Security Blanket: Jumpy Jack & Googily

Many picture books are what I call “concept” books, in which the author spins a tale around a specific childhood issue—say, anger over a sense of powerlessness (Where the Wild Things Are, and many others), or the anxiety of the first day of school (The Teacher From the Black Lagoon…and many others). The very best ones use the concept as an imaginative jumping-off point, successfully treating their subjects without harping on them too much.

Well, allow me to nominate a newish classic in the well-established “monsters under the bed” category: Jumpy Jack & Googily, written by Meg Rosoff and illustrated by the marvelous Sophie Blackall. (I clearly have a thing for illustrators who come from Australia.) Jumpy Jack is a snail, and his name suits him—he’s a nervous type, constantly worried that fearsome things may be lurking behind and under such ominous things as doors, tables, and beds.

But Jack doesn’t freak out about his fears—he simply asks his best friend, an agreeable large, pointy-toothed fellow named Googily, to investigate these potentially dangerous places for him and reassure him his worries are unwarranted. When Googily inevitably responds that his friend is very silly to worry about these things, Jack sheepishly agrees, but says he’ll feel better if Googily checks them out anyway. And he’s right; it works every time ("Phew!"), despite the reader’s growing realization that the monster Jack describes as the object of his terror has a close resemblance to Googily himself. (This sounds like it might lead to a scary moment of realization for poor Jack, but the ending goes in a different direction, turning the tables by revealing what Googily is afraid of.)

Rosoff’s clever path through each iteration is truly endearing, mainly due to the polite respect the two friends have for each other; in just a few pages, she establishes a fully fleshed-out relationship reminiscent of classic children’s-book pairs like Arnold Lobel’s Frog and Toad. (Googily: “That is simply too far-fetched.” Jack: “No doubt.... Still, if you would only check, I’m sure I would sleep better.”) And Blackall’s beautiful, eccentric art matches the text’s kindly whimsical tone precisely—this is the kind of picture book where you’re surprised to find that the author and illustrator are not the same person.

Upon arrival in our home, Jumpy Jack & Googily immediately joined the short list of Dash’s very favorite picture books, and it’s also among those that Whitney and I love to read aloud to him—the voices of the characters are so strong, and the light humor makes it so much fun to read. I would place it among our favorite five or six books that have been published during our kids’ lifetimes. (Hmm…I feel a future list post coming on....) In fact, I’m earnestly hoping our two-year-old soon likes it just as much as Dash did, so we get to read it regularly for years to come!

[Photos: Whitney Webster]

New Music: Lemonade School

The new wave of kids’ music has produced a number of fairly established artists by now, and parents can rely on a new album by almost any of them to be superb. My family has gone through several of waves of discovery, starting with They Might Be Giants and Dan Zanes, through a middle period of folks like Recess Monkey and Elizabeth Mitchell, and on to more recent discoveries like Secret Agent 23 Skidoo and Frances England. But at this point, a good percentage of the children’s albums I see are from musicians whose names I already know.

But as I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t lost that thrill I get from listening to a solid album by someone whose name I’ve never heard before, which by now generally means debut albums. Still, somehow I missed David Tobocman’s first CD, I Count to Ten and Other Very Helpful Songs, in 2008, and his name was still new to me when Lemonade School, his new collection of mostly folk-tinged acoustic guitar and piano songs, came out.

You hear right away that Tobocman’s influences include the likes of James Taylor, Randy Newman, Jackson Browne, Marvin Gaye, and the Beatles (the opening track, a cover of their “Hello Goodbye,” instantly grabbed the full attention of my two-year-old in mid-tantrum, soothing him magically). And his songs are pleasantly reminiscent of these artists without veering into the derivative.

As for his subject matter, it’s sweetly offbeat, getting beyond the surface level of kid-think to matters like their love for alarmingly creative food combinations (“Ice Cream on a Hot Dog”) and the frustrations of not being old enough to do whatever they want (the subtly funny “Soul of a Rebel,” which sounds like a kid's version of a track from What’s Going On). Tobocman even does the first Mr. Rogers cover I’ve heard, putting his own spin on the oh-that’s-why-that-sounds-familiar “It’s You I Like.”

As you listen more closely, you realize that Tobocman’s lyrics are full of interesting twists and surprising, quietly clever internal rhymes; this guy has a craftsman’s knowledge of songwriting. (Indeed, he’s a professional film and television composer.) All in all, Lemonade School is one of those CDs with instant kid appeal that at first seems merely pleasant to parents, then grows more and more appealing every time you hear it. If, like me, you weren’t familiar with its creator’s kid-music oeuvre beforehand, it’s an impressive introduction.

[Image courtesy of David Tobocman]

New Music: Wake Up, Clarinet!

In my experience, the best jazz for children is just, well, jazz. You may not want to start with Cecil Taylor or Ornette Coleman (most adults don't start with them either), but there's nothing even potentially off-putting to kids about most of the genre's classic big names, from Louis Armstrong to at least the early work of John Coltrane. So I've always been skeptical about jazz albums specifically aimed at children; they seem to me to be serving a nonexistent and unnecessary market.

Saxophonist and clarinetist Oran Etkin's Wake Up, Clarinet! qualifies as a remarkable exception, however. The album is being released this coming Tuesday, September 14, in conjunction with the launch of Etkin's Timbalooloo brand of music classes for children, an expansion of ones he's been teaching to New York City kids. Timbalooloo aims to access and augment children's natural musicality, and while I can't really say whether this CD manages that on its own, I can say that you and your kids will get to listen to some seriously high-quality playing while finding out.

