MORE 'MACMILLAN' POSTS
It’s a mystery. It’s a game. It’s filled with puzzles and riddles and clues. It’s funny, and it’s deadly serious. Parts are evocative and parts are heartfelt and parts are completely unforgettable. Having a rough day/week/month/year? Cuddle up to this. Challenging enough to intrigue you. Enticing enough to keep you.
Behold a story that runs, caterwauls, spies, sneaks, rides, and generally has a wonderful time. This is a book I can’t show my colleagues at work because my 8-year-old won’t let it out of her sight. A fairly high bit of praise, if I do say so myself.
It’s kind of gratifying to know that the story has been finding its audience. And what child wouldn’t find the notion of living on a school bus, tricked out like a long, yellow mobile home, enticing?
Don’t be surprised then if you detect a note of longing in the eyes of the kids that read this book. Thick with adventure, chock full of awe and beauty, this is what they mean when they say comics are an art unto themselves. The finest of the fine. Questing done right.
oxes? How scary can that get? Answer: Hoo-boy. Hold onto your hats folks. Turns out, what terrifies a fox can terrify a child just as easily. For some readers the fact that everyone here sports red fur will make the horrors a little better. For others, much much worse.
We think about aliens all the time and what they might be like. Imagine actually finding other planets where they might live. That’s what Just Right does. It allows for the scope of possibility, even as its very message about the difficulty in finding planets like our own reinforces the fact that this place is pretty special.
Here’s an idea: Why not take the idea of a world gone mad and give it a jolt of lightning to the veins? Set your book in another era when America went a little crazy, then liven things up with spies, car chases, murder attempts, gunshots, traitors, double agents, and that’s just the first few chapters! A book for the kids that want to read a response to our age that will thrill them to the core, and maybe plant a couple of seeds of rebellion in their craniums at the same time.
Gracefully switching between text and comics, comics and text, author Remy Lai feeds breadcrumbs (or, more accurately, cake crumbs) of humor and sequential art to kids, luring them towards a storyline with a deeper, darker meaning. For the kid that avoids serious stories like the plague, Pie in the Sky is the perfect gateway drug.
Peter & Ernesto: A Tale of Two Sloths By Graham Annable First Second (an imprint of Roaring Brook Press) $17.99 ISBN: 978-1-62672-561-4 Ages 6-10 On shelves now To quote the wise words of MC Scat Kat, “opposites attract”. Particularly when those opposites are best buddies. The idea of the carefree soul, untethered by earthly woes, […]
The Story Collector By Kristin O’Donnell Tubb Illustrated by Iacopo Bruno Henry Holt & Co. (an imprint of Macmillan) $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-250-14380-8 Ages 9-12 On shelves August 28th From 2007 until about 2012 I had the distinct pleasure of working in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of New York Public Library. It’s one of those […]