Liars and Saints

"Spring is a surprise." The days become strange. On certain mornings, the sun is out, "warming the wind." On other days, the snow returns; you need six layers of clothing; colleagues make allusions to "snowmaggedon."  That's the entire plot of Kevin Henkes's new book. The main reason I like the book is that it seems like a "greatest hits" tour for Henkes; we have the kitten from "Kitten's First Full Moon," we have the carriage from "Julius." We have the flowers from "My Garden." I also appreciate the sense of rhythm: Yes, said the flowers in the garden. Yes, said the buds on the branches. Yes, said the birds in the sky. The rule of threes: the sun is "warming the wind and melting the snow and calling the animals." Gorgeous book.  

  When I visit my daughter's classroom, I imagine rapt listeners, quiet hands, calm bodies. Instead, one child is having a full meltdown; he is thrashing and singing, for reasons that seem unclear to everyone around him. I have dressed as a rabbit; I'm reading "My Garden," by Kevin Henkes. The kids are unimpressed. First of all, the narrator is nameless. What's with that? Also, I have a nervous habit of  kissing my daughter on the head--one child lets me know, quite clearly, that this is distracting. Finally, my daughter herself was hoping for "The Poky Little Puppy." Why couldn't I bring *that* one? The point of the "mystery reader" tradition is to share a bit of your family life--so I start to tell the kids about my daughter's garden. "Sometimes, when she gets up in the morning and leaves her bedroom, she looks down through the window and spots a bunny in the--" A beady-eyed child interrupts. "Her bedroom is on the seco...

 I was recently advised not to give direct instruction to my daughter. I'd noticed that my standard command--"Take a deep breath"--didn't accomplish anything. Susie would be in the grip of near-murderous rage, and my "deep breath" suggestion would only backfire. The rage would grow. Perhaps I could present myself as a character--could tell a story about my former self. "As a little kid, I would sometimes get so excited, I would forget to breathe. Then, when I remembered to breathe, I could feel calm again." This is the "Daniel Tiger" approach. Of course Daniel Tiger is wagging a finger at his child-audience--almost constantly. But the finger-wagging happens in an "indirect" way, so it becomes tolerable. A parent is asked to (a) infer what is wrong, (b) empathize, (c) shift plans accordingly. I'm better with my son than with my daughter. My proudest moment in the past week involved getting my son into the car. He suddenly did...

  Writing is all about characters; all the plots are taken. Really, there are no new plots. That's what makes "Chrysanthemum" special. The story couldn't be more pedestrian. A little mouse is bullied; finally, a smart teacher intercedes. It's the character details that earn this book the status of a classic. To avoid school, a mouse slowly traces her name in sand (on a long, long walk from home). The bullying happens because of her name--so it's the name itself that finds its way onto the sand. At home, the mouse's slightly obsessive, nerdy father tries to enrich tiny vocabularies even while teaching lessons about social anxiety. (Pa Mouse holds a copy of a book called "Building a Resilient Rodent.")  At school, the specific moments of bullying are sort of delightful: "Her name has thirteen letters. That's  half the alphabet ." "A flower grows in a garden--with  worms ." "Thank God I'm named after my  grandmother ...

 Sometimes, my friend seems like a Kripalu counselor, and not a speech therapist living in South Orange. "You're having trouble with the bedtime routine?" she says. "Each step should be full of sensory delight. Your son should actually eagerly look forward to all of the little tasks before sleep. Taking a bath should be a soothing journey; the bubbles should calm and reassure him." My son throws himself out of the bath, nude, and grabs a framed picture from the wall. He tosses it off the balcony, so it splats on the wooden floor far, far below. "Attention!" he shouts. "It's HAMMER TIME!" "Hi, Josh," says my spouse. "Did you enjoy your soothing sensory experience?" It's fun to see my son's mind expanding, and to hear the evidence. He now knows to barter; if bedtime is approaching, he will request to "see the beach," "take a drive," "watch a storytime." If he attempts something new a...

