Review of the Day: The Talented Clementine

The Talented Clementine by Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Marla Frazee. Hyperion. $14.99.

When “Clementine” arrived on the scene in 2006 it hit a nerve. Otherwise sane and rational adults began thwapping one another over the heads with the book screaming, “READ THIS! READ THIS! READ THIS!” Children were left abandoned as their parental units devoured the title. Kids, as it happened, quite enjoyed the book as well, but you could be forgiven for not noticing this through the swarm of “Clementine”-addled adults out there. Now the sequel has popped onto shelves everywhere and we are experiencing the calm before the storm. Copies are already flying off the shelves, but we won’t experience the true gale-force winds of the faithful until the summer months. Then watch those copies simply fly. Sequels come with their own set of rules and regulations, of course. Rule #1 tends to be, “Be As Interesting As Your Predecessor,” and is too often ignored by writers. Not Pennypacker. A worthy sequel and a perfectly packaged little gem, “The Talented Clementine,” will please the initiated and uninitiated Clementine-fans alike.

It’s talent show time! Yes, the third and fourth graders of Clementine’s school are gonna put on a production to beat the band and this puts our heroine in a bit of a pickle. Clementine has no talents. None. Zippo o’ talentos. Well, none that she can perform anyway. She cannot dance or sing or cartwheel or Hula-Hoop. Her best friend Margaret can do all of these and more but even with her “help” Clementine’s having some difficulty. And really, it isn’t until the day in question that she discovers something she can do that no other third grader seems capable of. Something that isn't flashy or even noticeable, but that quite positively saves the day.

The funny thing about this particular volume is that Pennnypacker has done away with a subplot. There’s no A story paired with a lesser B story for kicks. This pup’s A and only A from start to finish. You might think that would make the book tedious and slow, but the author appears to know what she’s doing. The concept of figuring out what you do best is infinitely difficult to write about for any extended length of time without sounding like a broken record. All the more reason then for the author to add in details like Clementine super-gluing beer bottlecaps to the soles of her shoes in the hopes learning to tap. I can probably say with certainty that I’ve never read a children’s early chapter book that contained a kid who stinks like a brewery. Other unique details include the presence of adults that aren’t villains. The Principal that Clementine is constantly excusing herself to talk to acts more like an infinitely patient psychotherapist than an authority figure.

I’d like to point out that what I’m doing right now (reviewing this book) is a dangerous thing. You have no idea the position I’ve placed myself in, do you? How easy it is, when reviewing a Clementine, to suddenly lapse into copying down quote after quote from the text without giving it a second thought. I might try to encourage you to read the book by typing something like, “And that’s when the worried feeling – as if somebody were scribbling with a big black crayon – started up in my brains.” That might work. Or I could slip in a little description of the school nurse that says, “She always looks bored, as if she’s just killing time until a really good disease hits the school.” I think you should count your lucky stars that I’ve too strong a sense of self-preservation to ever fall into that trap. Whew!

You know, if we’re going to be perfectly honest with one another here, you should probably know that some people do not care for “Clementine”. Such people have grown tired of the spunky-red-haired-female genre and equate Clem with Junie B. Jones and her pseudo-spunky ilk. Such people, nine times out of ten, have not physically sat down and read the book cover to cover, but some have and Clementine is just not their bag. I’ve also heard objections to Clementine’s maturity or lack thereof. Some people didn’t believe (as seen in the first book) that a third grader would be so immature as to cut off all of her best friend’s hair. But even if that’s your objection to “Clementine”, there’s nothing to stop you from loving its follow-up. Maturity varies with every individual. And if there's any way to describe this heroine, it's as an "individual" indeed.

So why do people like Pennypacker’s books so much? Maybe it’s because she’s damn good at nailing little truths here and there. We know what it’s like when a teacher is so excited by a program that they end up tacking on words to the Pledge of Allegiance like, “With liberty and justice for all and I know we’re all very excited to get to our big project.” Her characters feel believable. Clementine is self-involved, sure. What third grader isn’t? But she honestly feels a concern for her annoying baby brother. In fact, she’s so afraid that the babysitter will forget that he’s allergic to peanuts that she scrawls a, “NO PEANUTS FOR ME!” in blue permanent marker on his head so as to avoid any accidents.

One of the branches in my library system is mere days away from hosting an honest-to-goodness “Clementine” party. There will be a pin-the-bologna-glasses-on-the-face, a pigeon toss, and who knows what all. I was hoping there might be a wok spin, but no such luck. Now after having read the sequel, I wonder what additional crafts and ideas might come of this newest title. A howling contest? A bottle cap coloring station? The mind boggles. Whatever they decide upon, I know that they’ll need plenty of copies of this book when it finally reaches their shelves. Once again, the Clementine-shaped ball that is this book gets knocked cleanly out of the park. A worthy continuation.

