(++++) ON BEYOND PICTURES

Scribbles at an Exhibition: “Baby Blues” Scrapbook 29. By Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott. Andrews McMeel. $12.99.

The Lorax Pop-up! By Dr. Seuss. Pop-ups by David A. Carter. Robin Corey Books. $29.99.

      Even in a visual medium, pictures are not enough – not enough for the best communicators, anyway.  Rick Kirkman’s Baby Blues illustrations continue to get better and better, and the latest collection of the comic strip even features cover art by members of the families of Kirkman and writer Jerry Scott.  It’s all pretty cool, and pretty self-referential, and hey, if the creators can’t have fun with their strip as well as making it fun for readers, what’s the point?  Scribbles at an Exhibition is full of artistic delights: the three MacPherson kids drawn as Marx Brothers; the detailed scene of utter chaos as dad Darryl explains to mom Wanda that, unfortunately, there is no such thing as a chocolate I.V.; the hilarious-if-you’re-in-on-the-in-joke scene of Hammie looking longingly into the window of a store called “Dill’s Bros. Trébuchets and More” (a tribute to Richard Thompson’s Cul de Sac).  But the illustrations work so well precisely because they are drawn in the context of excellent writing.  An almost-wordless Sunday strip that deserves to be a classic shows Wanda thinking negative thoughts about herself every time she looks in a mirror or reflective surface: she vacuums and sees herself as a frump with rollers in her hair, eats a salad and sees herself as obese and out of control with food, and so on.  Then Darryl calls only “to say I love you” and the harried homemaker pushing the shopping cart suddenly sees herself reflected in a supermarket display case as slim, elegant and beautifully dressed.  Scott’s writing really comes through here in strips that play against type and against reader expectations: an extremely touching remembrance of the Twin Towers (built by baby Wren with blocks) on the 10^th anniversary of the terrorist murders of 9/11, for example, and a strip in which Hammie actually comforts a disappointed Zoe – who comments that he can be “surprisingly human,” leading to his promise that “it’s temporary.”  And then there are strips in which the story line carries the art along: a new toy called “Ick-Baby” with “gross bodily functions”; a “when you say/they must hear” sequence that perfectly captures the disconnect between what parents think they are putting across and what their kids are actually absorbing; and Darryl’s reinterpretation of fairy tales so Hammie will like them – “Pinocchio vs. the Wood Chipper” and “Hansel Ditches Gretel.”  And then there are strips in which the melding of writing and comic-strip conventions is just about perfect, such as one in which Wren crawls up and around the panels while Zoe and Hammie argue about who was supposed to wipe the pancake syrup off her hands and knees.  It doesn’t get much better than that – or much better than Baby Blues.

      And there is really no way to get better than the words-and-pictures combinations of the inimitable Dr. Seuss, whose 1971 book The Lorax was recently expanded and “complexified” into an animated film that opened to mixed reviews but box-office success.  In conjunction with the film’s release, the Robin Corey Books division of Random House (itself a division of Bertelsmann AG) has brought out a “complexified” book version of the good doctor’s gentle environmental fable-cum-warning.  And darned if The Lorax Pop-up! isn’t wonderful – an intensification of the book’s message, perhaps, but not an attempt to add to it or turn it into more of a clarion call than Dr. Seuss intended it to be.  David A. Carter – who has previously created wonderful pop-up versions of Horton Hears a Who and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! – turns The Lorax into eight fold-out, open-up three-dimensional constructions that actually enhance some scenes (you really feel you are in among the truffula trees) and that expand the delights of the book in subtle, involving ways.  For these are not mere pop-ups, although the constructions are impressive enough in themselves.  Carter incorporates other interactive elements into this book: turning a notched cardboard tab causes Humming-Fish to swim in circles and leap playfully out of the water, pulling a tab unloads the Once-ler’s wagon, and the Lorax’s departure through the smog actually happens, in motion, when one page is turned.  The Lorax Pop-up! is much more for parents than for kids: it is costly, parts are fragile, and the type in which the story appears is small.  But The Lorax is one Dr. Seuss book that was intended to span the generations (along the lines of The Butter Battle Book), and by helping it do just that, Carter has produced something that is very special indeed.

(++++) POETIC JUSTICE

Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems. By Gail Carson Levine. Illustrated by Matthew Cordell. Harper. $15.99.

