Bow-Wow's Nightmare Neighbors

This year Gloria started Kindergarten in the same school where Frances is now in second grade.  We were lucky to already have a great relationship with the school librarian (who is a reader of this blog, yay!), so she wasn't surprised to have another reader on her hands.  Now we check out piles of books out of our public library on a regular basis.  But there, the girls check out as many books as they want, so there is very little actual selection on their part.  They take home everything they might be interested in.  But at the school library, Frances can only select two books at a time, and Gloria's class only checks out one book at a time.  I'm always fascinated by what they choose to bring home on those visits.  Frances tends to choose chapter books.  A few weeks ago, she brought home My Friend Flicka because she loves the movie.  I'm not sure she ever opened it, though.  She also checked out Just Grace last week, and actually renewed it this week because she liked it so much.  But two weeks ago, Gloria checked out a book that we both instantly loved.  I wouldn't let her return it until I had blogged about it (although the librarian was nice enough to let Gloria check out another book while I kept this one an extra week!).

I also want to note that this book was also published by Roaring Brook Press, who published the book I featured last week, Viva Frida. These books are both very cool pieces of art, and I hope that the rest of their offerings are just as magical!  I'll be looking out for them.  So back to Bow-Wow's Nightmare Neighbors...

This isn't the first book about Bow-Wow.  Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug came out in 2007, and I only vaguely remember it.  But now, seven years later, here comes Bow-Wow again.  And he's not very happy.  Bow-Wow is rudely interrupted mid-nap by three perfectly white (ghostly) kittens.  They nip him on the tail, startling him.  Bow-Wow leaps straight up, and while he's in the air, the kittens steal his comfy teal bed.  They slip out the window, but Bow-Wow is in hot pursuit.  He races across the street, and enters an abandoned house.  It certainly looks spooky, built out of gray stone, with sharply pointed shrubbery surrounding.  There are many cracked and broken windows, but Bow-Wow knows it is the right place because two little white kitten faces peer out from upper windows.

The chase is on.  It involves secret passages, mysterious doors, and glimpses of white tails.  Also, sometimes he sees just a hint of the teal dog bed to spur him on.  Or so he thinks.  Everywhere he goes, kittens follow him.  They always manage to disappear as he turns corners.  The white kittens romp through rooms, just ahead of Bow-Wow, acting incredibly entertaining and very ghost-kitten-like.  Those white kittens prefer nipping Bow-Wow on the tail, over and over and over again.  Bow-Wow searches and searches for his beloved dog bed, surprising a burglar and scaring him off in the process.  It isn't until Bow-Wow opens the very last door that he comes across the reason those ghostly kittens needed his teal bed.  There is a whole floor full of rainbow-colored cushions, and Bow-Wow's teal dog bed completes it.  It's a surprising moment, but it's not the only one in this story - there is another moment when the determined Bow-Wow goes to take back his cushion.

What's funny about this blog post is that I told you much of the plot of this picture book just now.  But I've told you that without reading a single printed word.  Bow-Wow's Nightmare Neighbors is a perfect introduction to the graphic novel.  The pages are a combination of panels and full-page illustrations.  The action is very easy to follow.  There is a clear path that guides Bow-Wow from panel to panel throughout the house.  The kittens and Bow-Wow have likable, expressive faces so readers can tell exactly what they are thinking.  The book is expressly designed to convey lots of meaning without words.

There is a limited range of colors in the book.  Most pages only have five colors - gray, white for the kittens, a tan for Bow-Wow, and of course teal, used as an accent color and also for the infamous bed.  The usage of standard colors also helps young readers focus on the main action on the page, or in the panel.  The pictures still show movement, for instance, when the dog sees a mannequin wearing a teal dress.  Bow-Wow believes that the dress hides his teal dog bed.  He darts through the dress after two kittens who have popped out of the sleeves to taunt him.  You can almost hear the thud as Bow-Wow inevitably knocks over the mannequin.

The color palette also does something astonishing for me.  The colors are consistent from page to page, which frees your eye to see all of the details Newgarden and Cash have created.  A kitten hides himself between a wall and a piece of peeling wallpaper.  I especially love a series of drawings that starts with a ghostly kitten parading up the stairs with Bow-Wow's teal dog bed.  Bow-Wow follows behind him.  As Bow-Wow starts up the stairs in an upper right hand panel, another kitten jumps to bite him on the tail in a lower left hand panel.  And after all of them race up the staircase, more kittens peek out of each stair tread - beguiling, yet a little spooky too.

There is a definite gothic feel to the abandoned house across the street.  Bow-Wow (and hence the reader) never knows what to expect.  There's a cracked mirror, leaves blowing across the hallway through broken windows, a closet full of teal junk, cats running in mid-air.  It's surprising, yet not.  The quirky details even extend to the endpapers.  When you examine them closely, each of the fleur de lis in the wallpaper is made up of ghostly kittens.  It's all clever, and intriguing, fun and sweet.

