New Books: George Washington's Birthday & Looking at Lincoln

Most holiday-themed children's books, let's face it, aren't very good. Most are conceived and created mainly to be promoted at their respective times of the year, and accordingly aren't terribly inspired. And Presidents' Day would seem, if anything, an even worse holiday than usual for kids' books; the preponderance of those pegged to it that I've seen through the years have been dutifully dull marches through the cherry trees and log cabins.

But two new books—one for each president, each illustrated by an artist known (among other things) for New Yorker covers—are out to change that. George Washington's Birthday: A Mostly True Tale, by Margaret McNamara and illustrated by Barry Blitt, is a whimsical tale of George's own seventh birthday. The authors don't exactly shy away from the hagiographic details by any means—but, borrowing a page from Blitt's sublime 2006 solo outing The 39 Apartments of Ludwig Van Beethoven, drop in little "fact" and "myth" boxes here and there to set the record straight.

The book makes young George refreshingly human; as he becomes more and more frustrated that his entire family appears to have forgotten his birthday, he quite naturally, well, acts out a bit. Early on it's muted—muttering "I'll be the boss of you someday" under his breath to his older half-brother (who's also his teacher)—but of course it all culminates in big-time vented frustrations on that poor cherry tree.

McNamara's tone is delightful throughout, just breezy enough without losing its grounding in the parts of its narrative that are based in fact, and she makes our first president more approachable and sympathetic than he appears in just about any other children's book I can think of—even the ones in which he's a child. And Blitt's trademark warped-realistic watercolors complement her text wonderfully, adding an additional and quite funny level of expressiveness to our hero. This is one of those books that slowly turns up the corners of your mouth as you read.

Maira Kalman's Looking at Lincoln is similarly imaginative, and even similarly whimsical, but also (as befits its subject) more pensive. In it, a child narrator takes the reader through her own investigation of the guy on the five-dollar bill (as she initially thinks of him). She hits the big historical points, of course, but it's the Kalman-ian flights of fancy that really make this book special: the girl's picturing Lincoln loving apples and vanilla cake, for instance.

Actually, Kalman even lends the historical stuff this extra dimension—when it comes time to recount the president's tragic murder, she opens the scene by noting that after the horrors of war, Lincoln felt the need to laugh at something and thus went to see the fateful performance of the comedic play at Ford's Theatre. It's all presented in a somber, matter-of-fact voice that feels very true and right, both for the young narrator herself and for the children who'll be reading this book. Kalman is masterful at capturing the wonder of discovery that's at the heart of all the best history—and she somehow allows even an adult reader who knows a lot about Lincoln to partake in rediscovery.

[Cover images, from left: Courtesy of Random House; Courtesy of Penguin USA]

New Books: Wonder Struck

Brian Selznick's 2007 children's book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, followed the path of every author's fantasy: It got magnificent reviews full of words like groundbreaking; it won a Caldecott; it became that book every parent tells every other parent about; and—just to make sure Selznick would be pinching himself—now it's a major motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese. Not bad for his first time out there! Selznick deserved every bit of it, too; Hugo Cabret is marvelous. (If you and your kids haven't read it, I highly recommend it, as does a fellow critic somewhat closer to the intended audience.)

Still, being an inveterate worrier, I wondered how Selznick would follow up on his blaze of glory. The key innovation of Hugo Cabret—in what's otherwise a traditional chapter book, the author inserts ten-to-twenty-page sections in which the narrative is moved along purely through illustrations—seemed almost custom-made, in its cinematic nature, for that book's cinema-themed story. When I saw that Selznick's new book, Wonderstruck, would indeed use the same technique, I wondered if it would work as splendidly the second time around. Might it even start to feel gimmicky, more a narrative crutch than the revelation it had been originally?

About 40 pages into Wonderstruck, I stopped worrying. (And by the way, those 40 went fast—despite their daunting, tome-like size and heft, a side effect of those extended illo-only sections, Selznick's page-turners are surprisingly quick reads.) The author uses his two modes of narration to alternate between two deaf children in different time periods (the 1920s and 1970s) whose lives are mysteriously connected by a wolf diorama at New York's American Museum of Natural History, again expertly weaving real places and events (the 1977 NYC blackout, for example) into his story. And the almost cinematic nature of the illustrated sections retains loses none of its power here: The illustration in which the two stories come together, and we see the 1970s boy's face in an illustration for the first time, packs an incredible emotional punch that literally brought tears to my eyes.

Now, I will admit that by setting his story at this particular museum, and also using the amazing New York City panorama at the Queens Museum of Art as a key location for a vital moment of his story, Selznick had this Upper West Side–raised boy at hello. (There are also several knowing and most pleasing nods to the mother of all museum-based children's books, E. L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.) Nonetheless, I'm confident that even those less steeped in NYC nostalgia than I am will enjoy Wonderstruck as much as I did. Which is quite a lot.

And in future, I will refrain from doubting Selznick's storytelling technique—and just enjoy it.

[Cover image courtesy of Scholastic]