Polar Bear Morning by L. Thompson

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Polar Bear ◽  
Book History ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
The University

Thompson, Lauren. Polar Bear Morning. Illus. Stephen Savage. New York: Scholastic Press, 2013. Print.Ten years ago, Lauren Thompson and Stephen Savage collaborated on “Polar Bear Night”, which was a splendid picture book that swiftly became a New York Times best seller. “Polar Bear Morning” follows up on the simple story of a polar bear cub that ventures out onto the arctic tundra for an adventure, but this time our favourite cub meets a new friend. The story begins when the cub emerges from her dark den, peeks out at the clear blue sky, and follows the sound of seagulls. Soon after heading out into the snow and ice, she notices something tumbling down a snow hill. It’s a snow cub! The moment when the cubs first meet is beautifully portrayed in a two-page spread that shows two furry faces in profile looking at each other without words on the pages, which perfectly captures a child’s speechless, wide-eyed bliss upon meeting a new friend.The story continues with several charming scenes that show how the friendship develops: they climb the snow hill and tumble down together; they sprint beside the sea; they race past seals, walruses and whales; they pause at the ice’s edge; and finally, they jump into the sea together. It’s a delightful portrayal of a budding friendship, with simple, yet charming illustrations rendered in a gentle palette of soft blues, greys, pinks, and browns. This picture book is a joy to read and has all the makings of a beloved classic, including frolicsome illustrations, thoughtful design, and a captivating story. It’s a wholly satisfying picture book that will be a pleasure to read again and again.Recommendation: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember.

scholarly journals The Lonely Book by K. Bernheimer

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Book History ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Public Library ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
The Public ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The University

Bernheimer, Kate. The Lonely Book. Illus. Chris Sheban. New York: Random House, 2012. Print.This charming story about a well-loved book will not easily be forgotten. It’s the sort of picture book I would have loved to discover during my childhood visits to the public library. The tale begins in a classic fairytale style, “Once there was a brand-new book that arrived at the library.” As the story unfolds, young readers learn all sorts of details about the inner workings of a public library, including the custom that many of the newest books are placed on a special shelf in a high traffic area.The “lonely book” of this story initially had a popular and fulfilling life on the new book shelf but eventually it is relegated to the children’s section, along with countless other well-loved titles. Years pass, the book becomes a little tattered and worn, and is now checked out all too infrequently. Then, one morning, a little girl named Alice discovers it and falls in love with the story about the girl and her life under a toadstool, and so she takes it home. “The book had never felt so beloved.” Readers will discover how lonely it becomes when Alice forgets to renew her old book, and especially so when it begins a new life in the library’s storage basement. In time, Alice longs for her favourite book and despairs that she may never see it again. The story ends on a cheerful note, however, when Alice is reunited with her once cherished book at the library’s big book sale.For those of us who understand what it is like to cherish a book from our childhood, this book will bring back fond memories. The soft watercolour illustrations complement the story beautifully and they evoke a magical time when children fall in love with books, read them late into the night, fall asleep with them under their pillows, and dream sweet dreams about favourite characters and events.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember.

scholarly journals Bon Appétit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child by J. Hartland

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Book History ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The University

Hartland, Jessie. Bon Appétit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2012. Print.Master chef and author Julia Child (1912–2004) was adored by audiences from the moment she first starred in her own television cooking show in 1963. It was an immediate success because people were captivated by Child’s warm, high-spirited personality and her enthusiasm for good food and wine. Indeed, she regularly toasted viewers with a glass of wine and her trademark “Bon appétit!” in her distinctive voice. Young readers are introduced to Child in this delightful picture book biography that is a feast for the eyes. It offers a surprisingly thorough account of her life, and includes scenes from her early childhood in Pasadena, California, her brief career with an American spy agency, and her struggle to publish the now famous “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, to name but a few of the highlights. In one especially amusing spread, readers are shown how to make chicken galantine in 32 numbered panels, which make clear that Child encouraged her fans to try new foods and cooking techniques. Author-illustrator Jessie Hartland uses simple cartoons and a handwritten typeface to tell the story, and it is immediately apparent from the opening pages that the book is jam-packed with artwork and text, but the overall effect is one of considerable charm and animation. The endpapers are crammed with line drawings of kitchen tools, ingredients, and objects from Child’s life, which have English and French labels for readers who want to learn some essential vocabulary in both languages. For readers who want to learn more about Child, the book includes a useful bibliography, brief epilogue, and web links that show Child’s actual kitchen from her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the restaurant where she had her first meal in France. This adorable publication will appeal to foodies of all ages. Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 stars    Reviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember. 