Notes on the Cover: Uh, it's Marla Frazee, dude. Short of drawing this cover entirely in her own blood I can't think of a way she could have messed up this image. I also happen to love that Clementine's new shoes make the cover and that the image you see here hints broadly at the talent she eventually finds. Nicely done.

First Line: "I have noticed that teachers get exciting confused with boring a lot."

Previously Reviewed By: What Adrienne Thinks About That, MotherReader, and A Year of Reading. Please inform me if I have missed anyone.

Review of the Day: Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
By Jon Agee, Tedd Arnold, Harry Bliss, David Catrow, Marla Frazee, Jerry Pinkney, Chris Raschka, Judy Schachner, David Shannon, and Mo Willems
Dial Books (an imprint of Penguin)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0803730946
Ages 4-8
On shelves now

There are some jokes out there that are so classic they’ve passed the point where they’re funny anymore. Knock-knock jokes fall into this category. Light bulb jokes too. And then there’s the best one of them all. Why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road jokes. Boy oh boy you just can’t make anyone laugh with one of those anymore, can you? Well that’s the way my thinking would have gone had I not picked up a bizarre little picture book title by the same name. In this book fourteen different children’s illustrators are each granted a two-page spread to offer their answer to this, the oldest of questions. No two answers are exactly alike and no two illustrators have styles even vaguely similar. It makes for a book that kids will adore, grown-ups will pore over, and incipient illustrators will want to keep very close at hand.

So why did the chicken cross the road? The answer may surprise you. Marla Frazee, illustrator of things like Roller Coaster, and the recent smash hit, Walk On: A Guide For Babies, shows a determined chicken crossing a road away from a rain-soaked gray-skied chicken coop towards a blue-skied brightly colored fun-factory of a building. Her single thought: “duh”. Turn the page and Mo Willems has taken an entirely different tack. In the gloom of a police department some hard-boiled cops are giving a very nervous chicken (note the number of eggs under its chair) the third degree. The chicken itself is insisting that “I just did it to get to the other side! Honest!”. To one side a detective is pouring the contents of a significant looking charcoal bag onto a grill. The entire book is like this. David Shannon taps into a vein not dissimilar from his beloved Duck On a Bike to show us chicken at the wheel of a fancy red convertible. Flip further through the book and you see pictures by everyone from the great Jerry Pinkney to the far-out Mary Grandpre and the more than slightly twisted machinations of David Catrow. Here you may find more answers than you ever could have thought up yourself.

The great joy of a book like this is that it also serves to introduce people to hitherto unknown illustrators. I remembered most of the people from this book before, but then there were people like Chris Sheban who’d entirely escaped my notice in the past. Mr. Sheban’s picture is an evocative piece where one chicken has accidentally hit a baseball over another chicken’s head and into a window. The two stand poised in a kind of frozen shock as late afternoon light seeps over the suburban scene. Or there was Judy Schachner who’s tiny-brained chick, “wasn’t just free range ... she was de-ranged!”. I suppose my favorite pictures in here were from people who seemingly were working in unexpected ways. Take Jon Agee as your example. If you’ve seen his Terrific or The Incredible Painting of Felix Clousseau then you are aware of his clean lines and sparse palette. Now consider a picture that consists of cars, people, dogs, pigs, motorcyclists, buses, etc. fleeing from three hungry look dinosaurs. And perched on the side of the road, not immediately apparent to the eye, stands a lone chicken. Or consider Harry Bliss. I was used to his New Yorker-like picture books like, Don’t Forget To Come Back that tend to have an innate sophistication to them. The last thing I would have expected was for him to come up with the answer, “Ask the mutated zombie chickens from Mars!”. But you know what? It works.

Children’s illustrators banding together to put together a book... it’s not a new concept is it? I mean, you can always find books like, Oz: The Hundredth Anniversary Celebration or The Art of Reading: Forty Illustrator’s Celebrate RIF’s 40th Anniversary. The problem with those titles, though, is that they’re really not produced with kids in mind. Far rarer is the picture book filled with different illustrators that kids might recognize and love. I’m not saying it’s never happened before. But name me three such books off the top of your head and I’ll be mighty impressed, if not utterly blown away. No, sir, this is an original idea and a classy little work. Consider this book to be an essential addition to any picture book collection. Funny and fabulous.

On shelves now.