Happyface by Stephen Emond

"Today is the day the world changed, and that is all I will say because I don't ever want to think of it again."    
   

Happyface reminds me a lot of one of my all-time favourite picture books, Michael Rosen's Sad Book.  Like the Sad Book,  Happyface deals with grief that morphs (as it so easily does) into long-term depression. It also reminds me of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in that it is heavily illustrated with the narrator's sketches,  and the illustrations do a great deal to enhance the mood of the story. There's a lot going on here visually--starting with the cover. With the book jacket on, we see a happy face, but if we look underneath, the face is sad. (Just like Quentin Blake's brilliant first-page illustration for the Sad Book).

 

Happyface is about an artistic guy whose family falls apart in a horrible way (how horrible it is, we don't learn until about halfway through the book because Happyface can't talk about it) which leaves him feeling deeply betrayed as well as permanently grief-ridden.  Happyface and his mother move to a small apartment in a new neighbourhood where his mother drinks too much and rides a private and painful emotional roller coaster, and he goes to a new school where no one knows him.  Happyface decides to reinvent himself, and at first he's pretty successful.  He "slaps on a grin", gets his nickname, makes friends with the cool crowd, and starts chasing a girl who's beautiful, reads Allen Ginsberg and seems to like him back.  He's fooling everyone. 

Of course, eventually everything crumbles around him, because a) people start digging for the truth, and b) he starts going just a little nuts, in the way that happens when you repress such powerful feelings.  He turns mean and desperate.  We're not even sure we like him anymore.  

Emond has chosen to give us the closure of a hopeful ending, although I really felt that this book could have gone either way.  Happyface mends some rifts, particularly with his father, and vows that "my problems and failures will not stop me, nor will they dictate who I am".   Frankly, the ending wasn't my favourite part.  What I found fascinating was how well Emond captured the complications of functioning in a depressed state, because, let's face it, Happyface is right--grief and rage are big social turn-offs for most people, particularly if they last a long time.  Sometimes the mask is what saves us. 

I also found the illustrations extraordinarily engaging.  They're plentiful, sometimes cartoony and sometimes more artistically rendered, and they add a lot of energy and vitality to what could otherwise have been a much more sober story.  Here's an interesting article written by Connie Tsu on the Blue Rose Girls blog about the process of editing  a book as visual as Happyface.  Enjoy!

Mirages Don't Have Chicken Breath, Mister: The Trouble With Chickens by Doreen Cronin

"There's an easy way to do a search and a hard way.
 The easy way is early in the evening with a cool breeze and a steady partner.
The hard way is high noon with a crazy chicken clucking in your ear and two feather balls riding your tail.
 This search was gonna go the hard way."

This easy chapter book lends itself to dramatic reading.  It's a send-up of the hard-boiled detective genre;  J.J.,  a retired search-and-rescue dog, is hired by a local chicken to find two missing chicks (he won't work for chicken feed or feathers, but she promises him a cheeseburger).  There are lots of good bits to act out, like:

"I never backed down from a staring contest in my life, but her eyes were so tiny and close-set, it was making me cross-eyed."

or:

"I sucked my breath in through my nose as hard as I could.  Sugar was dragged right between the two bars and stuck to my nose like a stray sock on a freshly dried towel."

(Sugar is one of the missing chicks. Just picture it. )

Jokes abound, and they're really funny.  One of them involves a ransom note which contains the words "behoove", "rendezvous", and "twilight".  Our sardonic narrator J.J. observes:

"I've been lowered from a helicopter, strapped to a snowmobile, and flown first-class to France to find a backcountry skier lost in the Alps.  
Not once did anyone find it necessary to use the word behoove."

If I want to get a laugh out of my son now, all I have to do is tell him that it behooves him to rendezvous with me at the dinner table. 

Like many of the best books for this reading level, lots of illustrations add interest to the text.  Here's J.J. enjoying retirement, and J.J. in a peck (bad pun) of trouble.

 
Just can't trust those chickens. 


 

Appetite for Detention by Sloane Tanen

It's back-to-school time.  Since my daughter's going into grade eight, I thought the time for reading her picture books was long over, but that was before I stumbled upon  Appetite for Detention.  Yes, she was skeptical when I offered to read her a bedtime story for old times sake, but the first ridiculous page won her over.  It's the contrast between the cute little toy chicks and the angsty-ironic teen dialogue that makes the book such a laugh.   Sloane Tanen has made a niche for herself creating these kinds of images with attitude, so if you like the book, check out her website.

Here are a few sample pages:

If I were in high school now, I'd tape these to my locker.

