Alice Cary

Children's & YAPicture Book

A simple comic for nighttime fun

Review by Alice Cary

Sleepless Knight is a fun camping story told in comic book form for preschoolers and young elementary school students. Creators James Sturm, Andrew Arnold and Alexis Frederick-Frost have previously published a series of award-winning Adventures in Cartooning books, and the fun continues in their new story featuring the exuberant Knight and his sidekick, Edward the horse.

The Knight proclaims that this will be “the BEST camping trip EVER!” as he overloads Edward with things like his scooter, ukulele and even a cactus. Most important of all is the Knight's teddy―along with 30 bags of marshmallows.

This duo doesn’t make it very far from the castle with their huge load, but they do manage to pitch a tent and start a campfire. Later that night, Edward falls into an exhausted sleep while the Knight realizes that his beloved teddy bear is missing. Adventures ensue as the Knight searches high and low, encountering a helpful rabbit and a rather large bear.

Young readers will enjoy the madcap nighttime antics, and budding cartoonists will particularly relish the endpapers, which feature step-by-step guides for drawing the Knight, Edward, the rabbit and the bear, all in a variety of humorous moods, expressions and activities. No doubt many young artists will be inspired to create their own adventures featuring Edward and the Knight.

Sleepless Knight is a fun camping story told in comic book form for preschoolers and young elementary school students. Creators James Sturm, Andrew Arnold and Alexis Frederick-Frost have previously published a series of award-winning Adventures in Cartooning books, and the fun continues in their new story featuring the exuberant Knight and his sidekick, Edward the horse.

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

The timeless power of music

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Children's Top Pick, March 2015

The latest novel by award-winning author Pam Muñoz Ryan is a hefty yet riveting page-turner containing four interwoven stories.

The first is a fairy tale about a boy named Otto who becomes lost in a German forest. He is rescued by three mysterious maidens who happen to be characters in a book that he has just bought from a gypsy. This gypsy also gives Otto a unique harmonica that has special powers. “When you play it,” the maidens explain, “you breathe in and out, just as you would to keep your body alive. Have you ever considered that one person might play the mouth harp and pass along her strength and vision and knowledge?” Indeed, this instrument has amazing “pay it forward” abilities.

The fairy tale is followed by three novella-length stories of historical fiction, each connected by Otto’s magic harmonica. It first appears in Trossingen, Germany, in 1933, where a boy named Friedrich yearns to become a conductor. He’s tormented, however, by his disfiguring facial birthmark, and his safety is threatened by a Nazi law requiring sterilization of those with deformities. The harmonica’s next owner is an orphaned boy in 1935 Pennsylvania who fears being separated from his younger brother and loves playing the piano. And finally the harmonica turns up in Southern California in 1942 in the hands of Ivy Maria Lopez, a young Mexican-American girl whose family’s fortune changes after a Japanese family is sent to an internment camp. These interwoven tales unite in a majestic scene in 1951 New York, along with a short epilogue explaining how Otto passed along his magic harmonica to begin its magical journey.

These fast-paced stories are woven together to give young readers a wealth of historical information in an incredibly gripping way. In a novel filled with real-life examples of prejudice and injustice, Ryan repeatedly illustrates an important message uttered by Friedrich’s father: “Music is a universal language. A universal religion of sorts. Certainly it’s my religion. Music surpasses all distinctions between people.”

 

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The latest novel by award-winning author Pam Muñoz Ryan is a hefty yet riveting page-turner containing four interwoven stories.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Pipe down, bunnies!

Review by Alice Cary

Bedtime at Bessie and Lil’s offers a delightful look at what bedtime routines are often really like. As Mama Rabbit diligently tries to read one of her favorite childhood books to her lovable yet active girls, Bessie practices headstands and Lil shows off her skipping abilities.

Sternberg’s breezily amusing text is spot-on. For instance, this exchange occurs after Mama reads a passage about tucking little bunnies in:

“I really like the word tuck,” said Bessie.
“I’d really like you to sit down,” said Mama.
“I want to say it ten times fast,” said Bessie. “Tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck―”

Poor Mama! Not only does her idyllic story time not go as planned, she frets that Bessie and Lil will wake the baby. Eventually Mama gives up and reads her treasured book to herself, and the girls decide they must go kiss the baby.

Adam Gudeon’s illustrations alternately depict the energetic bunnies’ reading session and the serene scenes in Mama Rabbit’s book, highlighting the stark contrast between the two. Gudeon’s primitive drawing style works well with his bright colors and clever artistic touches, such as the toy carrot car and carrot-shaped rocket in Bessie and Lil’s room, along with their carrot-accented headboards.

