Review of the Day: Alice in Sunderland

Alice in Sunderland by Bryan Talbot. Dark Horse Books. $29.95.

There have been, and always will be, books that intimidate your average everyday book reviewer. As someone who works primarily with children’s literature, this doesn’t happen to me all that often. After all, as much as I’d like to be overawed by the latest Junie B. Jones series title, it just ain’t gonna happen. But encompassing the whole of literature written with children in mind means sometimes having to deal with books that only just barely touch on my sphere of experience. When I first heard of Bryan Talbot’s graphic novel, “Alice in Sunderland,” I had no idea what it was. Not really. A glance at the cover gives the reader some hints to the contents, but for your average everyday American the word “Sunderland” means nothing. It’s a nonsense word. A play on “Wonderland” obviously, but beyond that we’re without reference. Standing at an impressive 328 pages, the book is obviously publisher Dark Horse Comics’ most ambitious project to date. Dense, intense, and without comparison, Talbot has constructed the ultimate love letter/tour guide to his home. The fact that it may have also inspired Lewis Carroll’s best-known work? Almost a sidenote.

Step right up! Step right in! Take off your hats and coats and make yourself at home. A man walks into a theater for a performance unlike any other. Onstage, the rabbit mask-wearing lead performer begins to tell the story. But it’s not the story of Alice in Wonderland or even Charles Dodgson, her creator. Rather it’s the tale of a place. A little strip of land on the North Eastern side of the island of Britain. A location that has inspired so many heroes, stories, tales, and legends you’d be amazed to hear them all. But Talbot isn’t going to concentrate on the biggest folktales of his region. Nothing so straightforward. Instead, the book leaps, glances, references, and side-steps around every possible connection Sunderland might have to the world of Alice. What's more, the very history of Britain itself is tied intricately into Sunderland’s tale. At the heart of it all, however, is the story of Lewis Carroll. For every seemingly inconsequential tangent, Talbot continually and continuously ties Alice Liddell, muse to the great author, and Carroll to the land they belonged to. Part historical treatise, part series of Rosicrucian-like connections, Talbot is unafraid to absolutely stuff his book with as much information as humanly possible. The result is a ridiculous and magnificent ode to a too little appreciated region.

It might sound a tedious affair. Constant backing and forthing between the present and the past. History coming alive is meant to be boring, right? So what are we to do when an artist like Talbot bends over backwards, not only to fit everything in, but to violently and continually change his style so as to both retain our attention and show off his prowess? Care to hear Henry V’s speech before Harfleur, Act III, Scene I, done in the style of Mad Magazine? A Jabberwocky poem via Tenniel (right down to the bisexual hero?). Bryan Talbot can tell the story of brave Jack Crawford like it was a boys adventure tale then turn around and present some pretty nasty Normans ala Jack Kirby. There’s even a bit of D.C. horror, odes to Herge, and a visitation from god-amongst-comic-artists Scott McCloud. Tenniel and Hogarth may get their due praise, but let us too admire what Talbot has seen fit to sneak in here and there artistically.

But I love the little things about this book too. The central plot concerns a single attendee, treated to this magnificent show in the Empire Theater. Of course the performer, the viewer, and even the man giving the walking tour are all various rather handsome versions of Talbot himself. Still, you grow very attached to the man watching. You're touched by his continual love and interest in George Fornby, local boy made good, ukulele phenomenon, and general nice guy. It’s history is what it is. Hearing that the current Queen of England is related by blood to Alice Liddell isn’t just good fun. Talbot can then turn Her Majesty into the Red Queen and at the same time show the moment Queen Elizabeth unveiled Sunderland’s ode to the Great Library of St. Peter’s in 1993. No detail is so small that Talbot can’t weave it into the text in some fashion.

I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Talbot discuss this book at a conference held by the Lewis Carroll Society of North America. And let me tell you, it takes guts to stand before that kind of assemblage so to present a book on their beloved. From that talk, however, I learned all kinds of secrets about "Sunderland". The amount of Photoshop that has gone into some of these pages looks daunting at the outset. It’s even more so when you hear how Talbot meticulously reconstructed some of his photographic scenes. The image of photographers taking pics of Alice at Columbia in her later years? Some of those fellows were lifted out of the original filmed production of “King Kong”. That image of the Bayeux Tapestry? It took some wrangling to get to display even the replicated version held in the Reading Museum of Berkshire.

Not that the book is flawless. Sorry folks, but while Talbot may be a genius he is by no means perfect. He tends to bog down on the topics that are of the greatest interest to him and him alone. A walking tour thorough the public art of modern day Sunderland is cool to begin with but can’t maintain the book's momentum after a while. Facts about Sunderland’s shipbuilding and geography come across as akin to Melville’s whaling portions of “Moby Dick”. You feel obligated to read through them, but you get no pleasure from doing so. It’s also funny to take into account what Talbot didn’t include alongside what he did. He fails to speak on whether or not the Cheshire Cat’s origins are also Sunderland-based (a notable absence, I feel). He doesn’t mention, when discussing the Bayeux Tapestry (England’s first graphic novel and compiled by “a single artist”) that the creator was widely considered to be a woman. Sometimes watching the unmentioned becomes as fascinating as the mentioned.

