Cat Tale. By Michael Hall.
Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $16.99.
Dogs and Cats. By Steve
Jenkins. Sandpiper. $7.99.
Absolutely Lucy 5: Lucy’s Tricks
and Treats. By Ilene Cooper. Random House. $4.99.
Magic Tree House #48: A Perfect
Time for Pandas. By Mary Pope Osborne. Illustrated by Sal Murdocca. Random
House. $12.99.
Magic Tree House Fact Tracker
(#26): Pandas and Other Endangered Species. By Mary Pope Osborne and
Natalie Pope Boyce. Illustrated by Sal Murdocca. Random House. $5.99.
Penny and Her Doll. By Kevin
Henkes. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $12.99.
Animal books,
fictional and factual, are a sure-fire way to reach out to young readers – but
different types of them are attractive in very different ways. Michael Hall’s Cat Tale is all about convoluted word play in the service of an
amusing story, accompanied by digitally combined acrylic painted textures and
paper cutouts that give the delightful illustrations a very unusual look. The plot – or rather the concept – is set up
on the title page: “From word to word/ they find their way,/ Lillian, Tilly,
and William J.” And they’re off! The cats pack kitty chews, then choose a
spot, then spot some ewes, then use a box…and so on. These
are not tongue-twisters in the style of Dr. Seuss’s Fox in Socks – they are connection games in which sound-alike words
are used as transitions between scenes, again and again, always with amusing
results. The three cats “flee a steer” on one page and, to make their
getaway, “steer a plane” on the next,
then “plane a board” and then “board a train,” and so forth. But Michael Hall is smart enough not to have
this unbroken string of connectivity go on throughout the book. In the funniest part of Cat Tale, he starts mixing the words up so they don’t quite
connect. The cats “shoo a truly naughty gnu,” but then “they knew a rock could squash a berry”
doesn’t seem right (“No. No. No.” writes Hall), and other alternatives are even
worse, as the cats try to use a squash to bury a rock, use their paws to rock a
“squashberry,” and the absurdity mounts – “they’ve lost their way.” But thanks to the words tale and tail, everything
eventually connects again and the books ends just where it began, in delight.
The real-world
delights of both cats and dogs are the subject of Steve Jenkins’ very clever Dogs and Cats, whose torn-paper collage
illustrations are distant cousins of those in Cat Tale. The purpose here
is quite different, though, and the cleverness is of a different sort. This is an upside-down-turn-around book,
called DOGS and Cats when held one
way and Dogs and CATS when flipped
around and read the other way – meeting in the middle with a picture of a dog
and cat together on an oval rug. The
balancing act between dogs and cats is carried through in the snippets of
factual information in the book: there are “Amazing Cat Facts” and “Amazing Dog
Facts,” explanations of how long cats live and how long dogs live, two answers
to the question of whether dogs or cats are smarter, and two sets of “I wonder”
pages, answering questions ranging from whether cats can see in the dark to why
dogs roll in manure. To make sure
readers keep the cat-dog connection in mind at all times, the dog pages contain
small cat illustrations with comparative comments (“some of a cat’s senses are
even sharper than a dog’s”) – and the cat pages have small dog illustrations
with comments, too (“a dog ‘sees’ the world through its nose”). The facts are easy to grasp and often
fascinating, from information on what wild creatures our animal companions are
related to, to pages labeled “What’s so special about a cat?” and “What’s so
special about a dog?” that will help young cat lovers and young dog lovers
alike learn some of the things that make their animal friends so interesting
and attractive to have around the house.
Back on the fictional
side, the (+++) Absolutely Lucy
series is an easy-to-read dog-focused sequence about a beagle puppy and her
boy, Bobby. The fifth book, Lucy’s Tricks and Treats, contains a
mild mystery with a Halloween focus, involving a standoffish new boy at school
named Jack and a series of things that seem to keep disappearing from the
classroom – including, at one point, Lucy’s Halloween costume, which is
supposed to be a “treat” for her. As for
the disappearances – are they seasonal “tricks” or something more
sinister? Ilene Cooper’s book is far too
good-natured for there to be anything the slightest bit dark or troubling going
on, and Lucy herself manages to do some detective work that makes everything
come out just fine at the end – complete with an explanation of why Jack (who
of course is really a nice guy) had seemed, for a time, to be unfriendly. Dog-loving kids ages 6-9 will enjoy the
warmth of this story and the straightforward way its events unfold.
Things are always more
convoluted in Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic
Tree House books for ages 7-12, and the 48th in the long-running
series is no exception. No house pets
here – A Perfect Time for Pandas,
which gets a (+++) rating, uses the usual silly setup: Jack and Annie are
looking for a certain food, described in a mysterious poem, to save Penny,
Merlin’s penguin. This becomes an excuse
to have the siblings travel to a panda reserve in southeast China. Expecting things to go fairly easily for a
change, they are soon disabused of that notion when they find themselves in the
middle of an earthquake. Nothing
inherently special there – Jack and Annie made it through the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906 in another book – but the quake leaves the siblings unable
to get back to the reserve until they make use of a magic potion, after which
they do get back and can help in a panda rescue and, not coincidentally, figure
out what food they need to bring back to Camelot (it has, of course, something
to do with pandas), allowing them to complete this particular quest by saving
Penny at last. The book ends with Jack
and Annie talking about how pandas are only one of the many deserving
endangered species worldwide (“there are millions
of things to protect,” says Annie). And
that provides a jumping-off point for the factual accompaniment to this
fictional adventure: Pandas and Other
Endangered Species, called a Fact
Tracker (these used to be called research guides). Here Mary Pope Osborne and her sister, Natalie
Pope Boyce, offer basic information on a variety of endangered species, from
hooded seals to giant salamanders to Asian elephants. There are photos of naturalists and
scientists interacting with endangered animals, drawings of snow leopards and
sea otters, information on the value of unattractive-to-humans animals such as
the California condor, a list of Internet resources, even a short discussion of
the film King Kong and the way it
made people think gorillas are fierce.
The (+++) book is not particularly informative in itself, but readers
who get interested in pandas because of Jack and Annie’s fictional adventure
may find this factual companion a good bridge between the unreal Magic Tree House world and other, more-thorough
studies of animals facing possible extinction.
One animal that is
certainly not endangered is the mouse – it is doing quite well both in real
life and in children’s books. Penny, in
Kevin Henkes’ Penny and Her Doll, is
a typical example of a cute fictional mouse.
In this (+++) followup to Penny
and Her Song, the little mouse gets a new doll as a gift from her grandmother,
and immediately falls in love with her and takes her everywhere. Penny is a gray mouse; the doll is a white
one in a pink outfit, with a pink bow between her ears. But what name should Penny give to her
wonderful new doll? That is the plot,
such as it is, of the book. Penny
worries that she will not come up with a suitable name, her parents assure her
that she will, and then she does, and everyone is happy. There is not much to this book and not
supposed to be: it is a short, sweet, easy-to-read story for little girls who
may not be mice, like Penny, but who most likely have special dolls that they
love just as much as Penny loves hers.
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