Tallying Turkeys: 10 Fat Turkeys by Tony Johnston

Gobble, Gobble, Wibble, Wobble,
Do a noodle dance.
10 fat turkeys
Fooling on a fence.

"Lookie!" said a silly turkey,
Swinging on a vine.
Gobble, Gobble, Wibble, Wobble,
"Whoops!" Now there are ... 9!

While their parents are busy counting heads for their turkey-day dinner, preschoolers can be gleefully counting their own plump poultry in another of veteran author Tony Johnston's feast-day favorites, 10 Fat Turkeys.

Not just a counting book, this book is also an elementary subtraction exercise, as one by one the feathery flock do various dismounts from their fence and the turkey count drops:

"Lookie!" squawks a goofy turkey,
Trying to roller-skate.
Gobble, Gobble, Wibble, Wobble,
Oops! Now there are... 8!

There's soon plenty of room up on that fence as turkeys alternately dive, fall off, and even flop away after swallowing an errant bee, until...

Lookie!" yells a plump turkey,
Jumping up and down.
Gobble, Gobble, Wibble, Wobble.
That's all there are! ...NONE!

Rich Deas' bright autumnal palette decks out his terrific Toms in shades of amber and orange and provides them with their own distinctive chapeaus, from baseball caps to Stetsons to aviator helmets and goggles. With their goofy, googly eyes and expressive beaks, we just know these poultry pals won't be falling for anyone's Thanksgiving dinner invitation. And, despite its tempting board book and paperback/CD versions, if 10 Fat Turkeys totals too many turkeys, there's always its toddler cousin, Salina Yoon's equally bouncy and best-selling Five Silly Turkeys, which can, um, be counted on to fill the bill as well!

Without a Prayer! Two Bad Pilgrims by Kathryn Lasky

In 1620 a ship called the Mayflower left England bound for the New World in the west. On board were Pilgrims seeking a new life in a land where freedom.....

HEY! THIS IS BORING! HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

THIS BOOK IS ABOUT US---FRANCIS AND JOHNNY BILLINGTON--AND HOW MUCH FUN WE HAD ALMOST
BLOWING UP THE MAYFLOWER, LIVING WITH THE INDIANS, AND CAUSING LOTS OF TROUBLE IN THE NEW WORLD!

Literature is full of bad boys, from Tom and Huck on, but who knew that two naughty lads were among those staid, gray-clad Pilgrims?

Well, it seems that the Pilgrim Fathers filled out their passenger manifesto with several families of what the Pilgrims called "Strangers"--some of them adventurers, some scofflaws one step ahead of the constable--who boarded alongside the Winthrops and the Bradfords. Of especial note among these were the Billingtons, a family with two sons, Francis and John. Records show that their parents were no prizes, but Frankie and Johnny were decidedly something else!

In the hands of Newbery-winning author Kathryn Lasky, the waggish Frankie and Johnny tell their own story their way in her latest, Two Bad Pilgrims (Viking, 2009). The brothers' boast that they almost blew up the Mayflower is documented as no idle brag: bored with the seemingly endless games of "draughts" (checkers), "naughts and crosses," (tic-tac-toe), and "Lummelen," (keep-away) on the long voyage, it seems the two got their hands on some "squibs," gunpowder twisted inside a paper straw, used like matches to ignite cannons. Caught almost "red-handed" just in time, the Mayflower escaped, as one of the Pilgrim Fathers put it, "through God's mercy a great danger...." on the high seas, no thanks to Frankie and Johnny.

WE WEREN'T SO BAD. MAN, THERE'S BAD AND THEN THERE'S REALLY BAD. WE WERE JUST MIDDLING BAD. SO WE NEARLY BLEW UP THE STINKFLOWER. IT WASN'T LIKE WE MEANT TO!

Having nearly aborted a whole major chapter in American history doesn't seem to have inhibited the Billington boys. Put to communal tasks immediately when they set their feet on North American soil ("WE WERE ALLOWED TO PLAY FOR ABOUT THREE MINUTES BEFORE THEY PUT US TO WORK!") Frankie and Johnny managed to skip the labor detail most of the time, perfecting their tree-climbing skills to avoid detection. While they were goofing off in the treetops, however, they spotted some large bodies of water to the west, and one of these discoveries is known to this day as the Billington Sea. Avoiding close contact with their hard-working fellow colonists had another unexpected advantage: they and their parents waltzed through the "Great Sickness" with nary a sniffle, being, as their fellow colonists probably grumbled, too lazy to die.

Making himself scarce from schooling and labor did get Johnny taken hostage by the neighboring Nauset Indians, who didn't seem to be signatories to the treaty with Massasoit. The colonists had given the rascal up for a goner when word came of a wandering golden-haired lad living with the "natives" down around Cape Cod. Probably with understandable reluctance, the village elders negotiated for his return, in the process fortuitously establishing peaceful relations with the Nausets, who strangely seemed to have enjoyed Master Billington's sojourn with them.

"I'M B-A-A-CK!"

Pious Pilgrim history to the contrary, our first settlers were always a mixed lot, with their share of ramblin' guys who sometimes serendipitously brought their improbable good luck along for the ride and added to the colorful mix that is our land to this day. With insouciant asides from the two lads breaking into the earnest efforts of "the Professor" to narrate the official account of Plimoth Plantation, Kathryn Lasky's hilarious tales of the Billington boys will delight young readers with their little-known exploits. John Manders' caricature-styled illustrations add to the fun--and the historical facts--of the book. For older kids, who think they know it all about the Pilgrim Fathers, this new Thanksgiving story will be both a revelation and a total romp!

Spring Fever: Emma-Jean Lazurus Fell In Love by Lauren Tarshis

"It is clear that Will is not suitable for me in any way," Emma-Jean said. "And yet I find myself thinking about him even when I want to be thinking about other things."

Indeed she could not recall a single fact from her classes that day. She had concluded, however that the arrangement of freckles on Will's forearm closely resembled the constellation Virgo.

"Could it be," Emma-Jean asked, her tone grave, "that I am suffering from spring fever? A crush?"

That anomaly, a middle-school girl who tries to approach life with total rationality, the doggedly logical heroine of Lauren Tarshis' hit first novel, Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree, (reviewed here in my post of February 10, 2007) to her total surprise finds herself in the throes of a crush on Will Keeler, indifferent student, star basketball player, but, even to the sensible-minded Emma-Jean, irresistibly cute! To make matters worse, the Spring Fling is coming up, and her best friends seem even more twitter-pated than usual, talking of little except the boys they want to ask to the dance.

Only Colleen is without a crush, or so it seems, until a mysterious note appears in her locker one day:

COLLEEN-

I THINK YOU'RE THE BEST GIRL IN THE WHOLE GRADE.

I HOPE YOU WANT TO GO TO THE SPRING FLING.

LOVE,
SOMEONE WHO THINKS YOU'RE SO GREAT!

Colleen is transformed by the amazing thought that some boy actually likes her, and buoyed by this knowledge, commandeers Emma-Jean to sleuth out the writer of the note so that she can ask him to the dance. Emma-Jean readily agrees, and examining the note with her father's magnifying glass, determines that the writer must be one of the nine left-handed boys in her seventh-grade class. But when Emma-Jean's surveillance uncovers the real person behind the note, her crush on Will takes on a new and conflicting significance.

Fans of Tarshis' refreshingly insightful and truly funny first novel will love Emma-Jean's second adventure into the "messy" world of middle-school mores, Emma Jean Lazarus Fell in Love, in which she experiences both the startling twinges of first love and a new appreciation of the pivotal importance of the loyalty she shares with her best friends.

Game Action: Swing by Rufus Butler Seder

CAN YOU SWING A BASEBALL BAT?
WHOOM! WHOOSH! WHACK!

CAN YOU KICK A SOCCER BALL?
FROOM! BOOM! SMACK!

In another of his celebrations of movement, Rufus Butler Seder's best-seller, Swing! (Workman, 2009) turns from animals in motion to the joy and beauty of human movement.

CAN YOU CARTWHEEL THROUGH THE AIR?
HOP! LOOP! WHIRL!

CAN YOU SPIN AROUND ON ICE?
SLIDE! GLIDE! TWIRL!

Children of elementary age can be seen in all those ebullient activities kids love, swimming the breast stroke like a dolphin, getting off a jump shot, and just running a race for the sheer joy of it. This scanimation book, like its predecessors, Gallop!: A Scanimation Picture Book (Scanimation Books) and Waddle!: A Scanimation Picture Book (Scanimation Picture Books), has been described over and over as "jawdropping" and must be seen in action to be appreciated. For example, in the picture of a child hitting a baseball, we see the action from setting the stance, through the backswing and follow-through, until the baseball, stitches and all, caroms toward us and itself fills the "screen." Each stage can be "frozen" by holding the page immobile and reversed by turning the page back toward the front of the book. While not marketed as an "easy-to-read" book, the text is brief, presented in large, colorful type, and well within the reach of most beginning readers.