Ah well. It’s a remarkable affair just the same. For those readers willing to dedicate a couple days of their time to reading it through, “Alice in Sunderland” is one of the most rewarding reads. The convergence of graphic novel enthusiasts, Lewis Carroll advocates, and history majors is sweet indeed. An intimidating work in the best possible sense of the term.

OTHER REVIEWS: The most creative review I've seen in a long time comes via Gad, Sir! Comics! Really remarkable and worth a gander on your part.

EXTRA: Please also be so good as to check out the official Bryan Talbot Fanpage for further information. And on a related note, this animation of the Bayeux Tapestry is worth checking out as well (thanks to Diane Duane).

Review of the Day: Tiny Tyrant

Tiny Tyrant by Lewis Trondheim, illustrated by Fabrice Parme. First Second Books (an imprint of Roaring Book Press). $10.50.

The French are different from you and me. They like their graphic novels smart, colorful, and consistently amusing. What other nation could claim the wonders of “Asterix and Obelix”? Who else has the chops to give us Joann Sfar on the one hand and then turn around to toss us the partnership of Lewis Trondheim & Fabrice Parme on the other? First Second Books, never afraid to co-opt the foreign so as to market it to one and all, has now brought us a title from the aforementioned Trondheim & Parme pairing. Now I’d like you to bear in mind that I am not a pushover on the subject of French GNs. To be frank with you, I love French graphic novels for teens but have never found one for younger kids that gave me anything but a vague sense of nausea/the willies. The “A.L.I.E.E.E.N.” and the “Sardine in Space” books do nothing for me. “Tiny Tyrant”, however, is another matter entirely. Telling various tales surrounding a pint-sized ruler with very little common sense, I think First Second has a winner on its hands. It’s hip. It’s hilarious. And it’s something I’d hand any kid if they looked at me mournfully and asked if I didn’t have any comics on my library shelves.

Meet King Ethelbert. You can call him, Your Majesty. As the six-year-old ruler of Portocristo, Ethelbert’s not just a pain. He’s a menace to the very society he rules. If he’s not conjuring up dinosaurs out of a laboratory or shrinking the world around him, then he’s fighting with his insufferable cousin Sigismund or kicking Santa Claus in the rear. Ethelbert isn’t all bad, of course. I mean he’s perfectly nice to Princess Hildegardina (though that might be because she’s three times as rich as he is and he wants to prevent his cousin from marrying her). And he sends a guy over to India for an all expense paid vacation (though, to Ethelbert’s mind, it was the worst punishment he could conjure up). All in all, he’s not the kind of monarch you’d necessarily like, but he does happen to be a king you’ll have a hard time putting down. This book is a collection of the best "Tiny Tyrant" stories from eight different French volumes.

Basically the book won me over to its charms right from the start. In “Safety First” Ethelbert finds himself in the care of a bodyguard. Not content to get just any old protector, however, the king decides to test his new servant in the hopes of finding a chink in the man’s admirable abilities. So what do you do when you want to test your new bodyguard? You put a price on your own head, naturally. When groups from all over the globe start showing up, the sheer variety of them is delightful. Everyone from The Family Farmers Liberation Front to a Michigander ambush performed by the Dastardly Detroiters, takes a hand. Not for the first time would I wonder to what extent translator Alexis Siegel and (uncredited) Edward Gauvin added their own personal touches to these exceedingly funny bits of wordplay. Princess Hildegardina, for example, speaks with a lofty convoluted speech that frequently leaves Ethelbert tongue-tied himself. How many of these words are direct translations of the French and how many the delightful vocal curlicues of Siegel and Gauvin?

I would like to point out that not just anyone can do humor and I credit author Lewis Trondheim on some of Ethelbert’s finer ridiculous aspects. When a group of Ethelbert lookalike robots takes over the palace his doubles offer a list of demands that are exceedingly magnificent in their silliness. For example, “I wanna see a death match between a giraffe and a penguin.” If I can take nothing else away from the book, let me at least take that.

Were it not for the book’s bookflap, I might not have noticed that artist Fabrice Parme draws quite a lot of inspiration from “the classic animation of Mr. Magoo and The Pink Panther.” Thinking about it, you can definitely see the mod influences here. And I was particularly taken with the look of Ethelbert himself. It's difficult to tear your eyes away from those eyebrows that float about a foot above his head and are roughly the same size as his body from the neck down. Lest you believe this penned by an American artist, however, I did find a couple instances here and there that were particularly daring by U.S. standards. For example, in the story “A Mountaintop Inheritance”, Ethelbert and Sigismund fight over their now deceased great-great-Aunt’s inheritance. As their squabble disintegrates over a single gold ingot, they start pulling various firearms at one another from a host of weapons lying on the floor. Trust me when I say that it works, but you can definitely see the horror that will grace some parents’ faces when they come to that part of the book. Then again, we all grew up watching Warner Brothers cartoons where pulling a gun on someone was an act of humor (much as it is here) so I don’t think any lasting damage will crease your own tiny tot’s head as a result. Still, keep an eye out for squeamish adults. They may have something to say about this section.

