Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Bad Boys by Margie Palatini

If you thought you'd heard it all about the big, b-a-a-d wolf, it's time you met Willie and Wally, those two really b-a-a-d con artists of the forests created by Margie Palatini and Henry Cole.

In their first book, Bad Boys, big bad wolves Wally and Willy begin the story escaping just ahead of a lynch mob composed of Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs. When the two bad wolves spot a herd of sheep, they come up with their own witness protection program, disguising themselves in matronly dresses and woolly locks to blend in with the ewe-biquitous female flock.

"We'll go on the lam," chuckled Willy.

"Pull the wool over their eyes," chortled Wally.

"Fleece the flock," they both snickered. "Oh, yeah, we're bad, we're bad, we're really, really bad."

Although the disguises dupe the ordinary flocksters, tough ewes Betty Mutton and Meryl Sheep (former stars of stage and screen) and Trudie Ewe (True-to-You, get it?) quiz the two faux ewes closely. When Betty Mutton refuses to believe their story that the two are Peep Sheep ("Just a minute. I knew the Peep Sheep. I grazed with the Peep Sheep. I counted with the Peep Sheep. And you two don't leap like Peep Sheep."), she arranges a ewe-nique experience as she fast talks the wolves into lining up with the ewes waiting to be shorn .

Buzz-cut, the bad boys take it on the lam again until they can safely lay low, knit themselves some clothes to cover their skivvies, and wait for those bad, bad, really, really bad haircuts to grow out.

Palatini is at her pun-niest with the text of this very funny book, and Henry Cole's illustrations of the two con artists trying to fleece the flock are choice. Kids will love to chime in on the refrain "We're bad, bad, really, really bad!"

In their 2006 sequel, Bad Boys Get Cookie!, Palatini and Cole give the two wolves new disguises. When the gingerbread boy escapes from the old baker, the ever-hungry two dress as private investigators Wallace and Willis, with no luck in, er, interrogating the runaway cookie. Ditto for their Hansel and Gretel disguises, which wouldn't fool a near-sighted witch. When their really bad get ups fail to trick the treat, Cookie Man taunts the toothy two with a refrain kids will soon pick up:

"Na Na Ni Na Na!
Lookee! Lookee!
You can't get me.
I'm one smart cookie!"

No More Moo: Boo-Hoo Moo by Margie Palatini

Margie Palatini's 2007 hit Moo Who? told the funny, punny tale of Hilda MacHeifer, who, struck by a cow pie, suffers temporary amnesia and a pro tem inability to use her proper voice. Her identity crisis results in a hilarious census of her fellow farm animals as she searches for who and what she truly is. At last convinced that she is indeed a cow ("You're no swine. You're bovine."), Hilda finally finds her inner moo and expresses it all too vocally, to the pained but patient and earplugged barnyard audience.

Never one to miss a singular chance for a sequel, Palatini has just published a companion book, Boo-Hoo Moo, in which Hilda MacHeifer has a bit of the blues:

Hilda MacHeifer was down in the dumps.

Feeling low, sounding like it, too.

Even her moo was low. "Mi-mi-moo. Boo-hoo-moo!"

And with a voice as annoying as Hilda's, it's not just MacHeifer who has the miseries. All her barnyard friends are miserable, too, just having to hear her inharmonious heavings. What to do about the boo-hoo-moo?

Finally the cat suggests that perhaps Hilda is just lonesome and opines that a cat-and-cow duet would do it, raising the heifer's spirits. Of course, all the other animals want to get into the act, and the would-be vocalists swell into a chorus of volunteers. An audition is held and soon the whole farm is pulsating with solid walls of sound.

But is Hilda happy to low along? Well, no. It seems Hilda has had a mid-career crisis. "I don't think I can really sing," she admits." No kidding?" says the pig, happily removing his prophylactic earplugs at last.

"It's true. I am definitely not a singer. I have the soul of a dancer.

I'm a heifer who's a hoofer!"

Witty wordplay, funny punning, all-out alliteration, rampant rhyming,and plenty of cracking wise are Palatini's trademarks, and as in her earlier hits Piggie Pie!, Zoom Broom ((The Sequel to Piggie Pie)), Bad Boys, and Bedhead,, this latest offering, abetted by Keith Graves' comedic illustrative style, will appeal especially to older picture book readers whose verbal and visual sophistication will find her humor just to their taste.

