The boys and I hit a bookstore as part of our errands this past weekend, getting a short stack of manga for Thing 1 (mostly to become rewards for reading "real" books), and two things for Thing 2.
And those two picture books were:
Diary of a Fly by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Harry Bliss. It's the third in a loose "series" after Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider, now featuring, for the first time, a female lead character. Fly (or "Fly Girl") is the friend of Spider and Worm, and now she gets her own book. As with the previous books, actual facts about insects join not always cleanly with faux-school life among the insect kids; in this case, Fly learns not to worry, because all of the other flies eat regurgitated lunch, too. I didn't find this one as inventive as Spider and Worm were -- in fact, I think Fly had better business in Spider -- but it's still a decent book by solid creators, and it's a lot of fun. (Just, y'know, not quite as much fun as the other two books. So go get them first.) Bliss's art adds a wry sweetness to the proceedings; he's known best from his cartoons for the New Yorker, and that combination is a little unlikely for picture books. (Though Roz Chast just did one, so it may be about to be a booming combination.)
I'm Dirty! by Kate & Jim McMullan, is also something like a sequel; they've done previous books called I'm Mighty! (about a tugboat) and I'm Stinky! (about a garbage truck). Again, Dirty is the least of the three -- it's pandering a bit to the presumed boy audience by emphasizing dirt, and the backhoe in this book doesn't have as much interesting stuff to do. I'm Mighty! is the best of the three; the tugboat has to pull three very different ships to different places, and sees interesting sights along the way. Stinky! is just a lot of fun, with a great voice -- it's a great read-aloud book. Dirty! is fun, but won't come down off the shelf quite as often as the first two, unless there's a little boy around who's crazy about backhoes.
So both of these are perfectly nice books, much better than a lot of the stuff on the shelves out there, that suffer just a bit from comparison to their predecessors.
And those two picture books were:
Diary of a Fly by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Harry Bliss. It's the third in a loose "series" after Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider, now featuring, for the first time, a female lead character. Fly (or "Fly Girl") is the friend of Spider and Worm, and now she gets her own book. As with the previous books, actual facts about insects join not always cleanly with faux-school life among the insect kids; in this case, Fly learns not to worry, because all of the other flies eat regurgitated lunch, too. I didn't find this one as inventive as Spider and Worm were -- in fact, I think Fly had better business in Spider -- but it's still a decent book by solid creators, and it's a lot of fun. (Just, y'know, not quite as much fun as the other two books. So go get them first.) Bliss's art adds a wry sweetness to the proceedings; he's known best from his cartoons for the New Yorker, and that combination is a little unlikely for picture books. (Though Roz Chast just did one, so it may be about to be a booming combination.)
I'm Dirty! by Kate & Jim McMullan, is also something like a sequel; they've done previous books called I'm Mighty! (about a tugboat) and I'm Stinky! (about a garbage truck). Again, Dirty is the least of the three -- it's pandering a bit to the presumed boy audience by emphasizing dirt, and the backhoe in this book doesn't have as much interesting stuff to do. I'm Mighty! is the best of the three; the tugboat has to pull three very different ships to different places, and sees interesting sights along the way. Stinky! is just a lot of fun, with a great voice -- it's a great read-aloud book. Dirty! is fun, but won't come down off the shelf quite as often as the first two, unless there's a little boy around who's crazy about backhoes.So both of these are perfectly nice books, much better than a lot of the stuff on the shelves out there, that suffer just a bit from comparison to their predecessors.
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