Pounce! Max Attacks by Kathi Appelt

Max is a cute kitty, with four soft little paws.
But at the end of each paw are five sharp little claws.

And Max know just what to do with them...

MAX ATTACKS!

IN A BOWL OF WATER BRIMMING...

FISHES! LOTS OF FISHES SWIMMING.

But just as Max get poised to plunge a clawed paw...

Wait! Is that a lizard on the window? Max whirls away from the fish bowl and leaps, landing spreadeagled on the window screen.

The family watchdog stops the attack, but cannot save the window plant as they both come down. Max leaps away Scot free, while the dog is tagged for the downed drapes.

MAX, ONE.
DOG, NONE.

Max's claws may be retractable,
But Max himself is quite distractible.

Max unhooks each claw from the screen and goes back to the fish bowl. But just as he's about to snag a fish, his toy catnip birdie on a string flaps by! He pounces, his claws penetrate, but the birdie swoops away into the dirty clothes basket. Max turns on a dime. That bird won't escape this time. Hey! Max is the predator. This is what his claws are for!

UP! UP! UH-OH!

WHERE DID THAT BIRDIE GO?

Oh, there it is, in the dirty clothes basket! And what are those stinky things in the basket? Ooooh!
Socks rock! Max pounces.

SOCKS, NONE.

MAX, NINETY-ONE!

Full of bravado, Max goes back to the fish bowl.

The fish are swimming, still accessible.
This time will Max's attack be successful?

Or will little Max wind up all wet? Suffice it to say, for Kathi Appelt's latest, Max Attacks (Atheneum Books, 2019), no goldfish were harmed in the production of this picture book. Despite his prowess at attacks and his claw-ful paws, kitten Max fails as a carnivore but succeeds as a charmer, in the Newbery-winning Appelt's adorable rhyming cat tale for young readers, while illustrator Penelope Dullaghan creates an irresistibly lovable striped kitty who switches his twitchy tale, licks his small whiskers, and pauses before pouncing like any proper kitten would do. With its big bold illustrations shown from varying prospectives and its intriguing rhymes, this one is the cat's pajamas for reading aloud to one or a group. Puns Kirkus Reviews, "Max's actions should win plenty of accolades: Max, a million; readers a million-plus."  More Max, Ms. Appelt!

Kathi Appelt was the winner of a John Newbery Medal for her brilliant middle-grade novel, The Underneath (See my review here.)

Out of the Depths: The Underneath by Kathi Appelt

Kathi Appelt's first novel, The Underneath is a skillfully layered book which indeed goes underneath--to the primitive ebb and flow of nature and magic beneath the surface of the Texas-Louisiana bayou country where it is set, winding its way back and forth through millennia to tell a simple but primal tale as deep and dark and rich as the waters of Bayou Tartine. It is a story which at its core goes underneath to the hearts of its characters, touching the elemental loneliness which they all share.

Underneath a decaying, sagging old house in a clearing filled with rusted cans, broken glass, and the discarded skeletons of animals, a hound named Ranger lies beneath the structure, chained by his cruel owner, Gar Face. Barely human, without hope or love, existing on the barter of the skins of animals he takes from the swampland, Gar Face is himself a victim of his drunken father's hatred, a father who broke the boy's jaw and drove him away from civilization decades before. Ranger, too old and lame to hunt, is kept tied to the cabin as a watchdog and can only bay out his loneliness when his harsh master is away.

One morning his song awakens an abandoned calico cat, her belly full of kittens about to be born:

It wasn't the chirring of the mourning doves that woke the calico cat, or the uncertain sun peeking through the clouds, or even the rustling of a nearby squirrel. No, it was the baying of a nearby hound. She had never heard a song like it, all blue in its shape, blue and tender, slipping through the branches, gliding on the morning air. She felt the ache of it.