I find it more than a little coincidental that “Tiny Tyrant” is getting a release on the exact same day as David Horvath’s picture book, Bossy Bear. Look me in the eye and tell me these two books don’t have a lot in common. Right here. Right in the eye. Now tell me. Can’t do it, can ya? Yeah, no, I didn’t think so, and why? Because the color scheme is frighteningly similar. The drawing style has some pretty familiar elements. Plus there’s the mild fact that both books are about crown-wearing tiny tots with egos the size of Goodyear blimps. A good pairing? Not necessarily since there’s the difference in age level to take into account here. Still, should you wish to get your nine-year-old and five-year-old nieces and nephews some related gifts, this wouldn’t be an unlikely pairing.

On its own “Tiny Tyrant” is sure to amuse plenty of kids and adults alike. If petulant dictators with little education and even less interest in the the plight of the common man are your cup of tea (and in this day and age, how could they not be?), you may find in this book a fun house mirror for our times.

On shelves May 1st.

Follow the link for a preview of the story Picture-perfect Children.

Review of the Day: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Amulet Books (an imprint of Abrams Books for Young Readers). $12.95

The world has not yet invented a method of finding the best webcomics currently available on the Internet for kids. So basically, for every twenty low-quality/poorly thought out amalgamations of crap, you get one bright shining star. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” the webcomic, was one such star. The only conclusion I can really draw at this point is that somebody at Abrams is a friggin’ genius for plucking the comic up and making it into a book. Now normally I don’t like to separate titles into “girl books” and “boy books”, but Jeff Kinney has written such a marvelous “boy book” that for every parent that walks in the door of my library I’m going to be cramming this title into their arms. Heck, I’ll slip it into their purses if I have to. This book is going to reach its intended audience whether I have to wrestle skeptical parents to the floor with it clamped firmly in my teeth. Want to transfer your Captain Underpants lovers from graphic novels to fiction? This book won’t do that. It’s just something that every single person will get a kick out of.

First things first. Boys do not have diaries. Girls have diaries. Let’s get that straight cause things could get messy if we don’t. Basically, what we have here are the gathered thoughts and memories of Greg Haffley. Greg’s got a pretty average life, all things considered. His older brother is a jerk, his younger brother annoying, his best friend a doofus, and his parents perfect dweebs. To top it all off, Greg’s been thrown into his first year of middle school and things are really weird. Suddenly friendships are shifting and Greg’s not sure who he wants to be. Add in some haunted houses, wrestling, downhill games involving bodily injury, forbidden cheese, and basic family fears and you’ve got yourself one heckuva debut.

I should specify that in spite of the fact that this book is based on a webcomic, it’s not a graphic novel. Not really. Comic illustrations appear on every single page and complement the storytelling, but this is really more a (what’s the term again?) illustrated novel. What this appears to be, more than anything else, is a notebook that’s been written in by hand with the occasional cartoony illustration here and there for effect. It never breaks up into panels or long illustrated periods. There are just tasty little comic treats on each and every page.

Now the term “laugh-out-loud funny” is not to be bandied about. When I say that something is “laugh-out-loud funny” I don’t want to be talking titters, mild chuckles, or undersized, underfed guffaws. I want to describe something so amusing that you think about it later and start laughing in an embarrassing manner on the subway. Jeff Kinney gave me that more than once. There was the moment when Greg’s trying to get out of performing as an apple-throwing tree in his school’s production of, “The Wizard of Oz.” He thinks that maybe if he screws up what he has to say, that might be his out. “But when you only have one word to say, it’s really hard to mess up your lines.” The next thing we know, “Dorothy” has picked an apple and Greg’s trying out a tentative, “Owwwchhh?” Oh! And the form thank you letters! Greg figures out that he says basically the same thing to all his relatives. So he just cranks out a form letter and fills in the details. This works great until he gets to something like, “Dear AUNT LORETTA, Thank you so much for the awesome PANTS! How did you now I wanted that for Christmas? I love the way the PANTS looks on my LEGS! All my friends will be so jealous that I have my very own PANTS.” I think I was laughing over this for a good three hours after I read it.

There’s something particularly charming about Kinney’s illustration/cartoons too. The lines are incredibly clean and precise, even as they are showing some pretty raucous stuff. Kinney’s grasp on visual gags is without comparison. At one point Greg happens to mention that if you “mess up in front of Dad” (i.e. kick over your little brother’s toys maliciously) he’ll throw whatever he has in his hands at you. We then see two shots of Greg misbehaving. The first is labeled, “GOOD TIME TO SCREW UP:” and shows him kicking over some blocks while his dad is holding the newspaper. The second reads, “BAD TIME TO SCREW UP:” and shows him doing it while his dad is cementing together a brick wall. Comedy gold, people! The comics are drawn over lined paper, making the whole enterprise really feel as if you’re poring through someone else’s journal.

And for all that, the writing’s not too shabby. When Greg talks about week-ends he says, “The only reason I get out of bed at all on weekends is because eventually, I can’t stand the taste of my own breath anymore.” Been there. Tasted that. Kinney’s able to point out all kinds of funny school details we adults may have forgotten, but that kids will recognize instantly. For example, why should you tell kids that “It’s great to be you,” when a lot of people really should think about changing themselves? We see two bullies shoving some poor kid down at this point yelling, “It’s great to be me!,” you you have to concede the point. I mean, Kinney remembers what it was like to roll a really big snowball and then see that you were ripping up the grass on your lawn in the process. No one remembers that! Characters are also lovingly delineated, not only in words, but in their little comic illustrations. Take as your example the character of Greg's fellow student and neighbor Fregley. Fregley is weird. So how would you, as the writer/cartoonist, convey this? You might want to have him say things like, “Wanna see my secret freckle?". You might draw him with a mouth wider than his head. You might have him stabbing kites in his front yard, shirtless. For a start, anyway. Every character in this book feels real. Even Greg’s annoying, practically mute, little brother.