I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus. By Jack Prelutsky. Illustrated by Jackie Urbanovic. Greenwillow/HarperCollins. $18.99.

      We are well into political silly season, and that means we are well into false-apology season as well: “I apologize if anyone was offended,” “I am sorry that my words were misconstrued,” “I had not meant to speak in a way that may have inadvertently upset some people,” and all the rest of the weasel-word apologies that are not really apologies but attempts to maintain deniability and wiggle room.  Politicians are far from alone in employing these unapologetic pseudo-apologies: their handlers and supporters do so as well, and so do corporate chieftains, and so – if we are being honest about it – do many people in everyday life who meant just what they said but who encounter a stronger reaction to their comments than they anticipated.  William Carlos Williams invented the false-apology poem, calling it “This Is Just to Say” and explaining that he was sorry to have eaten the plums of the person to whom the poem is addressed, but my goodness, they were delicious.  That is, he is not sorry at all to have gotten to the fruit first.  Gail Carson Levine includes the Williams poem in Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It, then adds to it a whole pile of her own false-apology poems, all with the same title as Williams’.  Her introduction (which she withholds until after several of the poems) explains the poems’ structure and urges readers to write their own.  And Matthew Cordell aids and abets the whole devilish enterprise with illustrations showing the successful perpetrators and dismayed perpetrated-upon.  Some of Levine’s poems deal with simple family matters: “I swiped/ your lucky/ baseball/ cap/ which/ made you tragically/ lose/ the state playoff/ Forgive me/ the cap/ keeps the sun/ out of my eyes.”  Others involve famous fictional characters, such as Pinocchio: “I have shortened/ my nose/ with your saw/ because/ honestly/ telling lies/ is so much fun/ Forgive me/ I don’t care/ about becoming/ a real boy.”  And then there are the sendups of lullabies: “I’m the one/ who stuck/ the cradle/ in the tree/ which/ was probably/ a stupid place/ to put a baby/ Forgive me/ I thought/ that bough would break/ sooner or later.”  And non-apologies about nursery rhymes, such as “Three Blind Mice”: “I confess/ I sliced off/ their skinny/ tails/ which/ they seemed awfully/ fond/ of waving/ Forgive me/ I wanted symmetry/ sightless in front/ tailless behind.”  The whole book is a modest sort of guilty pleasure, giving vent to a nyah-nyah-nyah impulse barely concealed behind clever verbiage and suitably amusing pictures.  Maybe, just maybe, kids who read it will absorb a dose of skepticism, suitable for application when they are old enough to vote.

      Jack Prelutsky’s poems in I’ve Lost My Hippopotamus are more straightforwardly humorous, less wry and considerably less cynical, but are just as much fun in their own way.  Some, such as the title poem, deal with imaginary situations involving real animals.  But the imaginary situations involving imaginary creatures are even more enjoyable: “The GLUDUS are a nuisance,/ With a tendency to cling./ It’s hard to make them go away,/ They stick to everything./ If you should meet the GLUDUS,/ There is little you can do./ You’ll find that you are out of luck—/ They’ll soon be stuck on you.”  Poems like this one seem especially to inspire illustrator Jackie Urbanovic, whose takes on WIGUANAS (“the world’s/ Only lizards with hair”), HALIBUTTERFLIES, the agile HOPALOTAMUS, the PENGUINCHWORMS and other critters are absolutely right.  Prelutsky’s imagination runs rampant in poems about PELICANTALOUPES (which “are predisposed to mope—/ They’re never very jolly”) and an unusual specter: “Most ghosts are insignificant,/ Incalculably small./ It’s impossible to find them,/ Even when they caterwaul./ A number are voluminous,/ A few are extra tall—/ The enormous ELEPHANTOM/ Is the grandest ghost of all.”  The oddball animals and other creatures are scattered throughout a book that also includes poems about golf, bouncing, conspicuous consumption (“Otto Gottalott”), a snake that can do math (it’s an adder), and the unexpected (but unapologetic) consequences of eating fruit.  A set of haiku about real animals makes an attractive mid-book change of pace; then the silliness resumes, remaining in place to the end of a set of poems that can be as much fun to read out loud as to use for chuckling quietly while reading them to oneself.

(++++) THE MANY USES OF CUTENESS

Princess Baby. By Karen Katz. Schwartz & Wade. $6.99.

