A Little Spark

A Little Spark by Christ Parsons, illustrations by Mike Motz, 2020

Recommended for grades 3-5; fantasy, talking animals

Not yet published; this review refers to an Advance Reader’s Copy from NetGalley

Spark the mouse lives in Lake Zuron, an idealistic community of talking animals that is surrounded by icy mountains. The only reason that Lake Zuron is habitable is that it’s kept warm by Daniel the dragon. Although Lake Zuron has the potential to be a utopia, it has a problematic class system. Some kinds of animals, like the bears and moose, call themselves “the Supervisors” and are, by default, the ruling class. Other animals, like cats and dogs and weasels, are “the Providers”, and their job is to delegate tasks to “the Streeters,” that is, the small, lowly animals who do all the actual work.

Our protagonist Spark is one of these Streeters. He’s determined to do something more than the menial tasks assigned to him by his boss, Veen the weasel. When Spark hears that Daniel’s fire has gone out, he wants to help, but his ideas aren’t taken seriously. When the bigger animals give up, Spark is allowed to try his idea and is able to get the dragon breathing fire again. But his solution doesn’t last long. It soon becomes clear that someone must go on the perilous journey to a land south of the mountains where there is a place like Zuron. Someone from this unknown land may be able to help.So Spark volunteers to go on this mission. He’s accompanied by Veen, who isn’t quite as mean and selfish as he seems.

This fantasy chapter book would perhaps work better as a full-length middle-grade novel. It has a few too many characters for such a short book, and it’s a little hard to keep them all straight. The world-building is fairly well done, but could have been done better yet if it hadn’t been stuffed into the space of just a few pages. And the vocabulary and sentence structures put this book at about a fourth grade reading level even though the bright, cartoonish illustrations look like something out of a picture book for preschoolers. The length of the book splits the difference, as it is roughly equivalent to that of a beginning chapter book for first or second graders. I can’t help wondering if the author actually knows much about children’s literature and childhood development as it pertains to literacy and reading skills.

But that problem can be shrugged off if we give the book the benefit of the doubt by assuming it’s intended to be a classroom read-aloud for kids in early elementary school, or perhaps a family bedtime story to be read over the course of several nights. In that case, the combination of the vivid, child-friendly illustrations and the complex but brief plot make more sense. And the messages in this book definitely are conducive to discussion for a variety of different age levels. Younger children can focus on the general themes of being nice and not thinking you’re better than everyone else, while older children can think about how this story does or doesn’t reflect human society and real-world issues.

Throughout the book, there are QR codes that evidently take the reader to Youtube videos of songs that go along with the story. I couldn’t get these codes to work, probably because the digital copy of the book wasn’t formatted quite right for the device I was using. But readers who have the physical book will presumably be able to use the QR codes to make this book a multimedia experience, which is a cool idea. There’s also a lot of end material in the book including additional QR codes to access “fun messages from your favorite characters” and discussion questions. Those discussion questions are a little too pedantic and preachy in tone; parents and teachers who want to check comprehension and facilitate conversation are probably better off asking question in their own words.

New Picture Books

During this pandemic, I’ve basically been living off of eBooks. Unfortunately, that means I haven’t really kept up with picture books. I personally don’t really like reading picture books or graphic novels in digital format, but it’s gotten to the point that I’m really missing out on a lot because of that, so I’ve finally read a bunch of picture books for the sake of writing these brief reviews. In some cases, these are already-published books that I acquired the normal way, (that is, with a library card) while others were ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) which I got from NetGalley. On this list, I’ve included all of the picture books that I got from NetGalley but only my favorites among the books I checked out. For all of the books that aren’t out yet, I’ve added a note specifying the expected publication date according to NetGalley.

Swim, Mo, Swim! By David A. Adler, illustrated by Sam Ricks

This early reader is the latest in a series of sports-themed books about Mo Jackson, a boy who is more talented than he realizes and tends to win athletic events unexpectedly. They’re written at about a first grade reading level, with multiple sentences per page and a fair amount of multi-syllable words. They’re great books for a student who is comfortable reading full sentences but not yet ready for chapter books, especially if that particular child prefers realistic fiction about real kids over cutesy anthropomorphic animals. While I personally don’t find these books especially humorous, and they always seem to end awkwardly abruptly, I understand the appeal and think they’re worth their spots on library bookshelves.

