So excited I might have a heart attack

Hands down my favorite picture book is Wanted: The Great Cookie Thief.  It's an old school Sesame Street joint from the seventies that takes place in the old west.  The town has an immense problem in the form of the Great Cookie Thief.  He steals all the cookies so no one can have any and the townsfolk are understandably miffed.  A fellow with big, white, googly eyes and blue, shaggy fur wanders in and everyone is convinced that he is the elusive criminal.  Not one to jump to conclusions, the sheriff sends someone over to check the potential perp against the wanted poster to ensure they are accusing the right man.  After verifying several things, including his fur, eyes, bandana and hat they know he is for sure the criminal mastermind behind the missing cookies.  Once accused, Cookie Monster alters the wanted poster in an act of considerable skullduggery so that the criminal featured has a mustache, which he clearly doesn't.  The townsfolk apologize, only to find out that he is indeed the Great Cookie Thief when he showers them all with cookies after lifting his cap.  Oh that Cookie Monster.

I decided to finally review this literary classic because I found THIS VIDEO that nearly gave me a heart attack.  Apparently there is a video version of the book and a brainiac in the truest sense of the word decided to pair it with Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal, making my life.  Literally.  If I were to die this moment it would most likely be okay because my life is complete.  I'm sure my friends and family will be sad, so I hope I don't die, but still.. life=complete.

Yo

As promised, I am back now that I finished reading the Animorphs series.  Well, technically I still have the Ellimist Chronicles... but that isn't part of the series proper and therefore doesn't count.  

All I have to say is what. the. hell!  As you are aware of the weekly publication in days past of Pottertastic Tidbits I am a diehard Potter fan.  That should alert you to how monumental it is that I think I cried more at the ending of the Animorphs series than I did for Potter.  True story.  Both children's books series use a war as the focal point and feature substantial losses on both sides.  However, Harry Potter ends with the final statement, "All was well," and even though there were more casualties than in Animorphs, it still ties together nicely in a little bow named King's Cross train station.  Animorphs, on the other hand, ends on a bitter note portraying the aftermath of the war and it's impact on all of the characters.  All but one are left miserable, and the one that isn't miserable is pretty much the reason the others are depressed.  I was initially upset by this ending, but this bitch slap from K.A. Applegate has led me to finally cope and accept the ending of this series (Please note: if you actually care about Animorphs spoilers, don't go to the Applegate letter).  

Yet again, I would like to state that I refuse to believe that fictional characters are not real.  I don't know when (or if) I can recover from my favorite Animorph dying, but I will find a way.  I somehow managed to survive Sirius Black going deadside, so I guess I can handle this.  Right?

Man in the Ceiling

Alright kids, it's that time again. This time, I went way back in the day to 1993 for a gem called The Man in the Ceiling by Jules Feiffer. This middle grade novel integrated graphics into the narrative before Hugo even dreamed of inventing anything. Young Jimmy wants nothing more from the world than to be a great cartoonist one day and have his father admire his brilliant comic strips. However, his father has no time for artistic types and Jimmy is challenged in the hand-drawing department. Schoolyard faux-friendships, sibling squabbles and a wayward uncle, amongst other various aspects of Jimmy's life, are introduced separately as the chapters progress. During the first handful of chapters, it seemed like each was a window into different vignettes of childhood for Jimmy, but they weave together into a cohesive storyline, one topic relating and referring back to the other.

The narration is delightful and often reminds you that the author is telling the story about Jimmy without being obvious or too demanding of the reader. My favorite example is on page 31, where the author comments on his own writing by saying,

"Now, I could take up the next five pages telling you what Lisi said, and it would be printed in capital letters to show how loud she said it, but you'd get bored reading the same lines over and over, so what's the point? However, I'll give you some examples: 'I ASKED YOU FOR ONE SIMPLE FAVOR...'"

