john and jana

Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie by Norton Juster and Chris Raschka

There are two sides to every coin — that’s a simple way of expressing duality to a kid, but it doesn’t get to the subtleties. And these things are only really of concern in regard to people. There are times in life when you find out for the first time that people you think are one way are also another and that other way of being is a part of them you are not privy to. The worst realizations in this regard revolve around parents and peers and feelings of betrayal are the gravest hurt these moments can inspire. At times, they can also inspire self-reflection as you begin to understand that you, too, have more than one side to you.

The little girl in “Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie,” the new children’s book by the Caldecott-winning duo of Norton Juster and Chris Raschka, has a head start — her grandparents have made clear the two sides to her personality. Sometimes she’s Sourpuss, who doesn’t want to go anywhere, do anything, eat anything or be nice to anyone. Other times she’s Sweet Pie, complimenting her Nanna’s wrinkles and begging stories from her Poppy.

While Juster’s words investigate the idea that these two are one and vice versa by presenting a real character through the sing-song monologue, Chris Raschka’s vibrant illustrations capture the emotional dance of the child. Stripped down to an existence of simple thick lines that create expressions topped by a curly brown mop, Raschka’s portrayal of the little girl offers his typical animated delights as well as a purposeful generic quality to her being. She could be any kid have this book read to them and this identification with something so bursting with color and personality will have any kid laughing at their own behavior as well as hers. It’s identification as self-realization and the emotional seed is planted that duality is common and it’s kind of funny, too.

Vunce Upon A Time by J. Otto Seibold and Siobhan Vivian

In J. Otto Seibold and Siobhan Vivian’s “Vunce Upon a Time,” vampires are given a nice holiday, fairy tale treatment as young bloodsucker Dagmar — actually, he doesn’t like blood, he’s a vegetarian — tries to find a way to replenish his candy stash and is tipped off to the human holiday of Halloween by a skeleton boy.

The real dilemma for Dagmar is coming up with an appropriately scary Halloween costume — after all, ghouls of all stripes would find different things scary than a human would. What this all points to, though, are cultural differences and the misunderstandings that create fears. In Seibold’s world, ghouls and humans aren’t all that different, separated by our taste in home decor and house pets more than anything else. Dagmar lives in a gloomy castle that is infected by vultures and zombie moths. He sleeps in a coffin and turns into a bat. Like a human child, though, he likes the idea of dressing up and he loves candy — especially when rendered as packaged absurdities via Seibold’s subversive sensibilities (you have to love the candy “Filthy Rich Candy” with the slogan on its wrapper — “Ka-Ching!”).

In the end, this Halloween tale is one of togetherness — Dagmar will come to understand humans better and humans, actually, kind of already do understand monsters. We love them so much that we dress up every year just like them and celebrate with mounds of candy.

Jack and the Box by Art Spiegelman

It’s always a great day when Art Spiegelman puts out something new and “Jack and the Box” is as delightful as a children’s book can be.

Spiegelman’s set-up is simple — a little bunny kid named Jack is given an unpredictable Jack in the Box toy that inspires slight terror before giggly delight. The Jack in the Box — whose name is Zack — is a mischievous toy who is so often pronounced silly that he’s able to get away with quite a bit. It becomes a Seussian tale of absurd excess as Jack must corral what he has unleashed from this playful Pandora’s Box.

As part of the Toon Books line, “Jack and the Box” is an easy reader comic, but rather than going for either the traditional page grid or a free form sequential style, Spiegelman has the story unfold entirely horizontally. It creates an ongoing narrative that begs the question, “Oh, no, what’s next?” Spiegelman lends plenty of atmosphere to the story by placing his characters against some unusual background washes, with foregrounds equally as off-the-beaten path — pages that mix gray-blues with aquas or throw light purples in there. Spiegelman’s shifting of the color scheme, which builds through the book, is simply masterful — it’s a multi-hued map of the emotional pathways in the story.

It’s always a pleasure to see someone so skilled as Spiegelman not only opt for simplicity to express his ideas, but to direct what results to kids.

Stinky by Eleanor Davis

In the never ending struggle against misconceptions about those who are different from us, few people consider what preconceived notions oogly monsters have of humans. Eleanor Davis’ easy reader graphic novel “Stinky” investigates the possibilities through a mix of old-fashioned cartoon good feelings and modern gross humor that sit quite nicely next to each other.