I Am Every Good Thing by David Barnes, illustrated by Gordon C. James

Gorgeous oil-painted illustrations accompany this poetic, feel-good list of positive affirmations. An African American boy who looks to be about seven or eight years old describes himself as various things he loves, like Saturday mornings in the summer and a grand slam. Some of his self-descriptions are very specific, reflecting his own interests in science and sports, while others are more general, describing his energetic and curious personality. He also describes himself as a brother, son, nephew, cousin, grandson, and friend. (That page is probably my favorite part; I love the picture of him hugging a girl who is presumably his sister) The book ends with the boy simply saying that he is worthy to be loved. Despite the fact that this story doesn’t consist of a chronological narrative, and the main character isn’t even given a name, by the end of the book, readers will feel like they really know this kid and like him. For me, the best part of this book is the artwork, but the positive messages and the lovable protagonist are big selling points, too.

When Winter Comes: Discovering Wildlife in Our Snowy Woods by Aimee M. Bissonette, illustrated by Erin Hourigan

This title has not yet been released. Expected publication date is October 13.

A family happily engages in outdoor winter activities like skating, snowball fights, ice fishing, and skiing in this cheerful, seasonal picture book. As they do so, they are consciously aware of the animals around them. Some, like the tree frogs, are hibernating, while others, like the field mice, tunnel beneath the ground and come out occasionally for food. Meanwhile, the fish are still active beneath the ice and the birds seek shelter in the trees. The illustrations appear to be mixed media including some kind of pencil or ink for the fine lines and something like charcoal for the texture of the snow, sky, water, and dirt. After reading it once through, I went back and took a closer look at the art style, and I love the realistic color palette used for the snow. The overall effect is pure, clean, quiet white, but there’s actually quite a bit of blue and pink and gray for showing the drifts and shadows and sunlight. The bright blue sky and the green branches of the pine trees make for a very colorful look overall. I think kids will especially like the pictures in which you can see the animals hidden from the human characters below the surface of the ground or the ice. This book will make a great read-aloud, either as part of a storytime or at home. I think it would pair well with Kevin Henke’s When Winter Is Here from 2018.

Bear Against Time by Jean-Luc Fromental, illustrated by Joelle Jolivet

(Originally published in French in 2018, English language version has a scheduled publication date of February 16, 2021)

Bear always shows up for everything at the wrong time. He’s late for school, he misses lunch and goes to the wrong classrooms, and he doesn’t come home on time. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to tell time. The father in the human family he lives with (for some unexplained reason) teaches him how to read a clock, and Bear’s life suddenly changes. Now he’s always on time and he has plenty of free time, which he fills up with so many extra-curricular activities that he collapses from burnout. It’s a little unclear what the point of this book is. Is it to teach children how to read a clock? Is it to make a point about the importance of being on time? Or is it a warning against the harmful effects of an overly busy schedule? While these are all valid points, they don’t mesh into a cohesive story. I don’t especially recommend this book.

Find a Moose With Me! A Countdown Adventure by Suzanne Buzby Hersey

This title has not yet been released. Expected publication date is November 24.

It’s Oscar’s first moose hunt! He and his parents are going on a hike in search of a moose they can photograph. As they walk, they count things they see, starting with ten pinecones, nine turtles, and eight beavers, and eventually counting down to two loons and finally, one moose. The rhyming text generally does a good job of sticking to the meter. The artwork is appealing but somewhat inconsistent in style. For some reason, Oscar’s facial features are overly simplified and slightly out of proportion while the animals are drawn in beautifully precise detail. Perhaps this was deliberate for the sake of making a point about environmentalism and de-emphasizing the humans, but if so, I don’t feel like that was especially well done. While this book doesn’t stand out as being exceptionally good, it is an enjoyable read and probably worth recommending to someone who’s specifically looking for picture books about nature for a child around three years old.

10 Ballet Dancers by Amanda Malek-Ahmadi, illustrated by Kathrine Gutkovskiy

This title has not yet been released. Expected publication date is October 13.

