Caldecott Hopefuls: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild

Something about the cover of Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown (Little, Brown; 2013) reminded me of Henri Rousseau: maybe it was the top-hatted Mr. Tiger himself, or the oversized leaf shapes that make up the jungle surrounding him. Rousseau aside, Brown won a 2013 Caldecott Honor for Creepy Carrots (by Aaron Reynolds; Simon and Schuster, 2012) and seems like a really nice guy (I know this because he signed a poster for my daughter at BEA a couple of years ago), so I requested a review copy of Mr. Tiger Goes Wild--thank you, folks at Little, Brown!

Here's the story: Mr. Tiger is bored of being a prim and proper anthropomorphized animal. He wants to be...wild (he's a tiger, after all). It's the perfect premise for a picture book, and Brown delivers, depicting Mr. Tiger's transformation in two gorgeous, graphic (ahem) spreads. I don't want to give away the page turns--they make the book as far as I'm concerned--but someone in the publicity department at Little, Brown might want to mock up a poster. 

Odds and endpapers: The illustrations for Mr. Tiger Goes Wild were "made with India ink, watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paper, then digitally composited and colored" (from About This Book); they remind me a little of Jon Klassen's work in the 2013 Caldecott Medal winner This is Not My Hat (Candlewick, 2012), actually. Bonus points for the illustrated endpapers and textured tiger-striped cover underneath the dust jacket, though. And for Mr. Tiger--roar! Available tomorrow.

The Vine Basket by Josanne La Valley

Josanne La Valley's debut novel The Vine Basket (Clarion, 2013) is Merighul's story, and it's not an easy one: not for a 14-year-old girl who has to leave school to help on the family farm after her brother disappears, leaving her father embittered, her mother withdrawn, and herself in danger of being to sent away to work in a factory; and not as a Uyghur in East Turkestan, a land--and increasingly, a culture--dominated by the Han Chinese. Merighul has reason to hope when an American woman buys her vine basket for 100 yuan (just 16 American dollars, but more than Merighul's family might make at the market in a month) and says she'll come back in three weeks for more--but those three weeks bring more hardship, and Merighul may not have even one new basket to bring to market on the fateful day.

Merighul's story is almost unbearably hard (her little sister Lali's situation is heartbreaking, too). Thankfully, Merighul has the support of her grandfather Chong Ata, an artisan himself, and a true friend, Pati; and even though her future is not at all certain at the end of the book, it is at least more hopeful. 

The Vine Basket reminded me in many ways--particularly in Merighul's dedication to her craft and descriptions of the basketweaving process--of A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (also Clarion, 2001), although that book is about 12th century Korean pottery (Park reviewed The Vine Basket for the New York Times, 5/10/2013). A Single Shard is one of my favorite Newbery Medal winners, which should say something about how I feel about The Vine Basket. Required--and rewarding--reading.

[Black Garden (Tandem), 2009 from Living Shrines of Uyghur China: Photographs by Lisa Ross (The Monacelli Press, 2013). Merighul ties a thin strip of cloth like these to a bamboo culm with a prayer for skill and courage.]

North of Nowhere by Liz Kessler

Liz Kessler's series books starring Emily Windsnap and Philippa Fisher are tween girl favorites (we like Emily Windsnap, the half-mermaid, best), but her standalone books are equally appealling: this one, North of Nowhere (Candlewick, 2013), is part mystery, part magic--but to say more about what sort of magic it might be would give some of it away, so I'll stick to what Mia knows: she is stuck in a sleepy seaside village on the coast of Cornwall (no cell phones, no Internet) over spring break because her grandfather has gone missing, and she and her mother have to help Gran run the pub.

If Mia sounds a tiny bit self-absorbed, it's because she is--she's in eighth grade, after all--and Kessler's writing, in Mia's voice, reflects that. But she's also genuinely concerned about her grandfather, and eager to make friends: with a girl she gets to know by way of letters exchanged via an old diary (I loved this part), and a boy, Peter, who's determined to help the two girls meet. She's also willing to walk the dog (Flake, a border collie--I liked him, too).

The girl in the diary (Mia knows her only as Dee) lives on the island of Luffsands, off the coast of Cornwall, which complicates matters when stormy weather makes it impossible for her to get to the mainland village of Porthaven, where Mia is waiting for her. And then Peter disappears, and Mia suspects he's gone to Luffsands to find Dee.

At risk of revealing too much, the island of Luffsands is based on the true story of Hallsands, a British village that collapsed into the sea almost a hundred years ago--but even with that information, it's almost impossible to know where the story is going until it's gotten there. And even then, you might have trouble believing it! Don't say Mia didn't warn you.

[This print is of South Hall Sands circa 1900, by Gerry Miles (2007). It's just how I imagined the village of Porthaven might look, too.]

Kibuishi's Harry Potter Covers

What do you think of the new Harry Potter covers by Kazu Kibuishi, writer and artist of the graphic novel series AMULET? Now that all of the cover images have been released (they will be on trade paperbacks in September), it's easier to see what they have in common, and how they compare to the iconic American covers by Mary GrandPre. Kibuishi's covers--my favorite is still the first, for Sorceror's Stone, but I also like The Prisoner of Azkaban--tend to look more like full shots rather close-ups, and they're all outside. The back covers are indoors and, appropriately enough, of Harry's back--as he's looking into the Mirror of Erised, for example, or a cabinet full of boggarts. I like the image of Hogwarts made by the spines of all seven books in the box set, too: Kibuishi designed the whole package.

It's my understanding that the new editions will retain GrandPre's chapter art (also known as "decorations"), which is good news for people like me who love black-and-white illustrations in children's books and wish more of the newer ones had them.