Swing! is a book which will fascinate kids and prompt them to read aloud to each other as they share the action. As an added bonus, after kids are told to "give themselves a great big cheer" (accompanied by a scanimation of a leaping pom-pom-waving cheerleader), the author offers a final healthy suggestion:

NOW LET'S GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY!

Move Over, Big Dog!: SheezuCacaPoopoo 2: Max Goes to the Dogs by Joy Behar

Everybody loves an underdog, and at Doggy Day Care, Max, the shihtzu/cocker/poodle-mix puppy, finds himself definitely low dog on the totem pole when he spends his first day at school being pushed around by the Big Dog on Campus, Brutus, and his burly buddies. Although his owner Evie is sympathetic with his plight, her mom is adamant that Max is too much of a mess maker to stay home alone, and Max finally realizes that he has to take matter into his own petite paws!

But when he meets up with a dog even smaller than he is, a timid little Chihua-poo, inexplicably named "Macho," who spends his day cowering under a table, Max realizes that it's got to be brains against brawn here. Forming a union of the little dogs, Max comes up with a game plan and a set of signals to bamboozle and outmaneuver the gangsta big dogs in order to get their rightful turn at the food bowls and sunny napping spots. Scooting under and around the big dogs, the little dogs achieve some of their objectives, but Max realizes that his campaign won't succeed unless the miniatures gain the respect of the big guys for good and all:

"Now see here, big guy," Max barked, trembling just a little. "I speak for my brothers and sisters when I say we may be closer to the ground that your are, but that doesn't mean you can walk all over us."

Brutus growled in reply. He was a dog of few words. Max though quickly. "You know, I bet we could even be useful to you if you give us a chance."

"What do you mean?" the big dog snarled.

"There are some advantages to our size," said Max. "We could make this work for you."

Max goes on to point out the advantages of small size--retrieving chewy toys from under low furniture and scratching itches that the big guy can't quite reach, Brutus begins to get the drift.

"I guess you're worth having around after all, little guy," he admits, and Doggy Day Care is on its way to being safe for the small and the tall there each day.

TV celebrity Joy Behar does a workmanlike job in this sequel to her popular first Max tale, Sheetzucacapoopoo: My Kind of Dog Sheetzucacapoopoo 2: Max Goes to the Dogs, with its comical canine caricatures, easy, breezy style, and positive message about dealing with classroom bullies which kids will subliminally understand, establishes Max the spunky Sheetzucacapoopoo as a diminutive dog to be reckoned with.

From Cowrie Shells to Silver Certificates: Show Me The Money: How to Make Cents of Economics by Alvin Hall

"If you were on a desert island, no amount of money would help you survive--you couldn't eat it, drink it, use it to build a shelter, or to keep away wild animals.

So why is money valuable?

The answer is simply that everyone has agreed to it."

When you think about this last sentence, it seems remarkable that a planet full of diverse and opinionated people like us could agree on such an abstract concept as modern money, or as author Alvin Hall describes it, a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. In his Show Me The Money (DK Books, 2008) Hall recounts this truly remarkable process, starting with the history of barter, and describes how livestock, jewel stones and shiny metals (e.g., silver and gold), cowrie shells, valuable objects such as tools, and at last coins, imprinted with graphics of these icons of trade, came to stand in for the value of goods and services themselves. After all, people are sometimes lazy and indecisive, and coins are certainly more portable than cows and less given to spoilage than a sack of grain, giving people the chance to carry their symbolic trading medium around and postpone their purchase until they were sure they were getting the best price for what they wanted.

With this thorny concept out of the way, author Hall goes on to explain in short, pithy text boxes such modern-day money matters as supply and demand, banks, stock exchanges, credit cards, and capitalism. Moving on, he discusses coinage, printing of paper money, counterfeit, and emerging means of exchange, such as debit cards, gift cards, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, and electronic credits (see PayPal!)

Of course, all this exchanging of forms of moola mean that someone has to actually perform some service or produce something of value in order to receive these rewards, and Hall doesn't slack on his discussion of work and of its anxiety-inducing alternative, investing!

There is much more to money--the choices between spending, stashing, or speculating and the perils of each (being busted, encountering inflation in price and thus deflation of the value of your stash, and the perils of getting the biggest return for your investment.) Although he stops short of explaining credit default swaps and Ponzi schemes, Hall takes the middle reader much further into modern economics than most authors have dared.

Shopping tips--look at what you're spending, not what you're saving by buying on sale; recognize the difference between needs and wants; and comparing the long-term gains and losses from money use--round out the discussions of personal finance. Hall then moves on to discuss matters of international economics, fair trade versus free trade, Keynesian versus Friedmanic philosophy, and the up and down cycles of global business. He even ventures to look at the world of work in 2020, ("The Way We'll Work") when his readers will be becoming part of the world's economy as producers.

Typical of Dorling Kindersley's design style, there are no long chapters, subdividing into sub-subjects, and no long gray blocks of text. Instead, bright photos and graphics dominate every page and subject sections are limited to double-page spreads. Still, Hall manages to cover a lot of ground, hitting the high points of economics and grounding them fairly firmly within the experiences of his intended audience. A brief biographical section, "And the Winners Are..." features current superstars who have taken good ideas and hard work into the realm of riches--Ben & Jerry, Tiger Woods, Bill Gates, Charles Schulz, J.K. Rowling, etc.,-- and a "Who's Who" of economics which briefly cameos theorists such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman, to name a few. Show Me The Money Show Me The Money makes an enormously complex subject lively and appealing to its targeted reader. As School Library Journal puts it, "Hall's presentation of this sometimes dull topic is remarkably vibrant.... [his] approach is distinctively eye-catching without sacrificing accuracy."

Motion Commotion: Waddle by Rufus Butler Seder

What's all this commotion about motion? Creator Rufus Butler Seder's little Waddle!: A Scanimation Picture Book (Scanimation Picture Books) (Workman, 2009), now riding high on both the New York Times best-seller list and Amazon's rankings, combines not-exactly-new moving image technology with solid design and easy-to-read text to produce an intriguing form of the picture book.

Can you waddle like a penguin?
Slip, Slide--Swoop!

Can you hop like a frog?
Flip, Flap--Floop!

Seder calls his technique "scanimation" and puts it to good use in his recent books. As he describes the process, he films animals and humans in motion, freeze-frames the subjects, cuts the images into skinny strips and combines the images and embeds all beneath an acetate film. When the pages turn, the layered pages slide, the subject appears to move in a lifelike fashion and VOILA'--scanimation!

Bouncy, alliterative, rhyming text with prominent use of onomatopoeia (remember that term from English class?) makes this technique a lot of fun for the picture book and easy reader crowd and almost irresistible for all who pick them up. Waddle!: A Scanimation Picture Book (Scanimation Picture Books) features slithering snakes, scampering bears, and prancing pigs, stomping elephants, and flapping hummingbirds, but the most fascinating image is that of the leaping dolphin, "UP, UP--AWAY!" which rises to the surface, arcs through the air and splashes down under water again (and if you close the page back, the dolphin will even leap tail first for you in the manner of running a film backwards!)

Although this venerable technique is probably familiar to most of us, Seder is one of the first to actually craft a full-fledged picture book with so much skill and appeal. Kids will crowd around this sturdy picture book to make these jolly animals do their thing and will no doubt stay to read the brief jaunty text before turning eagerly to see what's movin' and groovin' on the next page.

For more animals in motion, see also Seder's equally captivating Gallop!: A Scanimation Picture Book (Scanimation Books), this one showing off the special moves of horses, chimps, eagles, and other cool critters. Two very special books with appeal for kids from toddlers to 'tweens!

Best Buddies: Tarra and Bella: The Elephant and Dog Who Became Best Friends by Carol Buckley

Meet Tarra the elephant and Bella the dog who won her heart.

Whatever attracted the elephant and dog to each other remains a mystery, but one thing is sure--Tarra and Bella are truly forever friends.

An ex-rollerskating circus elephant and a shaggy mutt seem like an odd couple, but it was a case of love at first sight for these two.

Bella had been retired from show business to become the first resident of Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, a private park which provides meadows and woodlands for elephants emeritus. As other elephants were added to the herd, Bella seemed to take on the welcome wagon role, showing the newbies around barns, pastures, watering holes, and trails, but as the others paired off with each other for company, Tarra remained without a preferred companion.

That is, until one morning when Tarra awoke to find that she had a bed buddy--a shaggy gold and white dog sleeping right next to her. Unexpectedly, she touched the dog gently with her trunk and chirped a welcome, and an unlikely friendship was born. From that day the elephant and the dog, whom the staff named Bella, did everything together: they ate and walked and swam and even played hide and seek in the grass together.

Tarra even came to her friend's rescue one morning when she found Bella lying hurt in a shallow ditch surrounded by tall grass. The big elephant stood watch until the sanctuary staff noticed her anxiety and came to take Bella for medical assistance. Bella's big buddy remained by that spot all day, but when the caretakers did not bring her friend back, Tarra intuitively headed for the barn where Bella was resting after treatment. She returned there to visit her partner daily until at last the dog was well enough to be allowed out and around to resume their daily routines again.

