New Music: Grandkid Rock

It was a little alarming to realize that anyone from the current wave of kids' musicians had yet released enough music to compile a greatest-hits album. (Yet another sign I'm getting old, I guess.) But sure enough, Daddy a Go Go (a.k.a. John Boydston), one of the pioneers of tunes for children that sound good to their parents, too, has put out seven CDs in the last 10 years.

And so for his latest, Grandkid Rock, Boydston decided to take a look back, remixing, remastering, and reissuing 16 favorites from his previous output. Like most "best of" compilations, the result is an ideal way for the uninitiated to get a taste of what the artist is all about. In the case of Daddy a Go Go, that's good old classic rock-'n-roll with a decidedly southern bent, reminiscent of everyone from George Thorogood and Neil Young to early R.E.M and (I'm about to date myself once more) the Georgia Satellites, with tinges of '90s alternative bands like Cracker and Belly thrown in for good measure.

What put Boydston on the map originally—and has kept him there ever since—is that his guitar rock really, well, rocks; he was among the first to recognize that kids don't need this music to be watered down in the slightest. (I submit as evidence my own two-year-old, who immediately began grooving to the opening chords of the first track, "I Wanna Be an Action Figure.") It doesn't hurt that the musicianship and the skills throughout are (ahem) rock-solid, either.

The lyrics are the typical kid-topical, though Boydston keeps his tongue firmly in cheek throughout (e.g., song titles like "For Those About to Walk, We Salute You"). But whether he's keeping the kids happy by singing about finishing vegetables or embarking on a rockin' cover of "What a Wonderful World," parents will be thrilled to find that they're doing a little head-nodding to these songs, too.

[Image courtesy of Daddy a Go Go]

New Books: Lizard Music

Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music isn't a new book by any stretch of the imagination—in fact, it wasn't all that new when I read it back in grade school. But it is a lesser-known classic, and as such fits the mission of the New York Review Children's Collection, which recently came out with a typically snazzy new hardcover edition. (This seems a propos, given the recent return of offbeat reptiles to the kids'-entertainment zeitgeist.)

Children at the serious chapter-book level who are already looking to have their expectations shaken up a bit will be delighted by just about any of the dozens of books the man has written, right up to last year's Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl. (Parents who never encountered Pinkwater’s fertile, chaotic mind as kids themselves will be in for a treat, too.) But Lizard Music is kind of where it all began (at least for me).

It's told from the point of view of Victor, a 14-year-old boy left behind by his parents when they go on vacation under the supervision of his slightly older sister. (Can you tell yet that this book was written more than 30 years ago?) He is, of course, delighted when his sister ditches her responsibility and leaves him entirely alone. While he’s staying up late and watching as much TV as he can, Victor stumbles upon a late-night transmission from a group of, well, alien lizards. With the help of a local character known as the Chicken Man (who’s based on a real Chicagoan), he decides to try to find out what the lizards are up to.

Obviously, this is not your average kids' chapter-book plot synopsis (though thanks to Pinkwater's influence on a generation of writers, it's slightly less out there than it was when the book came out). Stated flatly, it may even sound a bit off-putting, but the tone of the writing—wry, sardonic, humorous, never taking itself too seriously—is all. (I think my friends who were the biggest Pinkwater fans as kids went on to become Frank Zappa aficionados in their later teen years—there's a common thread there.)This author's work is about reveling in being different, and while today we have a whole genre of entertainment on that subject, his approach still remains fresh, and all his own.

So if you see Captain Beefheart albums in your child's future, I can pretty much guarantee that this new edition of Lizard Music, complete with the author's own original woodcut illustrations, will become an immediate favorite. And even if you don’t, it’s well worth a look—Pinkwater has been a cornerstone of children’s lit for quite some time now, and this is one of his best.

[Image courtesy of New York Review Children’s Collection.]

New Movies: Rango

I've written before about how new Hollywood kids' movies are probably not the best use of my time here: There's no shortage of perfectly good reviewers out there already, and these big-budget films have big advertising budgets as well—it's not like anyone is unlikely to have heard about them. (In fact, most of us parents are likely to get dragged to even the worst-reviewed of these movies.)

But sometimes enthusiasm overwhelms logic. Such is the case for me with Rango, a wonderfully odd new animated film directed by Gore Verbinski, of Pirates of the Caribbean fame, and featuring the voice of that series' star, Johnny Depp, in the lead role. With the best of the non-Pixar division of animation, you tend to hear a lot about how beautiful the film is. ("Good-looking" is in this genre the equivalent of "having a good personality," I guess.) Rango is no exception: Revered cinematographer Roger Deakins has a consulting credit on the movie, and while I have only a very vague concept of what that means, exactly, for an animated film, the western vistas against which this story plays out are often breathtaking, and several lighting effects will have you wondering if the filmmakers have surreptitiously switched to live action.

But as remarkable as its visuals are, they’re not what makes Rango truly special—to my mind, the first Hollywood animated film that competes on the same playing field with Pixar. This is a strange movie, in the best sense: one that doesn't follow the by-now-worn paths most modern animated kids' films obediently trudge along. Among its delights is that, at least until it reins things in a bit for its denouement, you're never be quite sure where it's heading next.

Depp's title character is a pet chameleon, and the film opens in his imagination. (Indeed, there's always the possibility that we're spending the whole film there, a device I admit I'm always a sucker for.) He is happily play-directing a "film" starring himself and various inanimate objects in his tank, when an unforeseen accident leaves him alone on a desolate western highway. After being briefed on the concept of mystical missions by a Don Quixote–esque armadillo, he wanders through the desert to the town of Dirt, where various locals (each a different personified, and very realistic-looking, animal—somehow the mole looks both like a real mole and like Harry Dean Stanton, who provides its voice) are struggling to survive due to a dwindling water supply.