Bedtime at Bessie and Lil’s is a gentle family drama that reinforces the idea that despite the moments of chaos that naturally occur in a boisterous, loving family, in the end things often have a way of working out surprisingly well.

Bedtime at Bessie and Lil’s offers a delightful look at what bedtime routines are often really like. As Mama Rabbit diligently tries to read one of her favorite childhood books to her lovable yet active girls, Bessie practices headstands and Lil shows off her skipping abilities.

Children's & YAPicture Book

A fearsome predator’s on the hunt—or not

Review by Alice Cary

Owls are stealthy predators known to swoop through the night to surprise unsuspecting prey. This isn’t quite the case with Hoot Owl, Master of Disguise. In this clever book for preschoolers, Hoot is as cute as can be, with bright, bold and simple illustrations by French artist Jean Jullien.

Although Hoot fancies himself to be fierce, he is mainly hungry and melodramatic. Imagine this deep-voiced, deadly serious avian narrator announcing, “The darkness of midnight is all around me. But I fly through it as quick as a shooting star.”

Hoot Owl is a perfect read-aloud, begging for over-the-top theatricality as its hero repeatedly announces, “I am Hoot Owl! I am hungry. And here I come!” He disguises himself as a carrot while trying to catch a rabbit, and as a mother sheep when trying to catch a lamb—all with no luck. Next, his pursuit of a pigeon is equally unsuccessful (perhaps because his strategy is to hide and wait instead of actually attacking).

Despite repeated failures, Hoot remains undaunted. His self-confidence and unwavering tenacity bring to mind the character of Phil Dunphy in the TV show “Modern Family.”

Happily, Hoot eventually manages to catch his final prey, but only after zeroing in on quite the unexpected target―a final quest that youngsters are bound to enjoy.

This simple story packs plenty of punch. Hoot Owl is a comic, suspenseful tale that will no doubt be a hit night after night.

Owls are stealthy predators known to swoop through the night to surprise unsuspecting prey. This isn’t quite the case with Hoot Owl, Master of Disguise. In this clever book for preschoolers, Hoot is as cute as can be, with bright, bold and simple illustrations by French artist Jean Jullien.

Children's & YAPicture Book

When a new sibling is on the way

Review by Alice Cary

Young Elmore Green’s life seems perfect and orderly until one day when “somebody else came along,” and that someone happens to be The New Small Person. This new creature, whom Elmore refers to as “it,” squawks during Elmore’s favorite cartoons and once “actually licked Elmore’s jelly-bean collection, including the orange ones.”

Elmore, not surprisingly, isn’t happy about his baby brother.

There’s nothing new about this scenario, but in Lauren Child’s gifted hands, both text and illustrations are exceedingly fresh and funny. This best-selling author is well known for her memorable characters, including Clarice Bean and siblings Charlie and Lola.

Child’s bright, fetching art brings us right into these siblings’ world, where lines of small toys are monumentally important and where the adults’ heads are never visible, only their bodies. Child’s use of typography is equally creative, with changing font sizes and words that curve across a spread or climb down the rungs of a treehouse ladder.

Things go from bad to worse for poor Elmore. The new small person constantly follows him around and, on “one awful day,” actually moves into Elmore’s room. But one night, Elmore has a nightmare in which “a scary thing was chasing him, waving its grabbers and gnashing its teeth.” His younger sibling comes to the rescue, and soon after, “it” becomes known as Elmore’s brother, Albert.

The New Small Person is a delightful tale of new sibling arrival and acceptance, another wonderful offering from the masterful Child.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Young Elmore Green’s life seems perfect and orderly until one day when “somebody else came along,” and that someone happens to be The New Small Person. This new creature, whom Elmore refers to as “it,” squawks during Elmore’s favorite cartoons and once “actually licked Elmore’s jelly-bean collection, including the orange ones.”
NonfictionMemoir

Sticks and stones

Review by Alice Cary

In 1971, 10-year-old Allen Kurzweil arrived at a Swiss boarding school called Aiglon. He was a Jewish boy from New York; his father had died, and his mother was “test-driving her third husband.” Kurzweil was happy to be back in the Alps—his Viennese father had brought him there for winter holidays and imbued him with a love of alpine hiking and skiing.