And so much more. Such as the name of Greg’s older brother’s band. Loaded Diaper, only it’s spelled “Loded Diper” with an umlaut over the “o”. Greg suspects his brother thinks that it really is spelled that way. And there are the small failures and triumphs of your average pre-adolescent. No one in their right mind would ever want to return to the days of Middle School, but if Jeff Kinney keeps churning out books like this one, I’ll follow him there any day of the week. This title has already been getting some pretty choice reviews here and there. Can I make a nomination for funniest children’s book of 2007? Consider it a necessary purchase.

On shelves April 1, 2007.

Notes on the Cover: Apparently (and I'm getting this through the author's blog so don't quote me) the hardcover version of this book is going to have, "cool special effects like fake Scotch tape." I don't know if that means that there will be fake shiny scotch tape or what, but it sounds neat. I am rather partial to the design of the book too. The cartoon character on the cover, who looks like he was drawn on notebook paper and then slapped on a leather (slightly scuffed) diary. It's nice. Makes it look as if the publisher really cared about the subject.

For Additional Info: The series originally ran as a webcomic on www.funbrain.com.

Other Blog Reviews: The Goddess of YA
The What the Font Forum (wherein the poster obsessed over the choice of handwritten font)

Review of the Day: The Plain Janes

The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci, illustrated by Jim Rugg. Minx (the new DC Comics imprint). $9.99

Back up, back up. I’ve a whole roll of justifications for reviewing this, so let’s not assume I’m breaking any rules here quite yet. Now I know that I only review children’s books on this site. YA is such a vast ungodly stretch of landscape that I feel better limiting myself to books where the most shocking word you run across on a given day is “scrotum” (and not even a guy’s scrotum at that). Heck, if I really wanted to give myself an age group that would allow me some down time I could limit myself ever further and just do picture books or something. Whee. Fortunately I’m not that far gone yet. Now as you may or may not know, I’ve a weakness for good children’s graphic novels. They’re… uh… well they’re a bit rare these days. So sometimes a girl’s just gotta go with her instincts. Now having read “The Plain Janes” to myself, I’ve determined that there’s nothing in this book that would make me uncomfortable if I handed it to a ten-year-old. In fact, you may find me wrasslin’ up a pack of ten-year-olds fairly soon just so I can pop this book into their hands and watch them grow into little anarchists. So as it stands, this is a YA graphic novel, but there’s no reason in the world not to welcome it into your children’s rooms as well. If, that is, you don’t mind a little terrorism and the occasional Bertolt Brecht quote here and there.

Meet the Minx imprint. Described as providing, “Smart, original stories,” and, “Strong female protagonists,” to say nothing of their, “Different creators for each book,” DC Comics is making a backwards lunge for the elusive teen girl graphic novel market. Cool, huh? Ready for the irony now? Of the seven books Minx is putting out in 2007, how many women do you guess are either authors or illustrators of any of the books? Yeah, out of the fourteen people only TWO are female. Cause, y’know, it’s not like there aren’t roughly one billion female YA authors out there who might like to try their hand at writing a graphic novel. You’ll forgive me, then, if I decided to check out the Minx book that actually had a, y’know, living breathing female involved in it in some manner before I go slumming it with the gents. Cecil Castellucci is, at this point in time, carefully positioning herself as a sort of YA Higher Power. She’s the person you would’ve yearned to hang out with in high school, only to somehow end up relegated to the Meg Cabot table instead. She’s hip and alternative and apparently knows from whence she writes. In her first graphic novel, “The Plain Janes,” the divine Ms. C takes on the Big Brother atmosphere of your average suburban high school with a nice bit of pomp and flair. The girl's got bite.

Jane doesn’t remember the accident very well. One minute you’re walking along the street, and the next you’re flat on your face with people running and screaming all around you. Unpleasant. Still, all things considered, she could have it a lot worse. Terrorist attacks tend to kill people, and this one just left a perfectly nice guy unconscious. That thought isn’t enough to comfort Jane's now paranoid parents, though. Before she knows it the family has left the big city and entered Suburbia proper. Talk about landing in a place perfectly designed to stifle any and all artistic expression. Maybe the worst part about moving to a new high school is locating a new group of friends, but Jane’s pretty sure she’s got that one covered. She’s discovered a group of girls at a table in the cafeteria and they all have names that are some kind of derivation of Jane. Cool, right? Well maybe, but it seems like these girls don’t want anything to do with her. Plus there’s this guy she’s been writing who was knocked unconscious after the blast, a fellow at school who’s all kinds of cute, and a popular girl who just can’t seem to take a hint. It isn’t until Jane establishes P.L.A.I.N. (People Loving Art In Neighborhoods) and doing undercover public art displays with her fellow Janes that the group really begins to gel. Only now the city’s in a uproar over the art, the boy is acting weird, and Jane’s parents are supremely paranoid. Nothing’s easy for a girl who wants to be different. Especially if she wants to be different alongside her friends.

