Don't Mess with MAMA! Mo Willems Presents... That Is Not A Good Idea by Mo Willems

"WHAT LUCK! DINNER!"

A dapper fox, obviously on the prowl, practically twirls his mustache and licks his chops as he spies a tempting and tasty entre, a guileless-looking, blue-babuska-wearing goose, clutching her wicker shopping basket.

He gallantly invites her for stroll and she demurely accepts.  The melodrama ratchets up incrementally, as she in turn accepts the suggestion for a walk in the woods and a visit to the foxy gentleman's kitchen, where he engagingly begins to prepare their lunch, a savory soup in an alarmingly large stock pot.

So ... you think you know where this one is going?

Well, not with the wickedly wry Mo Willems as the director of this little one-reeler thriller.

Casting his little melodrama in the format of a silent film short subject, Mo Willems provides medium shots of the Fox and his quarry with closeups of the unsuspecting stooge goose coyly concurring, alternating with gray-toned title frames in which six little goslings act as a Greek chorus, with appropriately fateful prophecies.

"THAT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA!"

The warning subtitles become increasingly dire, with considerable overacting by the juveniles, as Fox's nefarious plot thickens, until at last he invites Goose to come closer to the simmering pot to taste for that elusive missing ingredient!

"THAT IS REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY NOT A GOOD IDEA!"

But the seemingly hapless hen turns the tables on this well-turned-out scoundrel in a climactic tour de force that has the reader suddenly realizing whom+ those warnings were really for, in Mo Willems' latest, That Is Not a Good Idea! (Balzer & Bray, 2013). Willems ends this little tale of peril with a final frame showing the goose and her chicks enjoying a savory soup with, um, just the right missing ingredient. Willems puts the silent film format to perfect use here, with each page a frame of a hand-cranked short subject, with a conclusion that would have his foxy villain (were he not otherwise engaged in, er, seasoning the soup) crying "Curses! Foiled again!"

Roll credits!

How Willems manages to continue to top himself with each flawless picture book would confound even the Keystone Kops. With a few well-chosen facial expression lines and telling body language, peerless page pacing, and a wry wit that wins over all ages, this winner of multiple Caldecotts and Theodor Seuss Geisel Awards shows yet again that he is indeed the master of picture-book craft.

As Publishers Weekly puts it cunningly and punningly, "a wickedly droll poultry-in-peril yarn."

The Envelope, Please! ALA Youth Media Awards Announced

The American Library Association has revealed their book and media winners for 2016.

Taking the prestigious John Newbery Award for the most outstanding contribution for children's literature was Matt de la Pena, for Last Stop on Market Street (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2015). Pena becomes the first Hispanic author to win this award.

Newbery Honor Awards go to Kimberly Brubaker Bradley for The War that Saved My Life (Dial Books, 2015) (see my review here), Roller Girl, (Dial Books 2015) by Victoria Jamieson, and Echo (Scholastic Press, 2015) by Pam Munoz Ryan.

The Randolph Caldecott Medal is awarded for the best illustrated book published in the United States. Winning the 2016 Caldecott for Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear (Little, Brown and Company, 2015), the story of the search for the toy bear who became famous as "Winnie-The-Pooh," is illustrator Sophie Blackall. The author was Lindsay Mattick.

Caldecott Honor Medals went to Trombone Shorty(Abrams Books, 2015), illustrated by Bryan Collier and authored by Troy Andrews; Waiting (Greenwillow Books, 2015) written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes, (see my review here); Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement (Candlewick Press, 2015), illustrated by Ekua Holmes and written by Carole Boston Weatherford; and the Newbery winner, Last Stop on Market Street (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2015), illustrated by Christian Robinson.

The 2016 Coretta Scott King Author Award, recognizing an African American author, went to Rita Williams-Garcia for Gone Crazy in Alabama (Harper-Collins, 2015) (see my review here). Illustrator Bryan Collier also took the King Illustrator Award for his work on Trombone Shorty (Abrams Books, 2015). The Coretta Scott King New Talent Author Award went to Ronald L. Smith for Hoodoo (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2015) (see my review here).

The Michael L. Printz Award for Young Adult literature was won by Laura Ruby for Bone Gap (Balzer & Bray, 2015).

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for life achievement went to Caldecott Award-winning author-illustrator Jerry Pinkney.

The Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) Award for the most distinguished beginning reader book went to David Adler's Don't Throw It to Mo! (Mo Jackson) (Penguin Young Readers, 2015),illustrated by Sam Ricks.

The Andrew Carnegie Medal for children's video went to Weston Woods Studio for its adaptation of Mo Willems' This Is NOT A Good Idea. (See my review of the book here).

Read the complete list of ALA's awards and winners here.

"BLARGIE! BLARGIE?" Cat the Cat, Who Is That? by Mo Willems

Cat the Cat surely likes her friends. There's good buddy Mouse the Mouse, her inexplicably best friend. Then there's the slightly stuffy Duck the Duck and surfer dude Fish the Fish, all with their own style of greeting, all as familiar as her own whiskers.

But then, Cat the Cat meets up with a genuine stranger.

Stacking blocks in her own neighborhood, there is a truly indescribable someone--or someTHING!

CAT THE CAT! WHO IS THAT!

EEEP!

I... HAVE... NO... IDEA.

It's tall. Its eyes are on stalks. It has three legs.

And FOUR arms.

And it can talk. "Blargie! Blargie!" it burbles at her.

Cat the Cat's tail goes all bottle-brushy and her ears are at full alert.

But the Alien seems harmless, with what might be loosely construed as a smile on what might be interpreted as its face. So Cat the Cat gets brave! Maybe.... Could "it" even be a friend?

Cat the Cat tries to twist her tongue around the creature's greeting. She tries out her own version of "blargie!" The creature blargies right back!

A friendship is born.

Mo Willems' ever perky Cat the Cat is back with yet another very simple early reader, Cat the Cat, Who Is That? (Balzer & Bray, 2010). Into this little book of very few basic words, Willems pours all his considerable and lauded skills of illustration and dialogue into turning his basic line drawings into individuals with their own individual personalities. For very early emergent readers not quite ready for his award-winning Elephant and Piggie early reading series, the adventures of Cat the Cat are simply the cat's whiskers.