  In one set of Henkes picture books, it's assumed that animals and toys have rich inner lives, though they can't speak to humans.  A fine example is "A Good Day," the book that led the Times Book Review to crown Henkes as "a genius." In this one, various woodland animals are bereft. A bird loses her tail feather; a dog becomes tangled in a leash; a squirrel drops his nut. These are lively characters, and we feel for them in their moments of crisis. Tension builds; a rupture occurs. The ending is a complete, satisfying reversal of the start -- just like the end of Stephen Sondheim's "Gypsy." It looks so very, very easy. I like Henkes best when he has a "busy" plot -- as in "A Good Day," "Sun, Flower, Lion," "Waiting." Also, it's notable that he seems to work with fewer and fewer words as his career progresses; he is pushing himself to tell a story in the lightest, most streamlined way. He isn't st...

  Do we need another novel about baby siblings? Maybe not--but if that's the terrain Kevin Henkes wants to explore, I'm ready to go. Henkes's new book, "Oh Sal," opens with a little girl who is irritated. She can't tolerate the presence of the new baby, and it especially bugs her that that baby doesn't have a name. ("Get with it; make a choice, Mom." Sal wanted the name "Spritz"--after her favorite cookie--but her mother laughed at the suggestion. Derisive laughter! Annoying!) To complicate matters, Sal's obnoxious uncle arrives for a visit. This guy calls Sal "Salamander," although she has indicated her distaste for the nickname. Also, he doesn't have a present. When Sal asks about this, he rolls his eyes and says, "My ARRIVAL is the present!" Finally, Sal's favorite new undies are missing; they have images of poppies, along with the word "Poppy." They were a gift from Santa, not from Mom or Da...

  I'm staying in a rental house, so I had to invent a new library for my kids. I generally have no advice about being with children, but I do have views on picture books, so here are (unsolicited) thoughts, below. To me, the particular season we're in is a useful starting point. Fall is the best of the four seasons, so it has yielded strong books: "Ghosts in the Attic" (Kohara), "In the Middle of Fall" (Henkes), "Arthur's Halloween" and "Arthur's Off to School" (Brown), and "Ten Spooky Pumpkins" (Grimly). Another guiding light for me is James Marshall. When Marshall died, several of his artist-friends contributed essays to a "tribute" book. My feeling is, if you're a writer/artist and James Marshall befriended you, then there is probably something worthwhile in your work. This thought has led me to "Epossumondas" (Salley), "Rotten Ralph" (Gantos), and "Where the Wild Things Are...

 As we get closer to the pub date for "Oh Sal," my mind is on the picture-book artist Kevin Henkes, and his quartet of "Penny"  books. It's so hard to tell a story, and I think it's especially hard if you're using just a handful of words (appropriate for a child). "Penny and Her Doll" does the work very well, and it looks easy. The book is about a mouse who loves gardening; one day, among the roses, she learns that she has a package, a doll from her grandma. The bulk of the story concerns naming. The mice in Penny's life have ideas--"Pinky," "Smiley," "Buttons"--but nothing seems adequate. It's only when Penny spends time with the doll, and reflects on the words that she herself really likes, that she stumbles on a suitable, simple name: "Rose."  I think these characters and this story are unforgettable, even though so little happens. A child needs to make certain decisions on her own; this is how...

On "Little Houses":   Kevin Henkes never really set aside his "child mind"; this is the reason for his success. Again and again, he creates children who wrestle with the natural world: a baby who struggles to understand what the moon is, a girl who dreams of a garden with invisible carrots ("I hate carrots"), another girl who waits (and waits and waits) for snow. Henkes's newest brilliant idea is to travel to the beach. His protagonist notes that shells are "little houses" -- and this leads her to imagine her own house with "orange freckles," or her house with "shiny pink walls." She goes on to consider the sounds in a shell -- are these the voices of ghosts who once lived on the beach? What do we really "know" about the ocean? Why--how--are the waves blue and white and silver and purple all at once? What lives on the bottom of the ocean floor? How old are the rocks by the sand? A snowy egret visits. Has the snow...