This book rewards the careful reader.  Those details don't all show themselves on the first reading, or even the second reading.  It's why this book is a perfect introduction to panels in graphic novels, but an experienced reader will also laugh out loud at some of the fun scenes.  Bow-Wow's Nightmare Neighbors did a great job of surprising and delighting me.  We enjoyed every moment with this book.  Check it out if you're a graphic novel fan, a dog fan, a cat fan, a haunted house fan...or a fan of really cool books.

Bow-Wow's Nightmare Neighbors.  Mark Newgarden & Megan Montague Cash.  Roaring Brook Press, 2014.

borrowed from Helena School District library

Minette's Feast

It is interesting to me how sometimes related books come into your life.  Does this ever happen to you?  You read a fictional book set in South Africa, for instance, and then you come across an informational book on Desmond Tutu.  Or you pick up two seemingly unrelated books from your library's new books shelf and they have a historical figure in common.  That happened to me not that long ago when I read Dodger (a Printz Honor winner) and Splendors and Glooms (a Newbery Honor winner) and found the same character (a historical figure) in both.  I love when connections between books reveal themselves.  This year while I was on the Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book panel, it happened again.  Two picture books on Julia Child were nominated - Bon Appetit! by Jessie Hartland and the book I am going to write about today, Minette's Feast.

When the books arrived in the mail, I couldn't wait to read them.  After all, I discovered Julia Child at about the same time everyone else did - when the book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously came out.  My then-husband bought it for me since it combined some of my loves - cooking, reading and blogging.  I continued to read about Julia's life over the years, and couldn't wait to see how it was interpreted for children.

But then I began to wonder if children would sustain the same interest in the subject of Julia Child as I had.  After all, I was interested in how Julia learned to cook, her cool job during WWII, and her connection with France.  Would a child (remember these are nonfiction picture books) be interested in any of that?  If Gloria and Frances are any indication, they don't care how their food is made or what technique I used, just that it is served in a timely fashion!  I don't have a good sense of whether kids really would seek out books about Julia Child, but I suspect not.  So Reich uses a different point of view to examine Child's life - through the eyes of her cat.

Even before Minette comes to live with Julia and her husband, their life in Paris is full of cats.  When they walk down the road, cats peek out of the alley; they curl up on seats in the cafe.  And then the couple decides that "A house without a cat is like life without sunshine" and adopt Minette.

When Minette first comes to live with them, Julia isn't a cook.  And that is fine with Minette, who would prefer to hunt her own birds and mice to eat.  But soon Julia becomes inspired by living in France, exploring the markets and getting advice from the locals.  She wants to really learn to cook, and enrolls at Le Cordon Bleu.  All of the enticing smells are alluring to Minette, but ultimately Minette prefers mouse.  Then one day Julia brings home a large cut of meat.  As she prepares it, Minette shows interest, perching on Julia's shoulder while she cooks.  It develops its flavor on the windowsill for three whole days.  Julia serves the meat to dinner guests who rave over it.  When all the leftovers are finally gone, Minette gets what she's been waiting for - the bone!  She rubs on the bone, chews on the bone, and plays with the bone.  In the end, no matter how much Minette loves that bone, though, she would still rather eat mouse.

Reich's writing brings life and rhythm to the story.  Many of the cooking terms are alliterative, and lend a swinging rhythm to the reader's voice.  For instance, as Julia learns to cook, "She baked and blanched, blended and boiled, drained and dried, dusted and fried."  It's quite a feat to assemble a dinner, and this particular combination of words emphasizes the whirlwind effort Julia goes through.  Reich also uses the terms appropriately and the rhymes make them fun to say.

The same thing happens when Minette is given the bone, with a tiny bit of meat left on.  She sniffs, then pounces, then attacks: "She frisked and flounced, darted and batted.  She tiptoed and hopped, danced and pranced."  Here, too, Reich uses lists of words to convey movement.  The words flow together effortlessly, like a dance.  You can envision Minette (or any cat, really) attacking, prancing and hopping.  These are typical cat behaviors that any cat owner will be familiar with.  After all of Minette's effort, "she licked herself all over and took a nice long nap".  That sentence is all cat!  

My only complaint about the writing is that this mysterious cut of meat that Julia prepares for three days is never named in the text.  We can tell that the meat is delicious - not only do the guests rave about the meat, but Julia and Paul savor the leftovers for days before Minette gets the bone.  We see Julia preparing the meat - both rubbing it with herbs and spices before its time on the windowsill and cooking it with vegetables.  But this recipe is never named (nor is any other).  Child's techniques are described, but it seems like this would be an appetizing place for a recipe.

Minette is the star of the illustrations too.  Bates creates these in pencil and watercolors, and they are fairly realistic.  I've talked before about books with historical figures in them (like The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau) and Bates does a great job of drawing Julia Child and giving readers the impression of her personality without perfectly imitating her.  This allows Bates to work within her own style, but still give a feeling of authenticity to her illustrations.  And she also adds period detail, bringing France to life for readers.