Mother Number Zero by Marjolyn Hof

"I think that from the very beginning Bing was always more curious.  A Chinese parasol hung from the ceiling in her room, and she owned a pair of Chinese pajamas.
'Why don't you get a Chinese tattoo?' I said.
She pointed at her butt.  'Here?'
'No!' said my mother.
'Yes, right there,' I said.  'Get a dragon.'
'But it has to be a  big one,' Bing said.  'A mini dragon would be useless.  You'd barely see it.'
'Big and colorful,' I said.  'So it catches your eye.  Red, green and blue.'
'And yellow.' Bing said.
My mother looked relieved.  'You're overdoing it.  I don't believe you anymore.'
'Overdoing it?' said Bing.  'It's my butt and I can do what I want with it.'
'It's also a little bit mine,' my mother said.  'I wiped it for years.'
'All mothers do that,'  Bing said.  'That doesn't mean a thing.' "

Dutch author Marjolyn Hof's Mother Number Zero is a quiet and sensitive story about adoption.  Fejzo, called Fay, is part of a Dutch family with two adopted children.  His sister An Bing Wa, or Peace-Loving Ice Baby, was adopted from China, while Fejzo's mother was originally from Bosnia.  He has a child-like understanding of his past:

"My mother number zero lived in Bosnia and I was in her belly.  Mother number zero didn't want a baby.  She couldn't take care of me and that was the reason she gave me up.  Luckily she didn't give me away to somebody in her own country, because they had a war and far too many problems.  She was smart enough to come to the Netherlands, and I traveled along in her belly."

Fay doesn't give too much thought to his adoption until he meets Maud, a newcomer who is very curious about Fay's birth mother.  Maud thinks that Fay's birth mother might be a famous artist, since Fay himself is accomplished at drawing birds.  She suggests that Fay might be able to find his mother number zero with a bit of detective work, just like on a TV show called Disappeared, where "they search for someone's father or mother and then you can see what happens."   The curiosity Maud exhibits eventually stirs something within Fay, and once he begins wondering about mother number zero, he can't seem to stop.

With his parent's assistance, Fay begins to take steps to find his birth mother.  Fay doesn't initially understand the difficult feelings this search may spark for both himself and his family, particularly his sister, who was found abandoned and therefore has no means of tracking her birth family.  In him, the search evokes many fantasies, some exciting and some frightening. 

"And mother number zero?  She had gone through a war and given her kid away....Was my mother like some people who could handle it, or like others who couldn't?  If she couldn't, then maybe she lived in a park somewhere too.  Maybe she drank beer all day long and had a knife to kill ducks.  Maybe that was the answer to the question of why she had given me away.  She had gone through so much that she had turned into a bum.  Maybe she was crazy.  Or wounded or crippled.  Maybe she didn't have a nose or only one leg or no arms."

Hof, an adoptee herself,  enters Fay's inner world with tremendous empathy and understanding.  As Fay's thoughts and feelings veer off in so many different directions, we feel safe knowing that he is blessed with parents who are kind and warm, and deeply connected with him.  Their support and guidance on his quest helps him prepare for whatever answer will come.

The ending felt right to me, and I found it very honestly and gently handled.  This is a story that is simple but never stark.  Reading it feels like taking a small pilgrimage and then coming safely back home. 

 

Num8ers: The Chaos by Rachel Ward

Although I didn't review British writer Rachel Ward's debut novel Num8ers when it came out last year, I found it intense and fascinating.  Num8ers takes place in a contemporary but dystopian England where a girl named Jem has a strange ability:  when she looks into people's eyes she sees numbers that represent the date of that person's death.  This causes a great deal of trouble for her in terms of the story, as it ultimately leads to her being mistaken for a terrorist .  I thought it was an ingenious idea, though.  Imagine the questions it raises:  is the future preordained?  If you warned someone, could you change their fate? Is there a purpose behind this ability?  What is the cost to Jem of such knowledge?  What makes Jem's situation more intriguing is that she can't see the date of her own death, since of course she can't look herself directly in the eye (mirrors don't work).

Num8ers:  The Chaos could also be called Num8ers:  The Next Generation.  We are now in the year 2026, and Jem has died of cancer.  Adam, her son, is living with his grandmother, with whom he often clashes.  Adam has inherited his mother's ability to see death in a person's eyes, but in his case the power is intensified:  he not only sees the date, he also feels the nature of the death, the emotions and the pain of the process.  Because of this disturbing ability and the isolation of being so freakish, he is a troubled, angry teen.  He's also scared, because after a flood takes down his mother's old home and his Nan insists they move to London, he can't help but notice that almost everyone he meets has the same death date:  January 1st, 2027, and that all of these deaths are traumatic.  Something terrible is going to wipe out London soon, and it's up to misfit Adam to do what he can to stop it.   

I liked this book even more than Ward's first, in part because having set up the situation already, she can now make it increasingly complex.  She adds another point of view, that of Sarah, a girl with big problems and a scary ability of her own. The goverment has grown even more distrustful and controlling, to the point where people are microchipped and can be tracked at all times.  The stakes are higher. The ending is unexpected and riveting.  But it's not only the tension and suspense that are so compelling;  Ward gives her characters a lot of depth and development.  This is a book with substance as well as thrills. Ward is planning a third book in the series, titled Num8ers:  Infinity, which will focus on Sarah's daughter Mia, so altogether the Num8ers series will span three generations.

