juushika

Title: Bumble Bugs and Elephants: A Big and Little Book
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Clement Hurd
Published: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2006 (1938)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 508,535
Text Number: 1830
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: This was too young for me. It's probably suited to its audience, but the lack of narrative also means a lack of movement and wonder. But I do love Hurd's art, the lineless style and limited color palette belying a surprising complexity of shapes.


Title: Night and Day
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Leonard Weisgard
Published: Harper & Brothers, 1942
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 40
Total Page Count: 508,575
Text Number: 1831
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: A white cat who loves the day and a black cat who loves the night try to win each over to their side of the argument. I struggle with picture books about cats for the usual reasons (not true to cats; idealizing outdoor cats), but when I can compartmentalize a little, like here, they also charm me. Weisgard's art is fantastic—I'm a sucker for picture books with minimal use of color and a lot of movement and texture, and this is that: the round, sweet silhouettes of cats set against daytime and nighttime scenes, vibrant and diverse, and I even like how Weisgard draws people! MWB has a knack for the dark and for brief, evocative descriptions ("The night was soft and dark around them. And the silence was big in their ears."); for engaging fear and setting it aside without condescension; and with endings—a story about how everything has its own unique beauty ought to end with both cats loving both times, but, no, night wins out, the night world quiet and all their own, and I love that for them.


Title: Two Little Gardeners
Author: Margaret Wise Brown, Edith Thacher Hurd
Illustrator: Gertrude Elliott
Published: Golden Books, 1951
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 25
Total Page Count: 508,600
Text Number: 1832
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: Two child-gardeners plant and tend and harvest a vegetable garden. It's hard to imagine this in any other style: MWB is at her very most detailed-list-of-things here, and Elliott's art is similarly intricate, carrot by carrot, cabbage by cabbage. Cute, certainly dated, this has strong teachable vibes and not much actual story, but I also kind of love it for its charm and its unerring commitment to the concept.


Title: Fox Eyes
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Garth Williams
Published: Pantheon Books, 1977 (1951 for the Carlot)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 30
Total Page Count: 508,630
Text Number: 1833
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: A fox causes consternation by spying on the secrets of his neighbors. The weird cover art is almost indicative of the tone, here: Williams's illustrations are desaturated neutrals and shadows shot through with the distinctive red of the fox, a delightful contrast; but his fidelity is slippery, a little comic, a little uncanny, despite the fluffy, soft textures. MWB's depiction of the world and its secrets is evocative in that simple, precise, playful way she has: "Even his rabbit smell was frozen to no smell, as he crouched there, invisible as something that does not move or smell or look like much." Her endings are often surprising, and this is no exception. An inadvertent trickster, the foolish, cunning of a fox settles down with his secrets and forgets them posthaste. A weird one! It feels a little off-kilter, but intentionally so.

I wish I could read the Charlot edition, since I loved his work so much in Two Little Trains; from the few spreads I could find, it has a totally different atmosphere, minimalistic line illustrations the secrets, the fox's changing face a bold, saturated splotch of color in reaction to each one.

Title: Zetsuai 1989
Author: Minami Ozaki
Published: 1989-1991
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 955 (192+192+192+188+192)
Total Page Count: 505,325
Text Number: 1796-1800
Read Because: mentioned in this post comparing Hannibal to 90s dark shoujo anime/manga/light novels, which is a normal reason to pick up a manga I think
Review: 2.5 stars. One of the ur-BL manga that I missed as a baby reader: a successful rock star is rescued after a bender by a soccer prodigy, revealing a missed connection from years ago that has since grown into an obsessive, operatic love. This has (more, helped establish) every problematic marker of the genre ("I'm not gay, I just love you" first among them; also a lot of sexual assault); but that's less memorable than: 1) a truly iconic, obsessive love with any number of quotable speeches about its nature; 2) the central role of soccer, frequently rendering high-tension moments in a plot which already overwrought patently ridiculous, as the beloved shoots a shot so hard it breaks the net and the lover's shades; 3) the unresolved, bitter ending—I've read a lot of BL, and prefer my BL weird and dark, but this may be the first ( spoiler ) conclusion I've encountered, and I'm taken by it.

Oh and: 4) OG fans put up with some truly illegible fan translations.

