Keeping Your Cool! No Biggy (a Story About Overcoming Everyday Obstacles) by Elyeia Rubin

"Lots of things make me feel happy."

Kiki loves her dog Pozey, with her big, sweet, fuzzy face. She likes practicing handstands, and she loves eating ice cream any time she can get it.

But sometimes things that happen she doesn't love!

School mornings are nutty! So many things to do before the bus arrives.

There is breakfast to eat and teeth to brush--which can be maddening when the toothpaste falls off the brush before she can get it in her mouth. And even when she's all dressed and pulling on her coat, the zipper thingy gets stuck and won't go up or down!

I get FRUSTRATED!

"Mommeeee!"

It's up to Mom and Dad to show the way not to sweat the small stuff when minor problems pop up. The main thing to keep in mind is that most of these things are, as Daddy, says,

"NO BIGGY!"

Dogs track in mud all over the floor, and when they get a bath, they get more water on the floor than in the tub. But if Mommy can say, "No biggy!" while she mops up the mess, Kiki can learn to keep her cool, too. When she grabs her favorite bedtime story book and a page gets ripped, Kiki tapes it up herself and says, "No biggy!"

Elyeia Rubin's No Biggy!: A Story About Overcoming Everyday Obstacles (Random House, 2018) show kids how to take small frustrations in stride. Josh Talbot's pastel cartoon illustrations point up the comic aspects of the small vexations of daily life, and the use of hot colors for Kiki's frustrating exclamations and cool colors for her parents' soothing advice reinforce the message that kids, too, can learn the art of keeping cool.

Podium Power! The Race by Edouard Manceau

EVERYONE LINES UP..., NICE AND STRAIGHT.

THE FIRST GUY FIRES THE PISTOL, AND EVERYONE RUNS AWAY.

No, It's not a bank heist in the wild, wild west. The First Guy is actually trying to start a race, and the other guys are a little slow on the uptake, one of them running away in fear at the sight of the starting pistol. But at last the race is on.

The runners all look alike, oval heads, jug-like bodies, four limbs, one pair with colored athletic shoes, all with seemingly flexible antlers streaming behind them, and all with numbers on their singlets. But despite their similarities, they are very different.

One guy takes off, full speed, clearly not pacing himself, determined to win. Not only that, but he's a mean-eyed cheat, as well. As soon as he gets far enough ahead, he drops a slippery banana peel on the track, with the expected result--a pile-up of his competitors!

The medics rush in and patch up the survivors, and the survivors rush off, looking determined. But as it turns out, they're no better than Banana-Peel Guy. They readily hitch a ride on a passing truck and capture a loose kite for an, er, lift toward the finish line. Mr. Banana Peel comes along, only because he gets tangled in the dangling kite string.

After a stop at the water station, the Guys are at it again, running flat out, except when they stop to set traps for the runners behind them.

All but a few.

THEY WONDER WHY THEY STARTED RUNNING IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The quitter guys horse around having fun, but soon settle down, building a house, making gardens, and living their lives, while the other runner guys keep running until finally one guy crosses the finish line.

 EVERYONE SAYS HE WON.

The winner gets the high podium, the flowers, and media attention, and the marching band plays him some anthem or other.

But the final page shows one of the guys who quit, happy in his hammock among his flowers, while his TV plays, the awards ceremony unwatched, inside his cozy house. Word is that the rest of the runners are losers.

BUT THAT'S...    JUST WHAT THEY SAY.

Author Edouard Manceau turns a hairy eyeball on the win-at-any-cost competitive sports organizations in his latest, The Race (Owlkids Books, 2014).  His racing guys are apparently caribou, befitting the origin of this Canadian import, certainly well-suited to the sport, but Manceau finds his sport in poking fun at the dirty tricks and competition between his  little cross-country runners. Facial expressions and their very flexible antlers in the artist's cut-paper collages provide all the comic body language needed to show up the errors of their dishonest ways, in Manceau's humorous little look at the true meaning of living well.

As they say... it's the best revenge!

Manceau is also the author of the lauded and lovely Windblown (see my 2013 review here).

