Fractured Fable: Wolf! Wolf! by John Rocco

John Rocco has taken the old Aesop fable of the mischievous boy who cried wolf and given the story a humorous new twist from the wolf's point of view.

And this wolf is a very different beast. Rocco's wolf is an elderly, shaggy old wolf, too stiff and slow to hunt, forced to grow vegetables to make a meal. But even his garden, overgrown with weeds, is getting beyond him. When he hears, with the aid of his ear trumpet, a faint voice calling "Wolf! Wolf!" he hobbles off, hoping the caller has food to share. What he spies is a troublesome goat boy giggling at the breathless villagers he has lured up the mountain to his rescue.

As the wolf soaks his aching old feet in a pond and dreams of a way to get his paws on the boy's goats without having to chase them, the boy shouts his false warning again and again, until at last the disgruntled villagers begin to ignore his calls.

"Perfect," says the wolf. "Not a villager in sight! Were you calling me for lunch?" the old wolf grins. "The villagers are only going to believe you if you really are missing a goat. I can help you with that."

Too tired to chase down a goat, the wolf offers to spare the boy if he will lead one of his fat goats over the mountain and tie it up to the post in the wolf's garden.

Dreaming of a delicious breakfast, the wolf awakes the next morning to find that the goat has eaten all of the weeds from the garden spot, leaving the juicy, ripe veggies exposed. "I'm a picky eater!" the goat explains apologetically.

The old wolf weighs the obvious choice--a one-time goat entree against a productive garden for the rest of his life--and opts to keep the goat around as his gardening partner--and as a future dining companion!

A former art director for the Shrek movies, John Rocco makes his picture book debut with Wolf! Wolf!. His deft use of a Chinese setting, with the old wolf decked out in a red silk jacket and a "blue willow" landscape of bamboo, oriental bridges, and cherry blossoms, perfectly sets off the visual humor of his unique style. The final page, with the old wolf and the goat walking away companionably together, is a wry reversal of the carnivorous conclusion to the original fable.

The Hair Makes the Man: Super Hairo and the Barber of Doom

EVERY SUPERHERO GETS HIS POWERS FROM SOMEWHERE.

MY POWER COMES FROM MY HAIR.

THE MORE MY HAIR GROWS, THE MORE AWESOME MY POWERS BECOME.

Superman may have had his kryptonite, but this young hero's superpowers come from his head.  Not from his brain, exactly, but from his hair--a truly impressive, bushy, reddish superfro that make all his feats of daring possible.  Along with his mega-hirsute followers, all sprouting massive mops, Rocco and his superfriends  accomplish feats of  strength and derring-do that impress all the kids in the neighborhood, especially that one interesting girl who quietly watches each awesome skateboard  jump or BMX bike leap.

But every superhero has his nemesis: Superman has The Joker, and young Rocco has ... The Barber of Doom.  

Faster than a speeding bullet, his traitorous parents nab Rocco, and off he goes to the villain's lair, where the Barber of Doom has his way with his hopelessly snarled mane. When Superhero emerges from his shearing a hapless hero, shorn of the source of his strength, he just knows that his super powers are history. Super Hairo is now Wimpy Baldo.

But that girl has a way to restore his powers.  An artful emergency is staged,  her Teddy bear is stranded far above the ground, and our sheared hero and his band of superdudes take the bait and answer the call to action.

POWER SURGED THROUGH US, AND WE SPRANG INTO ACTION!

It's hair today and gone tomorrow for this pint-sized superhero and his minions, who find out that their powers are all in their heads--but not in their hair, in this spoof of the Samson complex, John Rocco's Super Hair-o and the Barber of Doom (Hyperion, 2013). Masterful page design gives this superhero tale its pizzazzy prowess. Using comic-book dot-printing technique and a palette right out of DC Comics, Rocco uses dialogue balloons and plenty of  POWS and ZAPS to show the superdudes in action, switching to gray and white pages when the heroes lose their powers at the barbershop, and returning to color when the clean-cut heroes discover that even minus their manes, their mojo is still working. For a dynamic duo, a mane event, pair this story with Bethany Barton's This Monster Needs a Haircut (see review here)

A 2012 Caldecott winner for his Blackout, Rocco is a versatile author-illustrator who goes way back to Aesop for his fractured fable, Wolf! Wolf! (see review here), and ventures into fantasy in Moonpowder, very different stories but all with exemplary artwork.

Snow Trail Snow Tale: Blizzard by John Rocca

THE FIRST FLAKE FELL BEFORE RECESS.

From his desk, a boy spots the first flake through his school's tall windows. The excitement is palpable in the classroom, as the students hope that this will be the first big snow of the winter. Yea!

SCHOOL CLOSED EARLY.

The boy and his sister trudge home in the snow, already high up on their boots. By the next morning the snow is too deep for them to open their front door.