In the tradition of many a comic western, from My Little Chickadee to Three Amigos!, our hero is mistaken for a gunslinger and immediately appointed sheriff, then tasked with solving the water problem. He soon finds that it has something to do with the town's mayor, a smooth-talking turtle (voiced by Ned Beatty, who's been cornering the market on animated villains lately) who seems to be the only one in town with a regular water supply anymore.

Rango is written with Pixar-ian cleverness, its adult-aimed references aimed coming a mile a minute, yet delivered subtly and smoothly enough that kids won't be distracted by them. Many of the subtlest are just cinematic: Between them, Verbinski and composer Hans Zimmer give a nod to just about every famous film ever set in the West, from John Ford's oeuvre to Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns (their hero gets a cameo as “the Spirit of the West,” voiced by Timothy Olyphant) to Raising Arizona (whose yodeling theme gets an homage during a chase sequence).

But even as one notices happily that Beatty's turtle is channeling the menace of John Huston's character in Chinatown—this, too, is a story about stealing water, after all—the ultimate joy is in the tale itself, as it should be. And much of the appeal, it must be said, comes down to Depp himself, who somehow manages a solely vocal star turn here; you can almost hear how much he's enjoying the freedom of acting without his superfamous face. Working with a director he's clearly comfortable with, he lets it all hang out, and his Rango is as marvelously and adorably weird as the most beloved of the Muppets—insecure, self-analytical, garrulous, and so kind and well-meaning that you, and especially your kids, will love him instantly. (In a way, what Depp and the writers have done here is reboot Kermit the Frog—those are the kinds of warm feelings this character generates.)

The other voice talent maintains the high level set by Depp, though that's no surprise—the one thing you can count on in even the worst animated films nowadays is a crack voice cast. This one includes Isla Fisher as Rango's traditionally dubious love interest, Alfred Molina as the questing armadillo, and Bill Nighy as a truly scary rattlesnake gunman with a pencil mustache.

One other thing—more than in most cases, you'll want to see this one on the big screen; Rango's visuals are that remarkable. (Okay, I suppose those of you with wall-size flat screens can perhaps wait for the Blu-ray....)  

[Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures]

New Books: Can We Save the Tiger?

Most parents are familiar with today’s earnestly conscientious children’s nonfiction that tries to teach young readers about environmentalism and conservation. Most of these titles, I'm sorry to say, are not so great: lecturing, often self-righteous, and—the worst sin of all for a children's book—dull. Some even take a propagandist, indoctrinating tone, which I find especially alarming in kids’ books even when I agree with the author's argument. (Still, they're mostly harmless, since they bore children stiff and quickly get buried in the farthest reaches of the bookshelf.)

But reading on these subjects for the younger set doesn't have to be limited to the classic allegories of The Lorax; there are a happy few standouts in the genre as well, such as Raymond Bial’s A Handful of Dirt and Dan Yaccarino’s The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau. Joining their ranks is a new picture book from author Martin Jenkins and artist Vicky White, Can We Save the Tiger? Jenkins avoids the high-handed tone of many books on animal extinction, and instead calmly and reasonably puts forward the facts for kids to examine for themselves.

First, he defines the term extinction itself, with references to some of the more famous vanished creatures—the dodo, the auk, the marsupial wolf—each rendered, as is every animal here, in White's stunning, meticulously detailed pencil and oil illustrations. Then Jenkins introduces many of today’s endangered species, leading with the always appealing tiger. (He clearly knows his audience.) In each case, he briefly runs through the situation that has put the animal in such dire circumstances—the fierceness and beauty of the tiger, as well as its need for wide spaces in the face of ever-encroaching human expansion; the introduction of a previously unknown predator to the habitat of the partula snail; and so on.

Perhaps best of all, Jenkins is surprisingly nonjudgmental, writing with understanding about the reasons why people have made decisions that have been so devastating to these animals. Which leads him to his key point: Because the endangerment of so many of these creatures is almost intrinsic to their very state of existence in the modern world, it will take a concerted effort from humanity to save them. Then, to drive home that such efforts are not lost causes, he turns to a success story—the comeback of the American bison—to show it can be done.

Somehow Jenkins accomplishes all of this in a handful of short, informative sentences that take up far less space on most pages than White's marvelous art does, and that are manageable for fairly young readers without being too juvenile for middle schoolers. And in his brief conclusion, he lets the forceful simplicity of his argument speak for itself:

“…Sometimes it might all seem to be too much, especially when there are so many other important things to worry about. But if we stop trying, the chances are that pretty soon we’ll end up with a world where there are no tigers or elephants, or sawfishes or whooping cranes, or albatrosses or ground iguanas. And I think that would be a shame, don’t you?”

[Images courtesy of Candlewick Press]

Security Blanket: Flip Ultra

I am, I know, way behind the curve in my appreciation of Flip cameras, which I first remember hearing colleagues at Cookie rave about three or so years ago. I believed them, but it never seemed like the most important gap in our technology world to fill; after all, we had a perfectly functional video camera already.

Then last year, Grandpa, having learned of our six-year-old's fascination not only with movies in general but with how they're made (he's started watching the "making of" extras on every DVD intently), decided to buy Dash his own Flip Ultra for Christmas. We complemented the generous gift with the popular kids’ Movie Maker kit, and Dash was off and running.