Less Is... More by I. C. Springman

NOTHING.

SOMETHING.

MORE

AND MORE

AND MORE.

In a fabulously illustrated modern fable, author I.C. Springman and illustrator Brian Lies have given us a spare, 44-word parable of the perils of acquisitiveness taken to its illogical extreme, compulsive hoarding.

Springman's and Lies' tale features that most-collection-prone of critters, Magpie, who begins, as a bird with the blues, with nothing. A helpful mouse offers the gift of a blue-and-red swirled marble, and Magpie gratefully builds a roomy nest to set off his prize. His eyes glow as he admires the marble, and he is soon off to find other objects to ornament his home--a red lego, a golden schilling, someone's missing car keys, a broken strand of beads--and a collector is born.

Plenty is not enough for Magpie, as he continues to soar home with more objects, so many that his original nest becomes so full that there is no room for him in it. No matter. Another nest is built, and he sets out to furnish it splendidly with even more bright and shiny objects--from a pushpin to a pocket watch, a padlock, a toy car, even a mirror which reflects his bright eyes as he lovingly tucks a copper penny in among his treasures. The second nest bulges, portentously weighing down its limb even as his friend Mouse pronounces judgement on his new lifestyle:

ENOUGH!

The weighty collection can no longer be supported, and with a catastrophic CRACK, the limb fails and the heavy hoard cascades to the ground, burying its creator upside down, with only his shocked, straight-up legs in view. Mouse and friends hastily remove the debris of Magpie's collection, piece by piece, until he is at last freed from the weight of his possessions, with single fork left holding part of a peel-off non-fat yogurt top like a banner, one which proclaims Magpie's new state--FREE.

When is plenty enough? In a consumer society where closets are larger than our grandparents' bedrooms, most of us have begun to wonder the same thing. When is BIG big enough and when is enough stuff too much stuff? The award-winning Brian Lies' illustrations elegantly flesh out Springman's minimalist text in a tale that is sure to amaze kids with the sheer realism of its Walter Wick-like detailed objects and impress adults with its telling touches of irony. Magpie's right leg is banded, bearing, as one sharp reviewer points out, the number 3141 (suggesting the multiplying power of pi), while all the various detritus of human life is clearly symbolic of the over-abundant possessions of a modern life which generate (what else?) a profitable plethora of businesses whose sole mission is to whisk away that excessive stuff.

Springman's and Lies' More (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), forthcoming March 6, is a light-hearted little fable which also functions fully as an engaging picture book for youngsters, who will focus more on the riches of the brilliantly executed pictures, the personable mice, and the amazing plenitude of visual variety that Lies' illustrations offer rather than on its warning of the perils of plenty.

Color Me Out There: Chamelia by Ethan Long

WHEN OTHERS ZIG,
CHAMELIA ZAGS.

WHEN OTHERS ROCK,
CHAMELIA ROLLS.

Chamelia has a problem fitting in. A girl with fashion sense, flare, and a desire for the limelight, she has the misfortune to be born a chameleon. After all, blending in is what it's all about when you're a chameleon.

At school, everybody is green. Everyday. They dress in sensible, basic neutrals and try to slip by under the radar. That is not Chamelia's style.

Bright colors, bold prints, plenty of feathers and frippery, bows and baubles are more her style. When she plays Goldilocks in the school play, she dresses as a Viking warrior maiden, giving the kid playing Father Bear more than the usual surprise when he finds her sleeping in Baby's bed. When she goes biking, her helmet has bright designs and a long plume on top. And she insists on playing soccer in sequined platform shoes. She HAS to get herself noticed--no matter what she does.

But her parents and teachers point out that she needs to balance her act. There's a time when standing out in the crowd is not a good idea, when joining in is the way to go. Can she find a way to be one of the group and still be her outstanding self?

Ethan Long's easy-going little picture book, Chamelia (Little, Brown, 2011) shows the opposite of the usual story of the shy child who learns to take her turn in the spotlight, and his charming little Chamelia becomes a model of the middle way, a chameleon who learns to blend in and be herself at the same time.