Soon, however, Kurzweil (the youngest student at Aiglon) was being tormented by one of his roommates, 12-year-old Cesar Augustus, a native of Manila. Cesar’s abuse came in many forms, both physical and psychological, and Kurzweil begins Whipping Boy by taking readers back to that monumental time in his life.

Kurzweil leaves the school after a year, but the memories of being bullied continue to haunt him, even as an adult. As a novelist, he writes a children’s book featuring a bully modeled after his nemesis. When Kurzweil decides to look into what became of the real Cesar, he discovers that he’s in federal prison for his part in a bizarre international swindling scheme.

Kurzweil’s long-term pursuit of this strange story and his eventual confrontation of Cesar reads like a thriller, full of intrigue as well as humor and self-reflection. “Why am I still pursuing Cesar?” the author asks himself. “Is it to uncover his story? To avoid my own? The bottom line is this: I’m not sure what I’m after. Nor can I explain what compels me to travel cross-country to spy on the actions of a convicted felon I have promised my wife I will not confront.”

Kurzweil puts both his journalistic and literary skills to wonderful use in his “investigative memoir,” making numerous trips to revisit his school and to interview old classmates, staff, swindling victims, prosecutors and federal agents.

Kurzweil’s final meeting with Cesar is a worthy finale, bound to prompt plenty of meaningful discussions among readers about the nature of childhood, bullying and memories.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In 1971, 10-year-old Allen Kurzweil arrived at a Swiss boarding school called Aiglon. He was a Jewish boy from New York; his father had died, and his mother was “test-driving her third husband.” Kurzweil was happy to be back in the Alps—his Viennese father had brought him there for winter holidays and imbued him with a love of alpine hiking and skiing.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Time travel—there’s an app for that

Review by Alice Cary

Twelve-year-old Mel isn’t expecting Christmas to be exciting. His family life has recently come apart, so he and two other classmates are spending the holidays at their posh boarding school, where they’re known as “the Left Behinds.” When a history teacher escorts the trio to a Christmas Day re-enactment of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, things go strangely haywire, and Mel, Bev and Brandon inexplicably find themselves thrust back in time to December 25, 1776.

The resulting nonstop historical action begins when Mel discovers a body lying on haystacks in a stable and realizes that the deceased is none other than “stone-cold dead” General George Washington. Mel determines that a rogue iPhone app, iTime, is to blame, and he and his friends must fix history and save the Revolution. The excitement never stops in this riveting tale, leading Mel to Philadelphia in search of Ben Franklin (whose electricity can recharge Mel’s iPhone) and on to Trenton to surprise the Hessian forces.

David Potter’s debut is smart, funny and the first adventure of the time-traveling Left Behinds. Readers will charge through these super-short chapters like a Revolutionary soldier on the run.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Twelve-year-old Mel isn’t expecting Christmas to be exciting. His family life has recently come apart, so he and two other classmates are spending the holidays at their posh boarding school, where they’re known as “the Left Behinds.” When a history teacher escorts the trio to a Christmas Day re-enactment of Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, things go strangely haywire, and Mel, Bev and Brandon inexplicably find themselves thrust back in time to December 25, 1776.
NonfictionParentingFamily & Relationships

Discovering another side of parenthood

Review by Alice Cary

One day Claude Knobler and his wife read a newspaper article that would change their lives. Written by award-winning journalist Melissa Fay Greene, it chronicled the plight of Ethiopian children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

The article moved Knobler so deeply that he mentioned to his wife that they should adopt an Ethiopian child. Early on in More Love, Less Panic, Knobler admits, “The absolute 100 percent real truth of the story, is that I never ever thought my wife would agree.”

She did, however, and before long Knobler found himself traveling to Ethiopia to bring home 5-year-old Nati to join the family’s two biological children. In seven humorous, touching chapters, Knobler interweaves stories about his son’s adoption with lessons he’s learned that will be helpful to all parents, such as “How Trying to Turn My Ethiopian Son into a Neurotic Jew Taught Me It’s Nature, Not Nurture.” Young Nati was hardly a “Neurotic Jew”; instead, he was a carefree, energetic boy who found joy everywhere he went. With hardly a worry in his personality, he enriched his new family in endless ways.

Knobler wisely advises parents to try to sit back and enjoy the wild ride of parenthood, even when it isn’t clear exactly where the journey may lead. Parents will find many such nuggets of good advice in this entertaining, easy-to-read combination of memoir and parenting guide.