The calico follows the dog's lament to his hideout underneath the crumbling house, and there she and the lonely dog find solace in each other's company. And when the kittens, Sabine and Puck, are born, Ranger's love for the young ones is complete The dog and the three cats share what they have, a dark shelter in the underneath, Gar Face's occasional handfuls of dog food, and the mother cat's prey, hunted furtively while the man is away,--insects, lizards, and sometimes a mouse or rat. But the wise old dog also shares his knowledge of the master's wicked ways:

Do not leave the safety of the Underneath. Do not, under any circumstances, go out into the Open. DO NOT get in front of Gar Face and his gun.

But kittens are born to seek, and one day Puck forgets the rules in the joy of the sun-filled Open, and he and his mother, who rushes out to save him, are captured by Gar Face, tied in a burlap bag and gleefully thrown in the bayou to drown. Puck alone survives, learning to live on his own but always hopeful that he will hear Ranger's lament and find his way back to the two he loves.

Into this simple story of castaway animals Appelt weaves the story of two other creatures, magical creatures also living underneath--King Alligator, a thousand-year-old monster of incredible size whom Gar Face dreams of taking as a trophy that will win him the approval of humans which his deformed face has denied him, and Grandmother Moccasin, a shape-shifting lamia whose bitter loneliness at the loss of her daughter to a shape-shifting bird man causes her to be buried in a pottery jar beneath a giant lob-lolly pine. Trapped in her snake's skin and the hatred she cannot shed, she waits for an event which will bring her earthenware prison to the surface again and free her to vent her revenge.

Like the waters of Little Sorrowful Creek which wind through these woods, Appelt takes her time building the backstory of these characters, flowing back and forth through centuries as the reader comes to understand and care for them all, even Gar Face, whose final failure to find either hope or love brings the suspenseful story to a surprising and satisfying conclusion. Drawing upon the legends of the Caddo people who once lived in the bayou country, Appelt creates a world of magical realism, helping the reader see the natural world as our ancestors must have once seen it, at once physically real and yet inhabited by deep, unseen beings that are also part of the creation.

Although David Small's cover and incidental illustrations may suggest a touching and humorous story of unlikely friends, akin to Appelt's wonderfully warm and wise Bubba and Beaustories, The Underneath is a darkly complex and moving novel on a par with Shiloh or A Wrinkle in Time in its handling of the struggle between good and evil, love and hate, which runs deep to the heart of life itself. The artfully and tautly told central plotline of Ranger's and the kittens' struggle for survival will hold readers' attention from start to finish, but for thoughtful middle readers this is a once-in-a-lifetime read which will reveal much of what lies underneath the surface of life.

This novel will be one to watch at award time.

Another Sort of Rescue Dog: Mogie, The Heart of the House by Kathi Appelt

Some dogs are meant for dramatic rescues from burning buildings. Some dogs are meant to track down children lost in the woods. Some dogs patrol perimeters of lonely outposts, looking for saboteurs.

Mogie is not one of those dogs.

He's a shaggy, fluffy-footed, somehow goofy-looking Labradoodle, clearly capable of making messes and misbehaving.

But Mogie has one special talent.

GIVE HIM A KIDDO WHO IS BLUER THAN BLUE, AND MOGIE WILL BE TRUER THAN TRUE.

Mogie is an empathy dog. And when Mogie wanders into Ronald McDonald House, he discovers his calling.

Mogie sees a boy who used to be a busy, bouncing, back-flipping sort of boy, slumped sadly in a wheelchair.

Gage has definitely lost his Mojo!

Mogie goes to Gage and sits down beside him. He smiles at Gage in that goofy way that only a floppy, frizzy-faced, tongue-lolling dog can, and Gage looks at him. Soon Mogie finds a ball for Gage to toss, and the two become friends. Life is looking up for Gage, and he's on his way to becoming his old self. In time he's got his Mojo back and goes home.

Mogie has lost his friend. But then comes a girl, a gloomy girl who looks as if she's lost her "cha-cha-cha." Mogie knows just what to do.

