Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Jules: So, a while ago I read this intermediate-aged book called Billy Hooten: Owlboy (Yearling; released in July of ’07). Have you read it yet? It’s good stuff, the first book in a fantasy-comedy series for children, all about a misfit kid who becomes an unlikely superhero. Billy Hooten is what most people would call a nerd and gets picked on a lot at school. But after he tries to help someone in need in the cemetery bordering his back yard, he stumbles upon bizarro, creature-ridden Monstros City, which lies underneath Billy’s hometown of Bradbury, Massachusetts. When he finds out that, indeed, the residents of Monstros City believe him to be the next Owlboy — their revered superhero and the protagonist in a beloved, old-skool comic book series — he has to determine for himself if he can live up to the name.

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Jules: Happy Halloween! I am starting this post, to which Eisha plans to add some comments. And let me tell you that when she sees this image, she just might kill me. It’s taking a great deal of courage for me to post it to begin with.

That’s an image from the Bell Witch legend, a story, according to that link, which is “America’s Greatest Ghost Story.” Or so says Dr. Nandor Fodor, a researcher and psychologist. Or, if you grew up in middle Tennessee, it’s the “One Story That Will Scare the Holy Utter Crap Out of You for the Rest of Your Life,” or so say bloggers Jules and Eisha. The image you see there (in the public domain) is an artist’s sketch of Betsy Bell. Perhaps the most widely-used “Bell Witch” photo in existence, it was created in 1893. (The printing plates were made by Sanders Engraving Company out of St. Louis, MO and were used for M.V. Ingram’s 1894 book, An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch).

And as for the book cover image below and what it has to do with the Bell Witch, well, I’ll get to that in a moment.

If you saw the movie “American Haunting” last year, you may know the basic story of the Bell Witch. Author and historian Pat Fitzhugh will tell you everything you need to know about the legend at this site (and, specifically, on this page). Here’s the basic summary, as found on this informative Wikipedia page: “The Bell Witch is a ghost story from American Southern Folklore. The legend of the Bell Witch, also called the Bell Witch Haunting, revolves around strange events allegedly experienced by the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee, in 1817–1821.” And this might help (from this site), which will tell you a bit more:

“The spirit identified itself as the ‘witch’ of Kate Batts, a neighbors of the Bell’s, with whom John had experienced bad business dealings over some purchased slaves. ‘Kate’ as the local people began calling her, made daily appearances in the Bell home, wreaking havoc on everyone there. People all over the area of soon learned of the witch and she made appearances, in sounds and voices, all over Robertson County.

The ghost became so famous that even General Andrew Jackson decided to visit. He too experienced the antics of the witch and his carriage wheels refused to turn until the witch decided to let them.” Read the rest of this entry �

{Note: Please see the post below for today’s Robert’s Snow schedule!}

Hi, everyone. If you missed our earlier announcement, 7-Imp is currently guest blogging at ForeWord Magazine at their Shelf Space column (“Booksellers and Librarians talk about what’s in their reading room and what’s on the horizon”) for the next few weeks. Eisha took week one with some YA novel reviews, and this week I’ve got reviews of four middle-grade/early YA novels up. It’s called “Middle-Grade Novel Round-Up: Or, The Only Place You’ll See Joey Pigza, Camels, a Tangled Mass of Fairy Tale Green, and Banjos in One Post,” and it’s here. The novels I review are:

* Camel Rider by Prue Mason (Charlesbridge; June 2007; review copy);

* Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst (Razorbill/Penguin Young Readers; June 2007; review copy);

* Louisiana’s Song by Kerry Madden (Viking Juvenile; May 2007; review copy); and

* . . . I kicked things off with I Am Not Joey Pigza by Jack Gantos (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; July 2007; review copy). I reviewed this back in September, but for this piece, I took portions of that review and added a few comments that Jack Gantos made at the recent Southern Festival of Books about the writing of this novel.

Here’s the link again if you want to go take a gander. Enjoy!

{Note: Please see the below post for today’s Robert’s Snow schedule!} . . .

What happens when the creator of the Animorphs series tackles a free verse novel? Well, something quite lovely after all.

In Home of the Brave (Feiwel & Friends; August 2007; review copy), Katherine Applegate’s first stand-alone literary novel, she tells the story of Kek, who once lived in Africa with his mother, father, and brother but lost the latter two in the midst of war in Sudan. After time at a refugee camp, he is reunited with his aunt and cousin, Ganwar, already living in America as refugees, and befriends a cow at a nearby farm, which reminds him of home (“You can have your dogs and cats,/ your gerbils and hamsters/ and sleek sparkling fish./ But you will have lived/ just half a life/ if you never love a cow”). The popularity of free verse and its constant abuse could be an altogether different post, but I think this one mostly works.

