confers classic gifts: time to look and time
to wonder. “Where is your home?” she
asks. “Where are you?” Ages 4–8. Agent:
Steven Malk, Writers House. (Feb.)
The Yes
Sarah Bee, illus. by Satoshi Kitamura.
Eerdmans, $16 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8028-5449-0
Part Phantom Tollbooth, part E. E.
Cummings, this allegory stars a Yes, “a
great big orange thing” who sets off to
find his fate. Veteran illustrator
Kitamura (The History of Money) paints
the Yes as a featureless, three-legged,
Matisselike creature lumbering across a
barren plain filled with adversaries—the
Nos. “They were so many and so very that
you could see nothing but Nos. They
made all the Here and all the Else a noness and a not-ness.” Newcomer Bee
spins her lines of prose-poetry with a sure
touch, creating a series of episodes in
which the Yes is swarmed by the Nos but
succeeds anyway: “No, too big,” they
whine. “No, too tall. No, too silly. No,
you’ll fall.” Ignoring them all, Yes climbs
a tree, fords a river, and, at last, scales a
mountain to escape the Nos forever.
Kitamura’s blobby shapes and pared-down compositions echo Bee’s childlike
lyricism as Yes crosses golden plains and
green mountainsides, backlit by limpid
skies. The story is about declaring independence and conquering doubt, and
Bee’s writing itself provides a rich sense
of invention and liberation. Ages 4–8.
(Feb.)
Second Banana
Keith Graves. Roaring Brook/Porter, $17.99
(32p) ISBN 978-1-59643-883-5
When is it all right to boss people
around, and who gets to do it? Graves’s
(The Monsterator) tale about scaling the
hierarchy offers sharp writing, polished
artwork, and some unexpected character
development.
The Amazing
Bubbles is a
shrewd monkey
who stars in his
own circus act.
Oop, an oversize
gorilla with an
underslung jaw,
is Bubbles’s
faithful helper.
Patronizingly, Bubbles explains why
Oop can’t be the star: “Obviously, I am
the Top Banana. The Big Banana.
Numero Uno Banana. You are Second
Banana.” Then Bubbles gets a “boo-boo,”
and Oop volunteers to step in, crashing
Bubbles’s clown car, smashing the diving
pool, hammering the keys off of Bubbles’s
toy piano, and—unexpectedly—
delighting the audience. Clouds of
smoke, colossal explosions, and comic-book exclamations could overwhelm the
pages, but a milky pastel palette keeps
them restrained. Quieter scenes, meanwhile, explore the relationship between
Oop and her mouse sidekick. In the end,
Bubbles warmly acknowledges Oop’s
achievement with a promotion, while
Oop starts to assume Bubbles’s overweening personality. It’s a neat ending,
though a slightly chilly one. Ages 7–10.
Agent: Liza Pulitzer Voges, Eden Street
Literary. (Feb.)
Les Misérables
Marcia Williams. Candlewick, $17.99 (64p)
ISBN 978-0-7636-7476-2
Williams’s sweet-tempered pen-and-ink drawings take some of the sting out
of the misery of Hugo’s original—but not
much. Jean Valjean’s seesaw journey
between sin and redemption personifies
the misery of Second Empire France. At
times, Williams’s familiar comics
sequences seem disconcertingly light in
contrast to the harsh setting, with toysize cats and mice pursuing each other
around the margins as the human characters suffer within. Yet the wealth of her
imagination brings the tale to life for
readers who may already have encountered the story in the form of the musical
or its soundtrack. She keeps all the characters straight, summarizes the twists
and turns of the story clearly, and uses
oblong panels like stage sets with lucid
narration beneath, while dialogue
appears in speech balloons. The famed
sequence in the sewers is rendered in
typical style as mice journey through
the sludge with Valjean and a cat sits
watching on a bridge as Valjean’s nemesis Javert ends his life in the Seine below.
It’s an unimpeachable resource, if not
always an easy one to enjoy. Ages 8–12.
(Feb.)
Fiction
Jack & Louisa: Act 1
Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Kate Wetherhead.
Grosset & Dunlap, $16.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-
448-47839-5
Jack Goodrich was a child actor in
Broadway musicals, but his voice changed
just after he landed his first lead, and he
lost the role. Jack’s parents subsequently
whisk the family to Cleveland for his
father’s new job; they move in down the
street from Louisa Benning, a musically
talented seventh-grader and fellow MTN
(Musical Theater Nerd), who can’t believe
her luck that the new boy on the block
was on Broadway. Jack and Lou get off to a
rough start, but their friendship blossoms
after they get roles in a community production of Into the Woods. First-time
authors Keenan-Bolger and Wetherhead
show that they know their way around a
musical (both are Broadway veterans).
Writing in the two characters’ alternating
viewpoints, they trace Jack’s gradual
acceptance of his new circumstances while
tackling boys-in-musicals stereotypes
(when a bullying classmate derides Jack’s
Broadway background as “so gay,” their
peers instantly shut the bully down).
While the story charts a predictable
course, this is nevertheless a sweet series
opener, packed with theatrical references
and minutia, sure to please any young
MTN. Ages 8–12. Agency: Gersh Agency.
(Feb.)
Book of the Dead
Michael Northrop. Scholastic Press, $12.99
(208p) ISBN 978-0-545-72338-1
Northrop (Surrounded by Sharks) lays
the groundwork for his five-book multi-platform TombQuest series, in which a
12-year-old boy and his know-it-all best
friend fight immortal Egyptian menaces
while readers participate via online
games. Alex Sennefer suffers from a mysterious debilitating disease, which his
Egyptologist mother cures by using a lost
spell from the Book of the Dead. While
the spell saves Alex’s life, it also brings
evil mummies to life and summons a
plague of scorpions, among other bizarre
events. Using new magical abilities, Alex
and his friend Ren attempt to fend off
malevolent Death Walkers and the secre-