That's because Etkin is an award-winning artist outside the children's music arena (his 2009 album Kelenia, which combined modern jazz with traditional Malian and Jewish music, picked up an Independent Music Award), and because he's recruited a killer set of musicians to work with here, including drummer Jason Marsalis and vocalist Charenee Wade. The result is modern jazz that's not only accessible to kids, but designed specifically for them. In a way, it's a jarring contrast: the title track, for instance, is essentially classic instrument personification à la Peter and the Wolf, in which Etkin and the other musicians encourage kids to sing along to help wake up the sleepy clarinet. But the music, and especially the clarinet's solo when it is roused, feels unexpectedly sophisticated for such subject matter. (People probably once said the same of Prokofiev.)

I suspect that some of Etkin's patter introducing the various songs and concepts plays a little better in the directly interactive realm of the Timbalooloo classroom, but children still respond to it, and it's not overly distracting for adults. And the music is as rich, full, and pleasing as you'd expect from such an expert roster, particularly on the tracks that include Wade, whose voice just never stops smiling, or making you smile. 

[Image courtesy of Timbalooloo]

Security Blanket: Lane Smith

This post is basically an appreciation, since I suspect not too many parents these days are unaware of the Lane Smith oeuvre. Even I, trying desperately before we had kids to remain as ignorant as possible about them, had heard about The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, illustrator Smith's and writer Jon Scieszka's groundbreaking deconstruction of classic fairy tales. I also knew Smith's work from another of his collaborations, this one with George Saunders: the irresistibly wonderful The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, the incredible art for which (see the example here) managed to attracted my wife's attention and interest years before children were in the picture.

So as we embarked on parenthood, we already had more than an inkling that we'd have a family favorite here. But adult appreciation is one thing; bedtime reading quite another. With our first round of Dash's board books, we quickly learned that tedium was a serious threat, first tows, and eventually even to Dash.

Like many parents before us, we turned to the classics to solve this problem—Seuss, Sendak, Silverstein. (They didn't all start with s, I'm certain, but those were the first three names that came to mind. And Smith does too! Freaky.) Before long, we turned to Lane Smith, too, especially since Dash also took to his smart, offbeat humor right away. (Genes or environment? You decide.) Frip was a little wordy for him back then, so we started with Stinky Cheese Man, as well as a Smith solo effort we like even more, if that's possible: Pinocchio, the Boy: Incognito in Collodi. He grounds his version of the classic in his usual wisecracking, modern sensibility, in this case via a little girl who notices all the strange things this poor boy is doing (trying to talk to a cricket, going to dance on a marionette stage). Yet the story still retains the charm and even the beauty of the original.

The super-clever humor would be enough to make an illustrator great, but there's a lot more to Smith as well. He's an imaginative master, both in the structures he devises to tell stories (a storyboard-style spread in the Pinocchio book to get the reader up to speed at the start, for instance) and in his amazingly atmospheric, one-of-a-kind art itself. (The word collage always comes to mind, and then immediately seems insufficient.) There's no question in my mind that familiarity with Smith's books has broadened Dash's view of the ways one can approach storytelling. Heck, they've certainly broadened mine.

We've since made our way through several more of his books, with his typically irreverent take on the history of the American Revolution, John, Paul, George, & Ben, a particular favorite of Dash's. (The title refers to Hancock, Revere, Washington, and Franklin, and Smith's angle is that the very characteristics that made each man a bit annoying as a child—Revere's penchant for yelling, say—ended up serving American history quite well.) And to this day, I'm never more pleased, or more eager to get started, at bedtime reading than when Dash chooses a Lane Smith book. Which, happily, he does quite often.

[Photos: Whitney Webster]

New Books: Air Show!, Captain Sky Blue

Okay, it’s a stereotype: Boys love airplanes. I’m sure plenty of girls love them too, as evidenced by one of the books I’ll be talking about them here. But as it happens, both my boys do appear to love planes. In slightly different ways.

My younger son, two-year-old Griffin, has the more traditional-boy visceral reaction to them (and to anything with an engine). He loves the size, the noise, the physical power. And so he loves Air Show!, written by actor Treat Williams and illustrated by Robert Neubecker. (It joins the small but growing list of worthwhile picture books by celebrities—the author is a commercial pilot and flight instructor himself, and his enthusiasm for flying is evident on every page.) It's about a visit by a brother and sister with their pilot father to, yes, an air show, where they are thrilled to see dozens of classic planes, and the girl gets to take a ride with a (female) stunt pilot. It’s stuffed full of vivid images of World War II fighter planes and flashy red stunt planes, as well as helicopters, flying boats—you name it. And it gets across marvelously the excitement the kids—and the adults—feel at both seeing all these amazing machines and actually taking flight in some of them. The look in Griffin’s eyes as we read it to him is, to be honest, a little alarming.

There’s plenty of flight jargon in Air Show!, but it’s of the practical variety: It takes you through the various pilot-copilot checklists before takeoff and landing, for example. Veteran illustrator Richard Egielski (The Tub People) uses pilot terminology in his new Captain Sky Blue as a main feature—it conveys the action and even in some ways drives the plot. Egielski’s typically vivid, stylized art tells the story of the pilot of a young boy’s toy plane, whose aircraft is struck by lightning (“Mayday!”), leaving him to take a “nylon letdown” to safety far from his owner’s home. Determined to find his way back, he eventually makes his way to a familiar place—Santa’s workshop at the North Pole (“Now I’m spooled up!”)—and devises a clever plan to end up back with his boy. The book helpfully includes a glossary, so kids and parents can figure out what Captain Sky Blue is talking about. And since wordplay and language are always going to be the road to the heart of my five-year-old, Dash, Egielski has put one right in his wheelhouse.

