I Like "I Like This Color!"

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication date: May 1, 2023

 I Like This Color! by Liz Goulet Dubois is described on its cover as "A Silly Story about Listening." If you read all the way through to the last image and line, you will understand why. That last page is sort of deep. There are discussion opportunities there.

However, what I immediately loved about this book was the art aspect. I have little people in my family who are very into art and craft, and this simple graphic novel will hit the spot for them. The favorite colors thing is a big deal for my people. The mixing of colors, too. Additionally, I Like This Color! has a real storyline, which books for younger readers sometimes do not. Duck and Cluck are simple characters children could draw themselves. 

I Like This Color! is the second in the Duck and Cluck series. The series has a terrific website, designed by Liz, that includes a great activities page.

Unfortunately, Liz died last summer. She was very well known in the New England SCBWI, and our paths crossed once or twice years ago. 

I assumed I Like This Color! would be the end of her series. But after seeing both the strength of this book and the beautiful website, I wonder if there couldn't be a future for it. Did Liz leave ideas for future books? Could another author/artist write new books with Liz as the creator of the series? 

These kinds of things have been done before.

At any rate, I hope this particular book does as well as it deserves to.

Possibly My Favorite Unicorn Book

I'm always delighted when I enjoy a book written by an acquaintance or Facebook friend. That is the case with Pacey Packer Unicorn Tracker by Connecticut author and artist J.C. Phillipps. It's a terrific middle grade graphic novel about a smart, tough girl who is trying to be an awesome babysitter for her younger sister, when said younger sister disappears out the window on a unicorn. Pacey immediately heads off to save her with the assistance of her sister's plush unicorn toy, which is now alive.

This book has witty repartee, narrative drive, strong young women, and lots of purple.

I am aware that unicorns are popular, though I don't get it, myself. Here is what unicorns were in my youth:  Beasts in medieval stories who laid their heads in virgins' laps, which is how they were caught and killed. They struck me as stupid animals,. Not in the sense of them not being humans and thus must be stupid but in the sense that smarter animals know not to put themselves at risk like that. 

Unicorns appear to have come a long way.

We have a unicorn fan in the family, but she is too young for this book. I ordered a copy of it yesterday for her older brother 

Pacey Packer Unicorn Tracker is the first book in a series. The fourth one is coming out next year.

The Prince and the Dressmaker

The Prince and the Dressmaker, a graphic novel by Jen Wang, is a Cinderella-type story with a major and marvelous twist. The wife-seeking prince is a cross-dresser, and the Cinderalla figure is an ambitious and talented dressmaker.

Prince Sebastian seeks out Frances not as a potential spouse but to provide him with the kinds of women's clothes he wants. The two of them become a fashion team.

This story is unique for two other reasons. Sebastian, a character with a secret, is not a cliched, tortured YA male. (Though he's tortured some.) He receives support. And this romance involves two far more equal characters than you usually see in fairy tale-type stories. Frances's skill and drive make her much closer to Sebastian's level. He really has nothing going for him other than the accident of his birth into a royal family.

This is a fun and thoughtful read.

Worth The Wait

I liked what I heard about Nimona by Noelle Stevenson when it was published in 2015. I finally got hold of a copy a couple of weeks ago, and this National Book Award Finalist did not disappoint.

Nimona is a graphic novel about a joyful young female shape shifter who is game for, and good at, any kind of violence. She throws her lot in with a supervillain, one with a backstory that involves injury and disappointment. Morally, he's a little horrified by Nimona, though he definitely becomes attached to her.

There's what was for me a surprising and subtle love interest. I'm not going to say much about it and ruin anyone else's reading experience.

The world these people live in is an interesting one. It's your traditional high fantasy setting with knights and medieval-looking people, but one to which science and modernish weapons have been added.

Great-looking art. Also, this is my favorite kind of graphic novel, one in which the story is showed totally through the images and dialogue, no narrative boxes telling us things.

Lots to enjoy here and not much to complain about.