Other great examples are on pages 35, 140, and 120, just to name a few. I only had qualms with one sentence out of the whole book, which, if you ask me, is pretty good considering most of the rubbish out there. That sentence is on page 63 and despite Art Spiegelman's reassurance on the back that this is "a book for kids without an ounce of condescension in it," this particular sentence insults the memory of the reader with a reminder of something they learned in the previous chapter. Perhaps it isn't that big of a deal, but all the same, I felt it was extra.

Throwback Review: Regarding the Fountain

Author: Kate Klise
Publication Date: 1998

One of the reasons I enjoy being a librarian (trainee) is that I get to peddle books I heart onto kids as if they were crack. My library makes it all that much easier to push Regarding the Fountain onto children because we have about a gagillion of copies. No seriously, there are at least ten paperbacks and two or three hardcovers. It is glorious. I found this title by randomly browsing Novelist K-8 and I am so glad that I took that time to slack off from Summer Reading to do so, because this book is amazing.

After slipping in the persistent puddle located at the base of the leaky drinking fountain, principal Walter Russ seeks the creative assistance of fountain designer Florence Waters to upgrade the old model. He strictly indicates that he is only interested in a boring, run-of-the-mill fountain; yet Ms. Waters has other notions in mind, especially after consulting the fifth grade class that resides closest to the dripping fountain. Through the course of various memos, news clippings, and letters, the reader finds that there is more going on to the fountain than just a pesky puddle. Especially once the fifth grade unearths tremendous findings during their town history project revealing the real reason Spring Creek is now referred to as Dry Creek.

Because of the format, there are many delightful surprises as the plot progresses. One of my favorite aspects of this book is the inclusion of everything (and I mean everything) that might enhance the experience of this unique drinking contraption. Such as the page of text supplemented by water ballet instructions, to further illustrate the point of the text:
Genius. While there was an overabundance of illustrations, they were all splendidly executed, further evoking a whimsical atmosphere. My only real complaint with this text is that the word "principal" is used in place of "principle." That's just sloppy copy editing that taints an otherwise enjoyable book.

Throwback Review: The Westing Game

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (1978)

Ellen Raskin opens the book with one of my favorite beginning paragraphs ever:

"The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!"

All the sentences that follow are also very well written and fuse into an enjoyable adventure. The mysterious Mr. Westing, of Westing Paper Company fortune, passes on and names all but two of the Sunset Towers residents as the heirs and heiresses of his estate. That is to say, they are slated to win thousands, should they figure out who among the proposed inheritors murdered Mr. Westing.

In order to sniff out the murderer, Mr. Westing left behind a series of odd words to act as clues. The sixteen residents are paired off and each couple has a different set of words, which take them down many interesting paths, including right down Wall Street. As tensions rise between the heirs and heiresses, things start to go missing, several small-scale bombings litter the complex and a few end up in the nearby hospital. Yet, despite the suspenseful plot, it maintains an air of playfulness and provides several points to laugh boisterously.

Enviro-Nazi Strikes Again...

Excessive paper usage is a personal pet peeve. If there is no reason to put something on paper, don't do it. It's that simple. I blog now, instead of keeping a journal. My notebook is Microsoft, instead of Five Star. And yet, some people just want to print things to print them--even if it's grossly unnecessary. That's cool I guess if that's what you're into, but don't make me do it (and for the record, the italics mean it's totally not cool one iota). My reference professor is of the opinion that because our class isn't entirely paperless, it's quite all right to print out things for no reason. Let's see if you follow her logic:

• We are to look at two online or print biographical sources for next week and look up some individuals
• If we look at print versions, we must copy them and bring them to class (understandable as far as discussions are concerned)
• If we look at online sources, we are to print out the web page.
  
• Even if we use our laptops in class
• No, she's not collecting it

What the? I questioned her on these last two bullet points to confirm that yes, she really does want us to print things for no reason. Why is that? Because she couldn't give me a reason for printing them. But we have to do it. I mean, if it were one page, fine. But two sources worth of information, PLUS our notes?