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Claude Knobler about More Love, Less Panic. 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

One day Claude Knobler and his wife read a newspaper article that would change their lives. Written by award-winning journalist Melissa Fay Greene, it chronicled the plight of Ethiopian children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.
Memoir

Immigrant daughter goes back to her roots

Review by Alice Cary

Val Wang, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., wondering about her place in the world. "I didn't feel as though I belonged there," she wrote, "or anywhere yet, and I itched to travel to exotic places far away to look for what was missing in my life."

Much to her parents' dismay, Wang chose to go to the land they had fled in 1949. In 1998 she moved to Beijing and found work as a writer for a cultural magazine, hoping to film documentaries. Wang describes her decision as "an act of rebellion" against her parents and their suburban life.

Not surprisingly, Wang quickly discovers that "Starting over was not liberating or glamorous." For a while she lives with relatives in a house with an outhouse; later she moved into her own apartment in an area filled with sex shops and prostitutes.

Wang experiences a city in the midst of a great transition, as the government builds new apartment buildings while demolishing neighborhoods of "hutongs," narrow streets lined by traditional courtyard houses like the one she shares with relatives. Several of her family's courtyard homes had been taken over by the government years before and had gradually fallen into disrepair after being inhabited by squatters as well as family members.

Over the years, Wang gets to know and appreciate her family better, both those in America and in China. She struggles to find her own way as well, spending months documenting a family trained in the dying art of the Peking Opera, but eventually abandoning the project.

Beijing Bastard: Into the Wilds of a Changing China is an intriguing memoir of transformation and discovery on a cultural as well as personal level. Eventually, Wang returns to America. However, her journey of rebellion has transformed her, helping her find the part of herself that she felt was missing. As she explains, "Living in these courtyard houses had made me feel a part of my family as nothing else had."

Val Wang, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., wondering about her place in the world. "I didn't feel as though I belonged there," she wrote, "or anywhere yet, and I itched to travel to exotic places far away to look for what was missing in my life."

Children's & YAPicture Book

These cats need your help

Review by Alice Cary

Is There a Dog in This Book? had me hooked right from the start, when three adorable, hip cats (Andre, Moonpie and Tiny) welcome readers with a warm greeting on the title page. The trio continues to chat with readers as they notice with alarm that someone has drunk their milk and played with their toy.

The cats quickly realize that a dog may be nearby. Moonpie explains, “Dogs are snappy and yappy, smelly and noisy, hairy and scary . . . and dogs HATE cats!” These wide-eyed, lively cats immediately enlist readers to help them hide, because indeed, there is a dog on the loose, who happens to be a cute purple puppy.

This is a wonderful lift-the-flap book, the perfect interactive bedtime treat for young readers, and a follow-up to Viviane Schwarz’s There Are Cats in This Book and There Are No Cats in This Book. It’s rare to find such genuine humor and gentle suspense in a flap book for this age group.

Schwarz’s cats are full of personality. Young Tiny actually wants to meet the dog, while his elders quiver and hide themselves in a suitcase labeled "Do Not Open, Very Boring."

Schwarz’s vibrant art and spot-on text are sure to engage preschoolers again and again. Dog lovers shouldn’t worry: In the end, the cats become friends with the curious pup, and more chaos (and flaps to search) ensues when this newfound friend goes briefly missing. Is There a Dog in This Book? is a nonstop delight for young readers.

Is There a Dog in This Book? had me hooked right from the start, when three adorable, hip cats (Andre, Moonpie and Tiny) welcome readers with a warm greeting on the title page. The trio continues to chat with readers as they notice with alarm that someone has drunk their milk and played with their toy.

Children's & YAPicture Book

Whimsy from A to Z

Review by Alice Cary

It’s one thing to learn your ABCs. It’s quite another when Oliver Jeffers is in charge. His new picture book, Once Upon an Alphabet, contains 26 very short stories, beginning with “An Astronaut” and ending with “Zeppelin.” Preschoolers and beginning readers will delight in these vignettes featuring everything from a lumberjack who repeatedly gets struck by lightning to, of all things, a puzzled parsnip.

Jeffers (The Day the Crayons Quit) uses comical illustrations and sophisticated humor throughout, sometimes linking several stories. “An Enigma” asks how many elephants can fit inside an envelope, and readers must go to “N” for the answer. Kids will eat up Jeffers’ wacky wickedness, such as in “Half a House,” in which poor Helen lives in the remains of a house on the edge of a seaside cliff. (The rest collapsed during a hurricane.) One day, alas, Helen rolls out of the wrong side of the bed.