The Benefits Of A Binge Read

I'm always saying how much I wish I'd read a series in a binge, after several books had been published, instead slowly as they were published. Well, I stumbled upon the Zita the Spacegirl series by Ben Hatke at a local library and thought, Gail, here is your chance.

This was a great experience. Because when I read the first book, Zita the Spacegirl, I thought, That was okay. But as I read the others, Legends of Zita the Spacegirl and The Return of Zita the Spacegirl, I got more and more into this world and this girl's adventures. Seriously, I would have read another book.

These are well done graphic novels in that I don't think there is any narrative text at all. The entire story is told with dialogue and image. Readers have that marvelous experience of sucking in a story fast. I have to say that I sometimes found too much going on in some of the panels, but it didn't slow me down.

There are two things about Zita, herself, that are particularly terrific. One, she always comes up with a solution. And, two, though she is definitely a girl, she transcends gender. This is no pink and green princess story. This is a girl fighting her way across space. Any child can read this.

If you can get them all, read them one after another.

My Latest Faith Erin Hicks Read

I am a fan of Faith Erin Hicks' graphic novels. I love her distinctive artwork. Whether she's working by herself or with others, I'm attracted to her work.

The Nameless City is her latest book, and my favorite to date. It's a historical fantasy about two young people, one a child of the conquerors and the other of the conquered. I love the powerful women in this story. I love that the name of the city--"The Nameless City"--is an attempt to give some power to the subjugated.

I read this book over a month ago, and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to write about it sooner. I would have had much more to say. I can tell you that this first volume of a trilogy reads well as a stand alone, but definitely leaves me glad there will be more.

Okay. Let's Talk Some Professional Reading

Yes, as usual I am behind reading The Horn Book. The July/August issue is floating around here somewhere. I've finished the May/June special Transformations issue, though.

I'm not a big fan of theme issues of anything. However, there were some articles that grabbed my attention in this one.

• From Series to Serious by Thom Barthelmess. This made me understand the value of series fiction, the kind I haven't paid that much attention to in the past.
• What Makes a Good Nonfiction Adaptation? by Betty Carter. This was about creating childlit adaptations of adult nonfiction.
• Alice, the Transformer by Monica Edinger. This is a neat account of using Alice in Wonderland in the classroom.

Among the magazine's reviews were many for books by authors whose names we see a lot in children's publishing. Among the reviews for authors I hadn't heard of, one I found particularly interesting was the review for Nimona, a graphic novel written and illustrated by Noelle Stevenson. It "tweaks both the science fiction and fantasy genres."  And look! You can read the first three chapters on-line.

Okay, people. You are ready to move on to the new issue of Horn Book.

Books 5 And 6. "Boxers" And "Saints" By Gene Luen Yang

My last two Book Challenge books.

First off, this is a two volume set. Be sure to read Boxers first.

Boxers and Saints are Gene Luen Yang's terrific historical graphic novels about the Boxer Rebellion. They're treated as one work because the books treat the same material from different points of view. I knew nothing about the Boxer Rebellion before 3:00 this afternoon. By 8:00 this evening, I had a working knowledge!

So in 1900 a secret organization in China called the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists led an uprising of  peasants against western foreign influence, including the spread of Christianity. They were known as "Boxers" to the west because they practiced exercises they believed would give them powers. Presumably westerners thought they looked as if they were boxing. The Boxers fought against and killed "western devils" and "secondary devils"--those Chinese who either worked for westerners or accepted Christianity, the western devil's faith.

Boxers deals with the experience of a young villager named Little Bao who becomes the leader of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. Saints deals with the experience of Four-Girl, a young villager who becomes a Christian. One of the particular pleasures in these books is that Four-Girl, the protagonist in Saints, is a minor character in Boxers. Little Bao, the star of Boxers, is a minor character in Saints.

Though, really, neither of them could be called minor.

Earlier today I had trouble with the long descriptions in Haters. The thing with a good graphic novel, and these are good graphic novels, is that the graphic images carry the descriptions and even some of the action. The author doesn't have to stop everything to tell readers how someone is dressed or what their surroundings look like. You can just suck in basic story, character, information.

Reading a good graphic novel is such a rush because you can take in so much so fast.

