- Farewell Floppy by Benjamin Chaud (Chronicle Books)
- Black and White by Dahlov Ipcar (Flying Eye Books)
- By Mouse & Frog by Deborah Freedman (Viking Childrens Books)
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School... by Davide Cali and Benjamin Chaud (Chronicle Books)
- Mr. Pants #2: Slacks, Camera, Action! by Scott McCormick, pictures by R. H. Lazzell (Dial Books for Young Readers)
Episode Transcript:
First up: Farewell Floppy by Benjamin Chaud, published by Chronicle Books. In this story a boy has his floppy-eared rabbit and he tries to lose the rabbit. The entire story is about trying to lose a pet that you're just kind of over. The pet doesn't do anything. I can't teach it tricks. It doesn't give me affection. It's just kind of a lumpy animal. And so the boy throughout most of the course of this story travels deeper and deeper into the woods trying to lose his animal and runs into a girl along the way that has a dog and is wondering how many other animals have been taken out to the middle of the woods to be lost here. It's a sweet story and I like that the boy narrates the whole story and flips the story on it's head by essentially trying to lose a pet. We don't often get that approach, but it's definitely cute.
The next books is by Dahlov Ipcar and it's a reissue by Flying Eye Books. It's called Black and White. Again, written and illustrated by Dahlov Ipcar. Some of you might have read these books growing up. This one is about two dogs who have dreams of different animals and different things in black and white. The illustrations are beautiful. They look classic. And Flying Eye has done a wonderful job bringing them back up. The illustrations are timeless in that way that they can appeal through the generations. I feel like I'm seeing something new here now that could have been created fifty or sixty years ago, or it could have been published right now by some of our contemporary artists. The rhyming text is beautiful and it's just a subtle story that plays on different animals and different colors and shadows and light. It's really kind of an understated, beautiful book. One that I think is an easy one to enjoy reading over and over and over. Nothing huge or groundbreaking happens in it, but it's the subtlety that causes you to come back over and over.
The third book is called By Mouse & Frog and it's written by Deborah Freedman and published by Viking. And in this story you kind of having a sibling story, if you will, of Mouse, who is this talented artist who wants to tell a story and make the illustrations really beautiful and edited down and Frog jumps in a just wants to be a part of it. Frog is a little frantic and the art style is definitely younger and not as mature. But they have to find a way to co-exist. Again, much like siblings, Mouse has to find a way to tolerate Frog, but Frog also needs to understand Mouse's boundaries. And it's got a wonderful twist. You know, Deborah Freedman is great for braking the fourth wall in her books and for just taking the story in a direction you might not expect, and she certainly delivers on By Mouse and Frog.
Book number four is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School… by Davide Cali and Benjamin Chaud and this is published by Chronicle Books. This is a sequel actually, a follow up to I Didn't Do My Homework Because… And certainly in this story we have a boy who was trying to get to school but was late and the teacher's kind of grilling him about "Why are you late?" and he comes up with the most bizarre excuses like at the bus stop he was attacked by ninjas. There were these underground mole people that pulled him beneath the sidewalk. And then he became gigantic. And then he came to regular size but fell on a strange blob. It's kind of one thing after another, but it's just wonderful and it sounds like a kid's imagination running wild. And I think that it's that quality that draws me to it as much because we adults don't always think that way, but for kids it's completely plausible or at least enjoyable that things go so randomly and so crazy.
And speaking of random and crazy, the best book ever this week for me is one that I can't stop thinking about. It's called Mr. Pants: Slacks, Camera, Action! This is book #2 of the Mr. Pants series and it's written by Scott McCormick. Pictures are by R. H. Lazzell. And it comes out from Dial Books for Young Readers. And I'm gonna tell you up from that this might not be a book that you as an adult like because it is written so clearly for children. The illustrations look, I'm sure how else to say this respectfully, but they look sort of amateurish. They look wittled down enough that a kid could copy this book and make a semblance of a sequel to Mr. Pants that would fit in the same universe. And yet there's a lot of sophistication to this story and it is certainly about three cats trying to coexist in a house with a mom who is very aware that these cats talk and who talks back to them. But Mr. Pants, our protagonist, is trying to shoot a movie and is kind of forcing his family around to do different things. It's ridiculous. He enters a film show. You will laugh out loud. Your kids are going to want to read this over and over and over and over. And that is why I'm calling Mr. Pants: Slacks, Camera, Action! the best book ever this week. Way to go!
The next books is by Dahlov Ipcar and it's a reissue by Flying Eye Books. It's called Black and White. Again, written and illustrated by Dahlov Ipcar. Some of you might have read these books growing up. This one is about two dogs who have dreams of different animals and different things in black and white. The illustrations are beautiful. They look classic. And Flying Eye has done a wonderful job bringing them back up. The illustrations are timeless in that way that they can appeal through the generations. I feel like I'm seeing something new here now that could have been created fifty or sixty years ago, or it could have been published right now by some of our contemporary artists. The rhyming text is beautiful and it's just a subtle story that plays on different animals and different colors and shadows and light. It's really kind of an understated, beautiful book. One that I think is an easy one to enjoy reading over and over and over. Nothing huge or groundbreaking happens in it, but it's the subtlety that causes you to come back over and over.
The third book is called By Mouse & Frog and it's written by Deborah Freedman and published by Viking. And in this story you kind of having a sibling story, if you will, of Mouse, who is this talented artist who wants to tell a story and make the illustrations really beautiful and edited down and Frog jumps in a just wants to be a part of it. Frog is a little frantic and the art style is definitely younger and not as mature. But they have to find a way to co-exist. Again, much like siblings, Mouse has to find a way to tolerate Frog, but Frog also needs to understand Mouse's boundaries. And it's got a wonderful twist. You know, Deborah Freedman is great for braking the fourth wall in her books and for just taking the story in a direction you might not expect, and she certainly delivers on By Mouse and Frog.
Book number four is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to School… by Davide Cali and Benjamin Chaud and this is published by Chronicle Books. This is a sequel actually, a follow up to I Didn't Do My Homework Because… And certainly in this story we have a boy who was trying to get to school but was late and the teacher's kind of grilling him about "Why are you late?" and he comes up with the most bizarre excuses like at the bus stop he was attacked by ninjas. There were these underground mole people that pulled him beneath the sidewalk. And then he became gigantic. And then he came to regular size but fell on a strange blob. It's kind of one thing after another, but it's just wonderful and it sounds like a kid's imagination running wild. And I think that it's that quality that draws me to it as much because we adults don't always think that way, but for kids it's completely plausible or at least enjoyable that things go so randomly and so crazy.
And speaking of random and crazy, the best book ever this week for me is one that I can't stop thinking about. It's called Mr. Pants: Slacks, Camera, Action! This is book #2 of the Mr. Pants series and it's written by Scott McCormick. Pictures are by R. H. Lazzell. And it comes out from Dial Books for Young Readers. And I'm gonna tell you up from that this might not be a book that you as an adult like because it is written so clearly for children. The illustrations look, I'm sure how else to say this respectfully, but they look sort of amateurish. They look wittled down enough that a kid could copy this book and make a semblance of a sequel to Mr. Pants that would fit in the same universe. And yet there's a lot of sophistication to this story and it is certainly about three cats trying to coexist in a house with a mom who is very aware that these cats talk and who talks back to them. But Mr. Pants, our protagonist, is trying to shoot a movie and is kind of forcing his family around to do different things. It's ridiculous. He enters a film show. You will laugh out loud. Your kids are going to want to read this over and over and over and over. And that is why I'm calling Mr. Pants: Slacks, Camera, Action! the best book ever this week. Way to go!
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