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
If Curly's angry eyebrows and severe frown don't clue readers into her foul mood, then the grumpy, rainbow-splotched cloud hovering above her will. Playful cynic Snicket traces the cloud's movement through a town, as it's passed like contagion from one person to the next. Having been denied ice cream, brooding Curly feels much better after poking her little brother with a stick. But now her mother's annoyed, harrumphing down the sidewalk with the moody cloud tucked beneath her arm. Cue the raccoon that takes up Curly's discarded stick and startles handyman Lou straight into a mud puddle. Mom can't help but giggle, and so the cloud drifts to its new, sodden companion. The pattern continues until a series of cheerful events (courtesy of the stick) usurps the story, resulting in a (mostly) happy ending. Rather than employ sullen hues, as one might expect, Forsythe's artwork glows with sunset tones of marigold, magenta, amethyst, and yellow. His stylized, two-dimensional illustrations stand in sprightly opposition to the hovering mad-mood cloud, adding visual humor to Snicket's droll tale. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Snicket comes with a built-in fan base, so stave off grumpy patrons by ordering multiple copies of this one.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Curly wears overalls and two poofy pigtails. Her expression is stormy. A multicolored bad mood hovers above her like a cloud. Then she pokes her brother with a stick and cheers right up. Curly's mother has the bad mood now; then it moves to a man named Lou, and from there "all over the world. You yourself had it several times." All kinds of feelings prove contagious in Snicket's story; the lowly stick spreads cheer in Curly's town the way the bad mood spreads gloom. The story traces how chance knits together the lives of Curly, her family, Lou, Lou's dry cleaner, and the ice cream man. Snicket doesn't paper over the way the discomfort of others can turn a bad mood around; at the same time, he celebrates generosity, community, and the workings of fate ("You never know what is going to happen"). Forsythe's sherbet-hued images combine big cartoon gestures with rich color. Snicket's quirky narrative voice and observations of events both great and lowly make this a fine readaloud-and a sure cure for a bad mood. Ages 4-8. Author's agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary. Illustrator's agent: Judith Hansen, Hansen Literary. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Cause and effect get the Snicket treatment in this amusing tale. Because of the bad mood-visually represented as a frowning, multicolored cloud-Curly pokes her brother with the stick. Instead of following the familiar arc of her misbehavior, regret, and reconciliation, the story veers into unexpected territory: the poking completely cheers up Curly and the bad mood transfers to Curly's mother. (Parents will groan in utter recognition.) The bad mood and the stick then go on to affect other characters across the town, resulting in a wedding attended by "everyone in this book." All of this unfolds in the understated voice that Snicket does so well, particularly with the slyly funny repeated phrase "You never know what is going to happen." Forsythe's thickly outlined gouache, ink, and pencil illustrations add retro flair to the story. The various white- and brown-skinned humans resemble Peanuts characters with their heavy outlines, circular heads, and cartoonishly simple yet expressive faces. Pair with Fortunately by Remy Charlip and discuss predictions, or with Judith Viorst's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day for more on bad moods and their causes. VERDICT A cheerfully wacky read-aloud sure to brighten listeners' moods.-Sarah Stone, San Francisco 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
Once there was a stick and a bad mood, begins the story. The bad mood (depicted in Forsythes illustrations as a scowling rainbow-colored cloud) hangs over the head of a girl named Curly. Curlys own sulky expression comes from having seen an ice cream store but [not] gotten any ice cream. When Curly pokes her little brother with the stick, that cheers her up but transfers the bad mood to her mother. Curlys mother loses the bad mood when a raccoon startles a man into falling into a mud puddle. Though the story sounds mean-spirited (in much the same way as Snickets hugely popular Series of Unfortunate Events), the cheeriness of the yellow and orange gouache, colored ink, and pencil drawings on bright white paper offsets any unkindness. As the text says, You never know whats going to happen, and by the end of the story theres been a wedding and ice cream for everyone. On one double-page spread toward the end, the bad mood moves in a series of small vignettes from cat to bird to man to dog and on and on: You yourself had it several times. A humorous and neatly circular ending begins the whole process all over again. This light take on a negative feeling may be useful to adults working with children, and the concept of a bad mood being normal and temporary may be a new one to the audience. susan dove lempke (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 bad mood dogs different people in turn, while the fate of a stick dropped from a tree seems to move the bad mood along. Curly, a little redheaded, white girl out for a walk with her mother and brother, is carrying around a bad mood (depicted as a multicolored cloud with a frowny face) because although they passed an ice cream shop two hours earlier, they didn't get any ice cream. She finds a stick that had been dropped by a tree the night before and uses it to poke her little brother. She feels better, but now her scolding mother is carrying the bad mood. And so the bad mood moves on from her mother to a carpenter to a cat, to other animals and people, and the stick experiences a similar fate until it gains a new enhancement and is given a place of prominence, while the bad mood sails on. Snicket's story takes unexpected turns and reveals delightful surprises, told with smart, silly language and cheeky asides; every page blooms with beautiful artwork done in bright, colorful gouache washes and featuring charming, 1960s-style animal and human characters. There's even an interracial love story interwoven along the way. Snicket's fans will love this book, but readers need never have read a single word by the author to appreciate the wonderfully presented universality of the bad mood and how quickly a little thing can chase it awayor beckon it upon us. (Picture book. 5-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