I am out of books, but it's 9:00 PM on Sunday, anyway. I'm ending this year's 48 Hour Book Challenge on a definite high.

Book 2. "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi

Oh, my gosh. How could I have waited so long to read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi? How soon can I get hold of the second volume?

I probably would have been even more blown away by this memoir of living through the fall of the Shah of Iran, the fundamentalist takeover of that country, and its war with Iraq if I hadn't read Reading Lolita in Tehran, which deals with some of the same period but from an adult's experience.  What's amazing in both cases is the way people living under those conditions tried to maintain normality, continuing with their social gatherings in secret, collecting western pop culture trinkets. Oh, my gosh.

No wonder I see this book on my local schools' summer reading lists so often. But this isn't instructive, you-ought-to-learn-about-this-culture stuff. This is simply little Marjane's life, and she has quite a character. She's a very little revolutionary at first, but when the revolution leads to a fundamentalist takeover, she doesn't buckle under to that.

I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. Very pleased. Maybe a gift for my brother-in-law, who likes history but probably has never read a graphic novel.

My only complaint--the print seemed small at first. But once I was into the book, I no longer noticed.

An Odyssey For Those Of Us Who Don't Care For The Odyssey

I'm not a big fan of The Odyssey. Nasty folks in that story, doing nasty things. The Cyclops has all my sympathy. I appreciate The Odyssey's impact on literature and culture...in a creepy sort of way...but perhaps you can understand why I didn't rush out to read Stickman Odyssey by Christopher Ford.

But Stickman may be my kind of Odyssey. Main character Zozimos is an Odysseus-type in that he is pretty objectionable while managing to pull his sorry, and stick-like, backside out of one mess after another. And there are some references to familiar Odyssey scenes. But there's a great deal that's new here, too. This is quite a different story, if I remember The Odyssey correctly. For instance, I don't think there were any golems in the original work from ancient Greece.

David Elzey compared the Stickman books to Rocky and Bullwinkle's Fractured Fairy Tales. A neat idea.

Sometimes A Woman Just Has To Read A Graphic Novel

I am a fan of of Faith Erin Hicks' graphic novels. She has a very distinctive style that I am drawn to. So, yes,  I had to snatch Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong by Hicks and Prudence Shen off my library's shelf.

Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong is the story of a robotics team clashing with a cheerleading squad over funding. Unless it is the story of a teenager clashing with his parents who gets involved with the robotics team members and cheerleaders. When I finished the book, I wondered if there were two stories here or if I'd missed the main show. Mainly I wondered about this because if the robotics team/cheerleaders is the real story, it didn't take off until the mid-point.

But graphically this book has what I like about graphic novels. With a good graphic novel, I can just suck in, absorb a story. The images carry so much of the action, and I can whip through them and take in what's happening so quickly. I love the rush. In fact, I hunted through the graphic novels at the library because I was feeling a GN urge.

Report On Graphic Novels For Kids By Women

Gene Kannenberg, Jr., Director of ComicsResearch.org, did a presentation at last Wednesday night's  Gendered Publishing panel at UConn that had so much content that was new to me that I decided to give it its own post.

Unlike children's publishing, the comic book world that graphic novels grew out of was not dominated by women. In fact, Kannenberg said that it wasn't uncommon in days of old for women artists and colorists to get into comic books through the men in their lives, brothers or husbands who were already working for a comic book publisher.

The Graphic Women And Their Work

Marie Severin has great historic significance because she started working in comics in the 1950s and was with Marvel from the 1960s until 1996. She doesn't appear to have moved specifically into children's literature, though she was involved with the artwork for 25 of the 26 Muppet Babies comics, which would certainly seem to have been directed toward children. She was also involved with the Not Brand Echh series, which I remember.

Trina Robbins began as an underground cartoonist, according to Kannenberg. She moved to Marvel, also, working on comics aimed at young girls. She was one of the first cartoonists to do comic graphic novel adaptations. It appears that Robbins is also writing YA graphic novels with other artists doing the graphic element.