I cannot stress enough how good it feels to have a book where the ultra-cool heroine keeps turning down the Queen Bee’s advances in the hope that maybe the girls at the “uncool” table will let her into their private circle. It’s like a breath of fresh air. Equally breathable? Castellucci’s writing. This was the first book of hers I’d taken the time to sit down and read, and it hits all the right buttons. She’s wry. Wry’s hard too. Wry doesn’t walk down the street everyday allowing you a glimpse of it. Once you find something wry you need to grab onto it with both hands and never let it go. “The Plain Janes” is a good example of that. For example, when you have a heroine who thinks something like, “Who needs a stupid grampa-loving, book-reading, good-smelling boy who I like talk to? I had real friends,” you know you’re in good hands.

She relies on stereotypes, of course. You know. All the Janes are cut-and-dried characters. The tall girl-jock with the unibrow. The chunky theater geek who keeps inserting quotations into her speech. The quiet brilliant gal who you can tell is smart because she wears glasses (duh). The overly enthusiastic gay guy ("James" rather than "Jane"). They’re all there. So I was going to go into this long convoluted speech that lamented this simplification of people during their teenage years… and then I remembered my own. Oooooh, right. Yeah, see, there’s a reason many of us try to block out the memory of high school. These people? They exist. They exist and they often grow up to be the most interesting folks you could run into on the street. So maybe Castellucci’s telling us something here with her characters.

Of course, the inner Liberal in me was just pleased as punch when it came to the book’s message. Think about it. This is a fine and upstanding example of harmless civil disobedience. Then suddenly the city starts making a big deal of it and the more it tries to tighten its hold on P.L.A.I.N., the more the girls feel obligated to do more and more art. The idea that a victim of an attack would, in turn, create a series of “art attacks” (as her critics call it) brings up all kinds of interesting points. If you agree that they are, in a sense, attacks then what does that say about post-traumatic stress? Is art ever an attack, though? What if it treads into graffiti territory?

Now in this Manga-infused day and age it’s a relief to read something where the character’s eyeballs don’t appear to have eaten half their heads. Though apparently artist Jim Rugg’s “Street Angel,” has a bit o’ grime here and there, the world of “The Plain Janes,” is slick and smooth. Not in a designy way, mind you. Just a strikingly delineated fashion. I was a little perturbed from time to time to find faces or body parts alternating in size from one panel to another. It’s a stylistic choice and by-and-large it doesn’t distract, but it’s not really my thing either. Still, he’s done a good job of conveying the characters, even when the words don’t. He probably wouldn’t have been my first choice as an artist, but for what he’s done he’s given the book his all.

If Minx chose, “The Plain Janes” as their debut, they chose well. It’s sweet and sneaky and just a little bit subversive, just as your average graphic YA novel should aspire to be. A tip of the hat then to a great l’il ole book. I look forward to watching its accolades roll in.

Note: For an extra bit o' fun, check out the mix CD compilation Ms. Castellucci recently posted as an accompaniment to her book. I, personally, would have included The Magnetic Fields song Parades Go By. That's just me, though.

Other reviews of this book include: Newsarama

On shelves May 1, 2007.

Review of the Day: The Strongest Man In the World: Louis Cyr

The Strongest Man In the World: Louis Cyr by Nicolas Debon. Groundwood Press. $17.95

Okay people. Fess up. If a teacher tells all the kids in her class that they are now doing projects on famous Canadians and that everyone has to come back with at least one great Canadian hero, what biography would you hand them? Hm? Yeah, see, that’s what I thought. You can’t think of any great biographies of Canadian heroes off the top of your head (and no, Paul Bunyan doesn’t count). The fact of the matter is that Americans know so very little about their neighbor to the North that they hardly ever fret such matters. And truth be told, your child may never be given this assignment. But what if they were? And what if you knew of this super-cool graphic novel style picture book biography about (not to put too fine a point on it), “The Strongest Man In the World”? How cool would that make you? Well sit back and relax, puffins, cause here I hand to you a gem of a book. Chronicling the life of Louis Cyr and written by Canadian/Frenchman Nicolas Debon, this is not your average tale of strength and daring-do. It has heart. It has soul. It has facts. What more could a person wish for then?

Emiliana is worried about her father, and she has every right to be. It's the early 20th century and he has just been told by the doctor that he must retire from public life. And maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but her papa’s not just any man. He’s Louis Cyr, a strongman of great fame and fortune. Owner and creator of the Louis Cyr Circus, Emiliana’s father reminisces with his daughter over his long and remarkable life. Readers see his early days, when he was coached by a grandfather convinced that his grandson would be strong since, “In this tough world of ours, a man without strength is nothing.” Then at seventeen he lifted an imported French drayhorse in a contest and his life’s work began. Debon sketches out Cyr’s years, taking into account various challenges and meaningful moments in his life. We see food contests, a brief stint as a policeman, and finally the European tour that allowed him to follow his dream to start a circus of his own. In the end he must quit the circus life, but as Louis himself says as he leaves, “I’ve been called the strongest man in the world, and one day somebody else will be even stronger… But maybe the strongest of all is the man who knows how to leave what he has loved with no regret.” An Afterword contains photographs and facts on the real Louis Cyr and there is a section of Further Information that includes books for supplemental reading.