Stinky is a big-headed, stubbily-horned, purple, polka-dotted monster with an obese pet frog named Wartbelly and a penchant for pickled onions. Stinky has a clear vision of what human kids are like, pristine little squeaky clean bores who don’t like yucky things. Enter one kid with a treehouse to undercut Stinky’s expectations.

These are simple lessons about bigotry that reach to harder, more complicated realities, and they are presented in amusing, likable scenarios. If it’s sad that we still have to teach such lessons to children in 2008, it’s at least nice when the necessary preaching comes in the form of stories like “Stinky.” Pickled onion jokes make everything easier to swallow.

The Dayan Collection by Akiko Ikeda

Hidden away in children’s popular culture in Japan is a big-eyed cat named Dayan who inhabits a magical world not far down the street from the works of Beatrix Potter, thanks to its darkness and absurdity. The books are being translated into English for the first time, giving American kids the chance to encounter the cat’s low key adventures.

Akiko Ikeda’s tales walk a path that welcomes mysticism and a subtle folkloric quality, as well as an existentialism that replaces any sort of humdrum exposition. The first book, “Dayan’s Birth-day,” opens with the simple idea that Dayan does not know when his birthday is, but wants to so he can throw himself a party. Like something out of an old folk tale, Dayan makes a deal with witches to uncover the mysterious date, but thoughtlessness creates a conflict with the witches that can only be solved through fast-thinking trickery.

There is something positively pagan about the comings and goings of the animal characters — “Thursday Rainy Party” involves a celebration of showers and the creation of a calendar; “White Eurocka” brings animals together for a Winter Solstice style celebration that involves a mystical birth; and “Chibikuro Party” unveils a party of freed shadows who plan never to return to their masters, under the leadership of the nefarious shadow of “The Satan of Death Forest.”

Despite the dark, supernatural tones, these are not scary stories in the slightest — and they all unfold around cute forest animals. The darkness functions as a spice that mixes well with the adorable simplicity of the other half of the tales — there will be, perhaps, a cultural difference in what is considered the norm for children’s books. For a little kid who might be ready for something with unexpected texture — or a parent who might want to expose the child to other cultures in a subtle, less dictatorial manner, that involves exciting strangeness traveling through the ether — the Dayan books are just the thing.

Silly Lilly and the Four Seasons by Agnes Rosenstiehl

(Toon Books)

The second release in Toon Books’ new line of easy reader graphic novels, “Silly Lilly,” is a charming affair by French author/illustrator Agnes Rosenstiehl. In a series of seasonal sketches, a young girl named Lilly is followed through her reactions to the changes.

That’s a funny thing about being a kid — before you are really aware of time, of real change in the sense that an adult is, you are aware of the flow and passing in one very sensual way and that is the shift of seasons. Seasons, like anything else, are relative and will look and feel different according to where you live — at the same time, the basics are generally the same and this is structure we teach children.

Seasons, it seems, are the first formal lesson we give in the cycle of life. Lilly gets silly in the park in spring, the beach in summer, the apple orchard in fall, the snow in winter and the playground in spring, bringing the year full circle and, more importantly, transcribing a year of change for not only the earth, but the girl as well.

Rosenstiehl crafts a simple sketch of a graphic novel here, presenting the idea of sequential storytelling in its most base form without making it a pantomime. There is a crafty underbelly to the humor, with slight story tension being brought out in delicate ways.

“Silly Lilly” is the cutest tour de force imaginable.

Golden Legacy by Leonard S. Marcus

In the last 10 years — if you’ve been paying close attention — it’s become very apparent that the ephemera of 50 years ago is more influential to our modern visual style than any fine or gallery art.

In many cases, a visual idea may start with the boys in the berets, but it’s the commercial artists who take these and run, apply them to outlets in our daily lives and bring them to popular recognition, make them easy on our eyes and our brains, help us accept new ideas. As a result, brilliance crops up in the strangest places.

Like very old children’s books.

Two decades ago, Little Golden Books still had a reputation for the same level of ironic cheese that was reserved for Gumby and “Leave It to Beaver,” but that ended quickly once many of my generation started taking a second look at the line and realizing the artistic power behind the illustrators who created them. The stories run the gamut from charming to educational to odd dispatches from another era — with some timeless exceptions — but the artwork that graced these tales were often of such a high standard that they influenced generations of graphic designers, cartoonists, commercial illustrators and, yeah, children’s book illustrators.