Francoise Mouly put in time at Marvel, too, starting out as a colorist. Kannenberg says she used her earnings to buy a press and start RAW, a comics anthology, with Art Spiegelman. While art editor of the New Yorker (a position I believe she still has), she and Spiegelman produced the Little Lit series for Harper Collins, and five years ago, she started TOON Books, which produces graphic novels for younger readers.

Guess what? Jill Thompson has worked for Marvel, too. She's also hit a number of other comics publishers, working on both Wonder Woman and Neil Gaiman's Sandman for DC. Her work specifically for children is The Scary Godmother, the first in a series.

Linda Medley is more of a DC person. She has written and illustrated a whole series of Castle Waiting books that have a fairy tale thing going on, though I can't tell if they're specifically for children. She's also supposed to have done some rewrites of the Wizard of Oz books.

Update 10/23/13: A Castle Waiting fan from Google+, Amitha Knight, describes these books as being for upper YA to adult readers. "Fairy tales with a feminist angle."

Raina Telgemeier may be the best known of this group to those of us in children's literature because of her book, Smile. She's also adapted four books from The Baby-sitters Club series. Interesting point--She's the first of the women Kannenberg discussed who not only didn't have Marvel experience, she doesn't appear to have traditional comic book history at all.

Colleen A.F. Venable is a book designer for First Second Books, and has written a series of children's books. Again, this is a graphic artist who doesn't seem to have come out of the comic book publishing companies.

What, If Anything, Have We Learned?

• Since attending last week's panel discussion, I've wondered if male comic book artists have also moved into children's books. 
• Women (and probably men, too) appear now to be able to work with graphic novels for children without having first put in time with traditional comic publishing companies.

Why Am I Not Good Enough?

I found Brain Camp by Susan Kim, Laurence Klavan, and Faith Erin Hicks on my To Be Read pile a couple of months ago. It was part of my haul from a used book sale last year. The style of the cover seemed familiar to me, and I realized that Faith Erin Hicks' book Friends With Boys was a Cybils book last year. In fact, it was the winner in the YA graphic novel category. Hicks copyrighted the illustrations, and after reading Friends With Boys, it is easy to recognize her work.

Brain Camp is sort of a traditional nightmare camp story. In this case, parents send their average, or less, maybe, achieving kids to Camp Fielding, "America's best new educational summer camp, guaranteed to prepare any child for the SATs and beyond." The camp administrator looks for kids who "got turned down for math camp, computer camp, art camp..." and have never done well on a test in their lives, to paraphrase one mom speaking of her son. The kids leave camp stellar students because of a mysterious plot, which our two intrepid, and not at all gifted, protagonists discover.

The really intriguing part of this book wasn't the story itself but the feeling it carries of its characters being unacceptable to their families as they are. Love is not unconditional for the children who are sent to Camp Fielding. In the course of the book, we learn just how conditional it is. Yeah, there's a science fiction plot here, but it's the mood that makes readers feel that these children are being thrown to the wolves by the adults who are supposed to love them simply because they can't conform to a standard of achievement that makes Brain Camp striking.

Forget About Chocolates And Flowers

February 14th is the annual announcement day for Cybil Award winners. Check out my response to Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks, one of the graphic novel winners.

Is It Too Late For Me To Get Myself Some Brothers?

An argument could be made that Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks is just another outsider trying to make it in high school story. Maggie and her three older brothers were all homeschooled by their mother who, like so many mothers in  children's lit/YA, is gone, gone, gone. Each one of them had to transition to public school at ninth grade. Now it's Maggie's turn. Her brothers are quite marvelous, though not particularly attentive, and Maggie is left to experience not just the terrors of high school on her own, but the whole separation from family that most kids do somewhere between the ages of 3 and 5.

Yes, the homeschooling thing is the only unusual element here in the basic story. Nonetheless, Friends With Boys is very well done. Partly this is because those older brothers, while not particularly helpful at first, have made their way through an assortment of adolescent problems and are still standing, so there is every reason for us to trust Maggie to do the same. And partly this is because Friends With Boys is a graphic novel and a really good one.