Debon cleverly uses the character of Emiliana to bring up various rumors associated with Cyr’s life that are deftly put down from time to time. I suspect that in Canada such rumors would be better known than here in the states, but it’s fun to hear them just the same. Did he really carry off six bandits to jail all at once? No, probably more like one or two. Did he lift a horse when he was just a kid? Not at all. He was seventeen at the time. I was much impressed with the writing in this book, alongside Debon’s sense of storytelling. Essentially, what we have here is one great big flashback. But rather than feeling stilted or herky-jerky, the text flows from Cyr’s memories of the life he has led. Coming to the conclusion, you get a real sense that this man did exactly what he set out to accomplish. I couldn't help but hope for a Timeline in the back, of course. The Afterword really only touches on some of the aspects of Cyr’s life. We don’t know why he died or what of. I did find the photographs of him very interesting, as well as the mention that “Remarkably, despite dramatic improvements in strength training and lifting techniques, some of his records remain unequalled to this day.” Still, it would have been nice to hear which records those were.

Imagine a French Raymond Briggs and you get a sense of what Debon’s style resembles. The illustrations here are painted with thick earth-tones. Lots of browns, peaches, and blues are at work. The endpapers of this book display multiple acts that would have performed with Cyr during the height of his circus days. I was particularly taken with John Callahan, described as, “the funniest Clown in the Universe”, though he looks anything but. The graphic novel style works within the story Debon is trying to tell. At first I was suspicious of the format, fearing that Debon would rely too heavily on the style rather than the substance of his subject. However, the visual style works within the context of Cyr’s tale. If Louis Cyr was larger than life then it only seems fair that a picture book biography should find a technique that conveys all the drama and action of his life from start to finish.

I do wish that a little more time and attention could have been given over to Debon’s sources, to say nothing of the inclusion of a Timeline. Still, as new biographies go, “The Strongest Man In the World”, certainly does its darndest to pack a wallop. Infinitely readable and engaging, it’ll have kids all the more interested to learn about early 20th century circus life, and the feats of one man in particular. An engaging, unique little creation.

Review of the Day: The Arrival

The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Arthur A. Levine (Scholastic). $???

I’ll level with you here. This book isn’t coming out until October and it is so far away in terms of publication that Scholastic isn’t even sending out ARCs of it yet. But as it came out in Australia originally, and since I have in my hot little hands a copy of the Australian version, please know that this review is not based on the appearance of the final American product but, rather, the original Aussie package. By and large I like to hold off on reviewing a book more than six months in advance of its release date but at this moment I am so thrilled and excited by the splash that this title is bound to make that I’m going to sing its praises ASAP. If you’re smart, you’ll buy an Australian copy so as to get a sense of what America is going to experience eight months from now.

There are some books that come across my plate that strike me as mildly amusing. There are some books I develop a passion for over time. But once in a very great while, one per year if I’m lucky, I will find a book that gives me a powerful shock. An almost electric, instantaneous passion. “The Arrival” by Shaun Tan is the most amazing thing I’ve had the pleasure to read in years. A silent story of sequenced panels, “The Arrival” tells the story of a man’s immigration to a strange new land, and the people and places he discovers in the course of finding a place to call home. I have never read any book that puts the reader so perfectly into the shoes of someone who finds themselves somewhere that is completely and utterly bewildering to the senses.

A man prepares to leave his family for a new world. Tearfully they let him go as he boards a ship for another land. Once he arrives, he finds himself at a loss. Everything from the language to the buildings to the birds is strange here. The reader of this book sympathizes easily with the man since author/illustrator Shaun Tan has created a world that is just as odd to us as it is to our protagonist. Appliances consist of confusing pulls and toggles. People live and work in plate and cone-shaped structures, traveling via dirigibles and strange ship-shaped machinations of flight. As the man proceeds to discover how to find lodging, food, and work, he meets other immigrants who tell their own stories of hardship and escape. Through all this, our man grows richer for his experiences and even grows to love the odd little white-legged cat-sized tadpole creature that follows him everywhere. By the end, his family has arrived as well and the last image in the book is of his daughter as she helps another immigrant get directions in this dazzling and magnificent city.

Sometimes you fall in love with a book when you remember all the tiny details and little moments in it. At one point our hero looks in a pot and sees a spiked tail of a boy’s pet. The man is shocked and frightened and has to explain that he comes from a land where spiked tails have a horrific significance. Another time you get quick easy-to-miss little glimpses of everyday street scenes. A couple loading gigantic eggs into a cart on a street. A man getting a shave as a family of dog-sized hermit crabs scuttle underfoot. Street musicians surrounded by foxlike birds playing instruments you’ve never seen before. The book can feel like it's excerpting scenes from “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” one moment and then "In America" the next. And I’ve rarely seen an illustrator capture images of laughter, real honest-to-goodness laughter, any better Tan has here. On his website, the artist credits much of his research to a variety of books about the immigrant experience, to say nothing of his father’s memories of coming to Australia from Malaysia, interviews Tan conducted himself, and photographs that have found their way into this title as well.

