Close Encounters: Mr. Wuffles! by David Wiesner

"LOOK, MR. WUFFLES, A NEW TOY!"

Mr. Wuffles is a laconic tuxedo cat who finds store-bought cat toys, polka-dotted mice, balls with bells inside, assorted things with feathers--beneath his notice.

But among those pathetic objects that obviously only appeal to those dumb cats, there is ONE thing that has a novel appeal.

It is a football-shaped metal thing with legs, looking like nothing so much a miniature colander with a lid, but obviously it has an enticing smell that intrigues Mr. Wuffles. Strange sounds are emanating from the object, and Mr. Wuffles gives it the cat treatment, rolling over and batting it with his paws, carrying it about in his mouth, and giving it a trial bite.

But inside that apparent toy are five tiny, badly shaken-up space aliens, rubbing their battered green heads and moaning and groaning in their own language, mostly triangles and squares with exclamation points. Their equipment is damaged, too, as  their green-clad chief engineer discovers. Their red-robed captain leads them out of the spacecraft where they are suddenly menaced by a black and white paw with notable claws.  Fleeing under the radiator and  inside the walls,  they meet up with an assortment of household ants and beetles and see that the insects have already chronicled their cat conflicts in cave-style drawings on the internal wall, showing Mr. Wuffles in all his fang-and-claw ferocity!

Despite the language barrier between the minuscule aliens and the assorted hexapods, they form an alliance of convenience against their mutual enemy. They seal their mutual defense pact with a ceremonial feast from the ants' cracker cache. That done. the ants and beetles haul in a supply of roundish objects--screw shanks, pencil erasers--candies--from which the aliens slice disks which they use to repair their engine.

Obviously, a diversionary tactic is going to be required to allow the alien space ship to escape Mr. Wuffles' orbit.  The ants and an airborne ladybug keep the cat distracted long enough for the extraterrestrials to launch their ship through the window just ahead of the disgruntled Mr. Wuffles' claws, which embed themselves in the windowsill as he watches them soar toward space beyond his backyard.

Five-time Caldecott  honoree, David Wiesner, clearly has another winner in his Mr. Wuffles!(Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2013), another of his comedic fantastical stories that concludes quixotically, still leaving the "reader" of this almost wordless book with plenty to ponder. For his tiny space travelers, Wiesner collaborated with a linguist to create a graphic language which kids who love codes and cyphers will enjoy, and his cryptic closing.page will provide readers with plenty of open-ended inspiration to continue the story of Mr. Wuffles and his adversarial allies.

Using his own cat, Cricket, as model, Wiesner creates a central character who is a totally real-looking cat, who like most of his clan, disdains his owner's proffered cat toys without even a sniff. Wiesner's aliens, however, are another story, fanciful robed figures somewhere between humanoid and ant-like, and the collusion between these space travelers and household vermin is a comic contrast to Mr. Wuffles' predictably catlike vigil at the crack beneath the radiator. A master of storytelling in graphic form, Wiesner has the critics in the palm of his paw in this one, a new classic that, as Booklist's reviewer writes, readers will "pounce on."

Go For It! I Got It! by David Wiesner

Wish. Hope. Aspiration.

All that and more are in the opening pages of David Wiesner's newest, almost wordless, book, I Got It! (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018). The frontispiece shows a boy in orange sneakers and baseball cap, with his fielder's glove on his left hand, wistfully watching from behind a chain-link fence as a group of guys and one girl gather to get up a game of baseball. The title page shows the boy inside the fence, hesitantly standing a few feet away from the others, socking one hand hopefully into the pocket of his glove.

It's the usual motley assortment for a sandlot game--a girl in a pink cap, a couple of blond kids who could be big and little brothers, a biracial kid and an Asian girl, a couple of bespectacled brothers who've brought the bats, and the tall kid who seems to be in charge, the requisite baseball in his hand.

The tall kid gives the kid with the glove the nod and points him toward the far outfield, where he waits for his chance to show what he can do. The bigger kid with glasses socks the first pitch. It's a fly ball rising high over the infield. The kid with the glove goes deep and calls it.

I GOT IT!!

It's a gutsy call and the kid goes for it, flat out.

And he falls flat, tripping on a root, as the ball comes down, just a couple of feet from his outstretched glove.

The other kids cover their eyes. SHEESH!

But the boy calls the next pop fly and again reaches for it, tripping on a root and slamming into a tree. He's not hurt, but his confidence is a bit shaken. The next ball hit high seems huge, filling the sky, and the other fielders go for it, all reaching for the ball; it seems like the whole team has called that ball. Has the kid got what it takes to snag it?

I GOT IT!

"Ah, but man's reach should exceed his grasp!" said poet Robert Browning, and that "go for it" feeling fills Wiesner's inspired picture book about making the big catch and making new friends.

The multiple Caldecott-winning David Weisner juggles both realism, in his real-kid illustrations of this pick-up team, and fantasy, as he imagines seems to flash through the space above as he goes for the ball. It's a little life lesson, as Wiesner's final illustration shows the boy's team, now waiting by the fence for their turn at bat, the new kid now sitting right in the middle of his teammates, ready to root for his side. Wiesner's exceptional illustrations, done with much detail, are still ambiguous enough to lend themselves to more than one understanding by the reader. And what's with that flock of birds that fill in most of the pages and who seem to be the boy's biggest fans? Wiesner always leaves the reader waiting for some ball or other to drop.