To be honest, in yet another sign that I'm getting old, it felt kind of weird to be giving a six-year-old a serious video camera aimed at adults. I'll even admit to worrying that taking care of real technology would be too much to ask of our somewhat klutzy child. But either my initial imprecations that he be especially careful with the camera took root for once, or I was overestimating the danger in the first place. (Yes, I know which of those the smart money is on.)

Dash was enthralled by the chance to use technology by himself, of course, but that phase faded more quickly than I'd expected. It was replaced by the drive to get working on a film of his own—which, thanks to the excellent kit, a great primer, he knew meant preparing a script. (His project is a version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, with all the parts played by stuffed animals and monster puppets. Which at least means we have most of the dialogue written already—the kid is savvy, beginning with an adaptation, and one with the rights in public domain, to boot!)

Now, I don't want to exaggerate his dedication or focus here—Dash is still six, and we move forward with the project only in fits and starts; we shot our first scenes only last weekend. But he keeps asking to return to it weekend after weekend, which has kind of amazed me. What amazes me even more, when I stop to think about it, is that a six-year-old and his not particularly tech-savvy parents actually can shoot and edit their own Dickens adaptation in our own home. My own six-year-old self is very jealous.

The only problem, really, is that we always want to use the Flip for ourselves instead of our own video camera (which recently, and conveniently, died anyway). While this hasn’t yet led to any conflict, I'm thinking that we ought to get our own soon….


[Image courtesy of Cisco]

New(ish) Books: The Memory Bank

When The Invention of Hugo Cabret came out a few years ago, to immediate deserved acclaim (this summer, it becomes a Scorsese-directed feature film), I remember wondering if its quietly revolutionary storytelling style would catch on with other writers and illustrators. Brian Selznick's novel is mostly conveyed through the words and paragraphs that novels generally use, but there are occasional ten-or-so-page sections in which the narrative is advanced solely by uncaptioned illustrations. These sections don't reflect what's happening in the text; instead, they pick up the story where the words have left off, and then hand it back to the text when finished. This break from traditional narrative structure is part of what made Cabret so astonishing. (Of course, its epic brilliance didn't hurt, either—if you haven’t discovered the book yet, get it now!)

Recently, I came across the first book I've seen since that bears the clear influence of Cabret, from author Carolyn Coman and illustrator Rob Shepperson. Which is interesting, because otherwise, The Memory Bank is reminiscent of children's books of a prior generation, making it a perfect fusion of 20th- and 21st-century styles.

Like Roald Dahl's work, it uses matter-of-fact realism to tell a surreal, potentially harrowing tale: Young Hope is devastated when her blithely monstrous parents leave her toddler sister, Honey, by the side of the road one day, as punishment for unwanted frivolity. They tell Hope to forget her, but she cannot and will not, and instead falls into a deep depression during which she spends most of her time in bed, dreaming vividly about Honey. (These dreams, as well as what’s actually happened to Honey, are recounted in Shepperson’s Hugo Cabret–like illustrated passages.)

Before long, Hope is summoned to appear in person at the World Wide Memory Bank, where she is confronted the uptight Sterling Prion, who oversees collection and storage of every single memory on the planet, before being taken under the wing of Violette Mumm, who oversees its Dreams division. Prion wants to know why Hope is creating so few new memories and so many dreams; it seems there's a war on against a group of rebels who want to destroy memory, and someone with as few new memories as Hope falls naturally under suspicion. (The tone of this entire sequence is right out of Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, complete with lightly allegorical aspects to each new character Hope meets, from Prion to Violette Mumm, the head of the bank’s Dreams division.)

Hope's explanation of her unfortunate home life settles the matter quickly, but she begs not to be sent home to her neglectful parents, and Prion reluctantly lets her stay. Encouraged by Mumm, who sees Hope as a "champion dreamer," she starts to piece together what her dreams, as well as unfolding events in the rebellion, are telling her about Honey's whereabouts. (Honey's heartbreaking and revelatory first memory, which Hope eventually discovers, is the story’s climax.)

Like the authors whose style The Memory Bank harks back to, Coman and Shepperson manage the remarkable feat of endowing a seemingly grim setup with airiness. (Both the Dahl-ian setting in a not-quite-real world and the Juster-ian allegories help.) And Shepperson uses Selznick's illo-storytelling technique to particularly good effect; his passages reveal their plot details obliquely, much like the dreams that some of them represent do.

The result is one of those books that grade-school kids who are ready for books with some depth will love; parents reading along with them will find themselves unexpectedly affected. The Memory Bank is both a gem in its own right and, I hope, a sign that Selznick's push beyond the traditional boundaries of children’s storytelling is now a trend.

[Cover image courtesy of Scholastic]

New(ish) Music: Original Friend

Back when I included Lunch Money's latest album in my best-of-2010 list, I promised to give it a writeup of its own—only fair, since all the other albums included got one. And I always keep my promises...eventually.

Luckily for me, it’s easy to write about Original Friend several months after I first heard it—because it's became such a favorite of our two boys that it's joined the select few albums that rarely, if ever, leave the CD changer. (It's joined the likes of Recess Monkey, They Might Be Giants, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, and Frances England—the latter two of whom do guest spots Original Friend, actually. It’s CD-changer synergy!)

The word I'd use to describe Lunch Money's songs is infectious—they have a pleasantly jangly sound that will be comfortably familiar to parents in their 30s and 40s, who will inevitably find themselves toe-tapping a lot as the album plays. Songwriter and lead singer Molly Ledford has a knack for not only remembering but crystallizing moments of childhood. And she's always matter-of-factly good-humored without getting anywhere near that cloying tone most parents can't abide; her vocal style has a warmth, as well as pacing, that always put me in mind of the Pretenders. (Yes, I find Chrissie Hynde’s singing warm. Is that weird?)