Newbery-winning author Kathi Appelt tells this true story of a different sort of rescue dog, dogs whose job is to comfort and "rescue" sick and injured kids, in her latest, Mogie: The Heart of the House (Atheneum, 2014) Appelt has a light touch with what could have been somewhat smarmy story, brightening the narrative with appealing verse and with just a hint of the theme that all of us, even messy mutts, have our gifts in this world. Appelt's sweet story is ably illustrated by notable artist, Marc Rosenthal, whose engaging Mogie is the sort of pooch almost no one could resist. Publishers Weekly says, "A warm tribute to a remarkable dog and to the workers at Ronald McDonald Houses, which will receive a share of proceeds from book sales."

Claws Pause for Caws: Counting Crows by Kathi Appelt

TEN CRUNCHY CRICKETS,

TEN GREEN PEPPERS.

TEN FOR THE COUNTING CROWS.

YEP, YEP, YEPPERS!

Crows just wanna have lunch, and these guys are on the hunt for tasty tidbits and hearty handouts.

They're solid omnivores, sampling bugs and berries, mangoes with a chaser of spicy ants, crispy peanuts and pre-sampled trashcan pizza! They'll sing for their supper, too!

CAW! CAW! CAW!

Lithe and stylishly turned out in peppermint-striped tunics, one with polka-dotted scarf, these trendy crows are likely to pose--adorning tree limbs, arranging themselves artistically on telephone wires, lounging in their untidy, twiggy nests, and soaring down to check out overturned trash bins for munchy morsels. They grack and grabble, caw and crackle!

But the troika of crows are not the only ones on the hunt. There's this red-scarfed feline who's got a yen for a tea-time poultry treat who's already on the prowl. Will nature take its course when the hunters become the hunted? And where did that cat get that familiar-looking scarf anyway?

The rhyming couplets count up to a dozen, in Kathi Appelt's newest, Counting Crows (Atheneum Press, 2015). Appelt, a Newbery and National Book Award honoree for long-form fiction (The Underneath), as well as a multiple award winner for her picture book format favorites (see reviews here), shows her love for words and wordplay in a creative counting book that belies its well-worn genre. Artist Rob Dunlavey's black crows put even the venerable Heckle and Jeckle in the back seat for concept and execution on each invitingly well-designed page. It's well worth caw-caw-cawghing up the cost of this cawllosal counting lesson for the preschool or early reader!

As Kirkus cackles in their starred review, "This is a real counting fest, as not only the crows, but the food they collect—-berries, bugs and snacks—-are fodder for the counting game and for improving reading skills at the same time."

Coyote Courtin': When Otis Courted Mama by Kathi Appelt

BEFORE OTIS, CARDELL HAD A MOSTLY WONDERFUL LIFE. HE HAD A PERFECTLY GOOD MAMA AND A PERFECTLY GOOD DADDY. CARDELL ADORED THEM.

THE ONLY PROBLEM WAS THAT CARDELL'S PERFECTLY GOOD DADDY LIVED IN A DIFFERENT PART OF THE DESERT. CARDELL HAD TO SHARE HIM WITH HIS PERFECTLY NICE STEPMOTHER, LULU AND HIS PERFECTLY CUTE STEPBROTHER, LITTLE FRANKIE.

But most of the time Cardell has Mama to himself, and that's the way he likes it.

Mama is pretty and talented and she adores her little coyote. Life is pretty much perfect on their side of the desert.

BUT ALL OF THAT WAS BEFORE OTIS SHOWED UP AT THEIR DOOR.

Of course, a lovely lady coyote like Mama has had suitors before. There was Cleburne, a divine dancer, but with one big fault. When he sambas, he slobbers.

"WE CAN DO WITHOUT CLEBURNE," AGREED MAMA.

Other admirers come and go, and their departure pleases Cardell well.

But when Otis shows up at the their door, with ocotillo flowers and cactus candy and what looks to Cardell like a cheesy smile, he is clearly not pleased. Otis can't make jalapeno pancakes with saguro syrup or zig-zag through the sand like his daddy, and Cardell greets him with a growing growl, hoping that Mama will soon send him packing like the others.