Carol Buckley's Tarra & Bella: The Elephant and Dog Who Became Best Friends (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2009) is filled with appealing color photos of this unlikely pair of forever friends. Other books which feature unusual bondings between intelligent animals include Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship, the story of the unlikely bond between an orphaned baby hippo and a 130-year-old giant tortoise and its sequels, (see my earlier posted review here) and Koko's Kitten (Reading Rainbow Book), the equally amazing story of the sign-language-trained gorilla and the homeless striped kitten who became her best friend.

Rock'm Sock'm: Robot Zot by Jon Scieszka

ROBOT ZOT! WHAM BOT!
ROBOT ZOT! BAM BOT!

ZOT HOWLS HIS BRAVE BATTLE CALL!
ROBOT ZOT NEVER FALL!
ROBOT ZOT CONQUER ALL!

From the moment ROBOT ZOT explodes off the conveyor belt it's clear he is the quintessential action figure. Born to rock'm, sock'm, take no prisoners, he's a robot on a mission to crush, kill, and destroy the enemy.

No matter that he's about the size of a cherry pitter and his adversaries are huge and metallic, the obviously dastardly kitchen killers--a giant toaster, an egg-beater-wielding blender, and the most evil foe of all, the kitchen TV.

With his buddy BOT, ROBOT ZOT polishes them all off with plent of cyborg courage.

NO ONE STOP ROBOT ZOT. ROBOT ZOT CRUSH LOT.

But there is one thing which can overcome the mightiest warrior robot--the force of LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT! Stricken with the beauty of zee femme fatale, a toddler toy phone with all the bells and whistles to make even this robot's heart stop, he suddenly knows that he has met the QUEEN OF ALL EARTH. "Briring! Brring!" comes her siren call, and ZOT knows that his fate is to win her heart in battle and carry her away with him forever.

ROBOT ZOT! HOT BOT!

Joining forces with the noted David Shannon, of No David fame, with whom, among others, he has worked on his Trucktown series, gives Jon Scieszka a leg up in creating the wham-bam world of little guy play in his new Robot Zot! Little boys who like their heroes on the crash-smash side will love this new "toy story" that understands the rules of guy games from the git-go! Shannon's action-packed depiction of ZOT, with five-year-old teeth and bright, primary-colored paint, slightly nicked in battle, fits perfectly with Scieszka's vigorous but childlike dialog. This dynamic duo carries the story off with all the panache of their previous best-selling works--and with maybe just a little bit more synergistic POW! that will leave their readers calling for a lot more of ZOT!

WHAM BOT! ALWAYS ROBOT ZOT!

Play Ball! The Brooklyn Nine: A Novel in Nine Innings by Alan Gratz

It's 1981, Brooklyn, New York, and Michael Flint is one out away from pitching the perfect game for his team.

The count is three and two. He's already thrown his best pitch--an at-the-corners fastball--until his arm feels like an overdone noodle. His curve only works part of the time, often refusing to break and floating up to the plate like it's got "HIT ME" written all over it. Still, he hasn't thrown a single curveball all day, and he knows the batter won't be looking for it.

It was baseball's day, a day when the Earth said, "That's pretty good Earth, but I'll show you perfect."

It was a day like Michael had never known and knew he would never see again. Like Sandy Koufax and his perfect game, it was a special gift in a special time and a special place, one that he shouldn't examine too closely.

It wasn't up to Michael anymore. He saw that now. He stepped back up on the mound, worked his fingers into the right grip, shook Carlos off until he dropped two fingers for a curve, and let the ball fly.

And in Alan Gratz' The Brooklyn Nine (Dial Books, 2009), it is baseball's story that becomes the ties that bind this novel of nine generations of the Schneider/Snider/Flint family, culminating with Michael's son, fourteen-year-old Snider Flint, convalescing from a broken leg, trying to price a box of baseball memorabilia for his Uncle Dave to sell online.

Told in "nine innings," the story begins with Felix Schneider, a stowaway German immigrant who landed in Brooklyn in 1841 in the days when baseball was played by local clubs and the favorite local team was the Knickerbockers. Felix calls himself "the fastest boy in America" and his speed pays off on the diamond and at his job, a messenger for the garment industry. When the great fire of 1841 begins to rage through Manhattan, Felix meets fireman Andrew Cartwright and volunteers to set the charge to blow up a building and stop the fire from destroying Germantown where he lives. Burned in the explosion, Felix can no longer run the bases, but he handcrafts a baseball from the leather of his ruined shoes and passes it down to his son as a good luck talisman.

Gratz then picks up the story as this son, Louis Schneider, is about to be mustered out of the Union Army in 1865. Bivouacked in Spotsylvania, Virginia, his unit, the Brooklyn 14th, called the "Red-legged Devils" by the enemy, start up a game, only to be attacked by a ragtag group of Rebels. The lucky ball is lost, but as Louis slips back to find it by night, he meets up with a wounded Confederate still lying on the field where their game is played. Louis helps him back to his lines, and the two talk baseball all the way. Finally Louis gives him his father's baseball for luck, and the Rebel returns the favor, giving Louis his handmade bat, the first "Louisville Slugger."

Baseball is the common thread which appears at pivotal moments in the family's life. Arnold Schneider uses his great hand-me-down bat to try to get chosen by the neighborhood boys who play on a pig lot that has just been christened the Polo Grounds and meets the legendary player, King Kelly, who borrows the bat and pawns it for train fare out of town.

But an old bat possibly turns up later in the hands of Babe Herman, the favorite Brooklyn Robin's player of Frankie Snider (the name changed for the less-Germanic version during World War I), a girl with a head for figures which makes her the best numbers runner in Flatbush. Frankie makes the acquaintance of John Kiernan, famous sports writer for the Times, and together they pull off a scam which enables Frankie to put her skill with numbers toward earning a mathematics degree.

But Frankie's daughter Kat cares little for education. Playing ball is everything to her. It's the spring of 1945, men's baseball has been decimated by the draft, and Frankie's skills at the plate and on second base earn her a place on the Grand Rapids Chicks, one of the women's professional teams which has grown up to fill the void. Later Kat's son Jimmy Flint turns out to be not so great at baseball, but he knows a lot about the game and excels at baseball card flipping, a game kid collectors played in 1957 to capture the most valuable cards.

Which brings us back to the "eighth inning," Jimmy's son Michael and his nearly perfect game. From the dugout he begs his little brother David to get his Grandma Kat to come down and tell him how to handle his final three outs. Between visits to the concession stand, David reappears and through the fence passes on Kat's advice:

David appeared again, eating a hot dog. "She says she won't come."

"What?"

"She says you're not supposed to talk to somebody with a perfect game. She won't even say 'perfect game.'"

David leaned close to the fence to whisper to his brother. "I'm running out of ideas, here, David.... She didn't say anything?"

David finally swallowed. "She says 'there's a time and place for everything.'"

And in chapter nine, "Ninth Inning," Snider Flint begins with a bat, an old wooden bat with "Babe Herman" and the remains of some 1926 stamps and an address, "Spalding, Chicago, Illinois, almost illegible on the handle. Snider turns to Google and unravels the story of Babe Herman, finally turning to library microfilm to read John Kiernan's story of the man who hit a triple that left three Dodger players thrown out, all on third base at the same time, an historic triple play if there ever was one. Snider manages to sell Herman's bat for $1200, and turns with excitement to the other objects in the box, among them an antique handmade baseball, marked with an S, a couple of worn baseball cards from the fifties, a scorebook from a Little League team in 1981, and a 1945 beauty kit for a girl's ball team.

Family history and the history of baseball are skillfully woven together in The Brooklyn Nine, showing, as Grandma Kat says, that "there is a time and place for everything" in history.

In his appended "Author's Notes," Gratz explains the significance of each of his "innings," in the history of baseball, with such fascinating facts as the story of Knickerbocker Volunteer Fireman Andrew Cartwright, the "Johnny Appleseed" of modern baseball, whose gold rush trip to California spread the "Knickerbocker rules" across the country, and the myth that former Civil War general Abner Doubleday (who makes a brief appearance in chapter two,) invented baseball on a cow pasture in Cooperstown. Lovers of the game--players, fans, collectors, and historians--will find something to love in this excellent piece of historical fiction, a piece that shows that indeed we are all in history as a ball is in the game.

Woke Up This Mornin' : One Shoe Blues by Sandra Boynton, Starring B.B. King

WOKE UP THIS MORNIN',
COULDN'T FIND MY SHOE.

Yeah, we've all been there. Those up in the mornin', can't get my poor self together blues.

And who better to sing them for us than B.B. King, the quintessential bluesman himself.

If B.B. and Lucille can't tell it like it is, who can?

That's what Sandra Boynton, Li'l Queenie of the board books, must have figured when she turned to old-fashioned film to make her newest multimedia production, One Shoe Blues.