On this, their third album, the band has expanded beyond its guitar-bass-drums core with some nifty string and horn arrangements on slower tracks like “Getaway Car” and the R.E.M.-ish ballad “Follow Me Home.” But it’s their trademark upbeat indie-pop songs—the title track and especially the grin-inducing “I Want to Push Buttons”—that form the backbone of the album. The guest artists slide in nicely, too, with England, a similar songwriter and vocalist, fitting in seamlessly on "You and Me and a Bottle of Bubbles," and 23 Skidoo typically sharp with his rhymes in the clever "Come Over to My Dollhouse."

It all adds up to one of the best albums I've heard not just in the past year, but in my five years of covering kids' music. So really, it’s about time it got its own post!

[Cover image courtesy of Lunch Money]

New Music: Songs from a Zulu Farm

I thought about trying to become the only U.S. reviewer not to mention Paul Simon in a piece on Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s new album, but it’s just impossible, isn’t it? (Look, I blew it already.) Nearly any American parent’s first contact with the South African a cappella musicians was the now-classic Graceland album, though the half-century-old group long ago made it clear they were a force to be reckoned with long before Simon brought them to an international audience and Grammy recognition.

They remain so, as evidenced by their latest release, Songs from a Zulu Farm. It’s not exactly a children’s album, at least in the sense of one aimed only at kids; I suppose you could call it more a “family album.” It’s essentially a look back by Ladysmith’s leader, the astonishingly energetic 70-year-old Joseph Shabalala, and some of its other older members at their childhoods, through “the songs from the earliest time in our lives,” as Shabalala puts it.

Most of the songs are traditional, and reference either the animal life of the Zulu countryside (for instance, “Ntulube,” which aims to chase river snakes away so the singers can swim) or parental exhortations (“Imithi Gobakahle,” which calls kids indoors as skies darken before a storm), but there is a new song here as well: Shabalala’s own lovely “Thalaza,” a wistful look back by its writer at the innocence of childhood.

Now, these songs are sung almost entirely in Zulu, so beyond some vocally created animal noises in a few of them, there’s not a lot that makes the album particularly more child-friendly much of the group’s previous work. The good news, of course, is that the beautiful isicathamiya vocal harmonies for which Ladysmith has become rightly famous have great kid appeal. And, perhaps anticipating this very issue, the group has included a bridge to their music for the uninitiated youthful listener: the last track, a warm, charming take on “Old MacDonald.”

By the way, Ladysmith Black Mambazo is currently in the midst of a U.S. tour to support the new album, and will be up and down the East Coast over the next month or so. For dates and venues, check out the group's website.

[Cover image: Courtesy of Ladysmith Black Mambazo]

New Books: Ribbit Rabbit

I find that picture books generally have you at hello or they don't. For the most part, you can tell at a glance when you have a standout on your hands, whether it's the transcendent art or the clever concept. Since authors have to get that appeal across to young kids' barely-there attention spans, it's usually right out front, impossible to miss.

But there are exceptions, the books whose brilliance parents may not fully realize until they see them in action with their children. Such a book is Ribbit Rabbit, which at first glance looks like nothing more than a modestly charming addition to the "sharing is good" subgenre. It's about a frog and a rabbit (naturally), two best friends who do everything together. Understandably, now and then they have some disagreements over sharing toys and such, but in the end they value the friendship too much not to make up and solve the problems. And that's it, really: a sweet little tale, accompanied by Mike Lowery's ebullient, childlike-in-a-good-way illustrations.

But it wasn't until I read the book with our two-year-old that I saw what author Candace Ryan is really up to. She punctuates each sentence of her simple story with a linguistic twist on the title: "Dip it, dab it" when the friends are playing together in a pool, "nip it, nab it" when they start their fight over a treasured toy robot, and so on. And while that may seem merely cute to an adult, turns out it's right in the wheelhouse of kids in the process of picking up language. The rhyming wordplay of Ribbit Rabbit delights Griffin as no other picture book of this kind has; he took to it immediately and intensely, and it continues to make him laugh many multiple reads later. In fact, it's among the first books he's ever sought out to read by himself—and what higher praise is there than that?

[Image courtesy of Walker Books]

Inspiration Information

It's a new month, so I can put up one more housekeeping post: Momfilter, a new parenting/lifestyle website from the founding editors of Cookie magazine, is live! As I mentioned a little while back, I'll be cross-posting there and here on kids' entertainment each and every Friday (starting this coming Friday!); I'll also be contributing to the site on subjects outside of kids' entertainment.

But since anyone reading this likely has read their fill of me already, the real draw is, well, everything else: Brilliant ideas and solutions and thoughts from some of the savviest, smartest parents I know on nearly every subject known to parenting. As Pilar and Yolanda put it, the idea is "just the right balance of inspiration and information"—which happens to be not only the perfect aspiration for a parenting website, but also a subtle (and I'm gonna say intentional) reference to a great Shuggie Otis tune. Check Momfilter out!

In Concert: Recess Monkey

It's a bit embarrassing how few live kids'-music shows my family has been to, given that I spend this much time writing about the subject. I always intend to bring the boys to see the acts we enjoy most, but something else always comes up on the weekend or day in question—a visiting relative, a nasty cold. And so a bunch of perfect opportunities have passed us by: Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Lunch Money, They Might Be Giants. Lame, I know.