So, in light of the painfully environmentally UNfriendly decision of my professor, I've decided to do a throwback review. This book (and perhaps Dawn from the Baby-Sitter's Club) might explain why I am such an Enviro-Nazi, considering how prevalently I read these books as a youngin'.

A little while back, I recounted the very first book in the Animorph book series. After remembering how awesome the Animorphs are, I decided to reread the entire series (since I'm a huge-mega dork). Anyway, the fourth title of the series, The Message, is intriguing. It's told from Cassie's perspective and begins with strange dreams she's been having. When she tells her friends about them, it turns out that Tobias, her red-tailed hawk buddy's been having them too! Gasp!

When a news report indicates that something washed up on the beach, something that looks an awful lot like a piece of an Andalite ship, the Animorph gang realizes they're gonna have to go to the ocean and find out. Deep at the bottom of the ocean is a stranded Andalite (who, incidentally, was sending messages to any Andalites that may be on Earth to save him, which explains those pesky dreams Tobias and Cassie were having) who tells the Animorphs the real reason the Yeerk-Jerks are enslaving the human race, and it ain't pretty. Not only are they after a race of intelligent beings to control, but they also want to eradicate superfluous lifeforms on Earth. Now the Animorphs realize that they aren't just fighting to save the human race, but all creatures and animals of Earth.

The Invasion; or, the book that made me want to read below my RL in middle school

I haven't done a throwback review for a while, so I thought I might as well do it right. If you have not heard of Animorphs, you pretty much need to get up, leave whatever building you're in and get to the nearest book seller or library and pick up The Invasion, by K.A. Applegate (though, please be enviro-friendly and turn off the computer first). This book is everything I remembered and more. I've read a buttload of books for kids written in first person that are transparent and definitely feel like adults frontin' and pretending to be kids. With The Invasion, I felt as if Jake was telling me about the Yeerks and Andalites and the whole gang.

For those of you living under a rock for the past twelve years, Animorphs are a group of five kids that walk through an abandoned construction site and receive the gift of morph-technology from a dying Andalite. The Andalite, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, details the on-going battle taking place secretly inside the skulls of their fellow man all around them, between mortal minds and Yeerks. What is a Yeerk? Why, it's a mind-controlling, parasitic slug, of course! Throughout The Invasion, the five children that dub themselves the Animorphs must figure out if they want to fight the good fight to save humanity or step back and just be regular kids.

As for readability, I'll let you decide after viewing these pictures:



That is certainly a dog-eared copy (which, considering which text this is, is quite amusing in and of itself, but I'm just sayin').



Me in the library: "I think this is the first book in the series, let me check the spine to double check... Oh."




"Hey, is this a new-fangled monocle?"



"Gasp! It's the back cover of the book! I don't remember it being see-through!!?!"

Recap Attack

Instead of writing a bunch of posts, today I'm just gonna fashion myself a bulleted list and pretend that I'm as organized as a librarian should be.

• Reference is getting annoying. First off, I work at a desk in an academic library. And now, while I'm A) crappy at it and B) not everyone in the class has that luxury, I still can figure out basic things on my own, without a ten minute lesson on how to search databases. When Paulette said she was going to go over something we all should know how to use from the site, I was imagining her busting out the reference resources--because those suckers are intense and I tend to stay away from them even though they are ah-mazing. No. Of course that is too advanced. Instead, let's ask questions about how to find articles. Are you kidding me? Are you effing kidding me? Thank god for blogs and laptops, because otherwise I wouldn't know what to do with myself during class.
  