So: Good? unsurprisingly, no, not really. As bad as its reputation within the Western audience lead me to expect? no; not even the art. Recommended? I enjoyed it as a historical artifact, but, of the ur-BL I've read for the first time as an adult, this was probably the least successful. I'll still read the sequel, though.


Title: Bronze - Zetsuai since 1989
Author: Minami Ozaki
Published: 1992-2006
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 2780 (198+176+176+176+216+192+224+192+192+192+192+208+208+240)
Total Page Count: 519,455
Text Number: 1878-1891
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: I hate to say it, as it's inconsistent, tortured, improbable angst, but this is great. Call Zetsuai 1989 the proof of concept: restrained (by contrast! it's actually ridiculous!), brief, forward-heavy in its speeches on impossible, obsessive love. Bronze - Zetsuai since 1989, meanwhile, is unwieldy but it's all follow-through: the consequences of the protagonists's backgrounds and professions; their relationship not in speeches but as lived experience, marked particularly by an elaboration on rape-as-love tropes. Izumi's choice at the end of the original run is remarkable, and a continuation seems insupportable; this continuation is plagued by every predictable BL flaw, and yet Izumi's relationship with his relationship—functionally heterosexual in a queer romance, craving and courting attention which is retraumatizing and toxic and true—is captivating. It's hot mess material, some plot arcs are flops, and of course it stands unfinished. But Ozaki's willingness to go there (where? everywhere, but particularly following through on dramatic, no-takebacks plot twists) is phenomenal.

As threatened, I read more Silver Sprocket graphic novels; hit and miss, unavoidable when reading anything en masse, and not as horror-y as I expected from first brush, but that doesn't alter how fundamentally I love the style of works this publishing house is curating. Weird as hell, but quality, and most certainly queer. I'll trawl through more of their catalog in the future.


Title: Viscera Objectica
Author: Yugo Limbo
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2024
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 70
Total Page Count: 513,830
Text Number: 1859
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library c/o Hoopla
Review: Our protagonist falls in love with a puppet. And that's it: this is more heartfelt and uncomplicated depiction of objectum than a narrative, which is fine; representation justifies itself, especially for an under-discussed type of attraction. Limbo's art is highly stylized, trippy and animated and joyously queer, all of which I can appreciate without enjoying it aesthetically.


Title: Adversary
Author: Blue Delliquanti
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2024 (2022)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 80
Total Page Count: 514,000
Text Number: 1861
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library c/o Hoopla
Review: A self-defense trainer meets a former student under different circumstances, beginning an evolving, complicated relationship. This is a dense graphic novella, incredibly nuanced in its depiction of queer people and relationships and power dynamics and the internalized narrative of gendered violence, set in the early days of COVID lockdown & its social fallout. The ending tends perhaps too far in that direction (dense; sociopolitical), but I won't shun a graphic novel that immediately demands a second reading, and repays the effort.


Title: Putty Pygmalion
Author: Lonnie Garcia
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2024
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 70
Total Page Count: 515,070
Text Number: 1864
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library c/o Hoopla
Review: A lonely radish creates a companion using a banned children's sculpting toy. So this should be weird, right? Aesthetically, it is: fun character design and a phenomenal use of multimedia and image editing which gives this a crunchy, retro vibe. But even with the violent climax, this still feels like the most straightforward take on "reasons to maybe not try crafting a best buddy from clay": the uncomfortable power dynamics are forefront yet somehow still so tame.

(I'm not even giving this my unusually intimate relationship tag! Given the premise, that just feels wrong. Adversary gets it, though.)

Title: Sharp Objects
Author: Gillian Flynn
Published: Crown, 2018 (2006)
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 512,890
Text Number: 1854
Read Because: this post, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A reporter returns to her hometown to investigate apparent serial murders, and is thrust back into her troubled home life. Thrillers are larger than life in order to justify their pacing and twists, and that exaggerated scale grates against some of the psychological depth Flynn aims to explore; that depth is also what makes this stand out from the crowd. Readable, compelling, persistently unpleasant, but this failed to get under my skin - and I think it needed to. Case in point: I have a long and easily-triggered history with self-injury, and this didn't trigger me, barely pinged on my radar. Everything is pushed too far: the protagonist didn't just self-injure, she ( spoiler ); like the overlong coda, there is something here, particularly in the characterization of Amma-as-viewed-by-Camille, but it tips towards strained rather than haunting. I honestly don't know that it could be toned back without losing its momentum and genre, so, once again, the takeaway may simply be that this isn't the genre for me.