Jeffers knows how to catch the attention of his young audience while challenging their imagination, intellect and vocabulary. This whimsical exploration of letters and language begs to be read over and over again.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s one thing to learn your ABCs. It’s quite another when Oliver Jeffers is in charge. His new picture book, Once Upon an Alphabet, contains 26 very short stories, beginning with “An Astronaut” and ending with “Zeppelin.” Preschoolers and beginning readers will delight in these vignettes featuring everything from a lumberjack who repeatedly gets struck by lightning to, of all things, a puzzled parsnip.
NonfictionEssays

Confronting a doctor’s dilemmas

Review by Alice Cary

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, October 2014

Let me confess: I’m a medical book junkie. That said, Terrence Holt’s Internal Medicine: A Doctor’s Stories is my new favorite, both in terms of literary merit and intriguing medical details and drama.

Holt is uniquely qualified, having earned an M.F.A. in creative writing and a Ph.D. in English before turning to the study of medicine. Early on, he decided he wanted to write about the process of becoming a doctor. He eventually concluded that the best way to capture the essence of his journey without violating patient confidentiality was to write a series of “parables” that drew on his own experiences.

Whether or not you classify this collection of nine stories as nonfiction, they ring true in both details and spirit, starting with a doctor’s evolution from the first night on call as an intern and ending with ethical questions that a physician ponders 40 months later, his residency complete.

Holt describes telling a young woman that her death was imminent: “I’d like to say that I held her, or said soothing words. But I don’t hold female patients, even when they cry, and I had no soothing words. I knelt there and I watched her, and struggled to comprehend what I saw.”

Each account is equally compelling and thought-provoking. The narrator faces a dying woman who needs oxygen but finds the mask claustrophobic; an artist whose mouth and jaw have been eaten away by cancer; a mental patient whose mysterious but horrifying self-inflicted pain needs to be identified; and a young woman who arrives in the ER but has already, as it turns out, begun the act of suicide.

How can a doctor help patients such as these? What should or shouldn’t a physician do? How do doctors feel when confronted with such daily dilemmas and myriad personalities?

Dr. Holt never settles for easy answers, and the questions he poses—reflecting the frequent uncertainties of doctors and patients alike—will leave readers thinking long after the final page is turned.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Let me confess: I’m a medical book junkie. That said, Terrence Holt’s Internal Medicine: A Doctor’s Stories is my new favorite, both in terms of literary merit and intriguing medical details and drama.
Memoir

When the world goes dark

Review by Alice Cary

Rebecca Alexander started having vision problems when she was about 10 years old. Eventually, doctors realized she was suffering from Usher syndrome, a condition that would cause her to become both deaf and blind. Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found is a compelling account of her journey, starting with childhood and ending with her fairly recent acquisition of a cochlear implant.

At about the time Alexander's troubles began, she suffered another big blow: Her parents divorced. Despite acrimony toward one another, both her mother and father quickly became huge advocates and cheerleaders for their talented, energetic daughter. Now 34, Alexander has enjoyed being a spin instructor and works as a psychotherapist in New York City, even though her condition has caused issues with both pursuits.

Along with such triumphs, Alexander has endured incredible lows, such as her own eating disorder and the debilitating mental illness of her beloved twin brother.  She writes an intimate, no-holds-barred account of the good and the bad. Perhaps her lowest moment occurred after a night of teenage drinking, when she woke up in the middle of the night in her bedroom and managed to fall backward out of her window, more than 27 feet onto a stone patio, "breaking almost everything but my head and neck." While her friends headed off to college, Alexander faced a lengthy, painful recovery, but managed to gain important insights during the process.

Alexander's vision and hearing loss accelerated during her 20s, as she navigated becoming an independent adult and professional. She lives with her service dog, Olive, and uses a cane to navigate. She has learned sign language and lip reading, but so far has resisted using Braille.

Alexander writes memorably and often humorously about her life, including her decision to have a cochlear implant―a choice that was by no means easy, because it meant giving up what natural hearing she had left in one ear. Through each and every moment, she gives thanks to her supportive family and several extraordinarily friends.

Alexander brings readers into her realm―the world of a tremendously courageous, likeable, accomplished woman.

Rebecca Alexander started having vision problems when she was about 10 years old. Eventually, doctors realized she was suffering from Usher syndrome, a condition that would cause her to become both deaf and blind. Not Fade Away: A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found is a compelling account of her journey, starting with childhood and ending with her fairly recent acquisition of a cochlear implant.

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