This is a very gay book. This is a very queer book. Wishbone wears either descriptor as its badge of honor and positions itself as the queer hybrid between A Nightmare on Elm Street and Stranger Things. There are some interesting horror angles presented in Wishbone, but this is mglit that’s about reassuring gay, queer, and trans kids that they have a place in society to be themselves. It’s about an 80/20 split on the lifestyle and interpersonal story to the horror angles. By looking at the written description on Amazon, the book is also disingenuous and looks like it’s trying to present itself from two fronts. A casual look will tell you that it’s about a kid confronting their bullies who is granted the powers of magic wishes, however just by looking at the back jacket you’ll see what the heavier ratio of the book is about.
The problem with a Paul Tobin book is that you want to read every word. That’s not really a problem per se, but you want to get to the end of it so that you can find out how all of this silliness ends. And we mean that in the fondest of ways. My Vampire vs. Your Werewolf takes a premise that elementary ages, middle school students and RPG gamers have kicked around since they were first staked or howled at the moon. The moment you mention the title your mind starts to play out how they would fight, what environment would be friendliest to each monster and how could such a battle realistically take place without attracting massive amounts of attention.
Young readers and reluctant readers have more in common than they think. Reluctant readers in most cases just think that they don’t want to read. Assuming that we’re talking about young, elementary school ages, both groups have to find the vehicle that can get them to realize that reading is not punishment. It’s got to be a book so relentlessly fun, over the top silly that it commands young people to engage in something by themselves, for their own enjoyment. The First Cat In Space Ate Pizza is the first book in the series that takes its rightful place alongside Dog Man and Investigators as the go-to graphic novel series for ages seven and up. This book also came out a couple of years ago, so if you’re judging as to why it’s just being reviewed now, I say be curious, not judgmental.
It’s a great feeling for parents, educators and most of all, children, when they can comfortably carry around a chapter book. Those first and second graders might carry around Dog Man, but it probably belongs to their older sibling. It’s in late second grade, third grade and hopefully by fourth grade when kids start carrying books like Theodora Hendrix and the Curious Case of the Cursed Beetle. That’s an alliteration in case you’re reviewing that term for seventh-grade ELA. This is second entry in a ridiculously fun chapter-book series that run with silly characters, age-appropriate monsters, and just enough evil to thrill ages 7-10.
So, you’re telling me it’s not a problem if I wander without direction or purpose through life? No, that is not what the book, nor I, are saying that’s what you should do or how you should act. It’s Okay Not to Look for the Meaning of Life: A Zen Monk’s Guide to Living Stress-Free One Day at a Time sounds like it could be an alternate title to a Korean drama or a positive affirmation statement you’d see in a middle school. However, in the latter situation, those students might’ve taken it as a carte blanche to do even less than their doing now. This is not a Spicoli get-out-of-jail-free card, it’s simply a book that encourages you to take a step back and think.
We’ve been working with our 12-year-old on context clues and how to better understand them. Whenever I’m with high school ELA students I work with them on context clues, albeit in a slightly more direct tone. That could fall under the category of “read the room” or being able to infer what happens in a story due to something else occurring. The Den That Octopus Builtis a smart illustrated book that tells a grand story with minute details that older readers will get the first time, and younger audiences will latch onto after one reading.
Author Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville have a niche in children’s publishing that speaks to the white spaces in illustration. The blank spaces in illustrations can bring about as much power as the colored parts. A page full of color might seem like more, but it can be overwhelming and is too much. The two authors have paired up two times prior to Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All, and while each bok is different, they have strands that bind their quality and maintain their level of interest among elementary and lower-middle school readers. This is all the more surprising because the duo has written non-fiction books on women that typically have flown under the pop culture radar.
In How To Build A Hug they wrote about Autism expert, Dr. Temple Grandin. Pocketful of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire, told the story about a woman whose work people know, but few outside of the Disney-fandom could readily talk about or reference. With Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All, the two are partnered again with the Brigette Barrager, the illustrator that did the wonderful work on Pocketful. This trio work well together, or more accurately, Barrager’s style of art flows very well with the minimalist, yet detailed story they’ve created.
In both books, the subjects could’ve had a much more in-depth look at their lives or accomplishments. Lucy! is predomately about the very early years of Lucille Ball. When she was very young her father died and she lived with her relatives, who did not agree with her constant tomfoolery. This led her to play by herself most of the time. When her mother returned from working in a different city, it allowed Ball to see how much of her she could become.
She performed in local plays, school functions or any activity that let Lucille be the funny person she wanted to become. Her mother saw the passion Lucille put forth, as well as, the local success she had, so she scrounged up the money to send her to acting school in New York City. When Lucille got there she saw that she had the drive, but that because she wasn’t a singer, dancer or dramatic person her ability to make people laugh was going to be challenging. She jumped at any opportunity to get in front of audiences and continued slogging it away. Lucile kept at it, honed her slapstick skills with Buster Keaton and was there when movies started being filmed in Technicolor.
This led to her coloring her hair bright red, which yielded more bit parts in 60 movies over ten years. Unfortunately, this was the same serious stuff that paid bills, but wasn’t the funny money that she knew was in her blood. That fruit happened when she signed on to be a funny housewife in a radio comedy show, My Favorite Husband. It was taped in front of a live audience, which scratched the itch she had for making people laugh and became a very successful show. As television was a new medium it was logical that this be translated to the small screen and the rest of Lucille Ball, I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz, and the legend that she wrought is history.
I remember watching I Love Lucy I as a kid. I’ve seen snippets of the show as I wrote this review, which is one reason it took me so long to do. One highlight begets another highlight and so on, the show still holds up today and its humor translates to modern audiences. The only thing that will preclude it from being enjoyed by elementary or middle school audiences to the same degree is the fact that it’s in black & white, and much of the humor is based around relationships. There are still some hilarious physical gags and mistaken identity bits that don’t require any age limit to watch and enjoy.
Lucy! sets up the events and time period that lead up to her iconic television show. The story of never giving up, working hard for what you want and having the patience to see it through are characteristics that anyone can benefit from. You could easily imagine anyone who has trained hard for something, but had to wait decades until it was their time to go on stage, perform the operation, walk in space or do whatever had led them to that point. It’s resilience 101, a trait that some kids need lots more of and Lucy! is just the entertaining kind of book that they’ll enjoy reading and just might learn something from.
Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All is by Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville with illustrations by Brigette Barrager and is available on Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams Books.
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The below was not in the I Love Lucy show, it might not even be about Lucille Ball, but it’s a great song from a criminally underrated band.
Seasons Change as the classic song from Expose goes. And while some trends in mglit might ebb and flow, the dystopian, end-of-the-world novel with a plucky, female heroine will never die. The Flicker is an entry into that genre that wants to accomplish so much but ends up tripping over its intended inclusiveness. It’s challenging to find a sympathetic or interesting character in the first 85% of the book, and the lengths that it went to in order to check off virtue signal boxes has us recalling that classic Keanu Reeves scene from Always Be My Maybe.
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