Well, not this time. Recess Monkey's much acclaimed The Final Funktier has been in permanent heavy rotation at our house since last summer, so when we saw they were coming east as part of the Just Kidding series at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side of NYC, I knew my six-year-old and I had to be there. (Plus, the hall they were playing there is the site of the old Thalia movie theater, where I spent many an idle weekend afternoon watching old movies as a kid myself. And now it's called the Leonard Nimoy Thalia! It was all meant to be, clearly.)

The band, three working grade-school teachers who were able to tour last week only because they were off for winter break(!), had already played an early show the same day. But you'd never have known that from their energy when they took the stage, grabbing the audience with their catchy uptempo numbers that got the little ones up and dancing. Dash was psyched to hear live versions of tracks he knows from the recent album ("Jet Pack," "Moon Boots," "Booster Seat"). But he was soon singing along with lead singer/guitarist Drew Holloway on tunes he was hearing for the first time as well; thanks in part to the engaging introductions by bassist Jack Forman, it hardly mattered whether you knew the material before you came or not.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that Recess Monkey is better than just about anyone out there at writing these fun, clever, very danceable songs. Dash had a blast, though by about two thirds of the way through the hour-or-so-long show he'd danced and spun himself into near exhaustion. (He was also briefly surprised to discover that the band's "manager," a plush simian named Mayor Monkey, did not move and talk by himself, but was assisted in both tasks by drummer Darin Henry.)

As for me, I was marveling at how these guys, at the top of their game and their field, were making a full NYC house of about a hundred kids and parents feel intimate, like a show played for a group of friends. I suppose being full-time schoolteachers probably helps there; as I asked Dash on the way home, "How cool would it be to have these guys as your teacher?"

After the show ended, the band ran to the back of the house to wish their enthusiastic fan base farewell. We bought a copy of the band's album-before-last, Field Trip, from them, and when the guys offered to sign it for Dash, he was thrilled to near speechlessness. I also confirmed a rumor I'd heard that Recess Monkey has a new album due out in June—their seventh!—continuing to uphold their reputation as the most prolific of today's great kids' musicians. (It's about superheroes, they said.)

Dash was beaming all the way home, looking over his signed CD sleeve, and I vowed that I'd do better at getting us out to more shows in the coming months. With spring approaching, there's no shortage of opportunities in the NYC area; the Just Kidding series itself has an upcoming Justin Roberts show on March 26, for instance. And every major U.S. city seems to have at least one series like this in town, but an even better way to find shows to attend is just to check out your favorite musicians' own websites and see if they might be heading your way anytime soon.

There's even another chance for New Yorkers to see Recess Monkey soon—they'll be playing the 92nd Street YTribeca on May 1. (Is school out that week too, or are they flying cross-country for the weekend?) Any fans who haven't seen them live yet should jump at the chance; we very well may go for seconds ourselves!

[Photo: Myles McDonnell]

Being Counted

I should avoid more than one housekeeping post a month, but I wanted to quickly note that this blog has been selected as one of the SAY 100, for which experts in ten different genres each picked ten websites they feel "create engaging content, drive conversation, and shape opinion." Momover author Dana Wood curated the parenting list, and I'm truly honored that she considers my meanderings on kids' entertainment worthy of such remarkable company, both within and outside my category. (Thanks so much, Dana!)

And so this post is, first of all, a welcome to any readers who are discovering this site via the SAY 100; I pledge to exert every effort to live up to the recommendation! But it's also an exhortation to my existing readership to check out the SAY 100 list for themselves—it's well worth the click-through. Several of my existing favorite online writers (Mark Bittman, say) are there, but I've also already discovered many new favorites. And with every link I click, I'm a little more humbled to be on a list alongside them all!

New Books: Where's Walrus?

 
Yes, once again I'm a sucker for a wordless picture book. And as usual, it's not just the sheer beauty of the art I'm enamored of—though the retro-style illustrations by its author, graphic designer Stephen Savage, are plenty appealing—but also the whimsy and the charming execution of its concept.

The title nod to Waldo notwithstanding, Where's Walrus? isn't a true visual-puzzle book, which will probably be a relief to the young toddlers that are its audience. (Nor, as far as I can tell, is it an Alan Parsons Project reference.) It's really part of the crafty-animal-escapes genre to which classics like Good Night, Gorilla and even Curious George belong. And its plot is disarmingly simple: A walrus takes a powder from the zoo, and a mustachioed zookeeper then chases him around as he blends in with a series of absurd city scenes, including a lunch counter out of a Hopper painting, a line of can-can dancers, and a row of shop-window mannequins.

It's all pretty silly—Walrus is in ridiculously plain sight on every spread—but that's precisely what will delight young readers. Our two-year-old is pleased as punch to have it both ways, triumphant that he can quickly answer the title question with every turn of the page--there he is, right there!—yet also giggling more and more with each one of those turns. I dare say parents won't be able to resist a smile now and then themselves.

[Images courtesy of Scholastic]

Now Playing: Recess Monkey

Just found out that one of our family's fave kids'-music groups is playing live in our area, and I wanted to make sure to get a blast out about it to those of you who live in or around NYC. Seattle's Recess Monkey, whose album The Final Funktier was on my and a lot of other smart people's best-of-2010 lists, is coming to Symphony Space on 95th Street & Broadway, as part of the venue's Just Kidding series, for two shows on Saturday, February 26: one at 11 A.M., the other at 2 P.M.

(For those in the D.C. area, the band will be hitting Jammin Java in Vienna, Virginia, on Sunday, February 27, at 10:30 A.M. as well.)

I've gone on and on about Recess Monkey in this space a few separate times now, so suffice it to say they're three supertight musicians whose songs are catchy, often surprisingly complex, and always incredibly fun. I've heard they also put on a heck of a live show, and I intend to be at the second show with my older son to find out for myself. Look for me there!

