Whidbey Writers Workshop | Children's Reviews

Arrivals and Inventions: A Two-Book Review

The Invention of Hugo Cabret
By Brian Selznick
Scholastic Press, 2007
Hardcover: $22.99

The Arrival
By Shaun Tan
Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007
Haardcover: $19.99

Review by Stephanie Lile

There is a land somewhere far away from each of us where the language is unknown, the symbols unidentifiable, and the social structures unseen. And yet we must go there. For reasons that lurk larger than life, that threaten our very existence, we must go. We must travel to another place, and make our way in unfamiliar territory. Still, memories linger and merge with new experiences. Do we despair at the differences, or do we celebrate survival? Whether going to a new place or learning a new thing, we are all in some small way, at risk of becoming "The Arrival."

Shaun Tan, in his extraordinary work The Arrival, explores what it is like to arrive in a new place not knowing the language or the geography or the people. His is a story of a man who must leave his wife and daughter to go find work in another country. Using pictures and gestures, the man finds a room to rent, a job to work, and food to eat. All is strange and confusing, but he learns to survive and make friends. Through it all, a lone family picture and an origami crane symbolize memory and hope for a happier future. Tan does all this without placing a single word on the page.

In The Arrival, pictures tell the entire story. But these are not just any pictures. They are both universal and exclusive to every reader. Rendered with an unparalleled imagination and emotion, Tan's story in pictures touches the soul of anyone who has ever felt out place anywhere. It reveals the complexity of the immigration story with detail and insight pulled from actual stories and references of migrants to Western Australia, Britain, and the United States. From the frustration and discrimination of being tagged as an immigrant, to the joys of being befriended by an unexpected pet, to the compassion expressed through the sharing of arrival stories, Tan gives us a personal glimpse of what it takes to survive in a new place. Faces of sixty immigrants line the endpapers like a high school annual-each black and white pencil drawing alluding to another life story, another story of arrival.

This moving work, published in the United States by Arthur A. Levine Books, begs the question: "why no Caldecott for this one?" This year, in 2008, the Caldecott Medal for illustration went to Brian Selznick's clever and intriguing book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. While Hugo is without question a compelling work of art and story, highly deserving of its honor, The Arrival stops any Caldecott follower in his or her tracks. Like Hugo, its pictures speak as loud (actually louder) than the words, and the images are rendered with a similar technique and style. But the catch of the coveted Caldecott is that it "shall be awarded to the artist of the most distinguished American Picture Book for Children published in the United States during the preceding year. The award shall go to the artist, who must be a citizen or resident of the United States, whether or not he be the author of the text." The Arrival fails these criteria on two counts. Shaun Tan is not American and the book was not originally published in America. It was first published in Australia by Lothian Books in 2006.

A testament to Levine's eye for signing international books with groundbreaking impact, The Arrival is stunningly produced. Harkening back to turn-of-the-century, leather-bound photo albums, even the pages possess a gritty texture and faux crackled edges to suggest the original documents that provided much of its inspiration.

Production for Hugo was groundbreaking, too. Echoing the old wide-angle to tight shot movie imagery, the book's hefty 530 page count stunned booksellers and buyers. But its message, innovation in production and early film inspiration, moved readers beyond those hurdles as quickly as a 30-second film trailer makes a person want to sit through a three-and-a-half-hour movie. Unraveling the mystery of a broken automatron and a young, orphaned Hugo Cabret, this story weaves a magical tale of life's desires and disappointments as seen through the eyes of Hugo. After the death of his father and uncle, he secretly takes over the maintenance of the clocks in Paris's grand train station. The story evolves from what he sees and hears while secreted away inside the station's walls.

In comparing these two books, one significant difference is the speed at which you find yourself reading. I found myself wanting to read Hugo film-flicker fast and The Arrival sightseer slow. Yet interestingly, while these two books vary noticeably in dimension, production, and pace, their messages are largely the same. Theirs is a message of invention - and reinvention-of our selves. And yet the bigger question both stories pose is, "how will you do it - how will you get there?"

If we follow Tan's and Selznick's lead, we invent and reinvent ourselves by unlocking the stories captured in life's pictures. Their works make it seem deceptively simple.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
By Sherman Alexie
Little, Brown and Company, New York
Hardcover: $16.99

Review by Sharon Mentyka

“I was born with water on the brain.” So begins Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. An award-winning author, poet, and filmmaker, Sherman Alexie's previous works of fiction include Reservation Blues and the short story collections Ten Little Indians and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. This is Alexie’s first book for young adults and the 2007 National Book Award winner in that category.

The semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of Arnold “Junior” Spirit, an aspiring cartoonist from the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington. Arnold was born with water on the brain and has endured a childhood of poverty and teasing from his peers. “My brain damage left me near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other...I get headaches because my eyes are like enemies, you know? Like, they used to be married to each other, but now they hate each other’s guts.”

So when it comes time for high school Arnold refuses to accept that he’s destined to spend his entire life on the “rez.” He makes the huge decision to leave and attend school in all-white Reardan High, even falling for “movie-star pretty” Penelope and trying out for the varsity basketball team.

The book’s chapters are short, the cast of characters quirky and the snappy sentence style might fool you into thinking this book could be a quick read. But be forewarned. There’s a lot hidden here under the surface. Alcoholism threads through the entire book and there’s real brutality in some of the characters’ interactions. Arnold himself is irreverent and unflinchingly honest about his own predicament. His move off the rez has effectively and spiritually alienated him from his “tribe” and turned him into an apple—red on the outside, white on the inside.

Young readers will love the drawings sprinkled throughout the book by cartoonist Ellen Forney that bring an intimate feel to the telling of Arnold’s tale, as if you’re paging through someone’s notebook doodles. Arnold, the budding cartoonist says, “I draw because words are too unpredictable....when you draw a picture, everybody can understand it. So I draw because I want to talk to the world. And I want the world to pay attention to me.”

One drawing shows Arnold arriving for his first day of school at Reardan High, split right down the middle—the white side of him has the bright future, the Indian side the vanishing past. The white side has Tommy Hilfiger khakis and the Indian side has a Glad garbage book bag and canvas tennis shoes purchased in aisle seven of the Safeway Supermarket. Another documents Arnold’s cache of possible responses to his most expected question, “Are You Poor?”

Forney teaches cartooning at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts and is a long-time friend of Alexie. I asked her whether she and the author ever had any second thoughts about portraying Indians in a way that could be considered stereotypical.

“Sherman’s feeling was that this was his reality," Forney said. "On his reservation, in his family, alcoholism was epidemic. Stereotype implies that it’s not real and it’s absolutely real. My cartoons might temper that reality a bit, but the edge is definitely there.”

At one point Gordy, the white genius of Reardan High gives Arnold a book to read. Here’s an excerpt of Arnold’s musings.

“Gordy gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Well, I hate to argue with the Russian genius but Tolstoy didn’t know Indians, and he didn’t know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reason: the frickin’ booze.”

But Arnold’s humor, creativity, and refusal to give up hope in the face of overwhelming odds wins out and by the end of the book, if you’ve given it the time it deserves, you are entirely inside Arnold’s oversized head delving into every possible aspect of his adolescent wanderings. I’m betting when you turn the last page, you’ll find it hard to shake him out of YOUR head — this engaging and sympathetic boy, looking to see if maybe, just maybe, he can belong to more than one tribe.

Before I Die
by Mary Hershey
2007 Jenny Downham
David Fickling Books
Hardcover, $15.99

Review by Ann Gonzales

Before I Die, by Jenny Downham is so book. That’s book, as in cool or excellent — one of the best British slang words to come from teenagers texting each other. (When attempting to type the word “cool” on a cell phone keypad, the first word you’ll write is “book,” and that’s how it entered the British vernacular.) With every page of Before I Die, I felt envy and admiration for the clarity of Tessa’s voice and the beauty of the prose. Reading it as a writer, it’s a book I wish I’d written, and I hope, someday, to write one as good... you know, before I die.

The story shape of Before I Die is relatively simple – a sixteen-year-old girl, Tessa, is dying of acute leukemia, and she has a list of things she wants to do before she passes away. The list itself is compelling; it contains many firsts such as having sex, doing drugs, becoming famous, and saying yes to everything. As Tessa completes items on the list, she adds more as a way of putting off the inevitable. The list is her lifeline.

At the heart, this is a story about not wanting to die because of all the experiences one wants to have in life. The reason this basic story is riveting and not simply depressing is because Downham allows us to understand, through Tessa, what it’s like to experience deep and undeniable grief without ourselves having to bear it. We are given the rare and profound opportunity to share in Tessa’s heightened states of awareness, anger, desire and sensitivity. We get to experience the jarring turns from happy to sad to angry, which transform Tessa from one second to the next, and we get to become intimately aware of the significance and importance of this life we are living. We get to awaken to the gift of time.