10 Valentine Friends: A Holiday Counting Book. By Janet Schulman. Illustrated by Linda Davick. Knopf. $8.99.

Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur: A First Book of Manners. By Judy Sierra. Illustrated by Tim Bowers. Knopf. $16.99.

Rosie Sprout’s Time to Shine. By Allison Wortche. Pictures by Patrice Barton. Knopf. $17.99.

All for Me and None for All. By Helen Lester. Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. Houghton Mifflin. $16.99.

      Sometimes being adorable is its own reward, as in the new board-book version of Karen Katz’s Princess Baby.  The book was charming on its original release in 2008 and remains so in its new format, showing the baby complete with sparkly gold crown and golden slippers (with the accessories actually including glitter on the front cover).  The funniest part of this “please call me by my real name” book is the two-page spread showing what the baby is not – not a buttercup (she appears as a flower), not a giggly goose (she has a beak and webbed feet), not a cupcake (her head peeks out of the frosting), not Little Lamb (she looks suitably angelic in white), and ”never ever Sweet Gumdrop” (she is almost entirely enveloped in a green gumdrop).  These terms of endearment are simply not what this little girl wants to hear – and at the end of the book, after her parents try out some more unacceptable ideas (Creamsicle, Peanut, Missy Muffin), she gets called Princess Baby at last, and everything ends happily.  The book is perfect for any little charmer with a strong sense of self and just a touch of attitude.

      In other books, cute things and characters are there for a purpose.  10 Valentine Friends, for ages 3-6, counts upward with all sorts of sweet thoughts and sweet treats.  The round-headed, multicultural neighborhood kids here spend a lot of time thinking about what their friends like, as Janet Schulman helps young readers count to 10 and Linda Davick shows the kids’ interactions amusingly.  Take, for example, “Tom likes to pretend to be a gorilla. Guess what he gets from his neighbor Priscilla.”  This is the fourth valentine page, so there are four valentines displayed at the far right.  Priscilla is rushing down a flight of stairs with her hand-drawn gorilla (which wears a heart and is touching a second one), while Tom is beating his chest and presumably growling – with a decorative strip of hearts draped around his neck.  The cards pile up and up as the count mounts to 10 – and on the page after that, there are cards everywhere, far more than 10, leading to an invitation (“How many can YOU count?”) involving the cards on the final page and inside back cover.  There are 100 cards there in all, each of them different from the others and all of them cute and age-appropriate – making it possible for kids who have outgrown the count-to-10 story to go beyond it on their own, or with a little help.

      Intended for the same age range, Judy Sierra’s Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur manages to live up to its manner-teaching intention without being as heavy-handed as are many works that aim to show young children life skills (e.g., the Berenstain Bears books).  Tim Bowers’ delightful illustrations have a lot to do with Sierra’s book’s success: the dinosaur is huge, mostly green, and toothy, but wears big pink eyeglasses, carries a pink-and-blue purse, and is shopping for such items as Dino Chips, Bronto-Bits and Stone Age Crackers.  The little girl is startled when she first sees the dinosaur, but knows just what to say: “Hello. I’m pleased to meet you.”  The two interact repeatedly while shopping: the dino’s tail accidentally knocks down some apples in the produce aisle (the dinosaur says “thank you” when the little girl helps pick them up), the girl accidentally knocks her cart into the dino’s shin (and the girl says, “I’m sorry”), and so on.  The wide-eyed surprise of other shoppers contrasts amusingly with the girl’s matter-of-fact interactions with the dinosaur, until the two finally say a pleasant and polite good-bye as the dino drives off in a pink-and-blue car that matches her purse and is smaller than the dinosaur herself.  Because the story itself is so entertaining and so amusingly presented, the lessons in manners seem to flow naturally rather than being introduced intrusively – a very fine use of cuteness indeed.