Bates also does a terrific job of conveying Minette's personality through her illustrations.  In the scene at the end of the story, when Minette attacks the bone, there are a multitude of spot illustrations scattered across the page.  You can clearly see the frenzy of activity, legs akimbo and whiskers twitching.  Minette's movements are hilarious and very realistic.  The final full-page spread shows Minette eye to eye with a mouse clutching a crumb of cheese.  It encapsulates Minette's personality perfectly.

The back matter is rich in this book.  There is a two page afterword that summarizes Child's life.   Reich includes notes of all the citations for the quotes used in the story - she used quite a few, and I love seeing them treated seriously here.  There are also additional sources of information on Child's life, including a link to an online exhibit of Child's home.  And there is a glossary and pronunciation guide for many French  terms used in the story.  I didn't talk about it, but I really appreciated the way Reich not only used many French phrases and vocabulary, but also incorporated their definitions in context very naturally.

The last piece of back matter is very important to me.  It gives the author's personal connection to the story - Reich met Julia Child in 1993.  But it also explains why Reich created this story, and how she used Minette to make the story more relatable to children.  Reich notes "...Julia never actually said that Minette preferred mouse."  So some of this story is fictionalized, but I still think it does a good job of bringing the unusual aspects of Child's time in France to life for children.  I am still not wholly convinced that a child would request a book about Julia Child, but this one does combine facts with fictional elements in a natural way.  And its strong back matter satisfies my expectations for children wanting to continue their research.  It's a book that will stay in my collection of books about Julia Child.

Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and her Cat.  Susanna Reich; illustrated by Amy Bates.  Abrams, 2012.

sent by the publisher for  Cybils consideration

Note: I am on the Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book panel, but this blog post does not represent the committee's thoughts about the book.  It only represents my personal ideas and thoughts.

Cats and No Cats

I first came across There Are Cats in This Book in a review from a three year old copy of Family Fun magazine (November 2008).  The review called the book “mischievious” and a “real crowd-pleaser”.  I put it on hold, primarily because it didn’t seem familiar to me, and after many years in a library setting, most titles or authors do.  Then, before I’d even had the first book delivered to me, I saw an announcement in my Children’s Book of the Month Club catalog for a related title, There Are No Cats in this Book.  Talk about serendipity!  I waited until the second book was ordered at my library and then put that on hold too.

In There Are Cats in This Book, as soon as you open the book, you are informed by the narrator/author “The cats aren’t on this page.”  They aren’t on the second page either, but you learn the cats’ names – Moonpie, Tiny and Andre.  It’s on the third page where you really begin interacting with the three cats.  Readers see a fuzzy die-cut blanket, which they can peel back to see the three cats, sleepily blinking up at them.  Schwarz has embued these cats with the most humorous of cat personality traits.  The cats wax on about yarn, cardboard boxes, pillows and fish.  And through it all, they rely on the reader’s help.  The cats instruct the readers (“Can you dry us too?  Just blow on the page…”), harangue the readers (“Turn the page! Turn the page!”) and love the readers, with lots of purring.  And the narrator/author closes the book out in the same manner in which she began – “Did you like the cats?  I think they really liked you.”.

In There Are No Cats in This Book, readers familiar with the first title will recognize the cats on the front cover, peeping through cut-out eyeholes.  In this title, the three cats are on their way to see the world.  So they are leaving the book (and the readers) behind.  But their attempts to leave the book on their own (including a fold-out of the cats leaping fruitlessly towards the reader) are futile.  It’s only when the cats again ask for the reader’s help that they are successful.  Schwarz uses the same affectionate humor in this plot – these cats are lovable, but not especially bright – but some new techniques.  This keeps the story fresh and enjoyable,  but still connected to the first title.  In fact, when you pick up the second book, you feel like these cats are your old friends.

Schwarz uses a combination of brush and ink illustration with collage in both titles, along with the die-cut and fold-out elements.  The collaged items are things that are real, like the fish in the first book.  The cats dive into an ocean full of fish, and revel in these brightly colored, realistic fish.  This adds an exotic touch to the cats’ world.  I think it helps draw readers’ eyes to other things on the page besides the cats.  The use of die-cut pages and dimensional cut-outs in both of the titles is well-used.  Even though the first book is three years old, the die-cuts still look fresh and sturdy.  These elements help readers move through the story.

One of the most remarkable things about these book is how Schwarz uses the cats to encourage interactivity.  Their beguiling tones, their friendly faces, and their direct questions to the reader got my girls to interact with these stories in a way I have never seen previously.  Frances and Gloria were fighting each time we read to do what the cats asked.  They wanted to be the first one to peel off the blanket or turn the page when the cats instructed them to do so.  Frances and Gloria are ordinarily passive listeners – if a question is asked in a book, I have to prompt them to answer.  But these books were different – from the first reading, their magic got the girls to answer, loudly and immediately.  Schwarz’s book satisfied and engaged them.  I think these would be terrific read-alouds at storytimes, and I am only sorry I didn’t know about these while I was doing storytimes for crowds.

There Are Cats in This Book.  Viviane Schwarz.  Candlewick, 2008.

There Are No Cats in This Book.  Viviane Schwarz.  Candlewick, 2010.