Tessa’s friend Zoey, also a teenage girl, becomes unexpectedly pregnant. Tessa wants to live to see Zoey’s baby born, but all the doctors and medical tests suggest she won’t make it. Tessa narrates, “Zoey’s over three months pregnant. A baby needs nine months to grow. It’ll be born in May, same as me. I like May. You get two bank holiday weekends. You get cherry blossom. Bluebells. Lawnmowers. The drowsy smell of new-cut grass. It’s one hundred and fifty-four days until May.”

Tessa fights for another one hundred and fifty-four days. Most of the literature about people dying gives the impression that everyone achieves a profound state of acceptance in their final weeks, days or hours. This hasn’t been my experience. On the contrary, when I’ve attended to the terminally ill, they’ve all had an unrelenting desire to deny death, right up until their last breath. They are fierce about living, just as Tessa is. That’s another reason I love this book: it never turns Tessa into a wise young patient willing to accept her death like an enlightened sage, like Jesus or the Buddha. Tessa is completely human, she doesn’t want to die, and she fights for every breath, every experience, every blessed minute. Downham has my gratitude for writing a book for those of us who don’t want to die, and don’t want to feel inadequate if we aren’t sage and tranquil about the inevitability of our own demise.

The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California
by Mary Hershey
Razorbill/Penguin Young Readers Group (Ages 10 and up)
Hardcover, $15.99

Review By Sharon Mentyka

Booksellers tell us that girls will read books in which the protagonist is a boy but it doesn't work the other way around. With the Harry Potter series laid to bed, a common complaint among parents of pre-teen boys is the dearth of books that interest their sons. (Would-be children's writers might take note.)

An exception might be Mary Hershey's newest novel, The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California. The book has an unwieldy title, a complicated plot with too many subplots, creepy characters, difficult father-son relationships, rough language... hey, wait a minute... this is starting to sound pretty appealing to a pre-teen boy!

The story centers on thirteen-year-old Alastair, who calls himself 'Stump,' and who is shipped out to spend the summer with his estranged father in California. When Alastair was eight, he lost one of his legs after a too-soon jump from a ski lift. Guess who was supposed to be supervising him at the time? Now Stump is ready to confront his father for ruining his life. Except he didn't count on a host of new discoveries he makes, not least of which is the unrelenting optimism of Skyla, his father's new wife who also happens to be a double amputee.

Hershey has woven macabre humor and irreverence into Alastair's life that I suspect young readers will find satisfyingly normal. Stump is the first one out of the gate to crack jokes about his own disability, such as when he takes off his leg at school, puts it in his locker, then ties a rag with fake blood around it.

The jump in the title is both literal and metaphoric, as the best jumps should be. Both Stump and his father are on the brink of looking at each other in new ways. Hershey lets us see their journey with wicked humor and underlying affection. But the real star of this story is Stump and his voice. It is worth noting that the author is a former juvenile probation officer who says she has had 'the great privilege of working with some very funny, smart, and resilient kids.' In her wonderful depiction of Stump, it shows.

Bill the Warthog Mysteries - Series
by Dean A. Anderson
Volume 1 – Full Metal Trench Coat
Volume 2 – Guarding the Tablets of Stone

Review By Stefanie Freele

“I don't suppose you have a friend who is a warthog. You probably don't have a friend who is a professional detective, either. So it's very unlikely that you have a friend who's both. But I do."

Dean A. Anderson is an emerging author who also is fond of the terms ‘up and coming’ or ‘has potential.’ He attended San Diego State University,
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and worked as a youth pastor. He is now a hotel night auditor. The "Bill" books ("Full Metal Trench Coat" and "Guarding the Tablets of Stone" with three more awaiting publication) came about when a church he was serving in treated him to a writer's conference. He needed to turn in something to be evaluated, so he wrote a collection of bedtime stories he had told his kids about a warthog detective. And at that very conference, an editor expressed interest in publishing his book. When he tried to contact that editor a few weeks later, he found she had lost her job. But, he kept sending Bill off, and a few years later, he found a home.

The Bill the Warthog books can be found at
www.Sundayschoolstore.com and www.Christianbook.com.