Drawing on the soulful hit song from her book and CD combo from 2007, Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits From Way Back Never,(see my post here) Boynton fashioned a spin-off, a story board book and DVD, filming the illustrious bluesman himself performing the hit song, "One Shoe Blues" from the CD which accompanied the earlier book.

Film making requires more than just cutting the record--it requires sets, costumes, lighting, sound technicians, gaffers, and even the stereotypical corps of back-up singers, in the form of Momsock, "renowned actress and jazz legend," and the bluesy " Overeager Singing Sock Puppets."

The result is a sweet and swingin' fifteen-minute film in which all concerned help B.B. locate his missing green sneaker. Kids, of course, will spot it right away, but the fun of the search will keep them laughing through this stylish film in which the famous blues brother turns in a decidedly nuanced performance. B.B. admits that he had never in his long life in show biz performed with a sock puppet, but he carries it off with the good humor and grace he's always shown in the spotlight.

For her part, Boynton deadpans with her best faux film school seriosity,

"As the film director I feel that I have the responsibility to comment on the significance of the work.

My vision was... loss... and redemption... and sock puppets."

Uh huh. B.B. was no problem, "a fine actor," the director reports, but the sock puppets were "kinda high maintenance." (Watch the book/DVD trailer here.)

It's Boynton at her best, creating a product that is both childlike and sophisticated, and above all appealing to the preschool set. Where else can you share the universal experience of looking for your missing shoe, introduce blues to tots, and, um, sneak in the fun of Sesame-Street style characters to boot? There is even sheet music--words, notation, and guitar chords appended--for those in the mood to be singin' the blues themselves.

It's hot, it's blue, and it's just for you--One Shoe Blues, (Workman, 2009), kid-vid that parents can love, too.

The First American Cats: Pilgrim Cat by Carol Antoinette Peacock

One breezy September morning in 1620, a stray cat prowled the docks, hunting his breakfast. The cat spied a plump mouse. He pounced--and missed. When the mouse escaped to a ship, the cat followed, landing on the ship's deck.

The ship was called the Mayflower.

While the cat was watching the mouse scampering onto the small vessel, a young girl, Faith Barrett, was watching the cat make its inauspicious boarding of the ship as well, a ship which was to make an auspicious voyage indeed. Faith was waiting with her parents and a large group of passengers sailing that day, and although she was both excited and anxious about the long voyage ahead, she couldn't help being interested in the cat who it appeared would be her fellow traveler.

Throughout the voyage, through storms and sea sickness and fevers, Faith caught glimpses of the cat, apparently eating well from the ship's abundant supply of rodents, and when she could, she slipped the little mouser a bit of dried fish she had saved. And when at last the stormy weather broke and the pale, sickly passengers made their way to the deck for their first chance at sunshine, Faith was overjoyed to see the cat, too, sunning himself on the deck. Happily, she scooped him up in her arms, and the cat purred his welcome right back.

Life ashore in the new colony was hard, and Faith had little food or energy to share with the gray striper, whom she had named Pounce, but as the survivors of the "Great Sickness" greeted their first spring in the New World, the loyal cat had become a member of Faith's family. As Squanto came to teach the people how to plant Indian corn, Pounce followed Faith into the fields, occasionally snatching one of the small fishes intended for fertilizer and eating it greedily from his hiding place beneath Faith's skirts. But Pounce also paid his way, prowling the fields and keeping the mice and birds away from the growing crops as best he could, and as the harvest began, her family was happy to have the accomplished mouser to protect their stores. Pounce grew plump and Faith slept soundly with a happy purring cat beside her each night.

But one day Pounce didn't come home from the fields. She searched everywhere, but no cat came to her call. Days passed and Faith was sad.

Then one day Squanto led some men to the Eel River to fish. Faith and the other girls followed along.

Squanto stopped suddenly. He crouched beside a hollow log. Wordlessly, he beckoned to Faith.

There was Pounce, five tiny kittens snuggled beside her.

"Pounce! Thou art a girl--and a mother as well!" cried Faith.

Gently, Squanto lifted Pounce and the kittens and placed them one by one in Faith's apron.

The cat population of Plimoth Plantation took a great leap forward that day, and when the first harvest thanksgiving rolled around, there were five new, truly American cats to enjoy the leftovers.

Carol Antoinette Peacock's Pilgrim Cat (Albert Whitman Prairie Books), was inspired by her visit to the restored Plimoth Plantation, where her own daughter spotted a "re-enacter cat" among the costumed "Pilgrims" there and asked if there really were Pilgrim cats on the Mayflower. Research showed that there were indeed, and also three historical girls who might have befriended one of them on the voyage. From this idea the composite characters of Faith and her cat Pounce grew into this piece of historical fiction for young readers. Nicely illustrated in Doris Ettinger's gentle realistic style, her engaging text finds a novel way to retell the familiar story of the first Thanksgiving in an appealing and personal way that young animal lovers will remember.

The Spooky Tire (Jon Scieszka's Trucktown)

It was dark.

It was stormy.

It was night.

Melvin had a flat tire.

Cement mixer Melvin is in a situation. With a deflated front tire, he hopefully rolls into a shadowy, spooky junkyard in hopes of snagging a spare. And there he sees one, a strangely orangish, strangely glowing tire. It's a weird one, all right, but if the tire fits, wear it, Melvin thinks.

But before Melvin can roll back the way he came, he is stopped right in his treads.

"WHO TOOK MY GOLDEN TIRE?" a spooky voice called.

Melvin was worried.

Melvin was scared.

The timorous cement mixer hurriedly makes for home and, still spooked, parks himself in what he hopes is an undisclosed location, in hopes of an incognito idle.

"WHO TOOK MY GOLDEN TIRE?"

The spooky voice had found him!

Melvin pulls in his fenders and closes his eyes, but the spooky voice grows closer, until to his horror he sees a dark draped shape, with headlights glowing from behind its covering sheet.

"YOU TOOK IT!"

Don't you want the OTHER one?"

For those youngsters who are both ready to read or, as the author puts it in his introduction, "ready to roll," Jon Scieszka and his trio of vehicular design artists have a brand-new offering for the season, The Spooky Tire (Ready-to-Read Level 1) (Aladdin, 2009.) Using the, er, bare bones of the familiar folktale "The Golden Arm" and its variants, this talented pit crew has fashioned some timely truck fun for their emergent reader fans. Other books in this easy-to-read series are Uh-Oh, Max (Ready-to-Read. Level 1) and Pete's Party (Ready-to-Read. Level 1).

"A Cautionary Tale:" Once Upon a Twice by Denise Doyen

Once upon a twice,
In the middle of the nice,
The moon was on the rise,
and Mice were scoutaprowl.

They runtunnel through the riddle--
Secret ruts laid in betwiddle.
But one mousling jams the middle
Whilst he goofiddles, by the hole.

In the midst of a moonlit midnight, shepherded by eldermice, a troop sets forth to forage in the inky rice paddies of a southern night. Despite the greybeards' warnings not to loiter or linger outside their secret deep-worn pathways, one youngling, Jam Boy, stays and stops the line to smell the roses and sniff the scents about him.

"Do not disturb the bugs of June,"
The elder mouncelors whispercroon.

"Dangers lurk in the lettuce.
Twixt the celery, stalkers get us!
Open moonlight is a menace."

But despite warnings, this "riskrascal" falls behind and, once alone, yields to the lure of tempting tastes and adventures just ahead in the blue-purple dark. Beside a pond he stops, bedazzled by the jeweled beetles' wings and diamond dewdrops, as unseen "half-submerged, a slender queen/esses 'cross the pond unseen." The snake's attack comes swiftly and with a "squeak-eek! and a splash, Jam and the snake vanish below the water.

Alas! Silence descends like mud a-deep
On the creatures round the beach.

"Mouse years" pass, and then we see Jam, "wiser, whiskers now grown long" a fortunate survivor who now warns the young mouselings about him:

"When the moon is full awake,
she's the ally of the snake.
You wanderyonder by the lake?
Make no mistake...you're in a jam!
The world afield is dangerouse,
Foraging is--for a mouse--
A nightly duel and joust.
The House of Mice has many mourned.
Be forewarned!"

Breathtakingly detailed illustrations, in Barry Moser's rich deep blue, black, and ochre palette, and poetic language, sparked with evocative, playful neologisms, from author Denise Doyen make their Once Upon a Twice (Picture Book) (Random House, 2009), a simple prodigal mouse tale, into an enthralling picture book experience. As Kirkus Review states, "This slight cautionary tale is undeniably arrayed in a gorgeous brocade, woven of fresh, inventive wordplay and masterful illustrations."

Watch for this one at winter award time.

Black Cats and Broomsticks: The ABCs of Halloween by Patricia Reeder Eubank

A is for attics, spooky, dusty and dark.

B is for black cats and broomsticks of hickory bark.