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Jules: “Mokie and Bik lived on a boat called Bullfrog. They lived in it, on it, all around it—monkeying up ladders and down ropes, over the wheelhouse and across the cabin floor.” This is our introduction to Mokie and Bik, the two young children of this most unusual chapter book, who climb and crawl and generally scamper their way around this houseboat, while their father is off working his day job as a “parrot” (who will come home with a “pirate on his shoulder”) on his “ship-at-sea with clouds of sails on five tall masts and brrr-ooping broop for fog, and he salty sailed around the world.” The children live with their mother, an artist, who I thought was so savagely cool and who is depicted in my favorite illustration of the book with “her easel and her Art” and “roaring brrr-oaring down the road” on a “botormike,” telling the children, “{a}sk me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.” And their nanny, Ruby, lives with them; she can usually be found telling the children to “get out from underfoot!” The illustrations have been done by Jonathan Bean, an illustrator for whom I have already declared my great love this year (here and here and here and here and here. Whew).

Eisha, what did you think? The language in this title, I should add for those who haven’t read it yet, is quite distinctive. But I really fell in love with it:

Every morning, as the sun came up, when Mokie and Bik were still in their bunks in the bow, they heard Erik the Viking’s seagull boat chug-chug-chugging out to sea while the seagulls squawk wawk rawked and Erik shouted “No fisk yet for pesky gulls!”

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Jules: Lyle Hertzog and his friends, Dave and Marilla, form the Qwikpick Adventure Society, which is named after the convenience store where Lyle’s parents work and where they all like to hang out in the small town in which they live. With no plans on Christmas day, they decide — after reading about it in the newspaper — to visit the antiquated sludge fountain at the nearby sewage plant, originally built decades ago and soon to be replaced in a sewer upgrade. Essentially, this is their last chance to see the “fountain of poop,” and they wouldn’t miss it for anything. This book is their report of the adventure, which Riddleburger presents in a rather multi-media format — with occasional hand-lettered font, as if on lined school paper; line drawings; the aforementioned newspaper article; photographs; and more. Plus, a haiku about the poop fountain. No kidding.

Eisha and I both read Qwikpick. Here’s our mini co-review on this one . . .

eisha: I thought this was a great little MG novel. I liked the format, with Lyle’s confessional hand-written inserts, occasional photos and ephemera tucked into the official typed “report.”

What stood out for me, though, was the strength of the characters. Everyone in the story was believable, and really interesting – even the minor players, like Larry the gas station manager who used to live in the break room, and Freddie the sewage plant manager. The great little details about them, like the record player and lava lamp that Larry left behind, and the Molly Hatchet tape that Freddie rescued from the sewage, flesh them out into quirky adults that I felt like I really knew.

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I know I’m going to look insufferably and nerdily overachieving here, but I’m using my turn for this Poetry Friday to highlight three poetry books across the board, so to speak — picture book, middle-grade, and YA (actually, the Grandits book is more squarely aimed at teens, but it’d work just dandy for a middle-school reader as well). That’s because I can’t choose which to highlight today, not to mention I’ve been feeling rather behind on reviews lately. Here goes:

How has it taken me over three-quarters of the year to find this title? It’s wonderful. Portions of it were previously published in 1960, but here it is now with warm, ebullient illustrations from Melissa Iwai. In this rhyming text, Kuskin — winner of the NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry, among many other honors — offers the child reader a series of imaginative hypothetical questions: “If you could be green/ would you be a lawn/ or a lean green bean/ and the stalk it’s on?/ Would you be a leaf/ on a leafy tree?/ Tell me, lean green one,/ what would you be?” . . . The other hypothetical questions proposed to the reader involve being square, soft, loud, small, red, fierce, blue, and bright (“Tell me, quite bright one,/ what would you be?”) with a slightly surreal mind-bender proposed at the end. It’s a book to delight and engage in, to share with a group of children at story time, and ponder the world around and the qualities of it. And, as the Booklist review pointed out, Kuskin uses the sound of her words and their meaning to great effect (“If you could be small/ would you be a mouse/ or a mouse’s child/ or a mouse’s house/ or a mouse’s house’s/ front door key?”). Iwai’s imaginative acrylic paintings are soft, fanciful when they need to be and playful-with-perspective in just the right spots. A lively pre-school book, to share either one-on-one or in an interactive story time hour.