I always love finding a new ballet picture book that actually uses terminology correctly and depicts the dancers’ anatomy more or less accurately. This book already appeals to me for that reason, especially because the female dancers’ pointe shoe ribbons are tied properly! I also really like the artistic style. The dancers are drawn with precise lines evidently drawn in ink, while the background is more abstract without clearly defined lines. I’m guessing it’s watercolor. It’s clearly a spacious, brightly lit studio with huge windows and a very shiny floor, but the focus is on the dancers. This would be a great book for kids who take ballet and will recognize the terminology, but it would also be a great book for a ballet-themed storytime intended to introduce kids to dance. My only complaint is that the ABB rhyme scheme feels a bit weird.

Night Animals Need Sleep, Too by Gianna Marino

This book is a sequel to Marino’s 2015 book simply titled Night Animals, but it works as a standalone story, too. Since Possum and Skunk are night animals, they need to find someplace dark and quiet to sleep during the day. First they find a promising cave, but it turns out to have bees. Bear follows them as they continue their quest and try to get some sleep in a hollow tree. But then Beaver chops it down. Next, they find a hole that turns out to be a fox den and a tent that belongs to humans. By then, it’s nighttime and it’s time for night animals to wake up anyway. While this story may lack a satisfying conclusion, it has a cumulative pattern, humorous characters, and an appealing simplicity that will make it a great read-aloud for preschoolers. Adults will probably want to inform kids that possums like to play dead in order to avoid confusion and maximize humor.

Jade Braves the Dark by Valdene Mark, illustrated by Sawyer Cloud

I’ve seen this title around enough that I guess I had high hopes for it which it didn’t quite meet. My biggest complaint is that the meter of the rhyming text wasn’t entirely consistent, which detracts from its value as a good read-aloud book. While toddlers and preschoolers don’t generally understand the concept of a regular meter, it still constitutes a strong appeal factor and builds early literacy skills. So it’s worth doing well, and this particular book falls short; it has a few too many lines with an extra syllable or two. The style of the artwork was somewhat appealing but not especially distinctive or impressive. I’ve seen a couple people compare the illustrative style to Pixar, which I think is a fair comparison.The simple storyline about a girl suddenly overcoming her fear of the dark is apparently intended to help children deal with their own fears, but Jade’s sudden epiphany is too unrealistic to provide much comfort.

Hike by Pete Oswald

In this wordless picture book, a father and child wake up early to drive away from their city home and take a mountain hike. Together, they enjoy the beauty of the scenery and the challenges of the path, including a scary log bridge and steep rocks to climb. They plant a tree and take a picture before returning to their vehicle and driving away. By the time they get back to the city, it’s night. Father and child share a bedtime snack of milk and cookies and look at a family photo album. Presumably, they add the picture from today’s hike to the album. This is not a story with fully-fleshed-out exposition, conflicts, climax, and resolution, but it is a heart-warming picture of a positive parent-child relationship and enriching experience. The digital illustrations are simple and not entirely realistic, yet they do a beautiful job of depicting the sights and experiences of a day out in nature.

Robobaby by David Wiesner

Cathode is getting a new baby brother. But first, his parents Diode and Lugnut must assemble the baby and install the operating system. You see, Cathode and his family are robots. While the robot aspect is already a significant appeal factor, this book will especially resonate with young humans who have recently become older siblings. The adult robots’ excitement over the baby and their panic when things go wrong will feel very familiar to readers with new babies in their own families. But unlike in many books with a similar plot, our protagonist doesn’t mind the attention being lavished on the baby. She just wants the adults to let her participate and help out a little more. Most of the plot is told with the pictures; the text is limited to the word bubbles, plus the packaging, instruction manuals, and computer installation screen within the pictures. The bright, cartoonish illustrations will be very visually appealing to kids in the preschool age range. I noticed that this book did not have great reviews on Goodreads, but it appears that most people’s primary complaint was that the picture-based plot and comic-like format isn’t especially conducive to reading aloud to a group. That’s okay; not every picture book has to be a good group storytime book.

A Real Friend by Jennifer Wolfthal, illustrated by Judi Abbot

This title has not yet been released. Expected publication date is November 10.

Benny and Max are best friends, but lately, Max has really been bugging Benny. After an argument one day, Max and Benny decide that they aren’t friends anymore. Benny gathers odds and ends and builds a new best friend for himself. His name is Jax, and he always does whatever Benny wants. But after a while, Benny gets bored and misses the things he used to do with Max. He goes to Max’s house and introduces Max to Jax. It turns out that Max also built a new friend for himself named Lenny. The two real boys are best friends again, and they spend the rest of the day playing together with their robots. This is a feel-good story that would work well in a storytime with a robot theme or a generic friendship theme.