Title: The Amulet
Author: Michael McDowell
Published: Valancourt Books, 2016 (1979)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 513,210
Text Number: 1855
Read Because: reviewed by rachelmanija, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A southern gothic following the fate of an entire town rather than a single family, after a tragic accident sparks a journey of uncontrolled, disproportionate revenge. That's a cool approach in theory, focused as much on setting as character; in practice, it makes for slow & repetitive pacing as the narrative pauses to introduce/kill off a widening cast. This is black comedy/horror, a combination that doesn't work for me - that rollicking, over the top tone ain't my thing. Except the climax and resolution, which are a delightful juxtaposition; the last chapter is pretty much perfect. So: not for me, but an interesting read, and it leaves me ambivalent about reading more McDowell (the Blackwater series has been on my TBR for some time). CW for tiresome fatphobia, but the depictions of race are, crucially, not awful.


Title: The Butcher of the Forest
Author: Premee Mohamed
Published: Tor, 2024
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 160
Total Page Count: 513,370
Text Number: 1856
Read Because: reviewed by mrissa, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Veris is the only person to have entered the north woods and returned and, compelled by the Tyrant, she enters them again in search of his missing children. Nightmare-fairytale woods set in autumn, and I picked it up at the beginning of autumn - it felt like it showed up wrapped in a bow and there was no chance I wouldn't like it. And I do! This has great heaps of aesthetic, intuitive magics, strange monsters, fey creatures, and the right kind of evocative language to suit the weird setting. The tortured backstories get pretty tortured, and the protagonist's reveals don't quite land - there's nothing objectively wrong with them; they just fail to live up to the build-up. But the consequences of the setting (both within and without the forest) are thoughtful & effective, particularly in the relationship between the protagonist and the children, the children as representative (or not) of their position. This is reread material for me next autumn.

Title: Riding Freedom
Author: Pam Muñoz Ryan
Narrator: Melissa Hughes
Published: Blackstone Publishing, 2011 (1999)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 512,115
Text Number: 1849
Read Because: more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A retelling of the life of Charley Parkhurst (born Charlotte), who fled an orphanage to live as a male stable hand and stagecoach driver. Published in 1999, this is one of those (minor but apparently beloved?) MG novels that wasn't part of my own MG experience; I imagine it would be significantly different if written now, as Ryan treats Charley as the public persona and Charlotte as the private self, retaining she/her pronouns, shrinking the scale to age down the historic 1868 vote, and ending before Charlie's death and the discovery of his birth sex. The result is still compassionate and grounded, and like most stories of crossdressing to attain restricted social freedom it feels private, secretive, intensely personal, empowering, and full of potential; also: horses - I could see eating this up as a kid. But twenty-some years later, it's somewhat conservative in its approach to the nuance of pre-modern gender nonconformity.


Title: Twins
Author: Caroline B. Cooney
Published: Open Road Media, 2012 (1994)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 512,290
Text Number: 1850
Read Because: reading the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Inseparable twins are separated when their parents send one of them to boarding school. Every story about creepy twins immediately begs trope-guessing (one isn't real/is dead? codependency, incest, evil twin, mistaken identity, telepathy?) and I'm delighted to say that this has multiple of those, leaning hard into creepy codependenies (plural!), which means it might as well be dedicated to me, personally. Is it good? Not as remarkable in language or atmosphere as Freeze Tag, but I still appreciate Cooney's voice, a stylistic brevity that balances nicely the melodrama. Like many stories about evil, this falls apart a little when it goes to depict evil - there's a pivotal scene that needs to be scary and can't quite sell itself, and so it loses instead of gains momentum, and the ending doesn't recapture it. But in premise, I'm an easy sell and this didn't disappoint; I can see myself rereading this.