And in the meantime, here's one of the band's videos, "Jet Pack," off The Final Funktier:



[Photo: Kevin Fry, courtesy of Recess Monkey.]

Security Blanket: Neil Gaiman Novels

As I've mentioned before (endlessly, I know), my son Dash, now six, is a big fan of all things spooky and scary—ghosts, witches, vampires. The Nightmare Before Christmas has been a favorite movie since age three. So on reputation and subject matter alone, it was a no-brainer that he would, sooner or later, enjoy the children’s novels of Neil Gaiman.

Now, Dash devoured several of Gaiman's picture books—the macabre The Dangerous Alphabet, the sweet Blueberry Girl (out in paperback in March!)—the moment they came out. Both are standouts for their cleverness, but also feature a light touch that I found surprising, having only read Gaiman's early graphic-novel work (mainly Sandman) to that point. But even in Dangerous Alphabet, the writer demonstrates that he doesn't believe in sheltering young readers.

The novel Coraline, which I first encountered in perhaps its most frightening version, the P. Craig Russell–illustrated graphic novel (at left), even scared me a little. (The animated film is a Dora episode by comparison, drained of a good deal of the book's creepiness; I found it a little disappointing.) I was blown away by this book—by the storytelling skill, sure, but also by the seamless way Gaiman folds psychology into the tale: Is all this magical, creepy stuff really happening, or is it in the mind of a lonely, creative girl who's furious at her parents for neglecting her and flirting with the idea of an “other” mother and father, then realizing you have to be careful what you wish for? As with most great writing of this kind, the answer is up to the reader—and either way, the ending is deeply satisfying.

But Dash had just turned three when I finished Coraline, and it isn't scary in a playful way—it's really scary! (Even the original chapter-book version, which is slightly less vivid for not being explicitly illustrated, can induce chills—plus, at the time it was a bit ahead of Dash’s reading level anyway.) So while I was convinced of Gaiman's brilliance as a writer for kids, and I knew my son would eventually love his work, I felt I had to put this one off.

Not too long afterward, I got a copy of Gaiman's kid novella Odd and the Frost Giants, a Norse-mythology tale about an self-exiled boy and some anthropomorphic forest animals who need his help. (Gaiman’s work for children often seems to focus on kids forced, for one reason or another, to cope with difficult circumstances without parental help, at least of the traditional kind.) This was the perfect introduction: gentler and far less creepy than Coraline, it allows the author a chance to show off his lyrical side. It's a lovely book, the one that convinced my wife of Gaiman’s preeminence among active writers for children, as Coraline had done for me. And Dash took to its tone—offbeat and calmly proud of it—instantly.

I'm not sure if there was a teaser on our copy of Odd, or if Dash found out about it somewhere else, but he became obsessed with Gaiman's The Graveyard Book about this time, just based on the title. (The 19th-century graveyard one must walk through to get from our house to our town library might have had something to do with it, too.) I’d heard particularly great things about this one, including that it had won a Newbery, so I picked up a copy...and then discovered that it opens with the methodical murder of all the members of a family except their infant boy. (The better to set up the child-on-his-own trope, of course.)

I froze for a while. Dash hadn't encountered anything like this grim, realistic violence in his reading so far. Could he handle it? (Or was the question really, as so often, Could I handle it?) I mentally hemmed and hawed for a while, and Dash conveniently forgot about The Graveyard Book for a bit, allowing me some time to flip through the book some more on my own. I soon found that after the difficult setup, it settles into a gentler place; it wasn’t without frightening moments now and then, but it didn’t dwell in them, either.

Eventually Dash’s mind turned back to The Graveyard Book, and shortly after his sixth birthday I finally agreed to embark during his bedtime reading—fully aware that I might be launching a series of nightmares, and ready to stop at any time. And he was, no doubt, taken aback by the harshness of the book’s beginning. But I made sure we got past that part and through the true establishment of the premise—the infant is named Nobody and raised properly by the ghosts of all those buried in the titular graveyard—before he went to sleep the first night. No bad dreams resulted. And predictably, Dash was hooked.

So was I. Everything Gaiman had shown himself capable of in the books we’d read before was here in spades. The dark story is handled again with that surprisingly light touch, and it’s a true page-turner. The writing has depth, too, touching on philosophy, poetry, and other “serious” matters without getting bogging down in any. And just when you’re immersed in the thriller, Gaiman gives you a surprise gift—a beautifully lyrical chapter about a once-in-a-generation night when ghosts and the living dance together. (The living, naturally, don’t remember it.) It’s a breath in the middle of the book, a short lift that advances the plot not a whit. And it’s just perfect.

As it turns out, The Graveyard Book is closely based on—in fact, is Gaiman’s homage to—Kipling’s The Jungle Book, with the ghosts in the city graveyard taking the place of the animals who raise Mowgli. As always, Gaiman is subtle about this (I know the Kipling pretty well, and I didn’t even see the connection at first), and he never lets his references to the classic overwhelm his own narrative. You could read his book with no knowledge of Kipling and be perfectly satisfied.

But those familiar with The Jungle Book will find that Gaiman weaves a special magic in reference to it: His book makes you appreciate Kipling’s all the more, shearing it of the weight of Disney associations and “Bare Necessities,” and reminding you that for Mowgli, as for Nobody, this is life-and-death stuff, in the end. This ain’t old-fashioned Disney. (Now, a Pixar take on The Graveyard Book…that I’d pay to see!)