SO WE WENT OUT THE WINDOW!

The kids play in the snow until they are too tired and wet to have fun anymore, and they resort to cocoa and camping out before the stove. The boy bones up on blizzard lore, reading Arctic Survival.

As more snow days go by, the children begin to tire of snow play and the family begins to run out of their favorite foods. Without milk, their cocoa is not the same, and their snacks are down to raisins dug out of the back of the pantry.

Snowbound for six days, the boy decides that only a certified survivalist like himself is up to the task of resupplying the family larder. And... there is one more thing...

HE WAS THE ONLY ONE LIGHT ENOUGH TO WALK ON THE SNOW.

He suits up, fashions tennis rackets into snowshoes, and with a list of necessities (peanut butter, coffee!) and sled in tow, heads out to the store, stopping by the neighbors to see if they need anything.

It's a post-blizzard scene outside as the boy plods through the snow-obliterated streets. He is a Arctic explorer, stopping to make a snow angel, checking out an igloo some kids have built, getting into their snowball fight, and breaking a trail toward the store, which he is happy to find OPEN.

He's a celebrated returning hero when he drops off supplies at the neighbor's house and when he stomps into his own yard, his dog barks out a fanfare:WOOOFFF!

There's milk for the cocoa, coffee for his parents, and the next day brings a loud but welcome sound in the snow-deadened landscape.

"SNOWPLOWS!"

It's civilization at last for the snow-weary family in Caldecott artist John Rocco's personal memoir of the blizzard of 1978, in his latest, Blizzard (Hyperion Books, 2014). Telling the story primarily through his art, Rocco makes good use of a palette of wintry whites and hues of blue, providing a delightful fisheye lens view of the town's snowbound landscape on a four-page foldout painting. In Rocco's impressive illustrations, it's a child's dream of the biggest blizzard ever, with snow fun and seven days off from school to boot. Special touches, such as the day of the week shown cleverly on each page--Monday in careful cursive on the class blackboard, Tuesday written in the snow by squirrel tracks, Thursday spelled out in spilled raisins from the box---add touches of humor throughout. As Kirkus says "The Caldecott honoree's pencil, watercolor and digital paint illustrations are reminiscent of Steven Kellogg in their light and line and detail, and readers will pore over the pages as they vicariously live through a blizzard,"

CHOO CHOO, Stay, I Say!! How to Train a Train by Jason Carter Eaton

"IT'S ONLY NATURAL THAT YOU'LL WANT TO TAKE HOME ALL THE TRAINS, BUT DON'T JUST GRAB THE FIRST ONE YOU SEE.

TAKE YOUR TIME AND CHOOSE THE ONE THAT'S RIGHT FOR YOU."

Over the literary ages storybook kids have chosen some weird pets, all right--dragons, giant snakes, crocodiles, dinosaurs. (You know those stories, right?) So it's not too much of a huff puff down the mental track to imagine that a train might be the ideal pet for certain kids. Trains come in all sizes and shapes--hoary old steam engines with cowcatchers up front or sleek, bullet-like monorails. But whatever they look like, they need to be watered, washed, and taught how to behave just like any pet. And for that you need a guide book! Enter Jason Carter Eaton's newest, How to Train a Train (Candlewick Press, 2013).

Eaton opens with some advice about approaching a potential pet train.

"IF YOU BROUGHT SOME COAL WITH YOU, NOW WOULD BE THE TIME TO OFFER IT.

TRY SAYING, 'MY, WHAT A HANDSOME TRAIN YOU ARE!'

WELL DONE!  HERE IT COMES!!"

Eaton's helpful train training instructions continue, and in no time the pet train is rolling over, listening to sleepytime train stories, and letting the child ride him. Still, trains can be contrary and there are always silly "train tricks" to be gotten through in the process. But good train owners are empathetic with their charges.

"LEARN TO KNOW YOUR TRAIN.  HOW DOES IT FEEL ABOUT BRIDGES AND TUNNELS?" 

Eaton's text catches the slightly quaint retro tone of a child's guide to pet care as he puts his young would-be train owners through their paces, with much assistance from the detailed and dramatic artwork of notable illustrator John Rocco, whose sturdy and comic pictures give this wry fantasy substance and humor. Rocco shows his pet train tracking up the carpet with coal dust, an anxious engine getting a soothing warm bath at the water stop, and a sympathetic child pulling his nervous-Nellie steam engine over a trestle above an intimidating gorge. Combining the concept of trains and pets is a novel approach, and Rocco's many humorous touches throughout make this whimsical takeoff on pet ownership a trainload of fun that will be scheduling a lot of storytime return trips.