In “Golden Legacy,” author Leonard S. Marcus offers a decades-long company history of Golden Books, revealing the behind-the-scenes business and editorial decision making with a lush and much deserved document of the company’s output — the work of legends like Richard Scarry, Garth Williams, Tibor Gergely, Leonard Weisgard, Alice and Martin Provensen and ground-breaking author Margaret Wise Brown. It’s part biography, part business history and — most importantly — part gorgeous art book.

Golden Books has its roots in the 1907 purchase of a rapidly failing printing business by first generation German-American Edward H. Wadewitz in Racine, Wis. Wadewitz steered the business forward, changing its name to Western Printing and Lithographing Company around 1910 and, in 1916, acquiring children’s book publisher Hamming-Whitman, which he renamed the Whitman Publishing Company. Add to this mix the addition of social-turned-children’s-book salesman Samuel E. Lowe, who visualized a market for affordable children’s books, and you have the beginnings of a publishing legend.

In 1932, the company debuted their Big Little Book series, which thrived in part thanks to lucrative licensing deals with Disney, but in 1938 partnered with Simon and Schuster — at the time, new kids on the block and with all the chutzpah of punk rock — in a joint effort that culminated in Little Golden Books.

In documenting the company’s history, Marcus is able to weave other interesting crossroads of the era. For instance, Little Golden Books benefited from the pre-World War II upheaval in Europe, with artists like Gergely and Feodor Rojankovsky coming onboard and providing the publisher’s first signature styles. Gergely, a Hungarian by birth, spent time in Vienna as a newspaper cartoonist and avant-garde puppeteer — in his native country, he documented pre-Holocaust Jewish communities through his paintings and sketches. Rojankovsky was a Russian immigrant in Nazi-occupied Paris, where he worked as an illustrator — prior to this, he had been a White Russian soldier in World War I and had also worked as a stage designer and fashion magazine art director. Such was the diverse background of Golden Books illustrators.

Marcus also covers another émigré group that found a home in Golden Books — ex-Disney animators. Aurelius Battaglia, J.P. Miller Martin Provensen and others all redirected the talent that defined pioneering animation to working the same magic on the look and feel of children’s literature. As Marcus recounts, the idea of elegant and exciting books for kids, sturdy, at a price people could afford — and marketed in places like grocery stores where ordinary people would take note — was not lauded by everyone. Librarians in particular were vocal opponents of the line, the old guard of a reading experience that was seen as elevated, lofty. Despite the protests, Little Golden Books were able to make a simple statement through example — that cheap books did not have to promote cheap work, that ordinary kids did not deserve to be shut out from reading because they were alienated from the higher plane.

As proof, Marcus need only offer a colorful collection of book covers and inside illustration from the line. From the wacky abstractions of the Provensens and J.P. Miller to the soulful and insightful animals of Richard Scarry, the complicated design work of Leonard Weisgard and warm proletarianism of Gergely, Marcus’ book is a must-have treasure for fans of groundbreaking illustration work. The only better purchase would be the original books themselves — barring hose, you can’t go wrong with Marcus’ celebration.

Benny and Penny by Geoffrey Hays

Here’s an idea that never occurred to me before: Easy reader comics. Toon Books has arrived to plant that idea in everybody’s head, however, and wash away any opportunity to use that sort of stunned opening sentence in a review ever again. As evidenced through their inaugural title, “Benny and Penny in Just Pretend” by Geoffrey Hayes, they’re well on their way to doing just that, with the mantra from editorial director Francoise Mouly: “Comics, they are not just for adults anymore,” as she said in a recent interview with the Horn Book.

If you have never heard of Mouly, now is the time to learn. As art editor of the New Yorker, she has defined the feel of the magazine for 15 years, taking the traditional look of the covers and adding an updated, distinct style to them. Part of the unique quality of her stewardship has been her connection to the comic book world, through her years publishing and editing the RAW imprint with her husband, Art Spiegelman. In 2000, she and Spiegelman started the RAW Jr. line, with the Little Lit series, a triumphant anthology of comic book tales for kids featuring work by top line writers and artists like Paul Auster, Dan Clowes, William Joyce and others.