So I’ve learned two things in the course of this long story. First: Neil Gaiman is indeed at the very top level of writers for kids today, and we will continue to seek out and devour everything he produces. (Actually, we can start with Coraline; it wasn’t until I was writing this post that I remembered that I forgot to ever return to it with Dash!)

And second: As seems to usually happen, it’s the books and movies I’m most concerned will freak Dash out that become his very favorites. (And often mine.)

[Cover images courtesy of HarperCollins.]

New Books: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation

Not for the first time, I’m stretching the definition of new here a bit. The first entry in this two-book series by M. T. Anderson came out in hardcover way back in 2006, and the only "new" aspect about either now is their debut in a lovely updated paperback format last month.

But, despite the National Book Award won by volume one, The Pox Party, both of these books were entirely new to me. And while that honor, stamped atop the covers of the new paperback editions, lifted my expectations of their quality, well...I had no idea. This is the best young-adult fiction I've read since I began covering children's books, and the first I'd recommend to adult friends as well since Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Anderson's tale truly is astonishing.

It's about (and largely narrated by) the title character, the Boston-born son of an enslaved African woman in mid-eighteenth-century Boston. He is thus a slave himself, of course, but he doesn't know it for many years, as his "owner" is a the leader of a philosophical society that has decided, among its many other Enlightenment-inspired projects, to see what happens when you raise an African boy in European fashion. So Octavian and his mother (who develops a kind of salon of her own of infatuated society intellectuals and artists) wear fine clothes and eat well alongside their "masters," and perform no labor beyond that of Octavian's education, which matches the best available to white children—Latin, Greek, "modern" science, etc.

Eventually, however, Octavian discovers the truth—that he's not merely a slave, but one who's been the subject of a lifelong scientific experiment. Worse yet, circumstances eventually require the society to seek a new benefactor for its funding; the source of its continued operation is a group of southern plantation owners. They require that Octavian's "equality" experiment be rigged so that he will fail it, thus justifying their continued use of slavery to amount their riches, all of which has a predictably dire effect on the lives of both Octavian and his mother.

Meanwhile, amid all this, the hostilities between the American colonies and the English government are growing until the Revolutionary War finally breaks out. The bitter irony of the slave-owning colonists' fight for liberty is not lost on Octavian, as the New England patriots start to fear that English promises of liberation will cause their slaves to rise up against them. (A real-life regiment of ex-slaves that was created by Lord Dunmore, the colonial governor of Virginia, in response to Patrick Henry's uprising in that state, plays a central role in the second book, The Kingdom on the Waves.)

The real history, and Anderson's remarkable treatment of it—the American Revolution in these pages is neither as pure of motive nor as sure of success as it's generally portrayed, especially in books for children—would be enough on its own to make these books engrossing. But as vividly described as it is, it's really just the backdrop for the story, and the voice, of Octavian himself, as he discovers the devastating truth about his true place in his world, then questions that truth and finally refuses to let it define him. He's an unforgettably powerful character, rich and deep and real, the kind you start to see cinematically, hearing the voice of name actors (I settled on Larry Gilliard Jr. of The Wire) as you read Octavian’s words.

I should warn that these are among the most adult of young-adult books I’ve ever read. The text itself is dense, written as it is in true-to-era colonial language and sentence structure. And then there’s the subject matter: Not surprisingly given his situation, as well as the war he's living amidst, some extremely upsetting things happen to and around Octavian, and the reader is not spared their full force. That impact is part of what makes the work as strong as it is, in my opinion, but you’ll want to be sure your young adult is prepared. In other words, these are not the YA books with which most smart 10-year-olds will want to be stretching their boundaries.

But high-school kids who are strong readers looking for challenging adult-level material will be blown away by the Octavian Nothing books, I think. Heck, most parents will be blown away by them, as I certainly was.

[Images courtesy of Candlewick Press]

Looking Forward

As was probably becoming obvious, I'm abandoning the continuation of the 2010 year-end posts, feeling that what's there should suffice, and more to the point, it's February 2011 already, so time to turn to this year! My posting schedule has also fallen victim to the relentless snow and even more relentless viruses, but I am indeed gearing up for new and incredibly relevant posts, starting this week.

I'll also take this chance to announce that within the next few weeks, I'm also going to start writing for Momfilter, an about-to-launch parenting website created by two of my former colleagues from Cookie magazine. As part of my work there, I'll be cross-posting entries from this blog every Friday.

I'll put up a notice here once the site is live; I think any of my readers who don't already know of Momfilter from its Facebook persona (though I suspect I owe a good percentage of them to it!) will love it for its brilliant take on...well, just about every subject that's important to the life of a modern parent: viable travel destinations, dinner solutions, style inspiration (for parents and kids alike), birthday-party ideas...and, of course, children's entertainment!

2010 Wrap: DVDs

I'll get back to my final toys wrap-up post shortly, but I'm going to insert my video-of-the-year post first. It's not precisely the best movie or video we saw in 2010—that'd be Toy Story 3, predictably enough—but I figure few parents need me to tell them about movies they've probably seen already, and certainly have had ample chance to read reviews of. So other than to say we also liked How to Train Your Dragon quite a bit more than we expected to, I'll leave the big studio DVD releases alone.

Likewise, you know what TV shows your kids like best, and thus what TV-show collections you might want to own on DVD. (And these days, with DVRs and Netflix on-demand and 24-hour programming on Nick Jr. and the Disney Channel, who really needs DVDs of TV shows anyway?)