 Kevin Henkes often has animal protagonists--mice, a rabbit, a bear, a kitten. Regardless of the animal, the emphasis is usually on a creature's imagination. So the creatures seem like human children--in disguise. A kitten believes she sees a great glowing dish of milk in the sky. A rabbit ponders what it would be like to become a stone--unmovable. A mouse with big emotions dreams of subjugating her mildly unsatisfactory teacher; in one related piece of art, the teacher must sit in the "Time-Out Chair." In my house, a favorite Henkes protagonist is Old Bear, who goes to sleep in the winter and immediately dreams of the spring. The flowers will be as tall as trees. You might take a nap "in a giant crocus." It seems to me one of KH's many major gifts is that strange ability to slip into a kid's skin, to know what a kid might think or say in any situation. ("In my garden, carrots would be invisible, because I don't like carrots....") Well, I...

 One sign of talent in a painter, or sketcher: his images look like they're alive. I often admire Kevin Henkes for his psychological insights: his mouse who fears that a crack in the wall might open and swallow all living things, his family who worry about over-extensive use of one security blanket, his playground of bullies who like to fixate on one exotic first name. ("A chrysanthemum grows in the DIRT.....with WORMS....") But Henkes is also simply an inspired artist. I'm haunted by his sketches: the squirrel who loses his nut, the kitten who accidentally traps a fly on her tongue, the strange bear-figurine, wary about the arrival of a glass elephant, from India.  I have often pinned my attention to the canonical Henkes books--the mice works, and "Kitten," and "Waiting"--but I'm eager to dip into stranger waters. I have dates with "Egg," "Old Bear," and "My Garden"--in the near future.

  I'm a little bit obsessed with the new Henkes picture book ("A House"), which is like a sonnet. There are four short "scenes" about a house. Where are the doors? Where are the windows? Where is the sun? Where are the birds? Where is the moon? The stars? Where are the clouds? The puddles? In the fifth scene, snow falls--and this nice surprise causes a change in the rhythm: SO MUCH SNOW! Where is THE HOUSE----? Then, a coda. Pets begin to arrive, and people. What are they doing? They are COMING HOME. I love that you're looking for patterns even if the search is in your subconscious mind. And I like how Henkes effortlessly takes on the voice of a child. ("So much snow!" "Look! Here comes a dog....") You can bet my son has heard all this a bit more than he might like.....

 One gift Kevin Henkes has is that he doesn't talk down to children. He recognizes that life is complicated, and he doesn't try to simplify things that can't be simplified. In "Penny and Her Marble," Penny discovers a small treasure on a neighbor's lawn. A blue marble! It can't belong to the neighbor--Mrs. Goodwin--because she's too old for play-time. So Penny snatches the marble and rejoices. Later, though, Penny's conscience grows active. Has she committed theft? Penny spots Mrs. Goodwin on her lawn....maybe in mourning for her marble? Penny can't eat; the peas and oranges on the table seem to be angry marbles, antagonizing her. Penny dreams that the blue marble in her dresser swells and swells, and finally breaks its prison bars, like the tell-tale heart. In the morning, Penny runs the marble back to Mrs. Goodwin, who shrugs. "I put it there so a child would take it. Enjoy your marble." I guess the "lesson" is: Communicat...

 I raced through Kevin Henkes's new book yesterday, so these are just some first impressions. This is a subversive masterpiece. It's about ordinary life. No dragons appear. No geopolitical crises take shape. The book is about a kid awaiting third grade, living in an ordinary town, somewhere in the middle zones of the middle class. The book seems to be a response to Beverly Cleary; Henkes, who has been compared to the great master, seems to be talking with Ramona, and Willa Jean, and Mrs. Quimby. For example, as Ramona must care for the obnoxious Willa Jean, so Billy must care for his difficult little sister, Sal. As the later Ramona books are about a third child entering the family, so this new Billy book is about a third child entering the family. Like Cleary, Henkes mixes "inner" moments with striking scenes. Billy makes a wish for something interesting to happen, then guiltily feels he may have willed his neighbor to die. (The neighbor was 93.) Billy gets bored whe...

