Fly Guy’s Ninja Christmas. By
Tedd Arnold. Cartwheel Books/Scholastic. $6.99.
The Ninjabread Man. By C.J.
Leigh. Pictures by Chris Gall. Scholastic. $16.99.
Folk Tale Classics: Puss in
Boots. By Paul Galdone. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $8.99.
Those Darn Squirrels and the Cat
Next Door. By Adam Rubin. Illustrated by Daniel Salmieri. Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. $6.99.
Hmm. Not sure how much
ninjas have to do with winter holidays and folk tales. But they are the
attraction of new books by Tedd Arnold and C.J. Leigh. offering a heaping
helping of absurdity and silliness lathered onto territory that would otherwise
be familiar. In Arnold’s Fly Guy’s Ninja
Christmas, the title-character pet who can say his boy’s name watches Buzz
read a book about “ninjazzzz” on Christmas Eve and becomes excited when Buzz
explains that the next day there will be “prezentzz!” But unfortunately Fly Guy
does not have a gift for Buzz, so he cannot sleep. And then he spots a stranger
in the house and goes into ninja action, knocking down none other than Santa
Claus, or “Zanta,” as Fly Guy puts it. The tree gets knocked down, too, but
Buzz wakes up and helps put everything to rights, then goes back to bed –
awakening on Christmas morning thinking what a cool dream he had. Then it is
gift time, but Buzz cannot find Fly Guy anywhere, until he opens a beautifully
wrapped present and finds in it – Fly Guy himself! “You are the best present
ever!” says Buzz. And there is more in the box: a ninja suit, courtesy of Santa
– and, on the last page (and in one of Arnold’s funniest and most ridiculous
drawings), there is a ninja suit for Fly Guy as well, his Christmas gift from
Buzz. As Christmas stories go, this one will never overtake anything by Charles
Dickens, but as Fly Guy stories go, it will be a pleasant seasonal amusement
for fans of the series.
Leigh’s The Ninjabread Man gives a ninja twist to the folk tale of the
gingerbread man who runs away and taunts those chasing him until he gets his
comeuppance. That is exactly the story here, but the ninja elements – including
the cookie’s very amusing ninja-frosting costume, very well rendered by Chris
Gall – keep everything fresh. That includes the freshly baked cookie, made by
“a little old sensei” whose ninja students are a bear, a snake (whose ninja
costume is the best of the lot), a mouse, and a fox. The scenes of the ninjas
training are delightful, but the successful baking of the “dangerously
delicious” ninjabread man is what sets the main thread of the story going. As
in the original tale, the cookie escapes from the oven and runs away, but that
is not enough for this version: the ninjabread man also challenges the
students, causing the bear to lose his balance, defeating the snake in a battle
of throwing stars, and tripping the mouse during a sword fight. But he meets
his match in the wily fox, as in the original story: brains and trickery succeed
where brawn, speed and ninja skills alone do not. There is a delicious afterword
here, too, in the form of a recipe for ninjabread cookies, which of course are
simply molasses-rich gingerbread confections decorated “with frosting, raisins,
and candies” to look like any ninja you may want to design.
And speaking of brains and
trickery, for a very finely illustrated and far more straightforward version of
a classic tale, there is Paul Galdone’s 1976 version of Puss in Boots, now available in a new Folk Tale Classics edition. Galdone here offers a mixture of highly
realistic illustrations, such as the initial one of the elderly miller and his
three sons, and fanciful pictures, notably those of Puss the cat in his many
shrewd-looking, humanlike poses with his sly, knowing expressions. This is not
a sugar-coated version of the story – Puss catches a rabbit, a pair of
partridges and some fish and gives them to the king for supper on his master’s
behalf, and the king is quite happy to accept the game and order it prepared
for eating. The role of the miller’s son in this tale is simply to accept
everything Puss tells him to do, and that goes very well for him indeed. Galdone’s
Puss does not seem intimidating enough to frighten haymakers and reapers into
telling the king that they are vassals of the Marquis of Carabas – the name
Puss chooses for his supposedly lordly master – but this is, after all, a folk
tale, and best accepted at face value. The way Puss outwits the evil
giant/sorcerer is a highlight of the story and the book: this is the place
where Puss relies on his basic nature as a cat to gobble up the giant, whom he
has tricked into turning himself into a mouse. The happily-ever-after ending
fits this tale’s mixture of fun and drama particularly well, and Galdone’s
rendering of all the scenes, including the final one of a contented Puss – his
red boots now removed – resting on pillows and sporting a self-satisfied smile,
is particularly apt.
The art is also a major
attraction of Those Darn Squirrels and
the Cat Next Door, although Adam Rubin’s supremely silly story is amusing
enough on its own. Originally published in 2011 and now available in paperback,
this is the tale of Old Man Fookwire in the winter, irritated as usual by the
highly intelligent and mischievous squirrels that share his property, and now
doubly irritated when Little Old Lady Hu moves in nearby and brings along her
cat, Muffins. “He was a real jerk,” Rubin writes, and Daniel Salmieri draws him
just that way: Muffins is huge, super-furry, with tiny legs and a perpetually
crafty, sly or scowling expression. As the squirrels continue to make trouble
for Fookwire – for example, by eating the delicious pie that Little Old Lady
Hu, the town baker, makes as a neighborly gift – the cat makes trouble for the
squirrels, giving them noogies and wedgies and tying their tails together and
generally being a bully and pest in ways that Salmieri clearly relishes
depicting. Little Old Lady Hu, who thinks Muffins is adorable and calls him
“shnookums,” refuses to see how dastardly the cat is, so the squirrels use
their cleverness to devise a plan to humiliate the cat. And none too soon: even
the birds, which are among the few pleasures in grumpy Fookwire’s life, have
become so upset by Muffins that they “flew up to the treetops and refused to
come down.” The birds, though, are an integral part of the squirrels’ revenge
plans, and sure enough, when Muffins chases them, the cat is doused with water
from a squirrel-built trap sprung by the fleeing birds – and Muffins turns out
to be a “pathetic wretch…no bigger than a squirrel,” so embarrassed by his
thinness and overall scrawny appearance that he slinks away and becomes a house
cat. And all ends happily as Little Old Lady Hu makes friends with birds and
squirrels alike, Fookwire resumes painting – one of the few things he enjoys – and
Muffins is left to scowl and grump at himself, as different a cat from Puss in
Boots as it is possible to be.
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