This Just In! American Library Association Youth Media Awards Just Announced

ALA has just completed their annual awards program announcing the prestigious 2012 Newbery and Caldecott Awards


I am especially pleased with the Newbery Medal winner, Jack Gantos, for his wonderful serio-comic/mystery/coming of age novel, Dead End in Norvelt (Farrar, Strous, and Giroux, 2011), reviewed here only last week. Gantos is no stranger to the Newbery Awards lineup, but this top award is indeed well deserved, both for this excellent book and for his entire body of work.

Newbery Honor Books include Thanha Lai's National Book Award winner, Inside Out and Back Again (see my recent review here,) and Eugene Yelchin's Breaking Stalin's Nose.

The 75th annual Caldecott Medal, given to illustrator Chris Raschka, is A Ball for Daisy. Raschka is also a repeat winner for this award. Caldecott Honor Books are Patrick McDonnell's Me . . . Jane, (reviewed here April 14, 2011), Lane Smith's Grandpa Green (see my November 11 review) and John Rocco's Blackout.

Taking both the author and illustrator Coretta Scott King Awards is the peerless Kadir Nelson for his historical and personal narrative, Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans, with my recent review here.

Taking the Theodore Seuss Geisel Medal for excellence in books for beginning readers is Tales for Very Picky Eaters by Josh Schneider. Taking second honors for this award are former Geisel winner Mo Willems for his I Broke My Trunk! (An Elephant and Piggie Book), (see review here) and John Clausen's best-selling I Want My Hat Back.

The Sibert Award for children's informational books goes to author-illustrator Melissa Sweet for her delightful Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade. My review of November 7 is posted here.

The Andrew Carnegie Award for Excellence in children's videos goes to Weston Woods' production of Peter Brown's book Children Make Terrible Pets, review posted here.

A complete listing of all of the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards has just been posted here. If you, like me, missed a few of these winning titles, we've got something to look forward to!

Following in Her Tracks! Big Machines: The Story of Virginia Lee Burton by Sherri Duskey Rinker

For everyone in seaside Folly Cove, Virginia Lee Burton was just Jinnee.

Anyone who meets Jinnee will tell you that she is quite magical.

Jinnee Burton was a lovely, graceful woman--a strong professional dancer, a skillful journalist, an artistic soul who loved fabric design, gardening, and all the animals on her small farm, and to her two small boys, Aris and Michael, she was a wizard who could draw anything they wanted. And what they wanted was Big Machines--huge, honking machines, movers and shakers, strong, powerful, and capable of making and doing almost anything. Just like their mother Jinnee.

It begins with a line: black and rough.
Then a squiggle... and a rub.
As little Aris watches, a puff
of smoke appears, clears,
and then...

WHOOOooo oo oo! a whistle cries.
"I see a train!" says Aris! "More! Do more!"

Choo Choo was Jinnee's first picture story of a little runaway train. But then it was Michael's turn to choose, and he wanted a big digger that could build big things, and Jinnee created a steam shovel who dug great railroad beds, highways and runways, and foundations for skyscrapers, but wasn't too proud to dig a cellar for a schoolhouse for his owner Mike. That was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. But her boys wanted still more, so Jinnee's magic wand created a heroic little snowplow, and along came Katy and the Big Snow and then the hill-climbing Maybelle the Cable Car.

And then Jinnee had an idea that combined the quaint cottages of her beloved Folly Cove with the big trucks and trains and diggers and builders her boys loved. It was her memorable Caldecott Award-winning The Little House, a delightful story about both the big machines that changed the American landscape into great cities but also a story of returning to the roots, a grassy hillside home for the Little House, a parable that was both of its time and surely ahead of its time in its contemplation of urbanization.

Virginia Lee Burton was a American original who captured the spirit of her time in stories that delighted children while resonating with grownups in their ethos of hard work and loyalty and their sense of place in mid-century American. And Sherri Duskey Rinker's new celebration of Burton's work Big Machines: The Story of Virginia Lee Burton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) is also a celebration of the art of the picture book itself. Newbery winner John Rocco (for Blizzard) puts his superb draftsmanship to work portraying Burton's art perfectly, even showing her hands at work, sketching and painting her trademark illustrations, right down to an idyllic apple tree with swings for Aris and Michael beside the happy little pink house we all know and love.

Rinker, whose best-sellers Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site and Mighty, Mighty Construction Site pay skillful writerly homage to Burton's big machines stories, follows Burton's lead, giving the Arises and Michaels of today what they wanted--"More!" A first purchase for all libraries and picture book lovers everywhere.

Power Down--Please! Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! by Todd Tarpley

THREE LITTLE ROBOTS, TIME FOR BED.

TIME TO DIM YOUR INFRARED.

A sleepy boy, already in his stripey PJs, leads his three robots toward their beds. But first, there's the nighttime ritual to get through.  They brush their rotors, shower, and, ahem! take care of toileting, making a mechanical mess along the way. The toothpaste extrudes all over the place, the sink overflows, the toilet paper unfurls all over the tiles, and the shower splashes over the rim of the tub.