But Otis is a coyote who doesn't quit. He makes Cardell a yummy batch of prickly pear pudding and shows off his admittedly impressive pouncing techniques. And one night Otis begins to tell campfire stories so exciting and so funny that Cardell has to howl with giggles and forgets his growl.

Romance blooms, and one night, when the planets in the starry sky are in perfect alignment, Otis proposes, and with Cardell's grin replacing his grrrrrs, Mama says

"YES."

Newbery award-winning author Kathi Appelt has in her forthcoming When Otis Courted Mama (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) a empathetic family story that will have young readers howling with giggles and grinning along with Cardell, the cutest little coyote you could want, with a warm-as-a-chili-pepper ending to this blended family story.

Artist Jill McElmurry's Southwestern-tinged gouache illustrations reveal personalities with small touches--Mama's cactus flowers worn over her ears, Daddy's bolo tie, Otis' big sombrero, and Cardell's little guitar. McElmurry's book design features action vignettes set against white pages and emotionally evocative scenes in full-bleed style, as in the double-page spread in which Otis patiently smiles while little Cardell faces off against him with his best protective growl, setting off family scenes of great insight and some sweetness and affection. Appelt and McElmurry have themselves a howling-good winner here.

The Right to Sing The Blues: Brand-New Baby Blues by Kathi Appelt

It's official.
It's the news!

With my brand-new baby brother
Came the brand-new baby blues!

Our gal has got the right to sing the blues! There's her new little brother, wearing her cute little newborn-sized sleeper, snoozing in her cute little bed. Mom and Dad, whose lives seemed to be perfect when all their thoughts were of her, seem totally besotted with this baby, even though he can't do anything cool with them like she can, just eat, sleep, and make P-E-E-U-W diapers.

"Am I blue? You'd be, too" she thinks as she makes her case. But there's just a hint of a possibility that things may be look up in, oh, or year or two, or maybe more. Then they'll fly kites and play ball together. She'll have someone to play hide and seek with and introduce to all the big kid mysteries:

"I can't wait to teach him to spit!"

Kathi Appelt, whose hilarious Bubba and Beau picture books, augmented by the just-right Texas touches of Arthur Howard, looked at life from the baby's point of view, flips the perspective in her Brand-New Baby Blues (Harper, 2011), making the most of her considerable (Newbery Honor-winning) literary skills to craft a funny rhyming text which sum up the sibling's dilemma.

Yeehaw! Aroooo!: Bubba and Beau: Best Friends by Kathi Appelt

Not since Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad Are Friends rolled off the presses has there been such an unlikely but sympatico pair of buddies between the covers of a book. Bubba is a baby who loves to crawl in the mud and chew on things; Beau is a hound dog puppy to loves to do both, too. Bubba loves his pinky-pink blankie and hates soap; Beau is with him all the way on both.

In the first book about the baby buddies, Bubba and Beau: Best Friends, the pair face a downright onery sit-uation when Bubba's mama, Mama Pearl, ups and washes the pink blankie. Now Bubba and Beau love that blankie just the way it is:

Beau loved that blankie, too. He loved its snappity-snap sound. He loved its toasty warmth. And best of all, he loved its smelly smell.

Bubba loves the blankie because it smells like Beau, and Beau loves the blankie because it smells like Bubba. But when Mama Pearl snatches it and runs it through the wash, it's just not the same:

Its pinky-pink turned pale. Its cottony-soft turned soggy. Its snappity-snap turned flat. Its toasty-warm turned shivery.
Worst of all, it smelled like SOAP!

Fortunately for the sad buckaroos, Mama Pearl is on a roll. She snatches and soaps up first Bubba and then Beau, leaving them both smelling like, well, SOAP. When Mama Pearl takes the clean and dry blankie down off the clothesline and hands it back, Bubba and Beau happily fall asleep on a blankie that's still got all the right stuff and that smells--just like them.