So there you have it: Two great new airplane books for two entirely different temperaments. Of course, occasionally each boy will sneak over and grab the one that’s supposed to be the other’s favorite, so maybe I should just leave it at “two great new airplane books.”

[Photos: Whitney Webster]

New Books: Ivy Loves to Give

I’ve already written about a number of my favorite active picture-book artists, and one of these days I’m just going to have to come up with a definitive list. Prominent on it would be Australian illustrator Freya Blackwood, whose work has always just leapt out from the crowd for me.

I first encountered it in the wonderful Half a World Away, by Libby Gleeson, in which best friends separated—and, at first, crushed—by one’s across-the-globe move still find a magical way to communicate via imagination. It’s hard to imagine a better fit for the themes of this story than Blackwood’s watercolors: soft and lovely, they capture every aspect of childhood joy, sadness, and imagination. Her art was also the perfect complement to Roddy Doyle’s typically beautiful, haunting tale Her Mother's Face. Blackwood has the rare gift of being able to illustrate emotions of all kinds sweetly; even the sad moments bring a bittersweet smile to your face as you read. Both books quickly became favorites of our older son, and have long since entered his personal canon.

So I was eager to get my hands on the brand-new Ivy Loves to Give, the first book I’ve seen that Blackwood has both written and illustrated. It’s an endearing little slice of a toddler’s life: Little Ivy indeed likes to bestow things on members of her family, as well as the often unsuspecting animals who live with and around them, but she has a little trouble giving the right thing to each one. So a chicken gets Mom’s cup of tea, the (very perturbed) cat gets the baby’s pacifier, and the dog gets Grandma’s glasses. No problem—Ivy eventually sets everything right. And when her older sister lets her hang onto her tutu, which she’d originally presented to a goat, Ivy gives her "the best gift of all": a hug.

The simplicity is a big part of the charm, as is the quiet but ever-present humor. (On each page, as Ivy moves on to her next “gift,” you also see the real owner of her previous one in the background, looking puzzled.) But it’s the tone Blackwood maintains that’s most remarkable: again, you always have that smile on your face as you read. And the “awww” moment at the end, which would have been predictably over-the-top in many picture books, instead hits the mark perfectly—not too obvious, not too sappy. There’s nothing earthshaking about Ivy Loves to Give, but it’s among the most satisfying picture books you’ll read to a young child.

[Image courtesy of Arthur E. Levine Books/Scholastic]

Security Blanket: Music Over Manhattan

Some of my friends call them “loveys”—the especially beloved items that can calm young children when nothing else can. Traditionally, they’re stuffed animals of one kind or another—those endearingly well-worn ones whose dilapidation is almost unbearably cute to all parents. (We know what it signifies, after all.)

Dash, our five-year-old, had (and even still has) traditional loveys, of course, but back in the day, the go-to was a picture book. It was one of his first books, actually, a gift from my sister-in-law: Music Over Manhattan, by Mark Karlins, with illustrations by Jack E. Davis. This was the book he insisted we read him at bedtime when he’d had a particularly rough day, or perhaps a particularly great one he wanted to cap off well, even before he could use real words to do so.

It’s about a Brooklyn kid, Bernie, who feels he can’t do anything right, and certainly not as well as his irritatingly perfect cousin Herbert. But he’s taken under the wing of his Uncle Louis, a professional musician who plays Bernie’s favorite song, “Moonlight Over Manhattan,” so beautifully that the music lifts people into the air. Louis sees talent in Bernie, and over time teaches him to play the trumpet, and before a family wedding he’s playing for, he asks Bernie to fill in for a sick trumpeter—including the solo on the magical song. Bernie is nervous, but in the end, he doesn’t disappoint.

It’s a charming little book, and Davis’s exaggerated style of illustration fits the modern New York caricatures in the tale wonderfully. But the story itself can’t have been much of a touchstone for an 18-month-old who didn’t really have perfect cousins or peers to be frustrated by. It seems to be that magical idea of music making people actually lift off the ground and fly that captured Dash’s imagination early.

That concept has lasted, too—while he’s since moved on to other reading favorites, he still pulls out Music Over Manhattan from time to time for a look. The other day, I noticed him reading it to his little brother, who’s just a little older now than he was when he first fell in love with it. Two-time lovey, perhaps?

[Photos by Whitney Webster]

New Music: Underground Playground

Let’s face it: For just about any parent who likes hip-hop, the phrase “hip-hop for kids” is filled with dread. Almost all of the attempts at it can be summed up by the word joke—either intentional (I give Elmo’s occasional rapping on Sesame Street, which is meant to be funny, a pass) or horribly, horribly not. So I once tended to view the few children’s hip-hop CDs I encountered with skepticism.

Then Secret Agent 23 Skidoo came out with his first album, Easy, in 2008. As I’ve written before, and so many other reviewers wrote at the time, it was a revelation: “kid-hop,” as he calls it, was suddenly a viable genre after all. The key—really the key for almost all art forms for kids—was that 23 Skidoo doesn’t dumb things down for children. The subject matter was obviously different than it would be on an adult rap album, but the beats, the rhythms, and the rhymes were not, for the first time in my experience. (It didn’t hurt that 23 Skidoo has been a rapper and producer of grown-up hip-hop, with Asheville group G.F.E., for well over a decade—though it also must be said that others of similar description have made such forays with far less success.)

