monsterIm scared of that kid!). The monsters exercise some tough love by splitting the scene, leaving the youngsters to figure out their similarities and work out their differences. A selection of both--they agree about roller coasters and kissing movies but disagree on tuna salad, for example--are humorously shown in two consecutive, mostly wordless spreads including tidy four-panel art. One thing the children do have in common is a mischievous streak, and they turn the tables on their cool-as-cucumber monster buddies. Willemss comic timing is spot-on in both the text--a mix of conversational narration, speech-bubble dialogue, well-delineated sound effects, and the odd footnote--and the color-coded illustrations that shine a light on the kids histrionics and on the rewards of taking a chance on friendship. elissa gershowitz (c) Copyright 2017. 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 little over a decade after Leonardo, the Terrible Monster (2005) failed to scare even Sam, "the most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world," both monster and little white boy, now friends, are back. Sam, readers learn, is still scared of everything except Leonardo, so they will not be surprised at his abject terror at the sight of monster Frankenthaler and her friend Kerry, a little black girl. Being "the second-most scaredy-cat kid in the whole world," Kerry is equally terrified. Sam's "AAAAAAAAH"s and Kerry's "EEEEEEEEEK"s comically dominate the top halves of their respective sides of this double-page spread. Leonardo and Frankenthaler jump to the same, wrong conclusion: that each child is afraid of the unfamiliar monster. Apparently, however, it's the unfamiliar human that provokes such fright, though the book leaves it up to readers to decide what's so scary about each completely un-scary-looking child. A skilled, confident adult could use this moment to tease out a rich discussion. For their parts, Leonardo and Frankenthaler just leave it up to Sam and Kerry to "figure it out," leading to a rushed, superficial exploration of commonalities and differences. As a companion to Leonardo, this shares its predecessor's look and expectation-toppling gag, but it does not have the first book's effervescence nor its perfect pacingand, crucially, it doesn't get at the heart of what it seems to want readers to understand. A well-meaning miss. (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.