No Hurry to Hatch: Shelly by Margie Palatini

"Shelly was not ready."

In this recent offering by picture book humorist Margie Palatini, Shelly is a boy duckling who really is unwilling to come out of his shell. His three precocious sisters, Adelaide, Miranda, and Tallulah, have barely popped their shells when they become proficient at roller blading, portrait painting, and ballet. The big sisters are impatient with Shelly's progress, or lack thereof. Shelly's legs stick out of the bottom half of his shell, and he wears the top half of the shell like a helmet, peering through squarish eye holes like a Humpty Dumpty with webbed feet.

"He's fine," said Father. "Wait and see."

"He's taking his time," said Mother.

Although his accelerated sisters conscientiously provide plenty of learning experiences for the developmentally delayed duckling--playgrounds, picnics, paints, pirouette practice--Shelly stays resolutely stuck inside his shell. Finally the impatient sisters shove off to do their own thing outside, and then--"it's SHELLYTIME!"

With the playroom all to himself, Shelly doffs his eggshell helmet and proceeds to make a sofa cushion fort, play Go Fish with his bunny, put together puzzles, read books, and create an architectural masterpiece out of his blocks. Finally he paints a door sign--"NO SISTERS ALLOWED!"

When the go-go girls return, Shelly has just enough time to pop his shell back over his head and play dumb. "When will you be ready?" the sisters insist.

"Wednesday," says Shelly.

He just wasn't ready to say which Wednesday.

Palatini's Shelly should resonate with younger siblings who are perpetually outdone or dominated by older or more precocious sisters or brothers. The illustrations by Guy Francis are comic without making our reluctant duckling into a dunce, adding much to Palatini's always witty text. This book works well with Robert Kraus' evergreen tale of Leo the Late Bloomer, whose shy, introverted ways help him to bloom perfectly in his own good time.

Say "Yes" to the Nap! No Nap! Yes, Nap! by Margie Palatini

MAMA SAYS, NAP!

Baby thinks otherwise.

And the chase is on! Baby streaks, his blankie streaming, with Mama giving chase, from room to room, through the house, each of them repeating their mantra...Yes, nap! No nap! as they go.

Mama chases Baby energetically, under the table and into the kitchen, with her speedy little one always a couple of steps ahead.

Baby also knows how to stall. He demands a drink, downs a whole glass of milk, and then speeds off again. He starts a clapping game, and although Mama joins in, growing closer, he slides out of her grasp again. He sings, Mama chimes in, but he slips away once more.

Finally, he wants a story.

Aha! Mama senses an opening, taking the storybook onto her lap in the big comfy chair, and Baby can't resist climbing up and settling down, head against Mama's shoulder. There's a yawn, and then Baby rubs his sleepy eyes, and as Mama settles the blankie over them both, she knows she's got it made.

NOW BABY NAP.

BIG LONG NAP

ON MAMA'S LAP

At last Baby says yes to the nap. But it's not just Baby who catches a few winks, in Margie Palatini's latest, No Nap! Yes Nap! (Little, Brown Books, 2014). Artist Dan Yaccarino catches the spirit of the chase in his ebullient illustrations which move from left to right throughout the book, until drowsiness catches up with both Mama and Baby on the final pages and they come, happily, to rest. Yaccarino's running redheads are cheery and in great spirits throughout, and Palatini's brief text quickly becomes a refrain for little ones and an easy read for emergent readers. A jolly new way to "catch a nap!"

Coop de Grace: Bad Boys Get Henpecked by Margie Palatini

Those bad boys, Willy and Wally Wolf, were hungry.

Belly-babbling, tummy-talking, gut-grumbling hungry.

Yep. Those loopy lupines Willy and Wally Wolf are on the prowl again. This time they've got a yen for hen!

Disinclined to go chicken chasing, however, the two case the coop before the caper, ogling Mrs. Hen hard at work doing her daily chores. Obviously, this hen could use some handy help around the house, someone to kindly cope with her copious coopwork. Costuming themselves with rubber-glove coxcombs and fake beaks, voila! Willy and Wally are transformed into the Handy-Dandy Lupino Brothers, two capable capons at her service.

