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
Hee-yah! Most kids are fascinated with martial arts, as is our unnamed heroine. She finds a book about ancient Chinese animal forms and, despite warnings that they're for experts only, begins to carefully replicate each pose. She starts with the Crane, and is startled when an actual crane appears and starts wreaking havoc. She reads that the Leopard will overpower the Crane, so that pose comes next, followed by the Snake and then the Dragon. Each new apparition adds to the mayhem, as lamps and end tables go flying. The final form restores serenity, and the girl barely manages to restore order just as Mom comes home with a surprise: tickets to the zoo. McClintock's vibrant graphic novel-like illustrations use black outlines to set off the girl's careful modeling of each pose, and multihued watercolor overlays convincingly portray the increasingly frenetic action. The story is told through the pictures, with concise word bubble and brief background snippet reinforcement. McClintock's books are always in demand, and this timely offering will delight audiences.--McBroom, Kathleen Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A girl finds an old book with instructions for "forms," postures taught in Chinese martial arts that "release the power of the animals they represent." Despite the book's warning ("There could be unexpected results"), the girl tries the poses alone in her room. As she attempts the first, crane, stretching out her arms and standing on one leg, an enormous crane appears behind her, playing havoc with her possessions and tugging on her ponytail. More poses-leopard, snake, dragon-bring those creatures to life. The pages can barely contain the resulting chaos as the animals chase one another through the girl's house, their faces shining with cheer. The creatures initially appear as Chinese-style ink paintings that grow from the girl's shadow before materializing fully, and McClintock's graceful draftsmanship makes this visual magic work. In order to restore calm, the book instructs, the girl must enter a state of mental repose. Young martial arts students will recognize the need for masters to harness the power of the mind; that this practitioner wears a pink hoodie makes such power seem in the reach of any kid. Ages 4-7. Agent: Jennie Dunham, Dunham Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-In this energetic picture book, veteran author-illustrator McClintock tells the tale of a strange book found on a library book drop that turns an ordinary day magical. A young girl with brown skin finds a handmade book that explains how to do five forms of ancient Chinese martial arts. As she masters the poses, she brings giant animals to life and they cause a ruckus in her house. McClintock borrows five animal forms from Chinese martial arts traditions-the crane, leopard, snake, dragon, and the one that "returns everything to the way it was." The endpapers have ink drawings of the animals and stylized Chinese characters, and an author's note describes her connection to Chinese martial arts. Humorous ink, gouache, and watercolor paintings are expressive and bright, with the books and dolls in the girls room flinging around gleefully. VERDICT Those looking for informational books on martial arts and the different forms and traditions will need to look elsewhere, but this joyful story will tickle young readers.-Lisa Nowlain, Nevada County Community Library, CA © 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
A girl performs martial arts poses from a book, unleashing each form's titular, chaos-wreaking creature (crane, leopard, snake, and dragon). An offbeat story with delightfully kinetic art, but purists may fault McClintock's abandonment of the usual fifth form of southern Chinese martial arts, the Tiger, for a convenient "final form [that] returns everything to the way it was" before Mom returns home. (c) Copyright 2018. 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.
