The Doldrums by Nicholas Gannon

Archer B. Helmsley has grown up in a house full of oddities and treasures collected by his grandparents, the famous explorers. He knows every nook and cranny. He knows them all too well. After all, ever since his grandparents went missing on an iceberg, his mother barely lets him leave the house.

Archer longs for adventure. Grand adventures, with parachutes and exotic sunsets and interesting characters. But how can he have an adventure when he can’t leave his house?

It helps that he has friends like Adélaïde L. Belmont, who must have had many adventures to end up with a wooden leg. (Perhaps from a run-in with a crocodile. Perhaps not.) And Oliver Glub. Oliver will worry about all the details (so that Archer doesn’t have to).

And so Archer, Adélaïde, and Oliver make a plan. A plan to get out of the house, out of their town entirely. It’s a good plan.

Well, it’s not bad, anyway.

But nothing goes quite as they expect.

“A dreamy charmer of a book, full of clever wordplay that practically demands it be read out loud.”—New York Times
Have you ever wanted to hold a little piece of the impossible? Lavishly illustrated in full color, The Doldrums is an extraordinary debut about friendship, imagination, and the yearning for adventure from author-artist Nicholas Gannon. A modern classic in the making, The Doldrums is for readers of inventive and timeless authors such as Brian Selznick and Lemony Snicket.
Archer B. Helmsley wants an adventure. No, he needs an adventure. His grandparents were famous explorers . . . until they got stuck on an iceberg. Now Archer’s mother barely lets him out of the house. As if that would stop a true Helmsley. Archer enlists Adelaide—the girl who, according to rumor, lost her leg to a crocodile—and Oliver—the boy next door—to help him rescue his grandparents. The Doldrums whisks us off on an adventure full of sly humor, incredible detail, and enormous heart.

With approximately twenty pieces of breathtaking full-color artwork, as well as black-and-white spot illustrations, and gorgeous, literary writing, Nicholas Gannon proves himself to be a distinctive new voice with his middle grade debut. Be in it for the limitless imagination. For the characters who capture your heart. For the rich world you’ll want to settle into. But most of all, be in it for the friendship. That, after all, is the true adventure.

INTERSTELLAR CINDERELLA, BY DEBORAH UNDERWOOD & MEG HUNT

 
Interstellar Cinderella

Written by Deborah Underwood
Illustrated by Meg Hunt
Published by Chronicle Books, May 2015

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There has of late, thankfully, been a rash of children’s books with a strong emphasis on female empowerment. Shannon and Dean Hale’s The Princess in Black is one great example. The Detective’s Assistant, by Kate Hannigan, is another. And the favorite in our house is Andrea Beaty’s Rosie Revere, Engineer.

We have a spirited five year old (she’d want me to specify five and a half) girl, and it’s of grave importance to us that she grow up knowing that being a girl isn’t a hindrance but rather a gift and a strength, so whenever we go to buy books, there’s usually at least one in the stack with a strong female protagonist. The problem with these books, often, is that they’re Message Books, which in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Message Books tend to lack a certain… Nuance?

Our daughter doesn’t want to be read a lesson, and we don’t want to read one to her. She wants a story, and we want a conversation starter; we don’t want a book that says “Don’t underestimate girls, because girls can do anything!” We want a book that sets us up to say “So, why do you think that character underestimated her? Do you think that was fair? Why?”

Deborah Underwood’s latest is one such book. It’s the story of Cinderella, transposed to outer space, and replacing Disney’s enduring yet whimpering heroine with a little girl of great strength and a solid idea of herself. The handling of the Cinderella story owes a lot to Marissa Meyer’s young adult novel, Cinder, whether conscious or by coincidence, but no matter: It’s a great set-up.

There’s the requisite evil stepmother, the evil stepsisters, the ball, the fairy godmother, but it’s all tipped on its head. The godmother is a robot. The ball is gravity-free. Cinderella is a fledgling spaceship repairperson. The Prince of the story doesn’t even fall for Cinderella because of her beauty; he is smitten with her ability… But Underwood doesn’t bog down in proving how clever she can be with reinventing the source material; she sets up the .

There is a moment towards the end which I was dreading as I saw it coming: The traditional marriage proposal. You know how it goes: The Prince finds the girl who fits the slipper (in this case, a space wrench) and takes her as her bride, saving her from her life of misery, and Cinderella, with hearts in her eyes just from being near a real prince, gratefully accepts! But Underwood skillfully sidesteps the awkwardness, and nods toward the creepiness of how the story is supposed to go. This is a girl who wants a career.