"Good gracious," clucked the hen. "That old rooster of mine has flown the coop and I could use some help around the house. But all I can offer to pay is mere chicken feed."

Willy winked at Wally, Wally winked at Willy.

"We work for cheep." drooled Willy.

But before they can make a move, Mrs. Hen hands them a bucket and mop, drops her apron, and with a cheery "Ta-ta!" and "Good luck!" this bird has flown.

The Lupino Bros. feel they have no choice but to fake it while they wait for their chicken dinner to check back in, grumpily working their way through the to-do list while keeping a wary eye on what seems like dozens of pesky, peeping chickies. By the time they get to the last item--"Sit on the nest"--that job is beginning to look pretty darned good to the two pooped predators.

But as the Lupinos lounge their way through sweet rest in the nest, the little peepers are up to no good, undoing all the boys' hard work, and when Mrs. Hen makes her return and sacks her lazy babysitters, the two bad boys have had about all they can take of fowl play. Postponing their finger-lickin' feast indefinitely, Willy and Wally wind up, as always, taking it on the lam and dining on a vegetarian dinner.

"I do believe I have lost my taste for chicken," said Willy.

In her latest in the Bad Boys series, Bad Boys Get Henpecked! (HarperCollins, 2009) Margie Palatini keeps the puns a-popping and the alliterations a-tumbling, while Henry Cole's hilarious illustrations of those carnivorous con men keep the action rolling right along. Previous tales of those would-be wily wolf brothers are Bad Boys and Bad Boys Get Cookie!

Let the Eggplant Wars Begin! Isabella for Real by Margie Palantini

Saturday, 10:21 a.m.
Scene 1/TAKE 1
Attic Bedroom Closet

Can an eleven-year-old go to jail for fibbing, faking, and personality perjury? Just wondering.

"ISABELLA!"

Scene 1/Take 3

"ISABELL-AH!!!!"

Yes, she is me. Guilty. All four syllables.

He/him/him/he: Vincent. My cousin--my almost brother--who, by the way should never ask me to help him with anything again.

It's complicated.

It is. Isabella's college film-school cousin had recruited her to play the central character in some videos featuring her colorful Italian Jersey family. Isabella assumes these are class assignments and being a bit of a ham herself is happy to help. Little does she know he also uploads them to YouTube, where Isabella and her extended family's funny vignettes go immediately viral!

Now Isabella is about to begin sixth grade at the rather elite private Fortier Academy for Young Women, definitely different in poshness from her elementary school--Merciful Sisters on the Mount of Small Blessing. With her rich Aunt Kiki footing the tuition, Izzie is highly hopeful of establishing a new and more sophisticated image, but that hope looks iffy when she meets three typically cosmopolitan students, Oakleigh Lawson-Ng, Anisha Patel, and Emory Easton, who show an unexpected interest in her soap opera diva Aunt Kiki (a.k.a. Francesca Franchelli, the Contessa).

I spun around and saw three girls with perfect hair, perfect teeth, and perfect unbitten nails.

"Bonjour," they said.

It was going to be harder for me to fit in than I thought.

"Boon? Bone?... Uh, Ciao," I sighed finally.

"Hear that?" said the shoulder-tapping girl. Before I knew it I was surrounded by a trio of Madelines.

"She said Ciao! Told you it had to be HER! You are, aren't you? Isabella Antonelli?

Oakleigh whispered. "We've been wondering, what exactly do we call the daughter of a countess?"

Instantly, Isabella realizes that the girls are confusing her mom with her glamorous Aunt Kiki, former star of the long-running but lamentably discontinued daytime drama, Search for Truth, Lies, and Love, and that her home must be the opulent Italianate mansion portrayed in Vincent's film set. Isabella is filled with confusing emotions. She loves the sudden acceptance at school that her Contessa connection brings and tries to explain her relationship with some fuzzy fibs to her welcoming clique of popular Earl Gray-sipping friends. But oh, what a web we weave, as Izzie finds out as she is forced into more and more not-so-little white lives to keep the in-crowd trio's friendship piqued.