 We're a few days away from Kevin Henkes's next new book--"Billy Miller Makes a Wish"--so my thoughts have turned to "Penny and Her Sled." Sometimes, a book simply tells the truth; you read it, and think, this is life as I understand it. That's the case with Henkes's work. "Penny and Her Sled" has Penny, a small mouse, awaiting snow. She waits and waits. She wants the snow so much, she dreams of it falling and turning into marshmallow pops. She eats the pops; she becomes one with the snow. Back in the real world, the snow refuses to fall. Penny entertains herself as she waits. Her sled becomes "a bridge for glass animals," a "roof for a hut," a "small cradle for Rose, a doll." (The cradle is a bridge too far. Penny becomes lonely as she tries to go to sleep, so she grabs Rose and says, "You'll never have to sleep alone again....") Ultimately, the seasons change without a single snowfall--subversiv...

 Five stars for "Sun Flower Lion," the first book my son actually seems to respond to. This is a deceptively simple tale. The narrator observes the sun, "bright as a flower." His gaze travels downward to actual flowers--which, with their yellow "petal-manes," seem to resemble tiny lions. By chance, a lion strolls by. He sniffs the lovely flower. He warms himself in the sun. All that heat leads to a nap--and, during the nap, the lion dreams he is surrounded by flowers, large as the sun. By the magic of dream-logic, the flowers become "cookies"--and the lion eats them all. Startled, newly awake, the lion realizes how hungry he is. He runs home to feast with his family. I love this because it's a subtle exploration of cause-and-effect. Running up the hill--mixed with the warmth of the sun--causes the lion to get sleepy. In his dream, he has dessert; his subconscious tells him he is starting to get hungry. Thus, awake again, the lion runs home fo...

After "Weekend with Wendell," Kevin Henkes returned with a *second* mouse masterpiece. This one seems to tip a hat--boldly--to Beverly Cleary. Cleary wrote "Ramona the Brave"; Henkes wrote "Sheila Rae, the Brave." And, indeed, Sheila Rae has courage. She enjoys studying lightning during a storm, and she dares to giggle when the principal walks by. She imagines that her maraschino cherries are the eyes of dead bears (and she eats five). The biggest transgression: Sheila Rae announces she will walk him by a NEW UNAUTHORIZED ROUTE. (You really travel back to childhood here. Sheila Rae shivers with excitement as she "crosses streets" and "turns corners." Oh, to derive a thrill from having crossed a new street!) Of course, Sheila Rae doesn't really know herself, and her story takes a shocking turn. But Sheila Rae's sister comes to the rescue-- Friends can embolden each other --and all ends well. Big sis and little sis walk into their...

 I have forgotten what time zone I'm in, and many days I'd like to moan loudly from noon to midnight. I haven't changed out of PJ pants in quite a while, and if I go for a walk in these pants, I'm really embarrassed -- but not embarrassed enough to re-think the PJs-in-public move. Josh is having a better time. He has a dawning awareness of his environment. He sometimes seems to have an interest in kissing his own reflection, in the mirror. And he can get thrills from a very simple game: He hands a small block to you, studies your delighted face, then takes the block back. Over and over and over. Social congress! We're reading: *"A Weekend with Wendell." (An actual twist at the end!) *"Max and Ruby: Holiday Treasury." (A good winter for snow-day literature....) *"Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse." (One of us can't get enough of Mr. Slinger....and his semi-circles....and his way of saying "Howdy" .....Great writing!) ....And...

 One of my favorite writers--and owner of a career I seriously covet--is Kevin Henkes. The picture book "Owen"--winner of a Caldecott Honor--is perfect evidence of Henkes's eye for detail and his light touch. The story concerns a mouse who loves his safety blanket. A weirdly nosy (angry?) neighbor, Mrs. Tweezers, feels it's time for the blanket to "move on." Mrs. Tweezers advises Owen's family about the "blanket fairy." (You take the kid's blanket at midnight, and you replace it with a dollar....) But Owen is not hard of hearing, and he foils the plan by covertly stuffing his blanket down his sweatpants. Next, Mrs. Tweezers urges Dad to dip Owen's favorite blanket-spot in vinegar. Owen shrugs and chooses a different corner to sniff. It's impossible to destroy the blanket, because this blanket offers crucial help during "hair trims," "nail clippings," "doctor visits," and other scary events. Also, the bl...