My wife and kids loved Easy as much as I did, and it got tons of play around the house. We found ourselves eagerly anticipating his follow-up, though my own anticipation was tempered by a little knowledge of sophomore slumps. Now that he was established, could 23 Skidoo maintain his high standards without simply repeating himself?

I shouldn’t have worried. Underground Playground, which comes out August 31 (tomorrow!), is still clearly the work of the reigning king of kid-hop, but it expands on his debut, too. He dabbles in crossover with other genres, from the sunny singsong reggae of “Road Trip” to the Pogues-esque final section of “Wildlife” (representing a cheetah, fittingly enough). Meanwhile, his lyrics again convey positive messages on subjects like friendship (“Secret Handshake”) and honesty (the Public Enemy–tinged “Speak the Truth”) without ever getting finger-waggy, or losing the loose sense of fun that’s the core of so much quality hip-hop. (The verbiage in “Mind Over Matter,” a song about being yourself—perhaps 23 Skidoo’s core message—is a particular highlight.)

Perhaps most important, the beats and riffs he lays down are top-notch—catchy and addictive, they have your head bouncing in no time. Even here the new album pushes envelopes, though. While the cement is still the old-school hip-hop sound this artist clearly loves (think KRS-One), you also hear the influence of more modern names, especially in the song arrangements: Eminem, Jay-Z. Frankly, the eclectic nature of 23 Skidoo’s work is reminiscent of a lot of people, but if I had to pick one, it'd have to be Michael Franti, with whom he shares both positivity of message and an ability to rap effectively over many different styles of music.

Like its predecessor, Underground Playground is an awful lot of fun to listen to, and if your kids are anything like mine, they'll be asking to hear certain tracks over and over. (It’s been getting serious car mileage lately for us!) And you won’t mind a bit. In fact, when you realize you’ve left it on in the car when the kids aren’t around, you might just leave it in there, and coast down the road with your head nodding.

As a taste, here's a video for another track from the album, “Chase the Rain”:



[Image courtesy of Secret Agent 23 Skidoo]

New Music: Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti

The all-star-musician benefit concept goes back years, of course, to George Harrison's Bangladesh concert, and a bit later the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" and "We Are the World" singles. But with the exception of a few giants like Pete Seeger (who's been doing benefit and charity work with his music his whole career, really), there haven't been enough big names in kids' music for such a thing to be possible in the genre.

But Dean Jones (no, not the one from the original Love Bug movies—the frontman of kids' band Dog on Fleas), with a little help from the recent explosion of talent in this genre, has changed all that. Back in January, Jones desperately wanted to do something to help the earthquake victims in Haiti; he came up with the idea of a kindie-rock album to raise money. He joined forces with KindieFest cofounder Bill Childs, and the pair proceeded to put together an incredibly impressive roster of artists for the project.

The result is Many Hands: Family Music for Haiti, a CD of 22 songs, one each from many of the top children's musicians working today. Seriously, if I were making a list of the genre's top echelon of talent, it would look a lot like this track list: Recess Monkey, They Might Be Giants, Frances England, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo, Jonathan Coulton, Dan Zanes, Gustafer Yellowgold, Elizabeth Mitchell...the list goes on and on. Even the venerable Seeger himself contributed a track!

The proceeds (all the greater because everyone involved in the album's production, replication, and distribution either donated or heavily discounted their services) will benefit the Haitian People's Support Project, an organization with a long history of important work in the country. Knowing this is certainly one benefit to parents and kids who purchase this CD.

But of course, you're also getting the best possible sampler of the cutting edge of today's kids' rock, pop, folk, and hip-hop. If your kids are already familiar with most of the artists, they'll be excited to get a new song from so many of them between new releases. (My five-year-old's favorites: "Fiddlehead Fern," by Recess Monkey, and "Quite Early Morning" from Seeger.) And if they're not, Many Hands offers the best single way I've seen to get a taste of so many of the genre's leading lights, all in one place, and find out which your kids (and you!) might want to hear more of.

So it's a great album, and a great opportunity, all serving a great cause. (I should also mention that there are still a few release shows upcoming in September in Brooklyn; Portland, Oregon; and Northampton, Mass., each featuring a number of the artists on the CD, so if you're in or near those places, check those out, too!)

[Cover image courtesy of Spare the Rock Records]

New Books: Chalk

I've mentioned once before how magical a wordless picture book by an accomplished illustrator can be, and thanks to the generosity of our friend Tanya, we've just encountered one that both my sons are currently crazy about—Chalk, by Bill Thomson. (Somehow we missed it when it first came out early in the year, so I'm especially grateful to her for bringing it to our attention!)

The story is straightfoward: Three kids discover that their sidewalk chalk drawings are coming to life—good when one girl draws a bunch of beautiful butterflies, less so when a boy (natch) draws a T. rex. But it's told via a series of drop-dead-gorgeous illustrations that look so photorealistic, it's hard to believe at first that they're illustrations. (There's a note at the back assuring readers that they are, in fact, drawn, and Thomson even details his fascinating process for achieving such realistic detail, complete with his remarkable sketches for Chalk, on the publisher's website.)

It isn't simply that the art is stunning, though; Thomson does a fantastic job of telling the story without a single word. The result is a quietly masterful page turner of a picture book that, if my kids are any indication at all, will have yours obsessed in short order.

[Cover image courtesy of Marshall Cavendish]

Old School: Drive-in Movies

I'm really cheating in calling this an Old School, since I'd never been to a drive-in movie theater in my life before last week, and until recently I had no idea there were even any functioning ones left. My eyes were opened by my friends Joyce and Michael (the proprietor of the wonderful movie blog Cinema du Meep), and after some abortive attempts to attend one of the handful of options within relatively easy driving distance of NYC this summer, we wondered if there might be any drive-ins near the spot where we were vacationing in Rhode Island.