Meg Hunt’s illustrations are stunning. They are very dark, in contrast to the brightness of most kid’s picturebooks, but this works to the story’s benefit. She’s created a world. (My single complaint would be that, when the Prince’s spaceship breaks down, the smoke kind of blends into the rest of the picture; it took us a second to see what the problem was… But that’s the definition of splitting hairs!)

Her style is reminiscent of folk art. It looks like paint layered upon paint; I suspect, of course, that it’s digital, but if it is, it’s exceptionally well done in that it doesn’t read as digital. Interstellar Cinderella is her first picturebook, which in itself is remarkable. (That said, she’s by no means a newbie; her CV is impressive.)

It would be a mistake to consider this a book for girls, and, arguably, it’s even more important for boys to be exposed to this message when they’re young. Regardless of the gender of your child, your bookshelf can only be enhanced by the inclusion of Interstellar Cinderella.

 

 Once upon a planetoid,
amid her tools and sprockets,
a girl named Cinderella dreamed
of fixing fancy rockets.
With a little help from her fairy godrobot, Cinderella is going to the ball. But when the prince's ship has mechanical trouble, someone will have to zoom to the rescue! Readers will thank their lucky stars for this irrepressible fairy tale retelling, its independent heroine, and its stellar happy ending.

THIS IS SADIE, BY SARA O’LEARY & JULIE MORSTAD

This is Sadie
Written by Sara O’Leary
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
Published by Tundra Books, May 2015

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This is Sadie is an understated book. It sneaks up on you without warning, and slaps you upside the heart.

Author Sara O’Leary takes a remarkably common premise –kids have wild imaginations, and can do wondrous things with nothing more than an empty box– and weaves something incredible. Her text harkens back to a day of unforced simplicity in children’s literature, when easy ideas were delivered with just a pinch of poetry to make them go down even easier.

Consider:

Sadie likes to make boats of boxes
and castles out of cushions.
But more than anything she likes stories,
because you can make them from nothing at all.

Beautiful, and it reminds me very much of A.A. Milne, to be honest; even more remarkable, it compares favorably to the great master. The beauty of O’Leary’s writing is that she doesn’t strain to narrate in a child’s voice; she is clearly an adult commenting on what a child does, and even though we no longer, as adults, behave as children, we are better equipped to appreciate the beauty in what they do. A child hasn’t the language to relay the wonder in their own behavior, because to them there is no wonder, there just is what there is. There is no shortage of books that celebrate a child’s imagination, but O’Leary’s avoidance of the trap of speaking in a child’s voice is what separates This is Sadie from the abundant pack.

The other thing, of course, that sets this book apart are the remarkable illustrations from O’Leary’s frequent collaborator, Julie Morstad. (I believe this is their fourth time around the block together…)

Morstad’s works pulls influence from picture books of the seventies, which may explain why it resonates so strongly with parents who have kids of an appropriate age for This is Sadie. (The book seems to have taken on something of a feverish following online since its release just a few short weeks ago.) Her illustrations are epic when needed, and perfectly composed. Take the above, for example: A simple line about the fleeting quality of time, but Morstad delivers something dreamlike, and full of awe.

There is a lot of buzz surrounding This is Sadie at the moment, and my B.S. meter was on high alert when I sat down to read it with my daughter, to be frank; I tend to be suspicious of things that build hype so quickly, but this is one of those instances where the work backs up the promises made by the publicity people and bloggers. This is Sadie is a wonderful book.

P.S. Bonus points for doing something interesting with the dust jacket! It’s a bit of a pet peeve of mine that this opportunity is so often wasted in book design, but Tundra and designer Kelly Hill have done something pretty cool here… I don’t know if there are awards for jacket design, but if there are, This is Sadie surely deserves consideration.

 Sadie is a little girl with a big imagination. She has been a girl who lived under the sea and a boy raised by wolves. She has had adventures in wonderland and visited the world of fairytales. She whispers to the dresses in her closet and talks to birds in the treetops. She has wings that take her anywhere she wants to go, but that always bring her home again. She likes to make things -- boats out of boxes and castles out of cushions. But more than anything Sadie likes stories, because you can make them from nothing at all. For Sadie, the world is so full of wonderful possibilities ... This is Sadie, and this is her story.

Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova by Laurel Snyder (Goodreads Author), Julie Morstad (illustrator)

 
Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova
Written by Laurel Snyder
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
Published by Chronicle Books

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Before we get to the story of Anna Pavlova and the poetic prose of Laurel Snyder, let’s get the obvious out of the way: Julie Morstad is a treasure. A constant creator of illustrations that are gorgeous, whimsical and bursting with wonderful details, Morstad is one of an elite group whose name alone signals to the reader that they are about to embark upon a journey that will open their eyes and hearts to great beauty. (Read our review of another Morstad triumph from 2015, This is Sadie, HERE.) I imagine that, whenever she releases a book, American illustrators all over breath a sigh of relief that, being Canadian, she is ineligible to win the Caldecott medal.