In another part of his website, Tan explains that in this book, “the absence of any written description also plants the reader more firmly in the shoes of an immigrant character.” Tan is undoubtedly at his best when he allows the reader the chance to feel the sense of wonder and confusion that comes from immersing yourself in a culture you’re unfamiliar with. At one point our hero has dinner with a charming family. They eat odd spiky dishes that are prepared with unfamiliar torches. They play instruments you’ve never seen before and speak of escaping unimaginable, almost metaphorical, horrors. You are the main character in this book. His confusion is your confusion, and quite frankly he seems to adapt to his surroundings far better than I think most of us could. The language you encounter at all times is indecipherable. Even the clocks and the forms of transportation are magnificent and frightening. Yet at the same time, many of the people the man encounters are kind and try to help him navigate about. Tan knows too that if he makes the familiar just a little bit unfamiliar, that alone can confuse someone. So when the immigrants pull into a harbor, they see two large statues shaking hands in lieu of The Statue of Liberty.

I loved the animal companions that latch on to the humans in this book. They reminded me of Philip Pullman’s, “His Dark Materials” daemons, though if they have any kind of spiritual significance it's left to the reader to determine what that might be. As Tan says on his site, “I am often searching in each image for things that are odd enough to invite a high degree of personal interpretation, and still maintain a ring of truth.” He is not interested in the kind of symbolism where one object will stand for only one thing. He prefers to let people interpret his pictures in whatsoever way they prefer. If you feel these strange little animal companions are meant to symbolize how a person adapts to their new location, so be it. Tan isn’t going to tell you what to think. He’s just going to give you a helluva story and then let you do the rest yourself.

The art itself is phenomenal. Every language you see in this book is obviously made up, but no two languages you see here look the same. I repeat: You can tell the differences between separate imaginary languages. The realism of the style makes each picture look like a grainy sepia photograph taped inside a photo album. In fact, Tan has said that, “I was also struck with the idea of borrowing the ‘language’ of old pictorial archives and family photo albums I’d been looking at, which have both a documentary clarity and an enigmatic, sepia-toned silence. It occurred to me that photoalbums are really just another kind of picture book that everybody makes and reads, a series of chronological images illustrating the story of someone’s life.” So many of the memories in this book have a buckled quality to their corners. They look bent or pasted into the book in some way. There are wrinkles and tears and pieces that have flaked off over time. The quality of the sepia changes too. Sometimes the story is black and white, sometimes a golden honeyed-brown. In one sequence an old man remembers marching off to war. When going through a town the pictures appear in warm tones. Then we watch just the man's feet as they step over rocks and streams and the dead, and the palette grows darker and starker until we’ve just the blurred image of feet running. There's a quick view of the men attacking and then a single full page spread of black and white bones in a field.

I didn’t realize it at first, but I’ve been a fan of Shaun Tan’s work for years. In 2003 I was living in Minneapolis, Minnesota during a time when their main library branch was undergoing renovations. On a whim I visited their off-site location and wandered through their children’s room, looking for anything good. And there, standing all by its lonesome in the center of the space, was a striking picture book entitled, The Rabbits by John Marsden, illustrated by Shaun Tan. It was like nothing I’d ever read before. Published by the always magnificent Simply Read Books, the story was a crushing description of a native group of aboriginal animals destroyed utterly and totally by an invading society of rabbits. The words were heartbreaking in and of themselves, but the illustrations were the real draw. They contained magnificent intricate details hidden within page after page of text. Shaun Tan is like an industrialized and roughened William Joyce. His societies are full of dirt and muck and unspoken unstated horrors. They can reek of displacement more effectively than fifty pages of text could ever convey. So while “The Arrival” felt familiar to me, I didn’t immediately associate it with its creator’s former works. The feel of vast unfamiliar cityscapes is still present, but Tan leavens this latest offering with his human figures.

It seems almost unfair to the other publishers that Scholastic would have the wherewithal to publish not only this book but also Brian Selznick’s, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” in the same year. Scholastic has been especially good lately at locating books with strong visual narratives and adding them to their catalog. From the re-released colorized versions of Jeff Smith’s “Bone” series to Raina Telegemeier’s graphic novel adaptation of “The Baby-Sitters Club”, Scholastic is pushing the envelope time and again. My deepest hope is that “The Arrival” finds its audience. Because I could write paragraphs and paragraphs more about the meticulous details and searing personal portraits found in this story, I’ll just cut myself off now. Be sure to corner me at a party sometime, though, and I’ll wax eloquent for days on end if you let me.

It takes a deft hand to draw a book that can tell an emotionally resonant story without a single word and that works entirely in the medium of pictures. Shawn Tan says that “Even the most imaginary phenomena in the book are intended to carry some metaphorical weight…” I cannot praise this book highly enough then. Every story, every face, and every person in this book feels as if they carry the with them a thousand memories. You read this book in no doubt that Tan’s research and personal history has given “The Arrival” the hardest thing any novel can have; a soul. The best book published in America in 2007.

On shelves October 2007.

Review of the Day: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Scholastic. $22.99

I’ve been very good. I had a copy of this book sitting neatly on my desk and I read it well over a month ago. Review a book too soon though and everyone will forget about it when the title hits bookstore shelves months later. And since Selznick’s latest doesn’t come out until March I was trying to keep a lid on it. I think I did very well indeed and I deserve a treat. And that treat shall be the chance to review the book properly at long last. My logic may be faulty, but it’s all I have.