At last Isabella has got herself way in deep, and the posh preppies are clamoring for a meeting with the Contessa herself. Panicked, Isabella plies them with authentic Eggplant Parmesan purlioned from her eccentric Aunt Ellie and Aunt Minnie and stalls for time until she and her sympathetic cousin Frankie (not Frankie the cat, as we are frequently reminded) can persuade Vincent to film another video in his elaborate mock-up set of the Contessa's salon and persuade Aunt Kiki to make a comeo appearance to reinforce Isabella's new persona. It doesn't help that her Academy buddies self-reinforce their take on the whole faux affair, now gone viral on Youtube. Izzie's real house, a two-story frame house in an average neighborhood becomes part of a media frenzy surrounded by satellite press trucks. Isabella and the helpful Frankie are forced to clamber down the antique rose trellis (formerly Aunt Kiki's teenaged escape to adventure) to flee the paparazzi and try to salvage what is left of her at-jeopardy reputation at Fortier Academy.

Just be yourself, especially when she's not sure which self that is, is a tall order for Isabella Antonelli in this first book in the proposed Eggplant Wars series, Margie Palatini's Isabella for Real (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). Palatini is a veteran writer of hilarious picture books, and this fast-moving tale of a Jersey girl in the process of a self-makeover is only a bit far-fetched for the average middle school story, and middle readers who are trying to transition into a more mature image in their next school will right away recognize the all-too familiar pressures of moving on up.

Told in three streams--cleverly paneled comic-formatted pages by noted artist LeYuen Pham, flashbacks in which Isabella recalls how things got so complicated, and real-time first-person narratives combine to create a realistic look at an eleven-year-old trying to deal with her quirky, if comic, family and her own self-image as she moves out into a wider social setting, especially when complicated by her various identities in the ubiquitous social media world. It's a very modern middle school story with lots of laughs and a bit of a cautionary premise for readers just entering into their new milieu.

Palatini's forthcoming book is a great choice for the crowded middle school novel shelf and a worthily comic feminine-focused companion to James Patterson's best-selling Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life series (See reviews here).Isa

In the Zone: Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone by Margie Palatini

... Being halfway to eleven is when you really absolutely need a fairy godmother the most. I'm going to require major fairy dust intervention in the hair department alone. There are just so many days a person can wear a hat, if you know what I mean.

HERE'S THE SPILL (VENUS-SPEAK FOR "EXPLANATION"):

Sixth grade is only 198 days away. That's not a lot of time to learn about all the stuff you need to learn about.... Venus says her sister says that if you're not cool by sixth grade, you are not going to live happily ever after in sixth grade. The Cool Police are taking notes.

There are some kids (Brittany and Ashley, a.k.a. The Bashleys), who have the cool quality innately--perfect little bodies that look good in whatever current style and hair that never even needs combing (although they do it constantly)--and rule the school from the center of the universe, their table at lunch. Others, like Zoey and her friend Venus, expend molto energy trying to catch the cool. Zoey's hair, however, stands up and out and every which-way, but mostly in her way on the way to popularity: she was apparently born with a terminal case of bed head, which she handles by wearing hats as much as possible, thereby acquiring hat head when she's ordered to remove them for violating Harry S. Truman School's Rule #5--Absolutely No Hats Allowed.

On a particularly bad hair day (day 181 in the cool countdown), Zoey covers her wayward locks as best she can with her grandfather's old fedora, and donning his vintage bowling team shirt (Grabowski's Tool and Die with Ray stitched on the pocket), sets off for school hoping that what she's wearing will pass the test as a costume of quirky retro cool. The hat is greeted with mixed reviews, but Zoey manages to avoid notice by her hat hawk principal, Mrs. Pappazian, as she makes her way to the hallway where her bulging locker is located. And that's when the fairy dust descends dramatically into the Zoey Zone!

There she finds a team of New York-ish garbed photographers from the 'tween 'zine U Grl, clicking photos of The Bashleys and selected Friends of Bashleys right in front of her locker. And at that moment a fairy godmother in the form of the project boss (Lady in Black named Jazz) turns and mouths the magic words which hold the Key to Cool for Zoey's future:

"Does anyone have something INTERESTING in their LOCKER, that we can USE in the PHOTOGRAPHS?"

"I DoooooooooOOOOOOOOOO!" says Zoey.

"Hmmmm. Interesting." says Jazz. "So, Ray, what have you got in that locker of yours?

