Bang
Leo Timmers. Gecko Press USA (Lerner, dist.), $17.95 (48p) ISBN 978-1-877579-18-9
Watching vehicles bash into one another is a perennial rib-tickler for kids, and Timmers (The Magical Life of Mr. Renny) exploits this with a marvelously loony series of fender benders. The story opens with a self-referential gag as a googly-eyed deer in a bowler hat drives what appears to be the official Bang convertible, the back loaded with copies of this very book. He’s reading a copy instead of looking at the road when, “Bang,” he drives straight into a dustbin. Behind him, a man in a red jalopy filled with chickens sounds his klaxon, but it’s too late: “Bang.” A giraffe returning from a shopping trip is next; the force of the collision dresses the jalopy chickens in fashionable new clothing. An alligator with a load of tires smashes into the giraffe, and so on. No one is hurt, there’s no major damage, and a magnificent four-page foldout depicts the final catastrophe, which provides ice cream for all. Timmers never skimps, painting with devoted attention every automotive detail and gleam in every chicken’s eye, and providing a plausible cause for every new accident. Ages 1–up. (Sept.)
Big Snow
Jonathan Bean. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-374-30696-0
A “big snow” can’t arrive soon enough for a boy named David. Mom tries to keep him occupied with household tasks, but everything he does only makes him think about what’s happening outside (flour, bathroom cleaner suds, and white bed sheets all remind him of accumulation). When it’s clear that David’s help is actually creating more mess, Mom suggests a nap—and David, in turn, dreams that the snow has turned into a vengeful, invasive blizzard: “[W]ild wind pushed flakes through window cracks.... [I]t roared and blew open all the doors and piled drifts around the house.” Never mind being careful what you wish for—how are David and his mother going to clean up this huge mess? This is another terrific offering from Bean (Building Our House); his subtly rhythmic prose and elegant, astute watercolors hit just the right notes of comedy, suspense, and fantasy. The dream scene of Mom vacuuming the snow out of her drift-covered living room is at once deeply silly and a tribute to the indomitable will of mothers everywhere. Ages 3–6. Agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. (Sept.)
If Dogs Run Free
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Bob Dylan, illus. by Scott Campbell. S&S/Atheneum, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4516-4879-9
“If Dogs Run Free,” from the 1970 album New Morning, is Dylan’s version of a novelty song: a goof on a ’50s-style mashup of piano jazz and spoken word (“If dogs run free, then what must be/ Must be, and that is all./ True love can make a blade of grass/ Stand up straight and tall”). It inspires the talented Campbell (East Dragon, West Dragon) to create a benevolent, retro-ish watercolor universe of cross-species friendships and endlessly fun things to do, with a wide-eyed and inexhaustible girl, her younger brother, and their pet dog as ringleaders. When Dylan muses, “If dogs run free, why not me/ Across the swamp of time?” Campbell offers an aquatic orchestra of sorts, as the main characters are joined by a host of frogs, waterfowl, turtles, and dogs, all floating on logs, lily pads, and a cooperative crocodile while they sing and play musical instruments. But despite the succession of lively scenes Campbell paints, without Dylan’s ironic, gravelly delivery and the knowing accompaniment, the text comes off as opaque. Ages 4–8. (Sept.)
Xander’s Panda Party
Linda Sue Park, illus. by Matt Phelan. Clarion, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-547-55865-3
Phelan (Around the World) takes Park’s jaunty story about a panda with a complicated social life and develops it still further. In ink-and-watercolor vignettes, he animates the many zoo creatures Xander considers inviting to his party, capturing their expressions and interactions with a few quick pen strokes. Xander begins with his bear compatriots: Black Bear, Brown Bear, the Polar Bears, and Koala. “From her tree, Koala hollered,/ ‘Xander, I am not a bear.... Will I not be welcome there?’ ” Xander reconsiders: should he include all mammals? When he does, Rhinoceros complains that he can’t bring his bird. Should he include birds, too? Eventually, of course, Xander must invite everyone, and after the arrival of an unexpected mystery guest, the attendance list expands—providing Xander with a new friend. Park (The Third Gift) is really talking about the fluidity of boundaries, and how social groupings that look solid fall apart under closer inspection. Her afterword explores symbiosis (the rhino-bird duo), taxonomic classification, and zoo exchanges—there’s food for thought throughout. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown. Illustrator’s agent: Rebecca Sherman, Writers House. (Sept.)
Warning: Do Not Open This Book!
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Adam Lehrhaupt, illus. by Matthew Forsythe. S&S/Wiseman, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4424-3582-7
Mixed messages about reading abound, from Michaela Muntean and Pascal Lemaitre’s Do Not Open This Book! to Cece Meng and Joy Ang’s I Will Not Read This Book and Jesse Klausmeier and Suzy Lee’s Open This Little Book. Lehrhaupt’s debut predictably counts on curious readers to ignore the dire warning and its accompanying threat, “You don’t want to let the monkeys out.” As pages turn, lemurs, baboons, and rhesus monkeys stalk into the spreads, where they pluck at the printed words and paint trees for themselves. The narrator’s uninspired pleas to readers (“Can you stop now? Everything used to be so good”) scaffold Forsythe’s (My Name Is Elizabeth!) primitive, earth-tone watercolors of the escalating melee. When a flock of toucans joins the troublemaking monkeys, and a giant alligator emerges from the right margin, readers get to be part of the solution: “You can catch them all in this book!” If Forsythe’s grainy illustrations echo Jon Klassen’s picture books, the mood in this outing is light and message-free. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Judith Hansen, Hansen Literary. (Aug.)