David Wiesner's Caldecott Award and Honor Medal books are Tuesday, Flotsam, The Three Pigs, Free Fall, Sector 7 (Caldecott Honor Book), and Mr. Wuffles! (Caldecott Medal - Honors Winning Title(s))

... And the Winners Are... 2014 Newbery and Caldecott Medals Awarded

The American Library Association has released the winners of this year's young people's book awards. The Newbery Award, for books written for young readers, has gone to Kate DiCamillo for her novel Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick Press, 2013). (See my review here.) DiCamillo is a past winner of this award for her The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread and the Newbery Honor Award for Because of Winn-Dixie.

Four Newbery Honor Books were also named: Holly Black's Doll Bones (Simon & Schuster, 2013), previous winner Kevin Henkes' The Year of Billy Miller (Greenwillow Books, 2013) (see my review here), Amy Timberlake's One Came Home (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), and Vince Vawter's Paperboy (Delacorte Press, 2013).

Taking the Caldecott Award for the best-illustrated book for children is Brian Floca for his Locomotive (Atheneum, 2013). Caldecott Honors went to  Journey (Candlewick, 2013), written and illustrated by Aaron Becker, to Molly Idle's Flora and the Flamingo (Chronicle Books, 2013), and the multiple Caldecott-winning David Wiesner for Mr. Wuffles! (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2013 (see my review here.)

The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for beginning reader books went to The Watermelon Seed (Hyperion, 2013), written and illustrated by Greg Pizzoli (read my review here), with Geisel Honor Awards going to Mary Sullivan's Ball (Houghton Mifflin, 2013), frequent award-winner Mo Willems for his A Big Guy Took My Ball! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) (Hyperion, 2013) (see review here), and Kevin Henkes' Penny and Her Marble (I Can Read Book 1) (Greenwillow, 2013).

Other ALA awards include the following:

Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award recognizing an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults:
“P.S. Be Eleven,” written by Rita Williams-Garcia, is the King Author Book winner. The book is published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Three King Author Honor Books were selected: “March: Book One,” written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell, and published by Top Shelf Productions; “Darius & Twig,” written by Walter Dean Myers and published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers; and “Words with Wings,” written by Nikki Grimes and published by WordSong, an imprint of Highlights.

Coretta Scott King (Illustrator) Book Award:
“Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me,” illustrated by Bryan Collier, is the King Illustrator Book winner. The book was written by Daniel Beaty and published by Little, Brown and Company, Hachette Book Group.
One King Illustrator Honor Book was selected: “Nelson Mandela,” illustrated and written by Kadir Nelson and published by Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award:
“When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop,” illustrated by Theodore Taylor III, is the Steptoe winner. The book is published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership.

Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement:
Authors Patricia and Researcher Fredrick McKissack are the winners of the Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award is presented in even years to an African American author, illustrator or author/illustrator for a body of his or her published books for children and/or young adults, and who has made a significant and lasting literary contribution.
 Patricia McKissack and her late husband Fredrick McKissack, both natives of Tennessee, began their writing and research partnership in the 1980’s.Their subject matter from family-based folklore to nonfiction titles, are scholarly researched and written with accurate, authentic text, creating a cultural transmission of history. Their immense range of topics are informative, readable and enjoyable, covering accounts from slavery days to biographical studies of noted men and women in African American history past and present.

Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults:
“Midwinterblood,” written by Marcus Sedgwick, is the 2014 Printz Award winner. The book is published by Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.
Four Printz Honor Books also were named: “Eleanor & Park,” written by Rainbow Rowell and published by St. Martin’s Griffin (Macmillan); “Kingdom of Little Wounds,” written by Susann Cokal and published by Candlewick Press; “Maggot Moon,” written by Sally Gardner, illustrated by Julian Crouch and published by Candlewick Press; and “Navigating Early,” written by Clare Vanderpool and published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, Penguin Random House Company.

Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience:
“A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin,” written by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet and published by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. wins the award for children ages 0 to 10.
“Handbook for Dragon Slayers,” written by Merrie Haskell and published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, is the winner of the middle-school (ages 11-13) award.
The teen (ages 13-18) award winner is “Rose under Fire,” written by Elizabeth Wein and published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group.

Alex Awards for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences:

 “Brewster,” written by Mark Slouka and published by W. W. Norton & Company

“The Death of Bees,” written by Lisa O’Donnell and published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

“Golden Boy: A Novel,” written by Abigail Tarttelin and published by ATRIA Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

“Help for the Haunted,” written by John Searles and published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

“Lexicon: A Novel,” written by Max Barry and published by The Penguin Group, Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

“Lives of Tao,” written by Wesley Chu and published by Angry Robot, a member of the Osprey Group

“Mother, Mother: A Novel,” written by Koren Zailckas and published by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Relish,” written by Lucy Knisley and published by First Second, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership

“The Sea of Tranquility: A Novel,” written by Katja Millay and published by ATRIA Paperback, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

“The Universe Versus Alex Woods,” written by Gavin Extence and published by Redhook Books, an imprint of Orbit, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children's video:
Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly Ellard of Weston Woods Studios, Inc., producers of “Bink &Gollie: Two for One,” are the Carnegie Medal winners. The video’s cast is anchored by Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome, with music by David Mansfield. Tony Fucile’s artwork is brilliantly brought to life by Chuck Gammage Animation.