The Secret Life of Sam

The Secret Life of Sam by Kim Ventrella, 2020

Recommended for grades 4-8; magical realism, ghost story

Not yet published; this review refers to an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley

After the sudden death of his adoptive father, Sam moves away from his home in the Louisiana bayou to live with Aunt Jo in Holler, Oklahoma. He’s understandably pretty bitter about the whole situation, especially because Aunt Jo is like a stranger now. She’s been out of touch with him and Pa for the last three years or so. Shortly after arriving in Holler, Sam follows a strange one-eyed cat to a tree that turns out to be a portal that allows him to go see Pa for brief periods of time. Sam is determined to find a way to bring Pa back to the real world. Meanwhile, he has become friends with a girl named Edie from school. Edie already knows Aunt Jo well because she helps out with regular meetings that take place in Aunt Jo’s home. Aunt Jo is recovering from a drug addiction, and it turns out that her recent absence in Sam’s life is because Pa didn’t want her around Sam until she got her life together. But now she’s doing much better, and Sam is gradually starting to like her. And he’s definitely liking Edie; there are hints of a future romance there. Still, after a few failed attempts to bring Pa back from the ghostly world on the other side of the portal, Sam decides that he’d rather stay there and give up his life in the real world than to give up being with Pa.

The overall theme of the book is coping with death, but there are also a lot of passages that emphasize just how much Sam didn’t know about Pa. When Sam goes through the portal to see Pa, he usually witnesses some event from Pa’s childhood before getting to actually visit with him, and these events are never the ones that Pa told him about. Sam comes to the realization that, as much as Pa loved telling stories, there were some things that were just too hard to talk about. For example, Pa never mentioned his beloved one-eyed cat. And Pa didn’t give many details about why he adopted him or who exactly his mother was or how she died. Most of those questions never do get definitively answered. (It is strongly implied that Pa would have married Sam’s mother and thus become Sam’s adoptive father anyway, but that Sam’s mother then died in childbirth.)

Despite the ghosts and the underlying creepy tone, this isn’t really a horror story. I consider it more of a magical realism story. I’ve noticed that many of the plot summaries and reviews compare it to Bridge of Terabithia, and I can definitely understand the comparison. To me, it was reminiscent of Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar. That connection is partly because both books have a recurring motif of insects showing up in a place where they aren’t often seen. In this book’s case, it’s dragonflies. Pa always said dragonflies were good luck, so they’re very meaningful to Sam even before he realizes that they’re associated with the portal.

Sam’s narrative voice is made unique and memorable by the use of two distinctive phrases. One is “grape soda”. Pa and Sam only liked orange-flavored soda, so they got in the habit of using the expression “grape soda” in place of swear words. In Sam’s internal monologue, “grape soda” seems to also stand in for milder complaints. It becomes an all-purpose adjective phrase for things that are frustrating, discouraging, disappointing, or just generally unpleasant. The other phrase is “blue jay” and it describes a person who is selfish and mean. Although there were a few passages where this felt a little gimmicky, it was mostly well-done and helps to make Sam a memorable and likable character despite having a bit of an attitude. He acknowledges that bad attitude, but again, it’s understandable under the circumstances.

At this point, The Secret Life of Sam is on the list to be a runner-up for my personal Best Books of 2020 list. Since there are still two and a half months left in the year and I’ve got quite a few promising books to read in that time, I’m guessing it won’t make the final list, but I’d still like to put in a good word for it now. It has an appealing, atmospheric setting with believable and mostly likable characters and some meaningful if slightly trite messages. I thought it did a good job of addressing the issue of drug addiction in a sensitive and tasteful way, and its depiction of grief was likewise gentle and empathetic.