As it turned out, there is one. (Well, it's on the other side of the state from where we were--but it's a really small state!) As seems to be the general practice at many of these places nowadays, you pay an entry fee to one screen there, at which two movies play each evening, usually a child- (and not necessarily adult-) friendly option first, and something R-rated second. With young kids, obviously, you generally just go for the first one, rather than attempting to get your toddler to shut his eyes and ears for two-plus hours of Inglourious Basterds.

In this case, there were two screens that were starting out with kid flicks, and our choice was between Despicable Me and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. Being big saps, we let our older son choose, and predictably enough, he picked the one that didn't at least have Steve Carell's voice going for it. He loves cats. And dogs. (We were going to get Kenneth the Page either way, though—he appears to have a corner on the drive-in kiddie movie this summer.)

Now, this is not a review of the Cats & Dogs movie, though I will admit it wasn't as bad as I expected. (So nice to see Nick Nolte and Bette Midler working together again, even if the last time they actually had to be in the same place at the same time. And I'm always a sucker for a Wallace Shawn voiceover.) The experience of watching a silly movie with your kids in your parked car, though: This I give two thumbs up. Many more veteran families around us came better prepared, actually, parking their SUVs backwards and essentially tailgating for the film. But for our first go, we found it delightful just being enclosed together for the experience. It blew our two-year-old away in particular—his eyes got implausibly wide when he saw that giant white wall turn into a giant video. The whole thing was the perfect summer shared family experience.

Plus, we got Sean Hayes's vocal impersonation of Hannibal Lecter. Truly something for everyone.

[Photo by Drm31, via Wikimedia Commons]

New Books: StoryWorld

I have always been envious of those natural storytelling parents, the kind who sit down next to their child's bed each night and invent rich tales full of memorable characters and exciting plot twists. On the rare occasions I've attempted this, I've found myself internally grasping at straws, with results that are both bizarrely random and overly fixed on getting to the next plot point. ("Once upon a time there was a...muskrat! And he lived in the forest next door to his best friend, a...sloth! And one day they awoke to find...the forest was on fire! So they rushed to...their other friend, an elephant, yeah...and he lived next to a lake, and he took the water in his trunk and put out the fire with it, and the forest was saved. The end.") At the abrupt endings of these tales, my sons tend to look more bemused than amused.

I had more or less given up, accepting that facile, spellbinding storytelling wasn't among my gifts, until I saw the new StoryWorld, by John and Caitlin Matthews. It's an originally British package of beautifully illustrated cards, very much in the style of tarot cards, each featuring a character ("The Mother", "The Youngest Daughter," "The Cat"), a location ("The Castle"), or a magical/potentially magical thing or place ("The Magic Mirror," "The Door to Faeryland," "The Star Blanket"). Each contains a few leading questions on the back ("Where is the cat going on this starry night?"), as well as a number of suitably ambiguous happenings in the background of the illustration on the front.

The point of all this, of course, is inspiration. As the small included instruction book explains, you just pick out a certain number of cards—your child's favorites, or random ones—and then weave them together into a narrative. You can use the provided questions as jumping-off points, or ignore them and come up with your own ideas; you can do the same with all the little things occurring on each card. (You soon discover that these all link together, with major items on one card turning up in supporting roles on others—besides being gorgeous, these illustrations are intricately conceived and crafted.)

The stories still don't tell themselves, of course. But I found these little crutches remarkably freeing the first time I tried: I wasn't grasping for the core characters and ideas of my story anymore, and so I could devote my (clearly limited) creative imagination to filling it out with descriptions and plotting. There's certainly a learning curve—I don't mean to imply I've been transformed into Elmore Leonard or something—but I can feel myself moving along it, rather than completely stuck in place as I was before.

More important than my own storytelling education, though, is that my five-year-old is mesmerized. He's enjoying my stories from the cards, sure, but he's also been eager from the start to use these tools to engage in his own tales. Right now he's in the middle of a stretch where he's adding a couple of cards' worth of plot to a continuing story we both contribute to each night. Nothing like this ever happened before StoryWorld.

I'm hoping we can both eventually reach a point where we don't need the cards anymore. (Dash is a lot closer than I am.) I'm optimistic, and if I'm right to be, StoryWorld will have taught us how to invent compelling tales at a moment's notice. While my son may have been on his way to that anyway (his mother is much better at it than I am, so he has those genes or environment, or both, working for him), I certainly wasn't, so I'll be forever grateful. 

[Photos: Whitney Webster.]

New Music: Rock-n-Roll Recess

Most of the makers of kids' music I've written about here have been fairly established artists, with a proven track record of excellent CDs: Justin Roberts, Recess Monkey, Secret Agent 23 Skidoo (more on him soon, by the way). This is not a bad thing by any means; it's great to have so many musicians and songwriters coming out with music for children that you know in advance will be of high quality.

But, as with any genre of music, it's always a special thrill to discover a great album from an artist who's new to you, one you can add to the personal canon. That's how I'd describe the debut release from the Bazillions, Rock-n-Roll Recess. The Minneapolis band's subject matter is standard kids'-universe stuff that children will glom onto easily—macaroni and cheese, friendship, messy rooms—but songwriters Adam and Kristin Marshall know how to create hooks that are irresistible to kids and parents alike. (I'm finding myself pleasantly addicted to the one from "Super Sonic Rocket Bike" these days.) The music is sunny, jangly, and remarkably catchy, and parents who were fans of bands like R.E.M. in their youth will feel very much at home when it's playing.