This is a follow-up title to Grandits’ 2004 anthology of original concrete poems, entitled Technically, It’s Not My Fault, also published by Clarion Books (which I’ve not read but Eisha enjoyed), this title following Jessie, a high schooler with fervent opinions about her pesky younger brother, Robert (who narrated the first anthology); designing her own clothes; volleyball; her cat; “stupid pep rallies” (“I’m not feeling peppy, and the pep rally isn’t helping”); and much more. Book and magazine designer Grandits scores with these visually-enticing poems whose very shapes echo their subject matter, the words and type and design coming together to make a poem and a picture — an hourglass for “Allergic to Time,” a graph which charts out Jessie’s day in “My Absolutely Bad Cranky Day,” and the spray of a shower in “All My Important Thinking Gets Done in the Shower.” Read the rest of this entry �

Joey’s back in I Am Not Joey Pigza (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; July 2007; review copy), though Jack Gantos stated previously that the books would stop at the line where trilogies are drawn (read here to find out why Gantos kept writing). I, for one, am happy he didn’t close the book on the intrepid Joey.

I’ve noticed this book is being generally praised, though I’ve heard a few half-hearted (as in still mostly enthusiastic) grumbles here and there (as in, I liked this but . . .). But when I read this from Kirkus Reviews — “This is Gantos at his best, and that’s saying a lot” — I think I literally cheered and said, word. ‘Cause this is exactly how I felt when I finished the last page and closed the book. I’m a big fan of a) Joey and b) Gantos, so let me state that bias up front, if I must. I didn’t think it’d be possible for him to improve upon the Joey saga, but he has — again.

Carter Pigza, Joey’s “no-good squinty-eyed bad dad,” is back. It’s no coincidence that Joey’s mom is suddenly all starry-eyed, as well as the recipient of lavish gifts, and that — soon after — Carter comes knockin’ at their door, much to Joey’s surprise. He’s had a small stroke of luck with playing the lottery, and he’s back to take up his post as father and all-around family man, going so far as to insist that each member of the family changes his or her name. Hence, the book’s title; Joey is now supposed to go by Freddy Heinz (Carter was inspired by a catsup bottle), and his parents are now Charles and Maria (“‘But he’s changed, Joey for real,'” his mother tells him, “with admiration in her voice. ‘Only his name,’ I shot right back. ‘That’s like some kind of stupid pet trick.'”). Carter — rather, Charles Heinz — also moves the entire Pigza clan past the city and into the tiny apartment adjoined to a neglected, old roadside diner, which he plans to renovate into the brand-spankin’-new diner called The Beehive — this after Charles and Maria’s “rewedding,” which, at one point, had me laughing so. very. hard. that I had to put the book down for a minute and compose myself (it was the adult-size bicycle helmet over the bandage around Joey’s head which got to me, especially that Charles had spray-painted it white and Maria had put little heart stickers and cupids around the edge, though the re-wedding vows themselves, said in all sincerity with Maria’s friends chiming in with their “She forgives,” are classic — “I forgive you for all the times you called me a lifelong loser”; “I forgive you for trying to run me over with your motorcycle last year”). Read the rest of this entry �

Hey, pssst! Guess what? Adam Rex will be stopping by tomorrow here at 7-Imp for an impossible interview before breakfast (we’ll make it lunch — a sandwich, in fact — in honor of one of Adam’s books, a favorite of ours). And, in anticipation of his visit, we thought we’d take a moment today to review his two latest and greatest titles — his new picture book, Pssst!, which he both wrote and illustrated, and his first novel for children, The True Meaning of Smekday (here is its very own site), aimed at the 4-8 range*, if we have to pick age ranges here, which will be released next month. Adam also both wrote and illustrated Smekday as well.

We’re not only huge Adam Rex fans already, but we love these books. Actually, Jules has read Pssst!, and Eisha’s read Smekday, so we’re handling the reviews that way.

Without further ado then . . .

Jules: So, here we have a new picture book from Adam Rex, and it’s a wild ride and a very funny story, one that I think would be well-paired with last year’s Hippo! No, Rhino (Little, Brown Young Readers) by Jeff Newman (which I reviewed here last year). And why is that? Well, for many reasons, including the fact that both books are a visual delight, but primarily because in both books, the young child protagonists visiting the zoo are way smarter and helpful than any adult could even pretend to be. Power to the Children and all that good stuff.

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There is a reason I get excited at the release of a new Phyllis Root title. She is a master storyteller (and wrote the best creation myth this side of Genesis in Big Momma Makes the World). And it’s not as if she needed to prove to me her superb story-spinning skills any more with this new title from Candlewick, consisting of four boisterous trickster tales (two published previously and individually in 1996 — and two written in ’07), but you better believe that with this collection of stories, she shows that — somehow — she gets better and better with each book. I don’t know how this is possible, since she’s been a supreme storyteller since practically Day One.

Aunt Nancy is a crackerjack if ever there was one. She’s clever and quick (“{l}ucky for Aunt Nancy her head wasn’t up on her shoulders just to keep her ears from fighting with each other”) and knows how to take care of herself. And we know this, because she manages to outwit four pesky, unwanted visitors at her door, each one spotlighted in four entertaining tales: Old Man Trouble, Cousin Lazybones, Old Woeful, and Mister Death.

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