For the preschool set, what time is better than the spooky season, with its memorable symbols, for learning the alphabet? And with two lovely black kittens as frisky guides and bright carved pumpkins as the letter boards--not to mention all the awesome alliterations that Halloween brings forth--the nighttime is the right time for a Halloween alphabet adventure.

G is for glowing ghosts, glimmering ghouls,
giggling gargoyles, and grinning green goblins galore.

H is for hollow, haunted houses and crooked high hats that haggled-haired witches once wore.

Patricia Eubank's art, reminiscent of that of Jan Brett, is endearing without being cutesy, and her text does more than just rhyme, making poetic use of sibilant sounds and evocative images:

S is for spinning spiders and scary skeletons with secret spells unbound.

T is for tiny toad toes, tasty turnip tea, and twisted tombstones that topple over the ground.

A book that is great to read to one child or a group, Eubank's eye-catching The ABC's of Halloween should be around for Halloween as long as cats creep, crones cackle, and houses are haunted.

Pumpkin Potpourri: Toy Books for the Halloween Season

It's Halloween and we're having a party!

Will you help us get ready?

We need to hang our lanterns and take out our costume masks and hats.

Which creature do you want to be?

Halloween time is a great time for the genre of children's fare known as "toy and movable books." Things that go bump in the night are naturals for pop-up books, flap books, shaped books, and other design factors that make them part story and part plaything, with a spooky surprise always just ahead. They can be as complex as Maurice Sendak's Mommy?, with its sophisticated but slapstick gags, or as simple as Dorling Kindersley's new Halloween (DK) (DK, 2009) In this bright, tactile board book, the cover itself is a pumpkin-shaped trick-or-treat bucket, with an assortment of enticing "treats" spilling over the top. Inside, each die-cut page has its own text and adds a layer to the pumpkin's treat trove as the pages are turned. And when the treats are all gathered ("cookies and candies everywhere!") and the book is closed, there is a visual reminder of the jolly goings-on on each overlying page, popping out of the jack-o'-lantern's top.

Instead of revealing its surprises from the beginning, David A. Carter's In a Dark, Dark Wood: An Old Tale with a New Twist (Simon & Schuster) keeps the best for last. Carter's evocative darkling woods, with their swirling orangish fog, give way to a spooky house which, of course, the reader must enter. Following the traditional style of the cumulative tale, Carter's sturdy version takes us into the dark, dark house and up those familiar dark, dark stairs and through a door into that waiting dark, dark room, where there stands an old fashioned closed cupboard with a shadowy dark hand reaching forward to throw it open:

And in that dark, dark cupboard,
There was a dark dark shelf.

And on that dark, dark shelf,
There was a dark, dark box.

And in that dark, dark box
There was...

Thus far, not so scary, huh? But the lifting the last page reveals a huge. intricately constructed green ghost, which rises slo-o-o-wly and spookily from that last turn of page, one who is everything a pop-up ghost should be!

For slightly older readers, who like their Halloween humor a bit on the spoofy side, Colin McNaughton's witty classic Dracula's Tomb has all the right stuff. The cover is shaped like an old-fashioned six-sided coffin, with a long-fingered greenish hand reaching out to form the Velcro clasp.

If the reader dares to open the "coffin" (KEEP OUT! OPEN IF YOU DARE!! JOURNALS OF COUNT DRACULA. PRIVATE!), McNaughton gives the history and characteristics of legendary vampires, Vlad Drakul and the rest, with puns a plenty and a few appropriately "batty" riddles (What goes PALF, PALF? A bat flying backwards.) In the funniest section, "My School Days," Drac relates the fun and games at Dr. Frankenstein's School for Little Monsters, remembered as "the best nights of my life." Drac's report card shows him "truly amazing" at playing dead, but points out that he still has a bit of trouble transforming himself into a bat. ("He looks more like a plastic trash can liner," his transformations master reports.)

But there are plenty of the fine arts to study during Drac's school days. He's a natural for the lead in their Shakespeare drama, "Tomb B or Not Tomb B," and the class is visited by a real LIVE author, one Bram Stoker, who remarks that "he's going to write a book about us" some day. And his subterranean dorm room is comfortably equipped with a comfy, velvet-lined coffin, hygienic items such as a toothbrush with a bite out of the bristles and a fang file, and a fridge stocked with such treats as "I Scream" and "fangfurters," supplemented by a big bottle of "Biteamines." Even pets are apparently allowed in this dorm, including Drac's favorites, ghoulfish, Vlad the impala and Frankenswine.

Inside his casket, of course, lies the piece de resistance. Appropriately warned not the disturb the "last remains of Dracula," the reader lifts that lid to reveal an full-size pop-up of the vampire himself, along with appropriately spooky bats and serpents rising from the coffin.

All three of these books meet the main criteria for their genre--sturdy enough for plenty of use and clever enough to engage the reader while providing plenty of fun.

Do Your Own Thing: Frankie Stein by Lola Schaefer

Frankie Stein came into the world on a bright, sunny day.

"Our son!" announced the proud parents and they rushed to his side.

"Oh, MY!" said his mother. "He's. . . . CUTE."

"Why doesn't he look like US?" asked his father.

What to do with a child who seems not to belong with his birth family? Like many parents faced with a seeming changeling dropped down into their midst, Frankie's parents, a Frankenstein monster and Bride-of-Frankenstein twosome, resolve to go for nurture over nature and do their best to make Frankie fit in. They color his sunny blond hair purple, cap his first bright little baby tooth green, apply stick-on warts, and put his pudgy baby feet into clunky black boots. They try to teach him to groan and lurch appropriately, and little Frankie attempts, sweetly, to emulate his monstrous mentors. But on him, all the appurtenances of monsterhood just look wrong, and even his best stagger comes off with a bounce.

Instead, Frankie decided on his own kind of scary.

Early one morning Frankie made a grand appearance.

"Well, what do you think?" he asked his parents.

"HORRIFYING!" yelled his mother and father.

Lucky for Frankie, when he re-asserts his sunny, blond self, dressed in store-bought suburbanwear, his parents are appropriately affrighted at his preppiness and declare him the scariest Stein yet. And so he remains--until the birth of his too-cute-for-words little sister, Francie Stein!

Author Lola Schaeffer uses the same plot line here that Michael Rex adopts in his new Runaway Mummy: A Petrifying Parody, reviewed here October 8, but no matter. It's a common thread in books, movies, and television sitcoms, but in Schaeffer's and Atteberry's hands, it's still fun to see the maverick monster kid find a way both to be himself and to meet his parent's expectations. Frankie Stein (Marshall Cavendish, 2009) in its bright new (and cheap) paperback edition is well worth a fun October reading.

Bringing up Baby Spooks: My First Halloween by Tomie de Paola

For some youngsters, their first Halloween is anything but fun! Scary masks where neighborhood kids' faces used to be, toothy jack-o'-lanterns bobbing through the darkness, and noisy vampires and werewolves showing up at the front door at bedtime--it's no wonder that some toddlers clearly wonder what's supposed to be fun about it all.

But it IS fun when you know what to expect, and that's where Tomie de Paola's little board book, My First Halloween (Grosset & Dunlap, 2008) comes in. De Paola takes a gentle, step-at-a-time approach to the holiday, beginning with an easy-going decorating of the house for a party. Dad places a just-carved, happy-faced jack-o'-lantern on the mantle, and homemade black cats, bats, and orange crepe paper are hung about the room, and with a little black cat to hug during the process, there's nothing to fear.

It's time to put on our costumes.

We all go trick-or-treating.

When we get home, everyone comes to our party.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

With an appealing tactile pumpkin on the cover and cheery grandmoms handing out treats, kids costumed as clowns and chickens as well as ghosts and werewolves, and apples to bob for inside, My First Halloween is a soothing introduction to the fun and traditions of Halloween, good for reading to impressionable tots before that first doorbell sounds on October 31.

Texas Tale: Tex and Sugar: A Big City Kitty Ditty by Barbara Johansen Newman

In a swingin' Texas spoof of the old movie theme, two talented youngsters, Tex Mex Rex and Sugar Lee Snughead, leave the ranch behind to take on the trials of the big city:

"I've tuned my guitar. I know I'll be a big star," Tex tells his parents.

"Here I come, Broadway! Farewell, El Paso!" the sweet-singin' Sugar tells her momma.

But the big city has its trials for the the Texas twosome. Alone, they struggle to survive in the Big Apple.

Tex begged all the networks to give him a spot.
But a gig washin' dishes was all that he got.

She sang and danced and flashed her big smile.
But Sugar's big part in a show was the aisle.

After sloggin' through weeks of washin' dishes and usherin' patrons to their seats at the local movie house, Tex and Sugar are ready to pack up their guitar picks and head back to Texas--until one night after work they both do a bit of solo singin':

The warm summer breeze blew their songs throughout the sky.
Such sweet soulful longing caused neighbors to cry.

The tunes were forlorn and feelin's so true
That rats and roaches and pigeons cried, too.

"Dear Dogies!" purred Sugar. "I hear my soul mate."
"Hot Froggies!" yowled Tex, " This has to be fate."

