Confiscated! By Suzanne
Kaufman. Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. $17.99.
Hannah Sparkles: A Friend Through
Rain or Shine. By Robin Mellom. Illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton.
Harper. $17.99.
The trials and tribulations
of friendship are a frequent theme in picture books, and the eventual message
of cooperation and getting along is a standard one. But the circumstances, and
the form in which the concluding message is delivered, may differ greatly –
which is why so many books on this topic can be enjoyable. The eventual friends
in Suzanne Kaufman’s Confiscated!
happen to be brothers and happen to be sort-of-lizardlike-sort-of-dinosaurs, at
least as they have been Photoshopped to be. Brooks and Mikey fight constantly,
as many siblings do, and in particular they fight over things – toys and games
of all sorts. Unsurprisingly, this state of affairs is extremely annoying to
their mother and is thoroughly unacceptable to her. So she teaches the boys the
meaning of the word “confiscated” by taking away anything about which they
fight. But they fight about everything,
from Grandpa’s tuba to a Mexican wrestling mask: Kaufman has great fun showing
just what sorts of things provoke the boys into fights and just how many ways
those fights occur. The problem is that there are, after all, only so many
things in the house over which fights are possible (even including the dog); so
after a while, Kaufman shows the two boys all alone with a plain white background
on one page while the facing page shows a locked storage cabinet absolutely
bulging with confiscated items (and with the dog peering out rather nervously
through the slightly open doors). By now, “Mama had confiscated ALL their
toys.” And Brooks and Mikey are bored. Really, really bored. So bored that they
TALK to each other instead of fighting. And that talking leads to something
totally unexpected, at least by them: cooperation! They decide, together, to
get a favorite red balloon out of the “confiscation cabinet.” To do that, they
pile up everything they can find, from a salami to a Viking helmet to a fishbowl (complete with fish) to a clock
and a cactus and an old-fashioned record player, creating a mountainous mess
that they can climb to get to the slightly open cabinet door and pull the
balloon out. Great idea – except that pulling it out snaps the cabinet’s lock,
and everything comes tumbling out and
tumbling down; yes, even the lava lamp and the whole watermelon, the ship in a
bottle and the freshly baked pie. And THEN…a shadow looms over the scene, and a
very large and definitely dinosaurish Mama appears. But it turns out she is not
angry about the mess – because the boys are sharing
the balloon and actually being friendly
to each other. So a happy ending is had by all, although Mama reminds the boys
that they still have to clean everything up.
Mess-making figures as well
in Robin Mellom’s Hannah Sparkles: A
Friend Through Rain or Shine, a book about a girl with an exceptionally
sparkly name and a personality to match. Ever-smiling Hannah spends her time
cheering the world with pom-poms and drawing double rainbows, because just one rainbow
is not enough to contain all her hyper-cheeriness. Just imagine how happy she
is when a new family moves to the neighborhood, along with a girl her own age –
with the even-more-sparkly name of Sunny Everbright. Wow! Or – maybe not.
Hannah has huge blue eyes and dresses in bright, clashing colors, but Sunny is
dark-eyed, dark-haired and dressed almost completely in black and gray. Uh-oh.
Hannah tries her best to be friendly: she takes Sunny outdoors to find
butterflies, but Sunny is more interested in a lizard she discovers. Hannah
draws unicorns – Sunny draws centipedes. Hannah shows how to use magenta for drawing
hearts – Sunny prefers drawing a large black spider. Hannah picks strawberries
– Sunny gets messily down in the mud to interact with a frog. Nothing works for Hannah: Sunny does not
even smile when Hannah gets out her pom-poms and cheers Sunny on at hopscotch
and other games. And then, to make matters worse, it starts to rain, and rain
is not one of Hannah’s happy things. But now Sunny smiles! And in some of
Vanessa Brantley-Newton’s most evocative illustrations, she dances, runs sloppily
through puddles, plays in a mess of mud, and generally acts “super-strange,” at
least by Hannah’s standards. Bewildered, Hannah asks her mom that night why
Hannah’s favorite things do not make Sunny happy – and her mom suggests that
“maybe Sunny finds her sparkle in other things.” Lesson learned – especially
when Sunny leaves Hannah a let’s-play invitation on which Sunny has drawn a
smiling lizard carrying an umbrella. Friendships, after all, are like other
growing things: they need both rain and sun to thrive.
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