Shine by Lauren Myracle

 "What I knew was this:  Once upon a time, everything changed.  Now things had to change again.  Someone needed to track down whoever went after Patrick, and that someone was me."

Shine is unequivocally Lauren Myracle's best book to date, and it's a huge leap forward for an author who is already extremely popular, especially among tweens and younger teens. Myracle is largely known for a style that is funny, warm, playful and consistent, a style where happy endings are virtually guaranteed.  Shine is not at all like that.  Instead, it's psychologically and morally probing.  It's suspenseful and deeply absorbing.  It's piercing and compassionate.  It's nuanced and mature and very obviously written from the heart of a true artist. 

Shine takes place in a small Southern town steeped in secrets, tightly-knit loyalties and below-the-surface cruelties. At the centre of the story is Cat, who has retreated into herself since her older brother's friend assaulted her at age 13.  As a child, Cat's best friend was Patrick, but as a teenager she has distanced herself from him entirely, even though "losing Patrick was almost the same as losing myself."  Now Patrick is in a coma after having been beaten to a bloody pulp at the late-night gas station where he works, and for Cat, this is simply too much to bear.  She is consumed with the need to uncover Patrick's attacker, to "look straight into the ugliness and find out who hurt him, and...yell it from the mountaintop."  The assault on Patrick is assumed to be a hate crime, since Patrick is openly gay (in fact, he is the only out person in this community, as far as I could see) and he is found with the words "Suck this, faggot" scrawled in blood across his chest and a gas pump duct-taped into his mouth. 

Cat's unrelenting quest for the truth disturbs many people and places her in increasing danger.  Already intelligent, she becomes almost hyper-observant and soon realizes that even people whom Patrick considered friends may have wished him harm.  What I loved most about Shine was the way that Cat kept digging deeper and deeper and really thinking about the people around her, their histories and relationships and what they might or might not be capable of.   Cat becomes increasingly adept at seeing beneath the surface of people, noticing the aggression and nastiness hiding underneath the friendship.  Through Cat's determination and growing understanding, Myracle shows us the value and the cost of fighting intolerance.

Here's a fan-made video recommended by the author herself:

The Good, The Bad and The Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us by Tanya Lee Stone

Tanya Lee Stone's The Good, The Bad and The Barbie deserves all the love it's getting.  Stone's a great writer and writes the kind of non-fiction that kids will read for fun.  This book mines a rich vein since Barbie dolls have been so iconic and yet controversial in our culture.  Stone gives us the history of both the doll and of the points of view surrounding the image of womanhood she represents.  The two things about The Good, The Bad and The Barbie that I found most interesting were the anecdotes of how people had played with their Barbies as children, and the way various artists and film-makers have used her as creative inspiration.  Did you know that there is an annual Altered Barbie Exhibition in San Francisco each year, which "includes music, films, and performance art, as well as paintings and sculpture"?  Wild.

Here are some of my favourite quotes and images from the book:

"My neighbor and I always had Barbie parties together because she had a ton of them, including a princess Barbie.  At least, I thought she was a princess, but it's hard to tell because she was always missing her clothes.  We usually ended up marrying her and were both her wives.  It's kind of funny that as a child, a polygamist, nudist, homosexual lifestyle was obviously the best one, and I doubt anyone could have convinced me otherwise."

"How did I--the daughter of a feminist and working woman, myself a future feminist...play with my Barbie?  I took off all her clothes and sent her looking for love.  My Barbie got around...and it wasn't just me.  To walk into the bedroom of any of my Barbie-owning friends when I was little was to face a sordid truth.  'You want to play Barbie?' she would ask innocently and gesture.  Off in the corner--a bucket of large-breasted, pants-less women."

"Our naked Barbie collection did not go completely unnoticed.  At four, my son, who was not allowed to have a toy gun, found the treasures.  When he was playing with friends, he'd grab a naked Barbie, bend her at the waist, and shoot."

 Brooklyn artist Margaux Lange uses dismembered Barbie body parts to create a Plastic Body jewellery line, which has been showcased in galleries and museums.

Queen-Size Barb is an altered doll by Deborah Colotti, whose fascination with Barbies has led to a whole series of altered dolls.  She says, "Rather than trying to make myself as frozen and superficial as a doll, I decided to make Barbie more like me." 

I've just discovered that if you do a google image search on "altered barbie" you can come up with some pretty weird stuff.  Crucified Barbie, anyone? Zombie Barbie?  "Kiss" (the rock group) Barbie?  How do people get these ideas, anyway?

But I must admit I quite liked this one--"Take Flight" Barbie by Christine Webb.