Title: The Shiny Narrow Grin
Author: Jane Gaskell
Published: 1964
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 130
Total Page Count: 512,420
Text Number: 1851
Read Because: see review
Review: Terry's father reenters her life, and on his heels a strange, pale, cold boy, both exerting a tumultuous effect on the already-wild life of a teen Mod. On one hand, this needs more vampire; on the other, Gaskell is intentionally foiling the two halves of the protagonist's life, the social dramas of her parent's failed marriage and the Mod subculture, and the longing for something else, something worse, something dangerous and captivating. Gaskell's language is remarkable:

The Boy's shadow netted Terry's catching-up feet. It was bitty, a tattered shadow, a light-trick sliding across the pavingstones, as though his clothes were throwing shadow but he wasn't.

Imagery I've never seen, distinctive and strange and doing more than plot or characterization to sell the Boy's mystique. I found this chasing back from Klause's introduction to The Silver Kiss, and this book's influence on that one and therefore on the lineage of YA paranormal romances/urban fantasy is unmistakable. Hell, this precedes Interview with the Vampire and the popularization of the sympathetic vampire by over a decade. As a reading experience, I still agree with the protagonist: needs more vampire and less of the mundane. But it's well worth tracking down - as with all Gaskell, it's incredibly out of print.

Been on a very specific kick lately! What a change from reading heavy nonfiction on audio.


Title: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Author: E.L. Konigsburg
Narrator: Jill Clayburgh
Published: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2009 (1967)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 170
Total Page Count: 510,175
Text Number: 1840
Read Because: more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: I could have sworn I'd read this as a kid, but nothing beyond the premise feels familiar, so - maybe not. Is it good, now, as an adult reader without the apparent benefit of nostalgia? It's fine. Clayburgh plays up Mrs. Frankweiler's crotchety-old-lady voice in the Simon & Schuster audio narration, and takes a conceit I'd love - intrusive narrators are delightful - and renders it a little overdone. The sense of potential of living at the museum, getting private access to an infinitely rich, infinitely wondrous, liminal space, is phenomenal; the rest of the plot kind of misses me. There are fun characters and clear arcs, but a sort of conservative bent: eldest female child rails against her social position and wants her life to have value and meaning (relatable!); returns to status quo with a petty, selfish secret (...do not want).

Don't read the afterword unless you want more social conservationism and some irrelevant minutiae.


Title: The Door by the Staircase
Author: Katherine Marsh
Narrator: Laural Merlington
Published: Dreamscape Media, 2016
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 510,525
Text Number: 1843
Read Because: more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Finally being adopted ought to fix all of Mary's problems, but the identity of her reclusive, eccentric adopter living on the edge of an equally strange town may present unexpected dangers. This is about as gentle a Baba Yaga retelling as possible, which makes for an evocative atmosphere and an amiable introduction to this folklore, compellingly contrasted against reader/protagonist expectations from Grimm fairy tales. But it cleaves to increasingly predictable MG arcs and pacing, and loses all its tension by the climax. Familiar is a synonym for forgettable in my experience with MG fiction; I wish this were less safe, but I still like its cozy-spooky vibes.


Title: Willodeen
Author: Katherine Applegate
Narrator: Ariadne Meyers
Published: Books on Tape, 2021
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 510,795
Text Number: 1844
Read Because: fan of the author & more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Autistic traumatized girl investigates local ecology; rescues unlovable special interest-wildlife and in doing finds her place in her community & family. And it's ridiculously charming. Applegate is unsubtle in her approach: everything plays out in predictable ways and the ecological message is uncamouflaged. But she has a knack for integrating capital-I Issues into organic, rounded characterization, particularly in the protagonist, and the inclusion of fantasy wildlife, the bubblenest-building hummingbears and skunk/boar hybrid screechers, gives this a necessary sense of whimsy that lightens the heavy topics and relieves my urge to put a warning sticker about "rescuing" wildlife on the cover. Wholesome, cozy, and tells me to read more modern Applegate.

Title: Calico Captive
Author: Elizabeth George Speare
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020 (1957)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 280
Total Page Count: 508,910
Text Number: 1834
Read Because: recommended in 2016 by lareinenoire in case you were wondering what the turnaround on my TBR can be like; ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Like many readers, The Witch of Blackbird Pond is the Speare I grew up with, but this would have been an easy book to imprint on if I'd encountered it at the right age: a sort of walking tour of the French and Indian War from the fictionalized perspective of a real girl captured in an Indian raid in 1754. Speare maintains period-appropriate prejudices between all social groups, but the protagonist's exposure to a diversity of peoples, classes, and cultures forces her to grow increasingly open-minded. Not perfect, which is to say both that it's dated and that the protagonist doesn't make a complete transformation, but a lot more sensitive and tasteful than I feared. And there's a certain degree of wish fulfillment both in being forced to encounter such a diversity of cultures and in the protagonist's persistence, survival, and increasing adaptability.