The Bazillions have also come up with something I haven't seen before on a kids' CD: They've included versions of two of their most appealing songs without the vocal tracks, so children—and, sure, parents too—can sing to the music by themselves, karaoke-style. (With these songs, they'll want to, believe me.) At first I cynically thought this was just a pad-the-CD gimmick, but now they have me wondering why more kids' bands don't do it.

So add the Bazillions to the list: I'll be looking forward eagerly to their next release, and the one after that, and....


[Cover image courtesy of the Bazillions.]

Parental Suicide?

Like many parents, Whitney and I have a great fear and loathing of noisy toys. There are the ones that play the same annoying tune in a horrible synth-y tone over and over again. There are also the talking toys, usually branded (Thomas the train, characters from Pixar movies), that repeat a catchphrase endlessly, and inevitably start going off on their own as their batteries die out, scaring the crap out of us by suddenly informing us how useful we are in a pitch-black room at 1 a.m. (Before we became parents, we were warned that this would happen by a hilarious Denis Leary routine, but we ended up purchasing the talking toys just the same. We just don't listen....)

But we'd noticed that our younger son, Griffin, who was about to turn two, seemed to love maracas and drums and all things rhythmic, and my wife suggested we get him a little drum pad from the great series of realistic (and surprisingly affordable, given that realism) musical instruments from First Act Discovery. And strangely, my first reaction was not "Are you crazy? We'll regret that from the moment he turns It on!" (To be fair, that may have been my second reaction.)

We did pause to think it over: Would we find ourselves holding our heads in pain daily, seriously considering making our son's prized birthday gift "disappear," tragically, overnight? (Or more long-term, would we rue the day we encouraged our son to embrace drumming?)

Well, maybe we will. But such considerations, in the end, don't have a prayer against the unbeatable counterargument: Think of his face when he sees it, and sees what it does. He's going to go crazy for this.

And since he did indeed, we're feeling pretty good about the whole thing right now, though we know it's early yet. Most of me is still hoping this doesn't lead to a real drum kit in the basement in a few years, but you know what? Part of me hopes it does. Weird.

[Photo courtesy of First Act Discovery.]

Gone Fishin'

I've been on vacation this past week-plus, and was extremely silly and thought I would post from here. Shaky Internet connections and a family not thrilled with the idea of nightly disappearances for that purpose have made this predictably (if you're not me, apparently) impossible.

But I've been gathering fuel for new posts and will hit the ground running come Monday.

New Books: Three Ladies Beside the Sea

I’ve previously mentioned the amazing New York Review Children’s Collection; most of its little-known classics I’ve previously encountered have been chapter books. But the company’s latest reissue is a 1969 picture book, in rhyming couplets. Oh, did I mention that the illustrations are by Edward Gorey?

Both my wife and I have long been big Gorey fans—in fact, I think one of my first birthday gifts to her was a copy of Amphigorey Also. And as I've mentioned before, our older son, Dash, is a big fan of all things spooky, so we gave him his first introduction to Gorey’s work (that same book) early, when he was four. Things were going fine—he loved the macabre tone and the style and humor of the artwork—until, halfway through “The Blue Aspic,” I suddenly remembered how it ends: With the haughty opera star stabbed to death by her longtime anonymous admirer/stalker. (The panel informs us of this with Gorey’s usual calm equanimity.)

So it was with particular excitement that I picked up Three Ladies Beside the Sea. There was no guarantee that a similar surprise didn’t await within, but the slim volume, written by Rhoda Levine, didn’t have that look. That impression was correct—this book is aimed at fairly young children (though its charm and beauty will appeal to older ones too), and there’s nothing more shocking in it than a woman who often spends hours up in a tree.

The story, as the title suggests, is of three elegant (this is Gorey, after all) women who live in neighboring houses by the ocean. Edith is happy and bubbly; Catherine is quiet but positive; Alice is pensive and distant. The three are friends, and even occasionally meet on the beach to play chamber music together. So Edith and Catherine are a bit worried about Alice’s habit of spending long hours in a tree, through all nature of weather, gazing at the sky as if searching for something.

When they ask her about it, she tells them that she once encountered a bird whose plumage was so lovely and whose song was so beautiful that she’s been floating ever since. Now she’s compelled to watch the skies for its return, as only hearing its song again can return her to the ground. After taking a moment to process this, the other two come up with some suggestions that might keep their friend out of the tree, with mixed results. (I won’t give away the ending, except to say it’s a happy one.)

It’s all charmingly told by Levine in short quatrains of well-crafted, unforced poetry that’s perfect for young readers. And then there are the illustrations, whose ornate gorgeousness will be no surprise to anyone familiar with Gorey’s work. Still, the dazzling quality of his art never gets old for me. (Nor, apparently, to my two-year-old, who has claimed Three Ladies Beside the Sea as part of his bedtime-reading canon—every night.)

In sum, it’s yet another gem to add to the set the New York Review Children’s Collection has already accumulated.

[Cover image courtesy of the New York Review Children’s Collection.]

New Toys: MoMA Modern Playhouse

Playhouses come in many styles and formats these days. There’s the colorful plastic Fisher-Price ones that haven’t changed all that much since my own childhood; there’s the many fabulously details options from Playmobil; there are even a few high-end ones made from recycled materials or lovely wood.