  
• Last night was the YA author panel in the faculty lounge at SCILS. It was quite snazz-tastic. The featured authors were Bob Krech, Eireann Corrigan and Megan Mccafferty. It was definitely worth the late visit to SCILS and a great learning experience. I was pleasantly surprised that 2 of the panelists worked as teachers in addition to writing books; it gives me hope for the future. One of my biggest fears is that I'll finally get a real job at a school and never have time during the week to do something other than lesson-planning like my friend Dana, let alone write. So, phew, you can be a teacher and a wonderful writer. Excellent. Although, I can't personally say that I've read the books, so I am going on everyone else's words that they are awesome. I guess I will have to shelve my juvenille-fiction-only mentality to read their works. They all were such fun and interesting people that their books can't help but be good, right? Right. Plug time, so you can all read them with me:
• Megan Mccafferty's Fourth Comings(but it would probably be better to read the first three books beforehand)
• Bob Krech's Rebound
• Eireann Corrigan's Ordinary Ghosts
• Bonus: Eireann Corrigan's Splintering (because that just sounds interesting as hell)
  
  
• There is no logical leap for this, so I'll just put this out there. I miss the Secret World of Alex Mack. Badly. I yearn to watch a girl turn into silvery goo while wearing striped shirts from Sears and overalls. What a great premise. Her dad works at a radioactive chemical plant, and Alex, being in the wrong place at the wrong time (which is obviously the best formula for preteen mishap) gets doused in chemicals and BAM she can turn into liquid and squirt herself into all sorts of tiny nooks and crevices. Oh, and her father's plant is lurking and looming, looking all about for her. But oh snap, she just oozes out of all sorts of tight spaces. Sigh. I miss that being on TV all the time. Those were the days. In fact, I was grounded from TV so much that I ended up buying the books, because I need a Mack attack that badly.
  

Tired... so tired

Since I feel groggy and tired, my throwback shall be about a tired, old story. Many (a very many) will disagree with me about this, but I think the Chronicles of Narnia is terribly outdated. I decided to reread the Narnia series, in light of the popularity of the newer film versions and think that I was much better being off leaving the books in the foggy haze of forgotten memories. At this point, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is so embedded in popular culture that to recite the meat of the story here would be silly. In this review, I just want to discuss the feasibility of book-talking this book to a kid.

The main problem that I have with this text is gender roles. The girls are dainty and help out with setting tables, and washing dishes and aren't meant to fight. With hundreds of women in the armed service, it is an insult to the women fighting and risking their lives to suggest that women aren't meant to fight. Peter is given a rather phallic sword and shield and is expected to lead the battle. In the first book, The Magician's Nephew, Andrew must go after Polly because she is a girl and would not be able to get back herself.

Yes, these books are historical classics of children's and Christian literature. Yes, the gender roles depicted in these tales reflect the time period in which they were written. But, no, that does not mean I have to recommend them. I have an extreme aversion to sending the wrong idea about gender to young children still forming their concepts of boy and girl behaviors. They get enough of that on the playground and at potentially in their own homes. The last place they should get that thought is the local library (i.e., the warehouse of open ideas and information sharing). I would recommend other books (whose titles have decided to abandon me at this crucial juncture in my argument) that also place women into stereotypical "girl" behaviors over Lewis's books because they don't explicitly state that "women aren't meant to do" XY and Z the way Narnia books do. The fact that he repeatedly states what behaviors are and are not acceptable when exhibited by one gender is what holds me back.

If someone comes in asking about Narnia, I'll point to the DVD section unless they ask me otherwise. Honestly, I'd be hard-pressed to find a situation where I see myself even pausing on the spine of the book, let alone pulling it off the shelves without prompting.

Legendary Urban Chicken

This just in: there is a giant chicken running loose through the city! I repeat--there is a giant chicken terrorizing the streets of Hoboken. Do not leave your windows open and be sure to only leave your apartment when absolutely necessary! Keep all children and dogs indoors until the situation has been taken care of. *

I don't know about you, but if this was an all points bulletin going out in my hometown and I was an abnormally large chicken, I'd feel pretty lousy. And lousy is precisely how Henrietta, the 266-pound chicken of our tale--The Hoboken Chicken Emergency by Daniel Pinkwater--feels after being forced to leave her home. First, she is sold to a young boy to feed his family on Thanksgiving day by a mad scientist that genetically modified her. Then, after being saved a fate of sharing a table with stuffing and cranberry sauce, she is kicked out of her new home after a dog starts a fight with her. To make matters worse, she has no where to go and no one to feed her. If you were in Henrietta's shoes, what would you do?