Title: Ella Enchanted (Ella Enchanted Book 1)
Author: Gail Carson Levine
Narrator: Eden Riegel
Published: Books on Tape, 2006 (1997)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 509,350
Text Number: 1836
Read Because: now we're browsing available now in the children's literature tag, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A Cinderella retelling with a literal bent: Ella is cursed by an overly ambitious fairy to be obedient, and this curse only becomes more of a liability after her mother dies and Ella is thrust into the wider world. This is one of those childhood classics that missed me, so I'm delighted to be charmed by it, even without the benefit nostalgia. It's not perfect - the body shaming in particular feels like the thing one hopes we wouldn't put in MG/YA now. But I'm a sucker for the logical, daily, petty consequences of the fantastic and speculative, and this is all about that: Ella must obey any command, intentionally or unintentionally given, feasible or infeasible, safe or not at all, and has developed a rebellious, independent personality as a result. Unfortunately, the curse's resolution, which thematically satisfying and empowering, doesn't sell me; within the framework of mundane, realistic consequences for magical elements, the curse breaking feels insubstantial and too easy.

Nonetheless, a delight. Playful, spirited, set in a distinctly strange and quirky world, and it gives me that same feeling as the premise of Dungeon Meshi or Beastars or a Pokemon Nuzlocke: wait, if that were a real, living part of the world, wouldn't the ramifications be a mess and an half? Yes! Turns out: yes.

(The audiobook, narr. Eden Riegel, blindsided me with first person Ella-/little girl-voice and I almost DNF'd three minutes in; but, to my surprise, it's not grating and works great.)


Title: Treasure Island
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson
Narrator: Alfred Molina
Published: Listening Library, 2007 (1882)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 509,640
Text Number: 1837
Read Because: as above, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Sometimes a classic single-handedly explains an entire genre/set of tropes, doesn't it? And not just by popularizing them, but by embracing them with such ridiculous enthusiasm that it still feels like an indulgence today. This flagged a little for me at the midway point, which is equal parts no Long John :( and the vagaries of plot, but it's a dozen actiony set pieces and every pirate trope one could want wrapped in a phenomenal atmosphere, and revives when Long John Silver returns to the page. What a character! - larger than life, and then rendered deeply alive. I've seen Treasure Planet umpteen times, and kept thinking, yeah, no wonder they could borrow the premise, but the real gold is the likeability of this character.

Title: Spindle and Dagger (aka Lies and Miracles)
Author: J. Anderson Coats
Published: Candlewick, 2020
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: ?
Text Number: ?
Read Because: reviewed by chthonic_cassandra, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Deeply rooted historical fiction about a young woman attempting to sell the lie of a saint's blessings to a Welsh prince in order to buy her safety within the warband that killed her family. The protagonist's lie, her complicated relationships with other women, her tenuous position, her trauma, often intentionally lead her to communicate poorly; I adore that, but when combined with the number of bait and switch near-escapes, the structure starts to feel strained, almost contrived - which is frustrating because there's no emotional contrivance. So I can nitpick: I wish the structure were an inch different; I wish it weren't as yoked to its historical inspiration, because the larger plot is less interesting than the protagonist's story. But her story got me to read first-person present-tense YA and like it, which is near enough a miracle: the adherence to her point of view and willingness to allow her flaws makes for an astute, nuanced portrait of trauma.


Title: Tell Me I’m Worthless
Author: Alison Rumfitt
Published: Tor Nightfire, 2023 (2021)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 50 265
Total Page Count: 507,260
Text Number: 1816
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: DNF at 20%. You know that person who keeps pointing out [bad things happening to shared social group], and you go, I acknowledge and am horrified by this but I'm not sure what you want me to do with this information except to be angry about it? I understand what motivates that sharing; there's space for it, for shared rage, for pure acknowledgement; at best, it can be an impetus to action. But it's often just a suffering vortex, a spiral of anger and despair.