But there is one category of DVD that isn't as well advertised, or as much talked about, as Pixar movies and PBS Kids shows: the Scholastic Storybook Treasures DVDs. (For those unfamiliar, these are simply-animated versions of picture-book classics old and new, by everyone from Sendak to Willems.) I've sung the collection's praises before in this space—honestly, it's been our main video go-to for years now.

And our favorite of this year’s new releases in the series would have to be The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, from Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith's typically clever twist on the original tale. (If you don't know the wonderful book, it's narrated by "Alexander T. Wolf," who attempts to explain how his devastation of the first two pigs' homes and his attacks on the lives of all three were all just a big misunderstanding.) In the animated version—the art, as always in these videos, taken directly from the original illustrations—Paul Giamatti has a great time doing the voice of the seemingly earnest wolf. Our family enjoyed it an awful lot ourselves; it's one of those DVDs where you find yourself sneaking into the room to watch with your kids even when you were supposed to be, I don't know, making dinner or something. Giamatti's performance is irresistible.

Also as usual with these DVDs, the lead story is packaged with a bunch from the Scholastic Storybook back catalog with loosely similar themes. (Wallace's Lists, adapted from a book I didn't know and narrated nicely by Zach Braff, has also been popular with the boys.)

[Image courtesy of Scholastic Storybook Treasures]

2010 Wrap: Toys, Part 1

My experience of toys and games these days differs from that of the other categories of kids' entertainment. I manage to keep some semblance of track of the year's output of children's books and music and movies, but with toys I'm far less clued in. So this part of my 2010 wrap will be a bit broader than the others, with entries that definitely came out last year, entries that definitely didn't, and entries I'm not even sure about. (And I’m going to get finished with last year before the end of January, I swear!)

First off is an entry that decidedly did not come out last year, but that’s when we found it. Until my kids were old enough to be interested in them, I'd never quite gotten the appeal of customizable toys like Build-a-Bear and American Girl dolls. (But then, I am not a kid.) But this year, both my six-year-old and my two-year-old got robot fever, and then we stumbled over a place called RobotGalaxy. It's pretty much Build-a-Bear for machines: Kids create their own robots from various interchangeable parts, picking a head-and-torso core and various tool, shield, or weapon (yes, there are weapons, though they're expressed fairly broadly through shapes and lights) limbs. The staff helps children make their selections, gets them to give their creation a name, and then "activates" the robot in a little whistles-and-bells-laden chamber right out of Metropolis (but stripped of the sinister overtones, naturally).

The robots don't really do all that much—each arm or leg has a distinct function that's expressed via sounds and/or lights when you press its button, and each head speaks a few preprogrammed lines. There's also an online community you can connect the robot to via USB, with games and a little virtual world and such. But the price per robot (generally somewhere in the $50 to $75 range) is pretty steep for that. What I finally got about these customized-toy places, as I watched my son beam while he picked out his parts (including a female head-torso piece), is that a big part of what they're selling is the experience itself—the moments of free choice that don't present themselves too often to grade-school kids. The look on Dash's face as he went through the process was a mixture of pure delight and disbelief that this was even happening.

So while I can't really argue with anyone who says RobotGalaxy is overpriced based on the merits of the end product, I looked at the extra cost as thie price we paid for the show, as it were—a fee for Dash's glee, and our own warm feelings watching it. All those good vibes seemed to rub off on the robot herself, too—he plays with it far more than I would have expected for something with fairly limited features. (It would appear that the song-and-dance that accompanied its acquisition engaged his imagination pretty well.) Somewhat to my surprise (I can be pretty cheap), I haven't regretted the purchase, or the experience, at all.

2010 Wrap: Books, Part 5

 

  

The last of my trends relating to books I encountered last year builds on a discovery from my Cookie magazine years: Australian author Martine Murray's Henrietta: There's No One Better. (Say it with an Australian accent and it rhymes!) In a first-person-narrated stream of consciousness without any real plot, Murray crystalizes perfectly the energy, the randomly logical thought patterns, of a certain type of preschool girl we've all run across. Her accompanying illustrations, best described as "childlike with attitude," are equally spot-on. Often laugh-out-loud funny, with dazzling wordplay that always remains true to its protagonist's age and personality, the book remains among the best I've seen at capturing the essence of a child's character. (It shares something with Lauren Child's Charlie & Lola and Clarice Bean series in this regard.)

So I was thrilled to see two sequels from Murray arriving on these shores last year. And while the surprise factor—just at the author's amazing ability to pull this voice off so well—may be a thing of the past, both Henrietta the Great Go-Getter and Henrietta Gets a Letter are otherwise as delightful as the original, giving readers craving more of Henrietta exactly that.

Now, while I did notice that Henrietta shares certain of the more effusive, enthusiastic aspects of her personality with my Australian friends (there's one in particular I'm thinking of; she probably knows who she is on the off chance she's reading this), I had not at first thought of the qualities that set Murray's books apart as quintessentially Australian. Until, that is, a bit later last year, when I ran across Chris McKimmie's Two Peas in a Pod, on the surface a very different book from the Henrietta ones. For one thing, it has a plot—it's an entry in the classic "best friend moves away" genre. But it features an undeniably similar energy, and it likewise captures the mindset and point of view of a child marvelously through McKimmie's writing and vivid, expressive, often page-packing illustrations.

Combine this revelation with my previously expressed regard for Australian illustrators like Sophie Blackall and Freya Blackwood (whose lovely Half a World Away even covers the same subject as McKimmie's book; I guess friends' moving far away is a particularly common issue for Australian kids?), and I'm fully expecting a full-scale Australian invasion in kid lit any day now.

And that does it for my meandering path through my favorite new kids' books of 2010!

[Images: Courtesy of Independent Publishers Group]