What I hadn’t seen till now is a design-oriented playhouse at a modest price point—but that’s precisely what the MoMA Modern Playhouse is. For $20, you get a smartly designed box that holds all an kid-aesthete needs to create his or her own modernist pad. The box itself, and a few smaller ones inside, serve as walls in various colors and simulated textures (brick, stone, a few different painted plaster options). Also inside are three reversible floors and floor coverings (rugs, wood flooring, and even grass or a small pool if your child is designing the patio); a set of punch-out cards of hip furniture (older kids can put it together themselves; younger ones will need a more dextrous parent’s assistance with the folding and inserting); and a panel of endlessly reusable plastic-decal home accessories (lamps, plants, clocks, etc.) that can be attached to the walls anywhere that seems pleasing. 

Considering how compact the outer box is—about half the size of a standard lunchbox—the variety inside is remarkable: The possible permutations are nearly endless. (For the slightly less minimalist child who wants his playhouse inhabited, there’s even an add-on Modern Play Family kit of press-out people with vinyl clothes; it is, in the age-old phrase, “sold separately.”)

Now, many design-y toys are great if you’re, say, Frank Gehry, but can be disappointing to less precocious children, who get frustrated at their failure to approach the gorgeousness on the front of the box. That’s not a problem here—it’s incredibly simple to put together something that looks pretty great. (Since my own design skills are only barely at the pre-K level, the proof is in the photos below. As I always say, if I can do it, a six-year-old can, too. I did need to adjust that lamp a bit, though, I now see....) It does, however, probably take a child with at least occasional tendencies toward stillness to really enjoy this product, and not to accidentally destroy it: While the whole thing is remarkably sturdy given the materials, we’re still talking about cardboard and thick glossy paper here.

Kids with an eye for design, a decent imagination, and some semblance of motor control will get a lot of enjoyment out of the MoMA Modern Playhouse. It’s pretty dreamy for parents, too—one of those toys that actually looks good when a kid forgets to put it away when she’s done. And when she remembers to tidy it up (or you just do it—let’s be realistic here), everything fits nicely back inside the small box—so the playhouse is also perfect for travel, though I’d probably avoid the beach given the materials it’s made from. So the playhouse hits the parent trifecta: Nice to look at, versatile, and reasonably priced. (Seems like a pretty good gift option as well!)

[Box image courtesy of Chronicle Books]

New Books: The Amazing World of Stuart

I can’t say I was all that focused on children’s books before our first child was born in 2004. So my knowledge of the field since my own childhood, but prior to that year, has been largely limited to what’s already made the canon—Mo Willems, and that Harry Potter guy, say. I often wonder what I (and thus my sons) have missed out of sheer ignorance.

Libraries are one solution to the problem, of course, and we’ve made many discoveries from those distant 1990s there. Another is recommendations and gifts from friends who have older kids or better research talents; favorites like Peter Sis’s Madlenka and the previously mentioned Who Needs Donuts? came via that route.

But publishers are doing their part to further my education as well, and a recent reissue just became the latest passion of my five-and-a-half-year-old. The Amazing World of Stuart is simply two short books in one volume: Stuart’s Cape and Stuart Goes to School. They came out in 2002 and 2005, respectively, and were written by Sara Pennypacker, an author I was in fact familiar with (via her sublime Pierre in Love). I was, however, completely unfamiliar with the Stuart books.

Each of these two short chapter books is, of course, about Stuart, a young grade-schooler who’s just moved to a new town and is about to start at a new school. He is a worrier, obsessing about all the things that could go wrong as a new kid in a new place. Luckily, he’s also imaginative, and he uses his powers of invention to both avoid and (kind of) face his troubles, real and imagined.

The trick of the books, beyond Pennypacker’s endearingly wry tone in general, is that there’s no change in the narrative when Stuart’s imagination takes over. When he designs a magic cape and is subsequently visited by three wild animals, who inform him that he’s been playing “wild animal” all wrong and then take a turn at playing Stuart themselves, it’s really happening, as far as this book is concerned. The noise in Stuart’s closet that his parents yell upstairs to complain about? It wasn’t Stuart—it was the bear. Honest.

Pennypacker weaves this kind of fantasy through the reality of Stuart’s first days in his new town (during which he also starts flying all of a sudden, and later finds that his pet cat has switched places with the local garbage man, all thanks to the magic cape) and first encounters at school (which include an adventure with portable holes that’s reminiscent of the late Heinz Edelmann’s work on the Yellow Submarine movie). In Stuart himself, she’s created a neurotic go-getter, a seeming oxymoron that’s actually a pretty realistic portrayal of a certain type of 10-year-old. It’s all delightful, and Dash was hooked immediately; this was one of those “let’s read it again” books from the start.

Not that this is the main criterion I use for kids’ books, but The Amazing World of Stuart is also stunningly inexpensive, even for a fairly thin paperback. I’m unused to paying less than $5 for just about anything that gives either of my children this much pleasure!

[Image courtesy of Scholastic]

Old School: The Cricket in Times Square

I always kept five or six of my favorite childhood chapter books on my shelves, all the way through adolescence and young adulthood and marriage. I was never entirely sure why, other than my general reluctance to get rid of, well, anything. (Yeah, I’m one of those.) 

So for all those years, there sat George Selden’s The Cricket in Times Square next to the Sartre play (yeah, I’m one of those, too). It was my very first favorite chapter book—to a kid growing up in a still-gritty Manhattan, Selden’s classic about an out-of-town cricket who becomes the toast of New York City and saves the family newsstand of the boy who befriends him had a comforting familiarity. Heck, two of the three main characters were New York City archetypes, seen on a daily basis in my Upper West Side existence. It’s also not a classic for nothing; the story itself, while undeniably dated in certain ways, is a true kid’s page-turner.