Kathi Appelt's text is Texas terrific, and Arthur Howard's devoted dog and human families are just plain longhorn lovable on every page. Even Big Bubba's truck Earl is a rootin' tootin' lollapalooza, just like this book!

And The Winners Are... 2009 Newbery, Caldecott Awards Are Announced

As is usually true, the American Library Association's Youth Media Awards committees had more than a few surprises for readers eagerly awaiting the winners of the 2009 awards.


Receiving the 2009 Newberry Award is Neal Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, a dark story of a boy named Nobody, or Bod, for short, who is safe from a mysterious assassin only within the confines of a a graveyard, where he grows up under the tutelage of many mentors, some of whom are ghosts.

A trailer for this book may be viewed here.


Newbery Honor Awards go to Kathi Appelt for The Underneath, Ingrid Law for Savvy, Jacqueline Woodson's After Tupac and D Foster, and Margarita Engle's The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom.

Taking top honors for illustration is the 2009 Caldecott Award winner, Susan Marie Swanson's gorgeously and serenely illustrated The House in the Night.

Receiving Caldecott Honor Awards were Marla Frazee for A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, Uri Shulevitz for How I Learned Geography, and illustrator Melissa Sweet for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams.

The Carnegie Award has been presented to Weston Woods' film based on Christine King Farris' book March On!: The Day My Brother Martin Changed The World, reviewed here on January 10.

Mo Willems has again walked away with the Theodore Seuss Geisel Award for easy reader books with his latest installment in his popular series, Are You Ready to Play Outside? (An Elephant and Piggie Book).

For my review of Kathi Appelt's The Underneath , see my post of August 14 here. Ingrid Law's Savvy, was also reviewed here in my post of June 2.

Kadir Nelson has won the Coretta Scott King Author Award for We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball, reviewed here on February 7, 2008. The King Illustrator Award goes to Floyd Cooper for his work in The Blacker the Berry.

The Printz Award for Young Adult Literature has been given to Melina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road.

The Pura Belpre Award for Hispanic literature goes to author Margarita Engle for The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom and illustrator Yuyi Morales for Just In Case: A Trickster Tale and Spanish Alphabet Book.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for lifetime achievement went to Ashley Bryan, illustrator, known for many award-winning books, including Beautiful Blackbird (Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Winner).

The Odyssey Award goes to the audiobook of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, written and read by Sherman Alexie.

Alex Awards for adult books suitable for young adult readers go to the following:

City of Thieves, by David Benioff, published by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group.

The Dragons of Babel, by Michael Swanwick, a Tor Book published by Tom Doherty Associates.

Finding Nouf, by Zoë Ferraris published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti, published by Dial Press, a division of Random House.

Just After Sunset: Stories, by Stephen King, published by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster.

Mudbound, by Hillary Jordan, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

Over and Under, by Todd Tucker, published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

The Oxford Project, by Stephen G. Bloom, photographed by Peter Feldstein, published by Welcome Books.

Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow, published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Three Girls and Their Brother, by Theresa Rebeck, published by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House.

The William Morris Award, given for first-time authors, went to Elizabeth C. Bunce for A Curse Dark as Gold.

Watch This Spot! National Book Award Medals To Be Presented Tonight

The National Book Foundation will be presenting its 2008 medals tonight in the categories of adult fiction, adult nonfiction, poetry, and young people's literature.

The five finalists from which tonight's winner will be chosen in the young people's literature category are as follows:


Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster).

Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum).

Judy Blundell, What I Saw And How I Lied (Scholastic).

E. Lockhart, Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, The (Hyperion).

Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf).

With the exception of Appelt's The Underneath, covered before its nomination here on August 8, reviews of the other final five have been posted here beginning October 28. Scroll down or use the Search box to take a look at these finalists. These five nominees offer quite a range of style and subject: all mix great characterizations, humor, and serious substance directed at the "young adult" reader.

I'll post the NBA Medal winner here as soon as it is made known tonight!