New Books: House Held Up by Trees

I do try, in children's books as in life, not to judge books by their covers. But it is a fact that with picture books, you often can pick out the ones that at least could be great before you ever crack the spine—since the illustrations are so vital, and you can usually get a sense of exceptional art from the cover.

Still, the cliché holds: Just looking great from the outside doesn't mean what's inside is going to live up to that promise. Sometimes the writing or even the overall concept is dull or lackluster, and even the most brilliant illustrations can't overcome that. And then there are what I've come to think of as "picture books for parents"—children's books that we find irresistible but that don't speak to our children in the slightest. (I know there are a few of these gathering dust as de facto bookends on our shelves.)

The worst of these kinds of books is that once you've encountered a couple, they make you doubt your own judgment: If it's this appealing to me, you think, does that mean it's going to bore my three-year-old silly? It was with such worries that I started reading a book I had gotten very excited about—House Held Up by Trees, by Ted Kooser and illustrated by Jon Klassen—to my younger son.

On the one hand, Kooser is a Pulitzer Prize–winning former U.S. poet laureate, and Klassen is responsible for one of the very, very best picture books of the last few years, the delightful best seller I Want My Hat Back. And this book certainly passed the cover test with flying colors, thanks to Klassen's evocative, leafy rendition of the titular structure on it. On the other, well, Kooser is a Pulitzer Prize–winning former U.S. poet laureate, and this is a children's picture book, and those sorts of factors do sometimes combine to create bookends.

Kooser's text was a little alarming at first, for being set in passages that are unusually long for a picture book of this type. But the simple, somewhat wistful tale of a house that, over many years, goes from being a beloved family home to an abandoned, delapidated one before being "rescued" by a ring of wild trees that sprout up around it—well, it mesmerized Griffin from the start. Kooser's placid style, matched wonderfully by Klassen's gorgeous illustrations, put Griff in a similarly peaceful place, a reflective one he reaches when we read bittersweet stories like The Giving Tree and The Birthday Tree—books House Held Up by Trees is quite reminiscent of. (Say, what is it about trees, anyway?)

So for the moment, I can trust my cover judgment again. House Held Up by Trees looks, at first glance, like a special book, maybe an instant classic. And, in fact, I think that's just what it is.

[Cover image courtesy of Candlewick Press]

2011 Wrap: Books, Part I (Picture & Board Books)

I'm generally of the opinion that blogging, like love for Harvard undergrads, means never having to say you're sorry, but I feel I really ought to apologize for the even-lighter-than-usual posting over the November and December holidays. The regular winter-holiday excuses apply, but are as always no real excuse, since it's not as if I didn't know they were coming.

Anyway, it's time for my second annual belated best-of-last-year posts. This time, so as not to get bogged down with stuff I've already written about for a month, I'll alternate them with brand, spanking new-material posts. (And now that I've made that promise, I will endeavor to keep it.)

As I look over my favorite picture books and board books of last year, I see that they fall, sensibly enough, into two categories: the clever and the gorgeous. (OK, there's some overlap.)

THE CLEVER
This category is led by one of my finalists for best children's book of the year overall (admittedly, I haven't gone beyond finalists yet), Jon Klassen's marvelous, ever-so-slightly shocking I Want My Hat Back, about a bear who really, really wants his lost hat back. Though come to think of it, I was no less enthusiastic about the brilliant concept and execution of Hervé Tullet's remarkable meta-interactive print book, Press Here, while Ido Vaginsky's Spin displayed actual interactivity of the clever paper-engineering kind.

Rounding out the category were three sweet-clever titles. Both I and my three-year-old vacillate daily on which of them we love most, so I'll list them in alphabetical order to avoid false momentary favoritism. (And truly, we love them all equally.) Edwin Speaks Up, by April Stevens and the beloved-of-this blog Sophie Blackall, struck a chord with all toddlers who know they're the only sensible people in the family. In her Hopper and Wilson, Maria Van Lieshout channeled the warmth and poignance of A. A. Milne. And Diane Kredensor's Ollie & Moon combined illustrations with Sandra Kress's photography in a charming, evocative, and, yes, clever way.

THE GORGEOUS
This list is shorter, encompassing just two titles: Laura Carlin's stunning illustrative interpretation of the Ted Hughes classic The Iron Giant, and Sylvia Long's breathtaking nature illustrations accompanying Diana Hutts Aston's text in A Butterfly Is Patient. What it lacks in length, though, it makes up for in beauty. (And heck, the Hughes story is rather clever as well. So much for categorization?)

In my next 2011 wrap-up post (i.e., my post after next), I'll look at the year's top graphic-novels for kids, including a fantastic compilation I forgot to write about first time around.

[Cover image courtesy of Random House]

New Books: I Want My Hat Back

Every now and then, you run into a book that establishes its author—someone whose work you weren't familiar with—as a force to be reckoned with. It happens with books for adults, and it certainly happens with kid lit; we've all heard the stories of Maurice Sendak's meteoric entry into the pantheon with Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, while Brian Selznick's about-to-be-a-Scorsese-film The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a more recent example.

Well, allow me to nominate Jon Klassen as another entry in the ledger. His first picture book, I Want My Hat Back, has such a strong, whimsical yet black-humor-laden voice to go with its striking, lovely illustrations that it immediately places Klassen among the leading lights of his field.

It's all the more remarkable for its plot's simplicity: An exceedingly deadpan bear has lost his hat, and goes from animal to animal asking if any of them has seen it. They are, in various ways, of little help—one has seen a hat but not the bear's hat; another has seen no hats at all—but one rabbit's manic response that he's seen nothing, nothing at all, strikes our protagonist in retrospect as suspicious. His reaction to this realization leads to the book's delightful, unexpectedly dark punch line, which will fill the wicked minds of kids and parents alike with glee. (Lemony Snicket is a fan, which may be all you need to know.) Klassen has created an instant classic, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.

[Photo: Whitney Webster.]