Tell Me I'm Worthless has a great title and undoubtedly has a receptive audience, but it was pulling me into the suffering vortex.


Title: Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
Author: Roz Chast
Published: Bloomsbury USA, 2014
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 230
Total Page Count: 507,490
Text Number: 1817
Read Because: borrowed from a local Little Free Library
Review: A graphic memoir, this follows the author's relationship with her aging parents as they approach end of life. This runs into the usual issue of "how to rate a memoir": Not every page lands; predictably, it's the humor that fails me. But the complete text does work, which doesn't mean this is likeable or enjoyable so much as bitterly cathartic. I appreciate Chast's honesty, particularly in the insistence, and consequentially unfulfilling narrative structure, that these things that feel like they should be profound - end of life care, the loss of a parent, grief - don't necessarily offer closure or healing or profundity or anything, really, but a slow grind towards death.

The genesis of finally doing a deep (ish) (I am reading what Open Library has on offer, skipping Christmas books, but including multiple editions) Margaret Wise Brown was that she popped up in Hannah McGregor's A Sentimental Education, particularly in the context of queer picture authors/illustrators edited by Ursula Nordstrom, herself a lesbian. McGregor mentions that Nordstrom edited Arnold Lobel, James Marshal, Tomie dePaola, Maurice Sendak, and MWB, among others.*

This - the overlap between queer creators and children's fiction - is something I had noticed when delving into picture books a few years ago; it's an overlap probably not limited to Nordstrom, although her role is absolutely pivotal. But it's also so ... natural. McGregor comments that many beloved queer picture book authors (she mentions MWB, Edward Gorey, and Maurice Sendak IIRC) famously did not have, like, and/or indicate that they were writing for children, necessarily. Instead picture books, as exploratory, creative, often dreamlike works asking questions about self-identity and learning one's place in the world, are naturally spaces for queer exploration and self-expression. I'm paraphrasing from a text I read on audio and augmenting with my own reading*, but the TL;DR of this was:

Hey, go read more MWB. And thus I am!

And the thing about MWB as opposed to other picture book deep dives: MWB was not herself an illustrator; she has been enduringly popular; she left behind many unpublished manuscripts after an early death. As a result, there's rarely one true set of illustrations, and many of her books have been re-illustrated/re-released/re-edited, even, over the years, with some even more complicated origin stories (that'll come up in another set of reviews). Fascinating! Messy! And valuable insight into the relationship that art has on picture books, as I'll talk about below, in exceedingly long reviews for 30 page volumes.

As usual, my very very favorites are outside of the cut; but The Diggers, while not good, is fascinating.

* read: if I've mixed up any details, it's because oops, and because audio retention is for losers & I already returned the book.


( Home for a Bunny )


Title: The Dead Bird
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Remy Charlip (1958), Christian Robinson (2016)
Published: Harper & Row, 1965; Harper, 2016
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 40, 30
Total Page Count: 506,990
Text Number: 1807-8
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: Don't touch dead birds; k cool glad we got that out of the way.

This is phenomenal. The illustrations are kind of whatever for me - Charlip uses a limited (personally unappealing) (I hate blue-greens) color palette and soft, rounded shapes; Robinson's work is more vibrant and the children more diverse. Of the two, I prefer Charlip, in part because the more subdued palette reflects the somber tone, but mostly for the use of negative space: illustrations and text are on alternating spreads, which gives the text an incredible amount of contemplative space. And so in Carlip this is a spread:

"The children were very sorry that the bird was dead and could never fly again. But they were glad they had found it, because now they could dig a grave in the woods and bury it. They could have a funeral and sing to it the way grown-up people did when someone died.

So they took it out to the woods.

And in Robinson, this is three pages of low contrast text over vibrant images.

And the text should have that weight. This is a quiet, honest book about the profound imperfection of grief - grief as celebratory, performative, experimental, as a preparation for later life experiences; grief as profound, communal, healing; grief as material act; grief as "And every day, until they forgot, they went and sang to their little dead bird and put fresh flowers on his grave." It's not didactic but rather reflective, and the space it gives to imperfection really struck me.

When I feel compelled to write more about a picture book than there are words in the picture book, I know I'm going to remember it.