Jazz watches with delight as a avalanche of items cascade from Zoey's locker--4 books on the presidents, a piccolo, 2 owl-puke pellets, a book on King Tut, 3 tennis balls, 1 tube of green paint, and a roll of orange duct tape--to name a few.

"Fun! Get all of this, Maya," Jazz orders her camo-booted assistant. "Geek chic? LOVE IT"!

Zoey and Venus become the stars of the photo shoot, Zoey is offered a blog/column in the magazine, and with the forthcoming U Grl featuring the new cool celebrities of Harry S. Truman Elementary, Zoey finds she now has the option of seating at The Bashley Table at lunch to choose (or NOT.) After all, Table Ten, with the other chic geeks, is the center of her own cool universe.

Palatini sets off her unique character's musings on the higher path to coolness in a short and spiffy little novel in which Zoey's creativity leaps from the page with a rich pastiche of fonts, text boxes, drawings, and visual gags that help this light and bouncy storyline bound off the page, making this book both cutting-edge graphic chic and fine fare for the reluctant reader. A sort of girls' answer to Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid and sequels, Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone has wide appeal to 'tween girls contemplating the call to be cool in middle school.

For another uniquely designed story of "making it in middle school," see my post on Jennifer Holm's Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf: A Year Told Through Stuff, reviewed here.

Drawing On Her Strengths: Ellie McDoodle, New Kid in School by Ruth McNally Barshaw

THE END

Seriously. This is the end. I'm doing this new journal to keep track of my family's move to a new house (new city, new schools, new everything). There won't be much to keep track of, though, because this is the END of everything good.

Eleanor McDougal, a.k.a. Ellie McDoodle, graphic diarist extraordinaire, introduced in Ruth McNally Barshaw's Ellie McDoodle: Have Pen, Will Travel, is back in an even-better sequel, Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School. In this one, Ellie's problem is worse than camping with worrisome relatives in the woods: she's moving away from her six best friends, her house with her own room with her own clouds painted by her own mother on her own wall, her school where she knows everyone, and even her nickname, McDoodle, for her constant cartoon commentaries on daily life.

In the new place, she has to share a room with her high-school senior sister and go to a school where nobody knows her name and nobody can get it right. (On the first day she's called Eleanor, Allie, Ella, Elmo, Ollie, Ellie McDoo-gal, and, worst of all, Smellie McDoo-doo.) The school already HAS a best artist--Rachel--so nobody, including the cranky art teacher, Ms. Trebuchet, cares about Ellie's comic drawings.

But Ellie's got spunk and resilience and a dab hand for a caricature on her side. She sets out to find something good in her neighborhood and finds a humongous library and great woods to explore. And at school she finds a way to put her art skills and Ms. Whittam's social studies unit on non-violent protest to good use--organizing some long-needed action against the slow lunch line that leaves her class three minutes to actually eat their lunch--if it is indeed edible! In the course of designing a logo for the movement (a circle with a capital Q (for queue) with a diagonal line) and stickers and T-shirts with the logo for her co-protesters, Ellie wins the hearts and minds of most of the class--and the majority of the school board members--and becomes a fifteen-minute media darling when the protest turns up on the evening news.

Ellie even gets her nickname back from her new classmates and writes a new END to her current graphic diary.

THINGS I'VE LEARNED:

1) When I'm most sad, I should watch, because things are bound to get better.

2) A brand-new situation is like a blank canvas: I can be a real artist and make it great.

3) It's okay if new people don't like me right away. They will eventually.

4) From now on, I'm going to find the "new kid" and be friendly.

I need a new sketchbook. This isn't the end... it's only the beginning.

Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School is an empathetic, funny, and highly readable semi-graphic novel, a format which seems to be in style these days. In addition to the best-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, recent books which make use of this format for middle school girls include Katie Davis' The Curse of Addy McMahon, reviewed recently here, Margie Palatini's Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone, reviewed here, , Marissa Moss' Amelia's Notebook series, two of which are reviewed here, Rachel Renee Russell's Dork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life, and the similar format adopted by Newbery author Jennifer Holm in her unique graphic collage-styled Middle School Is Worse Than Meatloaf: A Year Told Through Stuff, reviewed here. All of these engaging middle school characters are transitional sisters under the skin with whom 'tween readers will feel right at home.