The Texas tunesmiths finally meet and form a twosome, and it's a duet made in heaven. Tex and Sugar together take the town by storm, and it's no time before they make the marquees on old Broadway:

The music was magic for Sugar and Tex.
It's hard to figure out what happened next....
Each cat searched for stardom and found a best friend.
They're still making music and will to... THE END!

Carefully crafted illustrations with many Texas-style motifs add plenty of visual emphasis to Barbara Johansen Newman's Tex & Sugar: A Big City Kitty Ditty that will have the listeners singin' "Deep in the Heart of Texas."

Tit for Tat: No Hugs Till Saturday by Julie Downing

Little dragon Felix's mom loves his repertoire of hugs: there's his soft snuggle, and his super squeeze, and then there's his specialty, the monster mash.

But one Sunday morning, when Felix makes a super dragon throw with his favorite ball and brings down a vase, Mom is NOT in a snuggling mood!

"No more ball till TOMORROW!" she decrees.

Well! Two can play this game, Felix figures.

"No more hugs till SATURDAY!" he declares.

"Dragons don't give hugs. Dragons don't NEED hugs!"

But soon Felix finds out that Saturday is a long time coming. Mom shows him the days of the week on her calendar and Felix begins to mark off all the days between Sunday and Saturday.

"I meant Friday. I really meant no more hugs until Thursday!" he amends.

Then Mom turns to the baby for a few hugs and kisses, and Felix hurriedly adjusts his schedule again.

"Mom, there are no more hugs till Tuesday. No hugs at all."

"What happened to Wednesday?" asked Mom.

"I'm afraid you'll drown in all those slobbery baby hugs!"

Of course, a wise Mom can see where this one is going, and sure enough, by bedtime Felix is asking an important question:

"Is it TOMORROW yet?"

Julie Downing's soft, rounded watercolor characters make it through a shortened drought of dragon hugs as Mom collects a super-special, gigantic monster mash by bedtime. Reminiscent of Russell Hoban's evergreen Frances stories, No Hugs Till Saturday both reinforces the days of the week while also teaching a gentle lesson about forgiveness and family affection in the kind of insightful story which makes us hope to see more of this appealing preschooler's family.

What the Nose Knows: Farley Follows His Nose by Lynn Johnston and Beth Cruikshank

ROSES

FRESHCUTGRASS

SWEATYPEOPLE

THECATNEXTDOOR...

and ... HOTDOGS!

Fresh and frisky after his hated early morning bath, Farley is ready for adventure, and for the shaggy canine hero of the popular cartoon strip For Better or For Worse, following the siren call of adventure means, of course, following his nose. Unlike superhuman heroes, dogs don't just smell one thing a time. Dogs inhale a savory stew of olfactory experiences, but Farley is able to parse his perceptions well enough to home in on the heavenly scent of roasting hot dogs, and he's off and running, to the consternation of Mom and the rest of his family, on the trail of the Holy Grail of dogdom--FOOD!

Sniff Snerf Snoof Snuffa Whuff!

Farley catches other odors--apple juice, popcorn, lemon cakes--but also his second-most favorite thing--CHILDREN.

It's a neighborhood cookout, and there's a nice boy there, one who gives him his own hot dog! But when Farley rewards the kid with licks and slurps, the kid's mom bears down on the two with a worried face, and Farley decides it's time to make himself scarce.

As the sun rises higher in the sky Farley follows his nose to the source of a series of delightful scents-- a ham sandwich shared with a cheerful construction worker, a wading pool filled with cool water to slurp and and little kids to splash, and toasted marshmallows, which a supercilious girl reminds him are not good for dogs!

A quick nap in the shade revives Farley, but after following his nose from place to place, he senses that he is far from home. UH OH! But then...

Snuffah Whuffah Snoof Sniff!

Farley's nose picks up a new combination--with just one familiar scent.

AWATERFOUNTAIN

COLA CANS

CANDY WRAPPERS

RABBITS

and...

SOMEONE HIDING UNDER A BUSH!

It's the little boy who fed him his hot dog, and he's crying. Farley doesn't know what the boy needs, but as he checks him out, scent-wise, he recognizes a familiar potpourri--popcornlemoncakeapplejuicehotdogs...and suddenly Farley's mouth waters with the memory of the place where he found those smells, and with the little boy in tow, Farley follows his nose back to the source of that wonderful hot dog. Backtracking along his scent trail, Farley arrives at the little boy's house, the scene of the block party, but to his surprise the people and their popcorn, cake, juice, and frankfurters have all gone away--except for the kid's parents, who come to the door and hug their long-lost boy. "I'm home! I love you, doggie," he says, and leaves Farley behind as his parents pull him happily inside.

But now it's growing cooler and darker, and Farley is still hungry and a lot lonely. Then, to his waiting nose comes another very familiar olfactory bundle:

HOLLYHOCKS

SQUIRRELS

JUNIPER

AFTERSHAVE

and

PIZZA!

It's Uncle Phil, on his way with his usual Saturday night pizzas to share with Farley's family.

"Farley, you big mutt! Where have you been? We've been looking all over town for you!"

Uncle Phil loads Farley up and whisks him home quickly. "Snifffff!" At last everything smells just right.

But humans have noses, too, not as powerful as Farley's, true, but still good enough to smell a stinky dog who's been on the road all day.

"Pee-YEWWWWW!" Elly said. "Farley, you need a BATH!"

Johnston and Cruikshank, creators of the popular strip, have a brand new lost dog tale, Farley Follows His Nose (HarperCollins, 2009) which lets Farley the sheepdog shine. Dog-loving kids will enjoy seeing the familiar Farley featured in his own story, and Johnston's comic illustrative style lets Farley's body language tell the tale in his own inimitable way.

Neewolah Redux: Tell Me Another Scary Story by Carl Reiner

Do you remember the scary story I told you about my neighbor, Mr. Neewollah and how when I was a little boy, he once scared me to death?

Well, here's another even scarier story about Mr. Neewollah that may give you nightmares.

If you think it might be too scary, don't turn the page--it's up to YOU!

Going over to Mr. Neewollah's house is a real trip! His day job is to construct masks and costumes for horror movies, and he LOVES his work! He loves scary things so much he even created his own name by spelling HALLOWEEN backwards, and he loves to share his work with anyone brave enough to venture into his spooky basement. Just before Halloween Mr. Neewollah calls with a special invitation to come over for a hamburger and a special viewing of his costume.

"I am working on something really really scary and when I finish it, I think it will be the scariest one I ever made in my whole life,' he chuckled. "I promise you that it will make your eyes pop and your hair stand straight up!"

But when the kid arrives at Neewollah's house, there's no answer at the door. A couple of hamburgers and a ketchup bottle sit on the kitchen table, but there's no one upstairs. Thinking about how Mr. Neewollah once taught him how to use ketchup as fake blood, the kid heads down to the basement workroom. There he comes upon a scene that almost does stand his hair straight up.

Neewollah lies motionless on the floor, a bloody puncture mark on his neck, beside the figure of a vampire with crimson fangs!! But then the kid remembers the fake blood trick and tastes the red substance on the vampire's fangs. Ketchup all right! HA!

"Okay, Mr. Neewollah. You sure scared me a whole lot. You can get up now."

But Mr. Neewollah did not get up.

When I got closer I saw that the ketchup on Mr. Neewollah's forehead that looked like real blood was not ketchup--IT was real blood!

Carl Reiner's latest scary story, Tell Me Another Scary Story...But Not Too Scary!: (HC with CD), (Dove, 2009) brings a new "not too scary" story to elementary readers. This time the kid gets to be the real hero of the tale with a happy--not scary--ending. Nicely illustrated by James Bennett, this story is just right for Halloween parties and sleepovers and comes with its own CD to enjoy by the light of flickering Jack o'-Lanterns.

Reiner's earlier Tell Me a Scary Story...But Not Too Scary! (Byron Preiss Books) is reviewed in my post of October 29, 2008.

Voices of History: Pearl Harbor: A Primary Sources History by Jaqueline Laks Gorman

"It is now two years since World War II began.... There has been an effort to force the United States into the conflict.... We are on the verge of a war for which we are still unprepared, a war which cannot be won...."
----Charles Lindbergh (first Atlantic solo flight) (September 11, 1941)

"By Imperial Order the Chief of the Naval General Staff orders Yamamoto Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleets as follows:

Expecting to go to war with the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands early in December for self-preservation..., the Japanese Empire has decided to complete war preparations."
----Japanese Imperial Naval Command (November 5, 1941)

"Although we hope to achieve surprise, everyone should be prepared for terrific American resistance.... You may have to fight your way to the target."
----Admiral Isoroka Yamamoto to pilots (November 17, 1941)

"This dispatch is a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive
move by Japan is expected in the next few days."
----U. S. Naval dispatch to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel (November 27, 1941)

"It was like the sky was filled with fireflies. It was a beautiful scene--183 aircraft in the dark sky...the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
----Abo Zanji, Japanese bomber pilot (December 7, 1941)

"I saw a torpedo drop and our guns were firing before they'd even sounded general orders.... At one point we were all just standing there with tears in our eyes, watching the devastation."
----Crewman Bill Spears, aboard the cruiser Honolulu (December 7, 1941)

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"
----Words of Navy Chaplain Howell Forgy, used in hit song by Frank Loeser, 1941.