I'll tell you what! You'd rummage through rubbish bins, nicking all kinds of potato chips and other scraps to fill your hungry belly! You'd hide amongst the tallest buildings in your hometown, hiding from all those that fear and persecute you! You'd run from screams and shouts that made you feel as if you were a horrible chicken being! And saddest of all, you'd never know that your best buddy Arthur was looking to bring you home the whole time!!! Well. That's if you were Henrietta.

This book is quite entertaining, especially once some of the scientist's other modifications are thrown into the mix. The enjoyment factor is quadrupled for anyone from Hoboken, or at least familiar with the city of a square mile. Every so often a street name cropped up and I would squeal with delight that someplace my feet actually walk on a semi-regular basis was immortalized in this delightfully funny book. I can only imagine a kid from Hoboken (or the surrounding area) reading it and thinking, "Washington! That's where my favorite pizzeria is!!" A splendid book all around and a fairly easy read. But, then again, it is set in New Jersey, so it's pretty obvious that it lends itself to being awesome.

Datability
The only aspect about this book that may raise a few eyebrows of child readers is the lack of leash laws. This effect may be doubled on the face of a reader from Hoboken, as everyone knows it is NOT customary to let your dogs out the front door in the morning and expect them to come home at night, as the book suggests. It is common knowledge that any dog living in Hoboken is on a tiny leash, followed closely by a well-dressed yuppie carrying some type of pooper-scooper. Also, the dogs MUST be dressed in teeny little coats that may or may not match that of their yuppie owner in the winter months, such as the setting of the book. Other than that snippet of a "fact" found on one page in the book, the tale is quite timeless!


*No actual news reports from the Hoboken Chicken Emergency were harmed in the making of this blogpost. Any and all newscasts have been dramatically reproduced by the executor of this blog for theatric purposes.

Kickin' it Old School

Now that classes have definitely been ceased for a few weeks now, I'm realizing that my lack of regular blogging outside of Pottertastic Tuesday was not because I had no time, but merely a lack of motivation. To ensure that my blog contains something other than various tidbits relating to Harry Potter, I have decided to incorporate a second weekly item into the blog-orino. That's right folks, the Throwback Review will be broadcast from this dinky blogspot every Sunday evening to remind you of the wonderful books of days past. There are only two qualifications a book must meet in order to find itself featured in this lovely little section:

1. It must be written for children or young adults.
2. It needs to be at least ten years old, preferably more.
3. I must check it out from a library, because what's the point of telling you about it otherwise?

So without further ado, I give you the very first Throwback Sunday Review

Alice In-Between
by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

What makes the Alice books interesting, as far as "throwbacks" go, is Pyllis Reynolds Naylor continues contributing to Alice's trials and tribulations. Even though this book was originally published fourteen years ago, the perils faced are still very relevant to young readers. In fact, the only aspect of it that could potentially be dated is that Naylor does not once refer to Alice McKinley as a "tween." And while these days labels are a lot friendlier to those in-between kids, the stress of not-quite needing a bra at all times is no less annoying and confusing.

Beginning with Miss Alice's birthday, the narrative follows Alice and company through some hard lessons for young girls just coming into their "raving beauty." All around her, Alice finds out first hand what girls must do for one another in order to protect themselves against men of the grabby-handed variety. Naylor is able to subtley educate her young readers as to the right and wrong ways to handle these tricky situations while remaining true to the narrative and not sounding as if she is trying to hard. Put simply, this is a wonderful way for girls aged eleven through fourteen to find out not only how to compose themselves if they are stuck in one of these traps, but also illuminates the dangers of dressing too old for one's age.