I am able to whip through what I consider to be a well-done graphic novel, one that uses image to communicate setting and action. Hicks does even more here. Her wonderful artwork conveys character. When Maggie's older brothers appear, our understanding of them is almost instantaneous. There are no what I call "narrative boxes" in these frames--spots where the graphic novelist has had to tell us some info in words. Absolutely everything here is in dialogue and images. You can just suck this story in, absorb it. Be one with the story.

Okay, I will admit I don't totally get the ghost. But for you people who like that sort of thing, hey, there's a ghost.

Friends With Boys is a Cybils nominee in the Teen Graphic Novels category.

Classroom Buzz For Fangbone

I passed my arc of Fangbone on to a family member who teaches reading, primarily to children who need some extra instruction in the subject. I was aware that she had a student who is interested in becoming a cartoonist, and Fangbone is a graphic novel.

I learned this weekend that the first time he read the book, the boy didn't get much out of it. But he read it a second time, at which point it was clear that he was comprehending and enjoying what he was reading. In fact, he became an enthusiastic fan, anxious to read the second volume in the series (which has already been published) and wondering why their school library didn't own those two books. (Our family member suggested that he write to the librarian about the issue.) Not to worry. The young man's father purchased Kindle versions of both the first two Fangbones, so they're available whenever he wants them.

This boy is so taken with this book and has discussed it so often that now other children in his class, children who don't have difficulty reading, are interested in reading it. Our family member also thought it was noteworthy that this is a class of fourth graders, and the book is set in a third-grade classroom. She wouldn't have necessarily expected kids to be interested in reading about characters who are younger than they are. Certainly conventional wisdom tells us that children read up, not down.

But evidently the little barbarian in Fangbone can deal with that issue.

A Little Barbarian

Yesterday was publication day for a clever little graphic novel for younger readers called Fangbone! Third-grade Barbarian by Michael Rex. Actually, it was publication day for the second book in the series, too, The Egg of Misery. I received an advanced galley of the first book last month.

In Fangbone's barbarian world, he isn't taken seriously as a warrior because he's a child. He's enthusiastic but treated as a servant. He's ambitious, though, and plans to one day have his own army. When his leader is ordered by the clan master to send someone to another land to hide the big toe of Drool (what that's about is slowly revealed--no info dump at the beginning of the story), the older barbarians feel they are all too adept at fighting to leave the battle. So Fangbone volunteers to become the protector of the toe.

The other land where he's sent to hide? Ours, where he ends up in a third-grade classroom where this little barbarian fits in amazingly well.

Fangbone is the kind of time/world travel story I enjoy. I much prefer seeing someone from the past or another reality arriving in the here and now than someone from our time/world going somewhere else. The outsider/outcast perceiving and commenting on our real society is far more intersting to me than a character perceiving and commenting on a society that no longer exists or even never existed.

We do get commentary here. Bullies? A third-grade barbarian doesn't have to worry about them much, and not because he's violent. It's that barbarian attitude that takes care of threats. Bill, a boy with ADD, takes Fangbone under his wing, explaining toilets to him (You didn't think they'd have those in a barbarian world, did you?) and giving him his first taste of hot wings. Fangbone is flummoxed when Bill's mother asks for the magic word. He knows many, but "please" isn't among them. And when Fangbone is called upon in class to ask a question about why the sun rises, his response is a sort of creation story from his culture. It's the truth, as he sees it, and the episode raises questions about respecting the beliefs--any beliefs--of others.

One of the things that makes this book work for me is that there is a real story here. Sometimes with books for younger children you get a lot of jokes strung together. Fangbone has a mission. A mission has its own narrative drive.

Another aspect of the book I liked is that the graphics truly carry their weight by helping to tell the story. I don't care to see a lot of boxes with traditional narrative at the top, leaving the images to just illustrate text. With Fangbone we can pick up setting, action, and even character through the graphics. What a face that little Fangbone has.

Plot Project: A week or so ago, I read a review in which the reviewer talked about a premise giving direction to a plot. I think that could have happened here. Once the author came up with the idea for a barbarian in a classroom, the next logical step to plotting would have been to think of a way to get him there. Once he came up with the way to get him there, he had his character's mission. And with the mission would come a plot.