"There were more bloody wounds than I had ever seen in my life. We started operating. The air-raid sirens blew. We had nowhere to go. We had a patient in the middle of an operation. The big bombers, heading for Pearl Harbor, flew so low that the vibrations shook the instruments on the table....
----Second Lieutenant Madelyn Blonskey, Army Nurse Corps (December 7, 1941)

"Yesterday, December 7, 1941--a day that will live in infamy--the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan."
----President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address to Congress (December 8, 1941)

With knowledge of what followed, it is chilling to read the very words which precipitated America's entrance into of World War II. In a time in which students may feel Google and Wikipedia are their primary sources of history, Jacqueline Laks Gorman's Pearl Harbor: A Primary Source History (In Their Own Words) (Gareth Stevens, 2009) lets the words of major players and eyewitnesses unfold to recount the story of the Pearl Harbor attack.

The purpose of this slim volume is to introduce students of World War II history to real primary sources, the written accounts of actual participants to the beginning of America's involvement in World War II. Gorman does offer a lucid and succinct narrative which ties together the events around the Japanese air attack on American soil, but her text boxes quoting actual participants great and small give immediacy to her look at this piece of world history.

Her narrative takes pains to put the Pearl Harbor attack in context, beginning with Admiral Perry's opening to relations with Japan in 1845 and Japan's invasions of Korea in 1910 and China in 1937 and Germany's takeover of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in 1938 and 1939. Despite America's initial attempt to remain neutral after Britain and France declared war on Germany, resistance to the war ended with the surprise assault on Pearl Harbor. This daring raid by the foreboding alliance of Japan and Germany--the Axis--instantly drew the United States into a war on two massive fronts.

The actual course of the war which followed is only given brief exposition, culminating with the defeat of the Nazis and the dropping of the first atomic bomb and call for surrender which followed:

"We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima."
----U.S. Air Force leaflet dropped on Japanese cities after August 6, 1945.

In addition to quotes drawn from government documents, newspapers, personal letters, and extracts from songs, poems, film, and interviews, author Gorman augments her text with period photos and a sidebar timeline on each double-page spread to keep the reader grounded. She also includes a "popular culture" segment which highlights films and books about the Pearl Harbor raid, and a "looking back" section which puts the experience in its present day context. Appended are brief biographies of "major figures," a glossary, and index.

Other books in this In Their Own Words series include September 11: A Primary Source History (In Their Own Words), The Holocaust: A Primary Source History (In Their Own Words), and Titanic: A Primary Source History (In Their Own Words).

There Goes the Neighborhood! Dear Vampa by Ross Collins

To: Vampa
The Ruined Abbey
Lugosi Lane
Transylvania

From: Bram Pire
66 Nostfer Avenue
Harkerville,
Pennsylvania

DEAR VAMPA,

SORRY FOR NOT WRITING FOR SO LONG, BUT WE'VE BEEN HAVING SOME TROUBLE WITH OUR NEW NEIGHBORS.

The new neighbors, the Wolfsons, do have some odd habits, Bram writes. They stay up ALL DAY, lock themselves in at night, and they actually take SUN BATHS! Then, when the Pires politely attend their housewarming party, the appealing blood-red beverages turn out only to be tomato juice. Bram and his sister try to blend in with the Wolfson's guests at their Halloween party, but when they arrive, dressed as a Yankee slugger and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, they find all the others costumed as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. Not to mention, the Wolfson's pet barks at them constantly.

The final confrontation comes when the Pires transform themselves into bats and slip out of their tower for their evening flutter and the Wolfson kids shoot them down with slingshots.

Little Bram ends his letter sadly:

Mom doesn't think she'll ever be able to risk flying again. Dad says he has had enough. He used some very bad words.

As I write we are moving out. We're coming back to Transylvania to stay with you for a while. Mom asks if you can get the guest crypt ready for us.

Hope this finds you unwell. All my love to you and Vampma.

Lovebites,
Bram XXX

In Russ Collins' Dear Vampa (Katherine Tegen Books, 2009), the tale of these mismatched neighbors is told mostly through the clever illustrations which accompany the wry text. The vampire family is shown only in black and white, with small accents of red: little Bram writes by the light of fat red candles, guttering in pools of crimson all over his dimly lit desk; Bram's sister, costumed as Dorothy, wears ruby red slippers; and their pet monster looks like a bright red octopus gone terribly wrong. In contrast, the typically suburban Wolfsons, are shown in sunny pastels. The Pires, peeking from their black-curtained window, recoil in horror as the swim-suited Wolfsons blithely soak up some rays and cover their ears with bright red earmuffs as they try to sleep in their coffins while the Wolfsons frolic noisily in their sunny backyard.

But nothing is quite as it seems, for, as the Pires load their coffins into their moving van to head back to Transylvania by the light of a full moon, we see the Wolfsons, now transformed into a family of hairy werewolves, watching from their window and saying mournfully,

"It's so hard to find good neighbors!"

Where's That Monster Under My Bed? I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll

Tonight, when I looked under the bed for my monster, I found this note instead:

GONE FISHING. BACK IN A WEEK.
--GABE

What was I going to do? I NEEDED a monster under my bed.

How was I supposed to get to sleep if my monster was gone?

How would I ever get to sleep without Gabe's familiar scary noises and his spooky, green ooze?

A creature of habit, Ethan can't doze off without those familiar noises--whistling, claw-scrabbling sounds from under the bed. Reluctantly he realizes that he has to call up a substitute sleepytime monstrosity. Two raps on the floor boards summon up a series of subs, all willing to try out their talents.

"Good evening," said a low, breathy voice.

"My name is Herbert, and I will be your monster for the evening."

The kid is not impressed.

"Do you have long teeth and scratchy claws?"

"No, but I have an OVERBITE. And I'm a mouth breather."

"Next!" thinks Ethan, and in succession other monsters appear for an audition. The effete Ralph is rejected because his long nails bear obvious evidence of a professional manicure and nail polish. The next monster has impressive claws, but the bow on her tail gives Cynthia away. Ick! Even monsters have girl cooties, and the kid sends her packing. Then when Mack appears to show off his ticklishly long tongue, the kid collapses in giggles at the thought. Don't call me, I'll call you., thinks the kid.

But when Gabe suddenly shows back up, bored with easily frightened fish, Ethan is relieved.

"I'd like to start out this evening with an ominous puddle of drool," Gabe announces.

"So you had some substitute monsters tonight. Were you scared?"

"No other monster can scare me like you do."

"We're made for each other," Gabe growled. "Now if you would just stick out your foot.... I'd like to nibble your pinkie..."

"No toes tonight, but you can have this," I offered. I pushed a pillow off the bed.

I didn't even hear it hit the floor.

A better monster-under-the-bed story won't be had this spooky season--or any time soon. In their I Need My Monster, (Flashlight, 2009) Amanda Noll's tongue-in-cheek text and Howard McWilliam's atmospheric illustrations take Mercer Mayer's monsters into the digital dimension with a dash of Shrek and Monsters, Inc., supersized and deliciously funny-scary styled, to delight young monster fanciers everywhere. There's droll and sly humor for everyone here--from tots to adults--a perfect pairing, just like Ethan and Gabe

Catmares: Cat Dreams by Ursula Le Guin

It's fun to run.
I love to leap.

But now I think
I'll go to sleep.

Oh, how nice!
It's raining mice!

Cat owners have always wondered what those furry catnappers are dreaming of as they snooze. Sure, mice to chase are going to be high on the list, and in Ursula Le Guin's Cat Dreams (Orchard Books, 2009), her clever little calico catches more than mice in her ZZZ-time adventures.

The calico and her black cat friend dream of a giant Trojan cat which frightens the dogs away as two pop out, leaving them free to feast on kibble and cream to celebrate the victory. Things are looking up in cat-ville! Perhaps too far UP!

Now I'm climbing a catnip tree clear to the top.
I'm going to stop
And take a rest in a bluejay's nest.
And all the birdies will sing to me.

Oh, my, oh, me!
I'm falling out of the catnip tree.
This isn't the place I want to be.

I need a lap.

And it doesn't take long for the calico to find her mistress' lap, curl up, and purr herself back to dreamland, where, we hope, it's still precipitating mice, but not raining cats.

The soft gouache and watercolor illustrations of S. D. Schindler really get this attractive little rhyming story off the ground with a calico cat who is as softly realistic and as lovely as a furry feline can be. Cat Dreams reunites the author-illustrator team of the popular Catwings series in another arboreal feline fantasy.