Mouly’s formula has been simple, yet revolutionary. Whereas comics are often an afterthought to many publishers — and creators in the comic book world not necessarily well-regarded — Mouly saw a hot bed of originality in the comic pool and, with a discriminating editorial eye, sought to use these basic materials to give attention to the comic book form, to nurture the output for quality.

The result of this forward movement is the Toon Books line, which Mouly and Speigelman have also fashioned in collaboration with educators and educational advisers, stemming from the idea that comics are ideal for young readers, drawing them into the story, helping them “crack the code that allows literacy to flourish” — a comic book page acts as a road map to the mechanics of story telling that have proven difficult to some children and are valuable to any child.

With all that context for a book like “Benny and Penny,” it’s with relief that I report the book to be charming and simple, as it should be. Benny is a little mouse pretending to be a pirate — a wooden crate is his make-believe pirate ship. His little sister, Penny, wants to play with him, but a rejection and a scuffle sends the two into a conflict throughout the day where they will, inevitably, learn the value of each other.

This is no simple, sentimental aside, however — while familial affection is an obvious central component to the story, it doesn’t get in the way of creating a good bit of depth to the mice. Benny is a bit obstinate and reactionary are sudden, Penny is sly and patient — both characters are terribly honest, probably due to Hayes’ memories of his own dynamic with his younger brother and the idea that a kid might have to learn a lesson several times before it sticks. So it is with brother-sister relationships as it is with reading.

Hayes’ work hits the right between children’s books and comics. His mice and their world have that nice, warm texture of a personable picture book, but the panels flow with sequential ease, with energetic animation to his characters — there’s great body language going on here and Hayes gets a lot of facial emotion out of little mice.

Aimed at readers K-2, “Benny and Penny” will give any kid that age something delightful that will also challenge them — and any parent reading alongside will find plenty to be amused by. Toon Books is off to a great start and I look forward to them changing the way we look at comics.

Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen has written more than 200 books in her 40-year career, including the Caldecott Medal-winner, “Owl Moon,” the acclaimed young adult novel, “Devil’s Arithmetic,” and the very successful “How Do Dinosaurs” series — and about a milion other books. Yolen is renowned for never speaking down to her readers, regardless of their age, and always assuming that kids can work with levels of literary sophistication in language, plot, theme, and characterization. Adult can love a Yolen book as much as any kid and it’s this universality of respect that has given her career such a lasting buoyancy that overcomes trends in publishing.

Yolen has made literacy her number one priority and she does her part by writing the best books she can and speaking with parents and educators about the issue. She began her career as a journalist and a poet and currently lives in Western Massachusetts.

JM: How much of your professional life do you spend in regard to literacy?

JY: I’m almost always talking about the importance of literacy in a child’s life and that literature begins in the cradle and if we don’t engage children in books at an early age then we won’t have any adult readers as well.

I’m always preaching to the choir. These days, people who are involved in reading literature are an endangered species, Harry Potter notwithstanding—which is a phenomenon that has nothing to do with the long run of what’s going to happen to literature. I mean, it’s a mammoth blip, but a blip nonetheless and we can’t count on Harry Potter readers to go on to be other kinds of readers.

All I can do is just write the best books I know how, but I’ve also hired a publicist to help get out the word about my books, because you can no longer count on the publicity department in a publishing company to do that. They have hundreds of books and, alas and alack, very often they are more interested in getting out the latest celebrity book. That’s where all the focus and all the money is going to, so it’s up to individual authors to do what they can to get their own books out there and if that means scheduling your own tours, if that means sending out your own materials, if that means getting a publicist, that’s what we’re all doing these days.

JM: Has the overwhelming popularity of series books resulted in a less literate product?

JY: As a child I read series books. I read Nancy Drew, I read the Bobbsey Twins. Those are comfort books, they don’t necessarily challenge you in any way, but it’s comfortable because you are revisiting old friends over and over again. Just like we watch the same television shows over and over again. We like series. We don’t want the same plot, perhaps, but what we do want is ‘Oh, I know these characters and I can count on them.’ Wizard of Oz, I can count on those characters. There will always be something interesting happening, but I also know that it will always be Dorothy or I know it will be one of her buddies. You get books like the Spiderwyck books or the Lemony Snicket books and you know those characters already, you do have to be reintroduced — what you’re doing is being reunited.

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