More On The Battle Of The Books

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch lost in the first round of Battle of the Books, but I happen to have just finished reading it, and it's definitely not a loser.

Hereville is a quirky little graphic novel that began life as a web comic. It bills itself as being about "Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl." It seems to take place in a fairy tale type world, though the kids go to a school that's contemporary enough to have a cafeteria.

One of the things that I'm not fond of in traditional fantasy is that the world building often becomes very over the top, as if the author has to go further than the last author to publish a fantasy novel. What I really liked about Hereville is that the world building seems to be all about Orthodox Judaism. (I say "seems" because that's how ignorant I am about Orthodox Judaism.) I like my fantasy with a contemporary, real world edge. This book had that for me, it was just a contemporary, real world that I don't know.

The stepmother--not a stereotypical, fantasy stepmother.

The pig--well, not a stereotypical, fantasy pig mainly because I'm not aware of any other pigs in fantasy.

Mirka--could easily have been a stereotypical, fiesty fantasy girl but the bit about being an Orthodox Jew took care of that!

A quick and clever read with an ending that suggests that Mirka might be back to do something with that sword. I hope the Battle of the Books brings more attention to this title.

"Thanks For Getting The Second Book In A Series"

I rather liked the first volume of Jellaby by Kean Soo. Well, except for the part about the book not having an ending, of course. But I try to be open-minded about the whole serial thing. I do understand that once the serial is completed, a reader can go through every volume and have a complete reading experience.

But you really do have to have access to every volume in order to get that experience. Jellaby: Monster in the City, begins with Chapter Six, the first five chapters appearing in the first volume. Even I, who had liked that first book, had trouble getting into the story and the characters again. I had trouble seeing how the actual monster carrying-on in this book was related to the first book. And I can't tell if this book is the end of the story. The first book ended right in the middle of some action. This one ends at a point that could be an ending or could be a calm between storms.

How might someone who is being exposed to this serial for the first time with the second book respond? "Thanks for getting the second book in a series," was what I heard from a family member who read Monster in the City after finding it here at Chez Gauthier. Read that "Thanks" as meaning "What were you thinking?"

While I do understand the attraction of a completed serial, as a writer I still have a lot of trouble understanding why I would want to intentionally write a book that won't be accessible to many readers as an individual work. Even once the serial is completed, so many libraries don't carry all the volumes of a series. You often can't find them all in bookstores. I want to communicate with readers. I want to be understood. A real serial puts up so many obstacles that can prevent that happening.

I will say, though, that Jellaby: Monster in the City had a cool twist on the Puff the Magic Dragon storyline. Think Puff the Magic Dragon meets Fringe or The X-Files. But you have to make your way through half the book to get there.

Are Formulas Important For Some Reason?

You may have noticed that I'm on a little graphic novel kick this fall. That's why I picked up Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi.

What really struck me about this book is how incredibly formulaic it is. The word "rigidly" might apply. In a prelude, a child sees her parent killed. At the real story opening, the rest of the family is heading off to a creepy new home (new homes are always bad news) that has been in the family for years. (As I was reading this today, I thought about how these days, old family homes are probably sold to create new subdivisions.) Immediately, the kids find a mysterious...um...piece of jewelry, are led into a strange world, and have to start a quest to save their surviving parent. (Did she seem just a little bit bitchie to anyone else?) A mysterious and brilliant ancestor figures into the story. (I'm not sure if that last part is original to this formula or if I just saw it in The Spiderwick Chronicles movie.) Some cute characters are thrown in as helpers.

Maybe there is some reason why adhering to formulas like this are important in children's literature. Isn't repetition of words and sounds supposed to help them learn to read? Maybe reading the same formula/pattern/storyline over and over again assists them in some way I've just never heard about.

As luck would have it, David Elzey has just reviewed the second book in this series at The Excelsior File. He liked it a great deal more than I liked the first one. In fact, if you do just a little bit of digging around on the Internet, you'll find that this is quite a well-regarded series.