A Treat in Hand: The Haunted House by Peter Lippman

A black gate swings open,
A sign says "BEWARE!"
But I enter the house
That no others will dare

Of course, you do. With Peter Lippman's irresistible little movable book, The Haunted House (Mini House Book), nobody with an ounce of curiosity, child or adult, could help unfolding this small creepy mansion to see what adventures lie therein.

On the roof hungry bats
Catch their dinner in midair.
In the attic I dodge
A huge spider's wispy snare.

.
As the cleverly constructed little minibook is unpacked, more creepy characters are revealed--"creepy arms everywhere," a Frankenstein monster's scare.

Then, at last, the scene opens to the bedroom, where the reader discovers where it all arises:

I flee to the bedroom.
There's something worse there!
And then I wake up
From a silly nightmare!

The story literally "unfolds" in the ingenious diecut design, in which each section is "unnotched" and spread apart to reveal the next scene in the action. Lippman's creative construction, illustrative skill, and rhyming text make The Haunted House (Mini House Book), the perfect tricky treat (that's not a sweet) for a special someone's Halloween bag.

Other intriguing books in this series by Lippman include Mother Goose's House (Mini House Book), The Enchanted Castle (Mini House Book), Mini Wheel Books: School Bus, and that perfect stocking stuffer, Santa's Workshop (Mini House Book).

Out of the Dark: Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga

You can't rely on other people to be your strength.

You have to be your own strength.

You can't rely on love. Love will let you down every time. Every single time.

I don't love Jecca. I don't love Fanboy.

But...

God, the buts in life will kill you absolutely every time, won't they?

I don't love. But I need.

Kyra is back home after six months in a residential mental health hospital, her diagnosis, overheard from the jaded floor nurses, DCHH--"Daddy Couldn't Handle Her." And indeed, he couldn't. Kyra's emotional state had already led to wrist-slashing in one suicide attempt, and when an anonymous call warned him that she has stolen a bullet from a friend, her dad Roger committed her to the hospital. Both of them twisted and torn by the horrific death of her mother from metastatic cancer, the two survivors cannot connect with each other at all, and as her dad falls back on rules and lectures and groundings, Kyra turns more and more toward her Goth friends and outright rebellion, sneaking out at night, stealing cars when she needs a ride, and staying in trouble at school.

But things are different when, after her time away, she tries to slip back into her place at school. Girl friends Jecca and Simone seem to care more about attention from guys than their old Goth loyalties. Simone, especially, has become little more than a black-clad school slut, and even Jecca is absorbed in her crush on the popular Brad.

And then there's Fanboy. Hurt that her friend never emailed or tried to contact her in the hospital, Kyra still longs to renew the closeness that they attained when she worked with him on his graphic novel Schemata. But the first day back at school, Kyra is shocked that he's gone over to the other side--hanging with the popular crowd, publishing his work serially in the school literary magazine, changing crucial parts with the advice of his new friend Cal, one of the jocks. Pulled between her overwhelming anger at what she sees as the ultimate rejection of everything they meant to each other and her admitted attraction to him, Kyra conceives a cruelly clever plan to "destroy" Fanboy, to web-publish something she be believes will make him a pariah at school. To do so, however, she realizes that she will have to pretend friendship to get what she needs to carry out her plot.

As the reader soon sees, Kyra's anger at Fanboy is displaced--displaced from her own irrational but deep anger with her mother for dying when she needed her most. Author Barry Lyga uses an effective device in which is revealed, in recurring and lengthening segments, the overwhelming scene in the hospital, the last time that Kyra saw her mother alive. The first such entry begins with the cryptic line...

The room The room The room is rosevomit because

Interspersed through the text this refrain appears, growing longer and more graphic, until near the climax of the novel the reader sees the real source of Kyra's blinding anger, anger against her fumbling, grieving, overwhelmed father, her all-too-human teachers, her self-absorbed friends, and most of all against her one real friend, Fanboy. The source is at its core anger at herself for failing her mother so completely at the end.

This self understanding comes when, desperate for a human connection, Kyra slips out to a late night party. Repulsed by the drunken make-out scene there, she slips outside into the icy night. Rejecting the temptation to allow herself to freeze to death, Kyra is arrested trying to steal a car to get herself home. Refusing to talk to the police and left to wait alone with nothing in her bookbag but a comic graphic novel Fanboy had given to her, she reads it and comes to an understanding of her fascination with death and yet what it means to live in an imperfect world. When her chance comes to make her one phone call, Kyra sees that she has one connection she can trust, one person who sees her for what she is, and one whose gift is showing her how to forgive herself.

But I know this: I can't be alone anymore.

I can't sit in the dark while other people fumble around in the quiet and the murk
trying to find me, trying to locate me, while I huddle in the pantry hiding....

I need to be out there.

I need to live.

Lyga's Goth Girl Rising (sequel to The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl) is an serious and absorbing novel for mature young adults, dealing as it does with the deeper issues of life itself--death, self-knowledge, responsibility to self and others, loyalty and friendship, and living in the world as it is--one that asks and gives much to the reader who has the persistence to look beneath the surface of this in-your-face main character. It's not going too far to say that this novel is about the courage it takes to accept redemption over self-annihilation.

Diabolically Delish: Extreme Halloween: The Ultimate Guide to Making Halloween Scary Again by Tom Nardone

What would Halloween be if not for the extreme genius of Tom Nardone? Having come up with seemingly every devilishly delightful thing to do with a pumpkin in his best-selling Extreme Pumpkins: Diabolical Do-It-Yourself Designs to Amuse Your Friends and Scare Your Neighbors and his sequel Extreme Pumpkins II: Take Back Halloween and Freak Out a Few More Neighbors, (see my posts here,) in his newest, Extreme Halloween: The Ultimate Guide to Making Halloween Scary Again, our Halloween hero zooms his focus out to include all things spooky--extreme yard tricks and plenty of extreme craftings that turn any house or garage into a haunted house.

Outdoors there is plenty to amuse the neighbors and approaching trick or treaters--skull trees, hand-hammered wooden caskets, ghosts that seem to float and swoop down zip lines, porch scarecrows and ghouls, graveyards concocted from mulch, pumpkin heads, stuffed gloves, shoes, and other castoff clothing, and door decor with a surprise for those intrepid souls who dare to get that far.

Inside the house are cool ghoul food, bleeding baked goods, the toilet candy bowl, and other plentiful recipes for creepy comestibles. Then there is "the haunted lavatory," complete with skull soap, the terrifying toilet (Don't ask!), and the shadowy hangman in the shower. Inventive costume ideas abound, with hilarious suggestions for outfitting those lame guests who come cluelessly unadorned with the proper garb.

Nardone doesn't neglect his first love, the jack-o'-lantern, in this new book, however. There are flaming pumpkin heads (Caution: Warn Fire Department Before Using), graveyard jacks, pumpkin-head millipedes, and many other silly-spooky squash creations.

No library or ghostly trickster should be without these three handsome Halloween standbys, ghoulishly gigglesome, horrifically hilarious, and tantalizingly terrifying as Halloween itself should be.

Thirty-Second Scares! Half-Minute Horrors, ed. by Susan Rich

"The Chicken and the Egg"

"I was first," said Egg.

"I was first," said Chicken.

"I was," said Egg.

"I was," said Chicken.

"I was."

"I was."

"Okay, said Chicken. "You win," and pecked Egg. Seven times. From seven holes, Egg bled yellow into the barnyard dust. Until all of Egg was out instead of in.

Chicken grinned. "But guess who's LAST?"

"Less is more," says one reviewer, and he's right. Susan Rich, editor of Lemony Snicket's best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events, has brought together a stable of thoroughbred authors--Newbery winners Neal Gaiman, Avi, Jerry Spinelli, and Jack Gantos, Caldecott winners Brian Selznick, Chris Raschka and Lane Smith, and literary lights of all stripes such as Margaret Atwood, Kenneth Opel, M.E. Kerr, R. L Stine, even Joyce Carol Oates, and of course, Mr. Snicket--in an anthology of short, elegant horror stories perfect for campfires, sleepovers, Halloween parties, and any time the reader has a minute or less for a thrilling read. Here's a sample from Atwood, one which is complete in itself but which suggests many other spooky tales (e.g., "The Monkey's Paw," or "The Golden Arm") for further reading in the upcoming scary season:

"The Creeping Hand "

The hand crept up the cellar stairs. It was shriveled and dirty, and its fingernails were long.

It scuttled along the dark hallway. At the closed door it sniffed with its fingertips, then jumped up like a giant spider, grabbed the doorknob, and turned.

Inside the room it found a sock. Then a shoe. And then--another hand, hanging down from the bed. A young hand, a hand that it could kidnap and take away down to the cellar.

But this hand was attached to an arm.

Something could be done about that.

Half-Minute Horrors(Harper/Collins, 2009) is scary enough for the most sophisticated 'tweener reader, short enough for the most print-wary reader, and just right for those older kids who have already read the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series and want a book "just like that one." This slim anthology is a must-have for libraries, English teachers, and just plain scary story devotees of all ages.