Morstad works her magic once again in, Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova, Laurel Snyder’s biographical picture book of the prima ballerina.

Pavlova grew up poor in Russia, without much hope of breaking through the strict caste system. And then her mother took her to see the ballet one night, and her future was laid out: Considered all wrong for ballet (she was far too thin, and not athletically built), Pavlova auditioned twice for the Russian Imperial Ballet School, gaining admittance her second try, and, against all odds, would go on to become the dominant international star of the ballet world, and one of the most influential dancers in the art’s history. She was adamant that, should ballet be available to children from all walks of life, it could truly change the world, just as it had changed her own life, and she set out to make that dream real.

Snyder masterfully handles Pavlova’s myriad struggles and triumphs, and relays her story with impeccable grace and poetry, which are perfectly matched by Morstad’s pictures.

I read Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova myself before reading it to my daughter, and though I was impressed with it thoroughly, I was unconvinced that, with its subject matter and the scope of its narrative, it would capture her imagination and hold her attention. I was wrong, of course. We’ve read the book countless times, and she loves every word and every image.

Swan presents two artists working at the top of their powers to bring the story of another powerful artist to the world, and the result is, simply, breathtaking.

 The world is big.
Anna is small.
The snow is
everywhere
and all around.
But one night . . .
One night, her mother takes her to the ballet, and everything is changed. Anna finds a beauty inside herself that she cannot contain.

So begins the journey of a girl who will one day grow up to be the most famous prima ballerina of all time, inspiring legions of dancers after her: the brave, the generous, the transcendently gifted Anna Pavlova.

Imelda and the Goblin King Briony, May Smith

Imelda and the Goblin King
Written and Illustrated by Briony May Smith
Published by Flying Eye Books

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When I was a kid I was given by some unknown relative an anthology of folk tales from the 1960’s. I don’t remember if they were from any specific culture, or even which tales were included, but I’ve always remembered the illustrations. They were awash in earth-tones, with grotesque-cute characters and villains that were on the legitimately scary side. The moral lessons therein had terrible consequences, not the slaps on the wrist so common in the Disney-fied landscape of modern fairy tales. I’ve searched for similar books in used book stores for years, but have not managed to track down any that are quite right…

Yesterday I received a book in the mail, and when I opened the envelope I was brought back, finally.

Here were the earth-tones. Here were the adorably awful characters and the frightening bad guys. Here were the moral lessons that carry with them real consequences for the characters.

Briony May Smith’s Imelda and the Goblin King is a brilliant evocation of the golden age of the folk tale, somewhere between the gruesome stories dreamed up by The Brothers Grimm, and the saccharine nonsense peddled dressed in glitter-specked book jackets today. (But certainly owing more to the Grimm tradition.)

Imelda, a human girl, lives alongside a forest populated by fairies, with whom she has a close bond. One day the forest is taken over by a goblin, who appoints himself the King of the Forest; The Fairy Queen, not able to understand one so angry, posits that, should they lay before him a feast of great lavishness, he might lighten up and treat them with kindness. Of course, he does not; he proves himself selfish and mean, and locks up The Fairy Queen. Imelda comes up with a plan to test The Goblin King, which will either free him from himself or do away with him for good.

There is nothing about this book I dislike. It’s a simple story, very well told, with illustrations that match the content perfectly and also capture the spirit of those books I remember from my childhood. (This book even smells like those.) There is great humour in both the text and the pictures, and the lesson is clear without being heavy-handed.

Smith packs so much wonerful detail into every spread, it’s almost overwhelming. Hours could be spend poring over each page, examining every fairy and creature. Indeed, my daughter and I spend a good amount of time choosing our favorite characters on each page, and then our favorite for the whole book. (We agreed on the fairy riding the rabbit…)

Flying Eye Books, increasingly one of the finest purveyors of children’s books of the planet, is the perfect publisher for a book such as this. They have shown time and again that they understand that the form of the book must work in conjunction with the content, and here they nail that marriage. Even the end papers are gourgeous. Perfection.

Briony May Smith is a major talent, and Imelda and the Goblin King is a clear statement of intent from an author-illustrator from whom I eagerly await more.

A serious contender for Best Book of the Year.

Far away behind the hills Imelda lives beside a fairy forest. Every day she ventures into the forest to play with her fairy friends. But within the deepest, darkest depths of the trees lives the worst creature of all – the goblin king! When he kidnaps the Fairy Queen, the fairies call upon Imelda to help. Soon she has a cunning plan to turn the Goblin King into a worm and rid the forest of him for good.
Filled with inventiveness and beautiful art this is the unmissable picture book debut of Briony May Smith!