( Little Fur Family )


( The Diggers (two editions) )


Title: Two Little Trains
Author: Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrator: Jean Charlot (1949), Leon and Diane Dillon (2001)
Published: William R. Scott, 1949; HarperCollins, 2001
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 30, 30
Total Page Count: 507,210
Text Number: 1814-5
Read Because: reading Margaret Wise Brown, borrowed from Open Library
Review: The picture book deep dives I've done in the past (Gorey, Sendak, among others) have largely been by author/illustrators, so rarely have I encountered alternate versions of the same text. Reading MWB has taught me how illustrations change a picture book, not just the aesthetic but the tone, emphasis, even interpretation.

Two trains puff puff puff, chug chug chug, to the west. The Dillon frames one as real train and one as a toy, which is a classic real/play parallel that invites the child reader to imagine a stair rail as a mountain. And, as it's Dillon, the art is unsurprisingly solid.

But the (original 1949) Charlot is a different beast entire, a dreamscape of two trains rendered in flat pale colors and loose, fluid lines, the child-conductors napping under a gilded moon and amidst animal cargo on a long, surreal journey west, west, west. Rather than parallelism, repetition, but the use of negative space and direct address in the text ("Look down, look down that long steel track / Where you and I must go") invite the reader aboard.

The Charlot is less concrete and more open, impressionistic, fantastical even, and I'm crazy about it; and, also, by the juxtaposition, because while the Charlot is objectively better, the text taken in two such different directions is insightful and thought-provoking. And there's yet a third (Pizzoli) that I haven't read, and who know how it alters the text.

Title: Black Maria
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Published: HarperCollins Children's Books, 1991
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 504,370
Text Number: 1795
Read Because: fan of the author
Review:

We have had Aunt Maria ever since Dad died. If that sounds as if we have had the plague, that is what I mean. Chris says it feels more like that card game, where the one who wins the Queen of Spades loses the game. Black Maria, it is called. Maybe he is right.

Mig and her family are conscripted to a visit to Aunt Maria's seaside cottage, only to find her ruling the village in an iron grip. Mig's story is recorded in diary entries, which is a gimmick I adore, and moves from a wry, claustrophobic comedy of manners and into something appropriately DWJ-ish: strange, organic, magical. I was prepared to be annoyed by the binary, isolationist treatment of gender, and it's not awfully subtle, but it grows weirder and more complicated alongside the magic. My favorite DWJ? nah; but I have a backlog of her books on my ereader that I keep for a rainy day, an "I have nothing to read day," and selecting one at random had exactly the effect I wanted: it held my attention, wasn't afraid to get funny and strange, but grounded itself in well-sketched characters.


Title: The Little White Horse
Author: Elizabeth Goudge
Published: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2001 (1946)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 505,565
Text Number: 1801
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A girl orphaned by her parents' death travels to live with her cousin at a distant estate, and is pulled into an ancient family feud troubling a sweet country village. The beauty and the beast vibes are real - not the monster bridegroom, but the estate: beautiful, gently neglected, haunted by a tragic past, magically populated by embroidered riding habits and delicious sugar biscuits. It's delightfully purple escapist reading, set on the blooming cusp of spring, lush and indulgent and unrepentant. And for want of a monster bridegroom or other dangerous fairytale aspect it's limited by its 1946 publishing date, with restrictive gender and didactic social commentary which is never subverted or complicated. I mind less than I would: blur out the lectures about the sins of female curiosity, and the protagonist's journey, riding her gigantic protector-dog into the dark woods that surround a fairytale estate, still feels beautiful, bold, and, yes, full of a hunger for knowledge.


Title: A History of Fear
Author: Luke Dumas
Narrator: Graham Halstead, Toni Frutin, Gary Tiedemann, Jennifer Aquino, Shiromi Arserio, Gary Furlong
Published: Simon Schuster Audio, 2022
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 370
Total Page Count: 506,250
Text Number: 1803
Read Because: this review, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The personal testimony, edited and supplemented by interviews and evidence, of a murderer who claims his crime was the work of the devil. That gimmick - the personal narrative paired with investigative materials - is great fun, expanding on unreliable narrator tropes by adding a host of additional, contradicting voices. Both halves of the narrative develop their own theories, a divided structure that limits the space for each and, as a result, means neither is especially subtle. Still, I like how this handles ( spoiler ): subtle, again, not so much, but nuanced it is.