      The lessons – and the cuteness – are even more subtle in Allison Wortche’s Rosie Sprout’s Time to Shine, for ages 5-9.  Rosie is in a class that is trying to grow pea plants, and is jealous of classmate Violet, who is the best at everything (running, singing in the school choir, telling stories, dressing in fancy clothes) and is sure to be the best at growing plants, too.  Things go pretty much as expected for Rosie, who decorates her pot prettily but not as elaborately as Violet decorates hers, and who has the first pea to start growing – except that Violet’s also begins to grow, and Violet rushes to the teacher first with the news.  Jealousy leads Rosie to try to sabotage Violet’s plant – but then Rosie feels guilty; and then she notices that Violet has missed class altogether.  The teacher explains that Violet has chicken pox and will be out of school for a while, and Rosie, who has a good heart and basically sweet disposition, takes Violet’s plant under her care and treats it as well as she treats her own.  Sure enough, Rosie’s and Violet’s plants grow the best of all; and sure enough, when Violet returns, she is as self-centered and self-important as ever, although she does thank Rosie very quietly for her help – before continuing, much more loudly, to be her boastful self to the class as a whole.  Patrice Barton’s illustrations help move the story along smartly, and the final one really sums everything up, showing Rosie and the teacher looking at each other with knowing smiles: Violet isn’t putting anything over on either of them.  Rosie Sprout’s Time to Shine is an attractively understated book about being kind to others and helping them even if they don’t really deserve it.  It is also a good starter book for parents wanting their children to learn how things grow: the information on what plants need and how they emerge from seeds is simply and clearly presented, and there are even some relevant vocabulary words offered (from seed and stem to oxygen and chlorophyll).  All in all, Rosie Sprout’s Time to Shine is a book that sparkles on several levels.

      There is a lesson in Helen Lester’s All for Me and None for All as well, and it is a pretty clear one – about greed and generosity.  The cuteness element is played down in Lynn Munsinger’s illustrations but is scarcely absent: the postures of the five animals watching the piggish pig Gruntly sleep (two being pigs themselves and the others being a sheep, dog and chicken) are just human-like enough to be amusing, as are the animals’ facial expressions.  And Gruntly’s imagination about a Parks Department treasure hunt (“Gold up to my belly,/ silver to my snout,/ Diamonds to my pointy ears—/ that’s what it’s all about”) gets a silly and rather cute illustration as well.  But Lester’s point here is that selfishness is not cute, and Gruntly needs to learn that.  He is so eager to “be number one and get all the treasure” for himself that he rushes off each time there is a new clue to follow, never hearing or reading the clue’s conclusion.  Therefore, he repeatedly goes wrong in his search: all the clues rhyme, but Gruntly consistently comes up with the wrong rhyme (“sea” instead of “tree,” “wing” rather than “sing,” and so on).  Making mistake after mistake, driven entirely by selfishness, Gruntly eventually has an epiphany when he does get his treasure (a food treat, not gold or silver or diamonds) with his friends’ help – and realizes that “the others had saved it.  No one had touched it.  Or taken it.  Or snatched it.  Or grabbed it.”  Or done any of the other things that Gruntly himself has always done.  Embarrassed and finally self-aware, Gruntly shares with everyone – and yes, the final illustration of all the friends eating bits of Gruntly’s snack together is undeniably cute.  And in a good cause, too.

(++++) WHEN WORDS AREN’T ENOUGH

So You Created a Wormhole: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Time Travel. By Phil Hornshaw & Nick Hurwitch. Berkley. $15.

Big Nate 4: Big Nate Goes for Broke. By Lincoln Peirce. Harper. $12.99.