The book was originally published in 1960, and is set in what was, I now realize, a very different city than the one I was living in about twenty years later. But there were enough touchstones in it for me to recognize my city, too: The teeming insanity of the Times Square subway station hasn’t changed that much even now, even if the layout has, several times. More than that, though: Selden’s writing itself has a timeless quality, especially in his portrayal of his lead characters. If you’ve spent any time in New York, you’ve almost certainly met a Tucker Mouse or twelve, and you’ve probably encountered a few Harry Cats as well.

So the first moment I thought there was even a prayer of his having the slightest interest, I introduced my old, tattered paperback copy (the price on the cover: 95 cents!) to my older son’s bedtime reading. It was his first chapter book, and it was really way too early. I don’t think he was three yet, and while The Cricket in Times Square does feature many wonderfully vivid illustrations by the great Garth Williams, they are occasional, not ubiquitous—it’s a chapter book, not a picture book. But as ever, I couldn’t hold myself back; worst-case, I figured, we’d give it a shot, he’d be bored, and we’d stop.

We didn’t stop. Dash loved the book from day one, and became pretty obsessed with it for about a year. It inspired some of his first playacting, involving both scenes from the book—the fire in the newsstand was a favorite—and ones of his own invention, using Selden’s characters. (Dash was always Harry, while his mother and I traded, in repertory, the roles of Tucker and Chester Cricket.) At bedtime, we would read it over and over again, until my already old and fragile edition began to fall apart. Once, during a visit to my office in Times Square, Dash wanted to go down to the subway station to see Mario’s newsstand and Tucker’s drainpipe, and was nearly inconsolable when I informed him that the station has changed since that time (well, it has!) and so we probably wouldn’t be able to pinpoint their exact locations.

In summary, my first favorite chapter book became Dash’s first favorite chapter book. And yeah, I probably did force the issue a little, but it was still pretty heartwarming.

That isn’t the end of the story, though. The Cricket in Times Square turned into the gift that kept on giving in our household. First there were Selden’s own sequels, of course, which I’d read myself as a child. But then, just as Dash’s interest in the books was beginning to lose some of its heat, I discovered an audiobook version, read by actor Tony Shalhoub (of the TV show Monk and many films, including Big Night). It’s a fabulous rendition, among the best children’s audiobooks I’ve encountered; Shalhoub captures each character brilliantly with his voice work. Dash was hooked anew. (Plus, now we had a new fail-safe tool for long drives and plane rides.)

A bit later, I found (courtesy of my former colleague Christopher Healy) a Chuck Jones Collection DVD that includes a 1973 animated short of The Cricket in Times Square by the animator, as well as two odd but entertaining holiday-themed sequels that use Selden’s characters. The immortal Mel Blanc provides Tucker Mouse’s voice for all of them, which demonstrates just how spot-on Jones and his team are with their adaptation. (The DVD is advertised as featuring several stories from Kipling’s The Jungle Book, also well worth seeing.)

At five-and-a-half, Dash still loves every version of The Cricket in Times Square—books, audiobook, videos—and comes back to each of them often. (Though it does seem to be time for a new edition of the book, as pages are starting to fall out and go missing!) Which means, now that I think on it, that The Cricket in Times Square has been among his most treasured books for more than half his life. And, alarmingly, more than three quarters of mine.

[Photos: Whitney Webster]

New Games: Loopz

I remember my own parents looking at the early-computer-technology games I had when I was a kid and commenting, a little uncomfortably, about how much games had changed since their youth. Of course, they were talking about Mattel Electronic Football and Merlin, so by now I know exactly how they felt.

But every now and then I see a toy or game that magically melds parental nostalgia with somewhat more modern technology. Mattel’s new Loopz has something in common with one of my generation’s old favorites, Simon, but—as a good modern toy should and must—goes way beyond it, too. In several different directions.

As you can see in the image above, Loopz looks sort of like a set of plastic horseshoes stuck together (well, plastic horseshoes from the rec room of the starship Enterprise). Within each of the four arches—I suppose I should really call them “loops,” huh?—there’s a pair of small sensors, one at the top and one at the bottom. When you break through the invisible line between them, you trigger a light and a sound. (After a little practice, I found that the most effective and efficient way to do this was to stick my hands in each arch with a little lift, like a magician or someone playing water glasses. That may just be me, though...the chipper kids in the demos on Mattel’s site use a more direct style.)

That’s the basic concept, but Mattel has found a variety of ways to turn it into game play and ... just regular play. The first is the old Simon one, a memory game: Loopz plays an ever-increasing series of sounds and lights, and the player has to repeat after it. Then there’s a reflex game, in which you try to put your hand in the loop with the flashing light before it goes out, at accelerating speeds. And there are several music games, including one called Freestyle DJ that lets kids “mix” the preprogrammed songs on the Loopz machine by using the loops to turn tracks on and off. Finally, kids can just play their own music in a 10-note scale on the machine. (I was wondering at first how you get 10 notes from four loops, but of course the answer is combinations—for each of the higher notes, you simply trigger two loops simultaneously.)

Both my five-year-old and my two-year-old were instantly fascinated, in that way only young kids can be, at their first sight of the modernistic-looking machine with flashing lights that was making weird noises. But a lot of toys create that effect initially, and then the novelty wears off. Loopz, with its variety of options, and particularly with the freestyle music one, is proving to have real staying power, which makes the investment (the machine retails for about $30) seem worthwhile.

I don’t, however, quite think we’re going to reach this stage of expertise for a while yet:

[Photo courtesy of Mattel.]