No one can really summarize a book any better than the author proper. So what is, “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” anyway? “… this is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things.” In short, what you have is a book that can’t really be lumped into a single genre. With the rising popularity of the graphic novel, authors have been looking at how to let the visual elements of a given story complement the text. Some will weave graphic novel elements in and out, panels on one page, text on another. Others prefer a kind of “Captain Underpants” melding with cartoonish pictures. And while all these books are fun reads, none of them have ever really had the (for lack of a better word) gravitas you’d find in a classic text-only children’s novel. Until now, that is. “Hugo Cabret” is a risk. A 500+ page book that’s told just equally by pictures as it is by text. It is also like nothing you've ever seen before. No other children's book has even come close.

Without Hugo Cabret, none of the clocks in the magnificent Paris train station he lives in would work. Though he’s only a kid, Hugo tends to the clocks every day. But there’s something even more important in the boy’s life than gigantic mechanics. Hugo owns a complex automaton, once his father's, that was damaged in a fire and it is his life’s goal to make the little machine work again. To do so, he’s been stealing small toys from an old shopkeeper in the station. One day the man catches Hugo in the act, and suddenly the two are thrown together. Coincidences, puzzles, lost keys, and a mystery from the past combine in this complex tale of old and new. The story is told with pictures that act out the action and then several pages of text that describe the plot elements. The final effect is like watching a puzzle work itself into clarity.

Selznick is juggling so many different elements and inspirations in this book that you honestly expect the result to be a muddle. Okay. So you have a story involving old-timey movie-maker Georges Melies (he's the old shopkeeper) whose image in this book was modeled on children’s book author Remy Charlip (also an influence). You have an automaton, the history of automatons, and the history of movies themselves. There are photographs of old films mixed in with some bizarre sketches. Then you throw all of this together and add in a story about a boy, a girl, a one-eyed man, toys, keys, and a train station. Boom! Instant book. The fact that this title ISN’T a mess is downright bizarre.

They say that the mark of a good musical depends on how well the songs advance the story’s plot. You can’t just have your characters burst into song and then act like nothing ever happened. The case could be made too for books like “Hugo Cabret”. If there is a picture in this story, it has a purpose. Nothing here was included on a whim. When the book breaks from word to image, it has to be done just right. It has to feel natural. At one point in “Hugo Cabret” our hero is nearly trapped by the Station Inspector. The book reads, “The Station Inspector saw the bandages and loosened his grip, at which point, like a wild animal, Hugo escaped.” What follows is a thirty-six page chase sequence that comes across like a black and white film. And the real star of this show, in the end, is Selznick’s art. The man is doing things with mood and lighting that give the book just the right mysterious feel. Selznick’s pictures are done, for the most part in graphite with plenty of shading involved. At the same time, he knows how to get the viewer involved in what they are seeing. There are moments where the “camera” is zooming in on a particular shot and instantly gets your attention. In the book’s opening, we begin with a shot of the moon that pulls back and follows young Hugo. Then suddenly, we see Hugo look over his shoulder and the picture hits you hard. We’re on the eighteen or nineteenth page and already we’re deeply interested in what we're seeing. We want to know more. Hugo does have some magnificent bags under his eyes at times, and he and the old man's granddaughter Isabelle sometimes look rather similar, but on the whole it’s hard to find anything wrong with what Selznick has chosen to place in this book.

Admittedly, not everything works as smoothly as it might. Selznick has to keep everything in this story moving constantly. Nobody wants to see picture after picture of people just sitting around and talking, after all. So really, the downside to this kind of book is that some degree of characterization and description is lost in favor of plot and theme. The kids in this book go from liking one another, to hating, to liking again in a manner that feels a tad awkward. Motivations are sometimes murky, even if they’re explained later down the line.

But the allure of this book for kids can’t be stressed enough. Selznick is most familiar to children, at this point in time, because of his covers of such Andrew Clements books as “Frindle” and “School Story”. When kids see a Selznick cover, they know to grab it. Children who like big thick Harry Potter-sized tomes will pluck the multi-colored “Hugo Cabret” from its shelves without hesitation. Ironically, though, this is a perfect title for reluctant readers. Though the page count will scare off some, those who’ve been shown the insides will appreciate this unfamiliar form of storytelling. Unlike a graphic novel or a picture book, however, you can’t understand “Hugo Cabret” through pictures alone. You can try, I guess, but you end up with a very different tale from the one Selznick has written. The nice thing is that in spite of all the complicated details and influences at work here, the story itself is straightforward and interesting.

Extra kudos for the spine of this title, by the way. Publishing houses too often forget that sometimes the spine of a book is all a customer is ever going to see of a title. And if there were a Best Spine of the Year Award, I think I know who the winner might be. The spine and back are of Hugo’s face, lit from the side. Just his left eye and part of his cheek are visible on the spine, with the title, author, and publisher information shoved to the bottom. It’s haunting. Does haunting sell? You bet your sweet bippy it does.

It’s hard to say whether or not this kind of format would work with any other book. Really, it’s the fact that so much of “Hugo Cabret”’s plot revolves around black and white movies that allows this book to jump so easily between image and text. If you did something similar with a story about, oh I dunno, a lion in the jungle, it might feel odd. But given Selznick’s subject matter and his careful use of both his own illustrations, movie stills, and sketches, the book holds together. The writing is second to the illustrations, but it’s still heads and tales better than most of the crummy kidlit you’ll stumble across. Sometimes you hold a book in your hands and it feels like a classic from day one. “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” radiates that feeling.

On shelves March 1, 2007.