The Language of Ghosts

The Language of Ghosts by Heather Fawcett, 2020

Recommended for grades 4-8; fantasy

Not yet published; this review refers to an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley

It’s been two years since Noa Marchena’s mother, the queen of Florean, died. The day of the funeral, a councilman named Xavier sent assassins after Noa and her siblings. The three Marchena children escaped, but Xavier took over the throne. Since then, the royal orphans have been living on the island of Astrae, which Noa’s older brother Julian enchanted to make it travel like a boat. Julian, now eighteen, is the rightful king and an amazingly powerful dark mage who speaks all nine of the known magical languages. Noa’s younger sister Mite is also a dark mage, but thirteen-year-old Noa isn’t a mage at all. She’s just Julian’s kid sister and the unofficial brains behind his mission to retake the throne of Florean. Noa has her own personal mission, too. Although dark mages aren’t necessarily evil, Julian’s power seems to be going to his head, and he has lately been acting increasingly cruel towards everyone other than his beloved younger sisters. Noa knows that Julian hasn’t truly gone bad, but she’s concerned that he’s heading in that direction. It’s up to her to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Lately, King Xavier has been executing the dark magicians throughout Florean, and possibly other mages, too. And there’s reason to believe that he’s hot on the trail of the Marchenas, despite the fact that the island of Astrae has magical properties making it difficult to locate or follow. An incident involving poisoned mangoes proves to Noa that she and her siblings are in immediate danger. Rumors say that King Xavier is hunting for the legendary Lost Words, which are additional magical languages that have been hidden away. If he finds them, he can use them as weapons against Julian, so it’s imperative that Julian’s mages find them first. Julian and his followers manage to find the first one relatively quickly. To everyone’s disappointment, even Julian can’t understand this mysterious, long-lost magical language. But it turns out that Noa can read it. After a few misadventures and preliminary magic lessons, Noa and Julian discover that this unfamiliar magical language gives Noa the ability to see ghosts and travel through shadows to get to Death, which functions as a sort of parallel dimension.

Against Julian’s wishes, Noa uses her new magical powers for several side missions including rescuing the resident sea serpent’s baby after it’s taken hostage and searching for the other Lost Words. Towards the end of the book, Noa sees the ghost of her mother, who knows where the next lost magical language can be found and wants to lead Noa there. But Julian warns Noa that it can’t possibly be their mother. She can’t be a ghost because she didn’t die unhappy, and besides, she would never direct her daughter to undertake such a dangerous mission. Noa is infuriated with Julian and insists that he’s wrong. He doesn’t even understand her newfound magical powers or the language of ghosts, so how can he doubt what Noa has learned? But it turns out that Julian was right all along and Noa is being used as a pawn to track down the magical language of fear for Xavier to use against Julian.

I have a few complaints about this book, so let me just preface this by saying that it was relatively interesting once I’d gotten a few chapters into it and that the quality of writing was at least somewhat better than average. There were some passages that sounded slightly pretentious due to an excessive use of long or obscure words, but the story also included a fair amount of well-written imagery, subtle humor, and entertaining animal personalities. There was quite a bit of comic relief in the form of invisible cats and prideful otters with a weakness for flattery. I also thought that the book made some interesting points about the nature of good and evil and the question of how they apply to politics. I think that this book is worth recommending, but probably only to readers who already know that they like fantasy and who prefer unique settings over formulaic fantasy worlds.

I’m actually not sure whether this story is intended to be a series opener or a stand-alone fantasy novel, but either way, its content might have been better spread out into two or even three books. The book simply isn’t long enough for all of the necessary world-building, character development, and action. The result is some awkward transitions between expository passages and dialogue, especially early in the book. While it’s obviously important for this kind of fantasy story to provide some background information about the nature of magic, as well as relevant public opinion and the political situation, all of these explanations can get boring if they aren’t skillfully blended with the plot itself. The Language of Ghosts didn’t do too badly at that, but it didn’t do quite well enough to keep me interested and engaged until I’d reached the point where the exposition was more or less done.

Despite those awkwardly long expository passages in the first few chapters, I felt that later passages in the book could have used a bit more description. For example, Noa’s trips through the unknown magical world of Death felt pretty rushed and vague considering just how different it was to everything Noa had ever seen before. These types of hurried passages got progressively more common throughout the book, and the final climactic battle scene in particular felt very rushed compared to the slow-paced exposition from the beginning of the book. I ended up feeling that the plot was moving too quickly to follow easily. And even as an adult reader, I found it a little difficult to keep all of the minor characters straight.

While this was not a bad book by any means, it doesn’t stand out to me as an exceptional one, either. I’ve ended up giving it a four-star rating on Goodreads although, until being almost finished reading it,  I had been planning on going with three stars.