      Sometimes you have to go beyond silly and sarcastic to make a point effectively.  Sometimes you have to travel to the land of silly, sarcastic and illustrated.  And that is where Phil Hornshaw and Nick Hurwitch go in their generally sophomoric but often hilarious So You Created a Wormhole.  Certainly the words are important here – they take up most of the space on most of the pages – but as amusing as they are, they tend to deal with the expected time-travel topics, such as the paradox of going back in your own life’s timeline and discovering that your own mother was “at one time, pretty hot.”  But “if you in any way prevent the meeting of your parents or the consummation of their relationship in the form of exchanging bodily fluids, it could mean the instant erasure of your existence, which could, in turn, implode the universe.  Additionally, it’s gross.”  And this is but a “paradox by action” – albeit one whose illustration of the right and wrong thing to do with an apron-wearing and clearing willing woman, presumably a maternal unit at an earlier time, makes the explanatory words almost unnecessary.  There is also the “paradox by inaction” to consider: “It comes into effect when your timeline has already been affected by time travel and your own travel through time is necessary to set up events that have already occurred in your past.”  And there is “paradox by predestiny,” which includes a nifty illustration of Alexander Hamilton, and “paradox of a general lack of understanding of paradoxes,” meaning that “the threat of totally mucking up time is never really gone, as any action taken in the past (or future) could result in a paradox.  That, of course, totally sucks.”  But it makes for great illustrations, such as the circularity of “grandpappycide,” the forms of time-travel machines (booth-based, portal-based, closed-loop, and so on), the picture of an insect-like alien emerging from a cryogenically frozen human body, and a portrayal of “The Close Enough Axiom in Action” (which means you “get reasonably close” to the future you remember after you inadvertently make a significant change in the past).  Then there is the illustration in the chapter called “Surviving in Time: Prehistory,” and portraying the food chain as an inverted pyramid with a human at the bottom, “definitely man-eating creatures” at the top, and layers in between showing “probably man-eating creatures,” “man-eating plants” and “man-eating ameoba” (which is misspelled, but you get the idea).  The illustration neatly expands on verbiage that goes, “You’re not even on it [the food chain]. You’re a smear on the snot guard at the buffet.  You’re slow and have terrible hearing, poor eyesight and almost no sense of smell.”  And so forth.  There is also the illustrated good advice about surviving in the Middle Ages: “Always be prepared to accept the most popular religion as your own.”  And the “Know Your Aliens” picture that includes “Sexy Blue-Skinned Alien Babe,” “Xenomorph” and Doctor Who.  The fact is that a lot of So You Created a Wormhole is just plain silly, even childish, such as the Stone Age warning label about fire and the hundreds of footnotes (371 of them, actually).  But everyone can use a dose of silly fun now and then, and this book is a good place to find some.  Rather too much, perhaps – try reading only part of the book, stopping before you overdose on the forced comicality, then coming back later.  And definitely keep an eye out for the illustrations: an average picture may be worth the traditional 1,000 words, but given the quality of the words here, the ratio is more like 2,500 to 1.

      So You Created a Wormhole is for adults, although admittedly ones with a strong streak of immaturity; the Big Nate series of amply illustrated novels is for preteens.  But readers of Lincoln Peirce’s books – the newest is No. 4 in a planned 16-book series – will be even more grateful for the pictures.  These books are packed with them, yet these are neither traditional comic-strip collections nor ordinary graphic novels.  Instead, they are novels in which cartoons by 12-year-old Nate and about him are ever-present and significant elements.  Nate is a typical self-involved sixth-grader, a kind of slacker-in-training with his disdain for school (although he is actually smart), and he is also a good friend and an almost-inadvertent sort-of hero (one bit of kindness in Big Nate Goes for Broke actually leads to a break – of Nate’s wrist).  Spike-haired (seven spikes) and prone to getting detention for disrupting class in various ways, Nate is himself a cartoonist (as Peirce says he was back in sixth grade) – and Nate’s cartooning figures into Big Nate Goes for Broke as well.  In fact, thanks to Nate’s creativity and drawing ability, things work out quite well for him and his friends by the end of the book; and that is a good thing, since matters are pretty crummy for them in most of the earlier pages.  Nate’s school, P.S. 38, sustains water damage and has to be closed for several weeks, so Nate and his classmates are temporarily assigned to Jefferson Middle School, their arch-enemy – a super-fancy place filled with nastiness and bullies (who unfortunately never really get their comeuppance, even though Nate and his friends do find a way to defeat them in one particular contest).  A new character in this book is a girl named Dee Dee, who talks incessantly and is something of a drama queen – she is, in fact, in the drama club – but who proves to be smart, fearless, a good artist, and a particularly good match for Nate (who is clueless about this; maybe Peirce will explore the situation further in later volumes).  The book is written as a simple-to-follow story about Nate’s and his friends’ adventures before and during their time at Jefferson; but every single page contains illustrations that either show what Nate and the others are thinking and doing – or are created by Nate himself to illustrate points he wants to make (such as the “P.S. 38 Dance Floor of Shame” and “Rank the Stank: P.S. 38’s Worst Odors”).  The result is a very enjoyable hybrid format, not quite a continuous comic strip but not just a novel with plenty of illustrations.  Readers may even learn something here, as Nate himself does, since his eventual success turns on finding the Achilles’ heel of the stuck-up Jefferson kids – which means learning what an Achilles’ heel is – which means getting information, reluctantly, from his big sister, Ellen – and which means using that information in a surprising and satisfying way.  In fact, “surprising” and “satisfying” are two good adjectives for Big Nate Goes for Broke itself.