Tug-of-War
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John Burningham. Candlewick, $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7636-6575-3
In 1968, Burningham—now known for Mr. Gumpy’s Outing and Granpa, among other stories—illustrated Letta Schatz’s The Extraordinary Tug-of-War, a retold West African folktale. This edition reprints the original illustrations with a new retelling from Burningham himself. Hare, the smallest of three creatures, faces merciless teasing. Hippopotamus calls Hare “a tiny, wimpy thing” and a “weak little fool,” and Elephant trumpets, “Hare, you really are a feeble idiot.” Such insults may give readers pause, yet they show why Hare is keen to defeat his tormenters using his superior wits. Hare finds Elephant in the forest, challenges him to a tug-of-war, and gives him an end of rope. Hare meets Hippopotamus at the river and gives him the other end. Sight unseen, both creatures believe Hare is pulling against them, and fail to realize their error until Hare “was already miles away, up in the hills.” Burningham’s energetic yet shadowy mixed-media drawings, in aqueous hues of blue, brown, and green, recall the oily lithography of the 1960s, yet hold up well in this still-relevant fable. Ages 5–8. (Aug.)
Rifka Takes a Bow
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Betty Rosenberg Perlov, illus. by Cosei Kawa. Kar-Ben, $17.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7613-8128-0
Rifka lives in early 20th-century New York City with her glamorous, devoted parents, who are stars of the Yiddish theater. She marvels at the transformations that they undergo and revels in backstage life, with its dressing rooms filled with makeup, ribbons, and beads; its clever props (ketchup for blood, tea for whiskey); and even its rules for how to perform a kiss (“The man holds the girl’s head between his hands, and he kisses his thumbs”). When Rifka accidentally ends up on stage during a performance, she blanches only for a minute—the theater is in truly in her blood. As the afterword notes, Perlov’s childhood was the model for Rifka’s, but this story is more about the magic of theater in general than about Yiddish theatre in particular. Similarly, Kawa’s dreamy pictures, with their skewed perspectives and fanciful characterizations, make some references to Jewish life, but are more interested in pretend play writ large. Readers will get little sense of Yiddish theater’s distinctive emotional flamboyance or cultural relevancy, though the afterword offers some historical details. Ages 5–9. (Sept.)
The Hypnotists
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Gordon Korman. Scholastic Press, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-545-50322-8
The fast-paced first volume in Korman’s Hypnotists series introduces some historical conspiracies worthy of Dan Brown. In Korman’s world, famous events from the Hindenberg disaster to the Lewis and Clark expedition were influenced by hypnotists, people with a genetic gift that allows them to control others’ minds. Twelve-year-old Jackson “Jax” Opus is starting to notice that people sometimes do what he says without thinking about it, and that he has strange visions when this happens. After a run-in with a stage hypnotist, he is recruited to the Sentia Institute, run by Dr. Elias Mako, friend to politicians and movie stars alike. Jax starts training his natural skills, but an encounter with another hypnotist, former con artist Axel Braintree, persuades him that there’s more to both his own family history and to Sentia. Korman (the Swindle series) delivers an entertaining mix of intense action and goofy fun; he isn’t afraid to raise the stakes when necessary, and he makes the moral murkiness of mind control apparent to characters and readers alike. The ending wraps up some loose ends, but leaves plenty for future books. Ages 8–12. (Aug.)
Listening for Lucca
Suzanne LaFleur. Random/Lamb, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-385-74299-3
At night, 13-year-old Siena has dreams about a house overlooking the ocean, as well as wartime imagery including plane crashes and sinking ships; scarier still, visions of the past are bleeding into Siena’s waking life. As a result, Siena has alienated her friends and taken to collecting abandoned objects. Meanwhile, Siena’s three-year-old brother, Lucca, hasn’t spoken in a year and a half, and her parents move the family from Brooklyn to Maine (into a house that resembles the one from Siena’s dreams) in hopes that both children’s behavior will return to normal. But the grand old house on Ocean Drive feels haunted, and although Siena makes new friends, her attention is drawn back to her worries and the discovery that her visions and dreams are tied to Sarah, a girl who lived in the house during WWII. Questions of how Sarah is connected to Siena and whether Lucca will speak again swirl throughout this insightful, delicate tale. LaFleur (Eight Keys) offers an enticing blend of history, mystery, and family, perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me. Ages 8–12. Agent: Elizabeth Harding, Curtis Brown. (Aug.)
The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas
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David Almond, illus. by Oliver Jeffers. Candlewick, $15.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-7636-6169-4
As he did in The Boy Who Climbed to the Moon, Almond strikes a lighter, more whimsical note in the story of orphan Stanley Potts. After Stanley’s guardian, Uncle Ernie, is fired from his job, the man quickly rebounds with “big, big plans” to build a fish cannery in his home. When ambition and greed prompt Uncle Ernie to dip his fingers into Stanley’s bucket of pet goldfish, an infuriated Stanley leaves home and joins a carnival. He is working the hook-a-duck stall when he is discovered by Pancho Pirelli, a man renowned for performing the death-defying act of swimming with piranhas. Pancho, on the verge of retirement, is looking for a replacement, and Stanley might fit the bill. Reinventing oneself can be dangerous, disastrous, or fortuitous, as this proudly silly tale (and Jeffers’s equally blithe spot art) illustrate, and there will always be members of the establishment (in this case, DAFT, the “Departmint for the Abolishun of Fishy Things”) trying to prevent the realization of dreams. Bold, imaginative, and funny, Stanley’s bigger-than-life escapades will tickle imaginations. Ages 9–12. (Aug.)
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