The boy is clearly weary, but he piggy-backs one little robot, with the other two seemingly sleepy cyborgs behind him, toward his room, where he beds down the three.

QUIET AT LAST, NOT A PEEP.

Or not. One robot turns on the light, and they all have a complaint! One misses his coil. Another holds out his cup for a drink of oil. The last claims his sensor hurts.

The tired boy tugs his toolbox out from under his bed and takes care of their complaints, and they all settle down, or so it seems. But then...

BEEP! BEEP!

One robot waves his Saturn night light. The other two complain about a too-loose belt and a too-tight bolt. The boy sleepwalks through the various fixes. And then they three trundle back to their triple-decker steel bunk beds.  The yawning boy clambers back under his blanket.

Peace at last?

BEEP!

Apparently, all the robots' circuits are still firing, their gears grinding. The boy delivers an ultimatum!

NO MORE BLIPPING!
BLINKING-BOINKING!
WINKING-WHIRRING!
SQUINKING-OINKING!

OINKING?

They're adjusted, given oil, offered nightlights and a coil. What else would a robot want?

Oh.

A BEDTIME STORY.

It's a cyber goodnight at last, in Todd Tarpley's Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! (Little, Brown and Company, 2015), a rhyming story in which Tarpley turns the tables on the kid, giving weary parents a chance to see the bedtime shoe on the other foot. But the robots get the last whirr and wink, because it's the boy who falls asleep first, as the whole cast of characters snuggle down for a bit of co-sleeping in the boy's bed.

Caldecott-Honor artist John Rocco (for Blizzard) struts his stuff in ink-line, watercolor, and digital illustrations that are long on wit, satire, and charm. His boy plays a little grownup, tired and with his patience wearing thin as his electronic charges pull out all the usual sleep-avoiding tricks. Visual humor abounds, a robot on the toilet wound in toilet paper, and a mouse along as observer, soaping his armpits in the bathtime spillage, trudging off to the bedroom in his little fuzzy bathrobe, trying to sleep through the whining and beeping, and at last sacking out on the boys' bed with the rest of the guys. Humor, wordplay, and a clever comic consciousness gives these sleepytime resisters quite a cachet for the story circle set.

Hot on the Trail: How to Track A Truck by Jason Carter Eaton

IF YOU WANT A PET TRUCK--AND WHO DOESN'T?--YOU HAVE COME TO THE RIGHT PERSON.

I HAVE GOT TWO DUMP TRUCKS AND A FIRE ENGINE MYSELF

I THINK EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE ONE, AND THAT IS WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK.

In his new companion book to his popular How to Train a Train (reviewed here), author Jason Eaton pens a manual for the kid who wants a pet truck. Trains stay on their tracks, so they are easy to find and keep, but trucks are a different story. Trucks can be found wherever roads go, and many are even to be found off-road in the wilds, so before a kid adopts a truck, he's got to track down the perfect one. But the author has some apt advice for the novice truck fancier. First the potential truck owner needs to understand the natural habitats of trucks.

DO YOU WANT A MOVING TRUCK? THEY LIVE IN BUSY NEIGHBORHOODS.

A MONSTER TRUCK? THEY LURK IN ABANDONED PARKING LOTS.

The author points out that some delightful and desirable trucks may be migratory. Ice cream trucks head south in the winter, while snowplow trucks head north and are easily tracked down in wintry climes. And then the truck owner has to consider the proper breed of pet truck to fit his lifestyle.

IF YOU LIVE IN A SMALL APARTMENT, A CAR TRANSPORT TRUCK MAY NOT BE A WISE CHOICE.

And as for the actual capture of your chosen truck, you may need to learn how to recognize your truck's tire tracks and follow him to his lair. Sometimes you may EVEN have to lead them into your trap. But there's a perfect lure for the wily truck.

TRUCKS CAN'T HELP FOLLOWING A TRAIL OF ORANGE CONES.

And once you have your perfect pet truck in sight, remember you can conveniently attract it with the universal homing call of the truck.

MAKE A FIST AND PULL IT DOWN TWICE!

And the perspective owner will be rewarded with that characteristic call of the truck, "HONK!" in Jason Carter Eaton's latest, How to Track a Truck (Candlewick Press, 2016), in a comic treatise on truck-keeping that benefits hugely from noted artist John Rocco's bold and bright multi-perspective illustrations of all sorts of trucks and all sorts of kids successfully on safari to park trucks in their own homes. Each truck comes across with its own personality, yet all come together to cooperate in all sorts of truck-ish activities. As author Eaton promises, "You'll be good to GO!" And that is just what kid truck lovers love to hear.