scholarly journals The Honeybee Man by L. Nargi

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Mead-Willis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Rare Book ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Spare Time ◽  
The University ◽  
Local Ecology ◽  
Wild Blueberry

Nargi, Lela. The Honeybee Man. Illus. Kyrsten Brooker. New York: Schwartz & Wade, 2011. Print. This charming picture book chronicles the unconventional cottage industry of Fred, a Brooklynite who spends his spare time tending three colonies of honeybees housed on the roof of his townhouse. As the day unfolds, we follow Fred’s bees as they fan out across the borough, bringing back nectar from the herb gardens, flower pots, and even wild blueberry bushes flowering therein. Fred then harvests the honey and distributes jars of it to his neighbours. With this growing popularity of urban agriculture (and urban apiculture), Nargi’s story is a timely one, clearly aimed at progressive young families interested in the connection between local ecology and human community. The book is transparently but not disagreeably didactic: bee behaviour is examined and explained (both within the context of the story and in a two-page appendix), and the processes of beekeeping and honeymaking are illuminated through Fred’s perambulations within his apartment-cum-apiary. Brooker’s illustrations, a combination of gestural painting and collage, have a patchwork, handmade quality well suited to the book’s overarching preoccupation with all things organic and homespun. Her renderings of Brooklyn’s brownstone vistas are simple in their bright, flat planes of colour, but also satisfyingly dense with decoupaged texture and detail. Like the honey made by Fred’s “tireless Brooklyn bees,” her artwork is both a concentration - and a sweetening - of the teeming heterogeneity of urban life.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sarah Mead-Willis Sarah is the Rare Book Cataloguer at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. She holds a BA and an MLIS from the University of Alberta and an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria. 

scholarly journals The King Who Wouldn’t Sleep by D. Singleton

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
Book History ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Farm Animals ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
To Come ◽  
The University

Singleton, Debbie. The King Who Wouldn’t Sleep. Illus. Holly Swain. London: Anderson Press, 2012. Print. The King featured in this fairytale picture book is a man on a mission. He refuses to nod off until he finds the perfect mate for his lovely daughter, so he interviews a long line of princes, but of course “not one of them was quite perfect”. The illustrations of princes in all shapes and sizes are highly amusing, and the prince with the “extraordinary mustache” is especially charming. Despite the King’s indifference to this motley crew, the princes refuse to give up, so they decide that the only way to talk to the princess is to make the King fall asleep. They present him with sleeping potions, stuffed animals, blankets, bedtime stories, and every imaginable soporific gift, but the King will not be deceived; indeed, he gives everything to his servants, who immediately fall asleep, leaving no one in the palace to cook his dinner.  Princes continue to come and go but no one makes the cut. A young farmer witnesses all the comings and goings and decides to approach the King with successive gifts of farm animals, but the King shoos him away at every turn. That is, until the farmer returns with an entire flock of sheep and encourages the King to count them to ensure that all one hundred are present and accounted for. Presto! The King finally falls asleep. Everyone is impressed with the clever farmer, especially the princess, and so they get married, have a magnificent wedding, and live happily ever after. The comical story, complemented by cheerful illustrations, provides plenty of entertainment for young readers. Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember.

Long live the picture book!

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Picture Books ◽  
Keyword Search ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections

Ever since The New York Times published an article in October 2010 about the impending demise of the picture book, I have wanted to publish a short screed in its defense. I thought this was an opportune time because so many splendid picture books are featured in our spring issue. Let it be known that I am a devoted fan of children’s picture books. I read them voraciously as an adult, and have done so for as long as I can remember. I collect them. I purchase them in stores and from online booksellers. I present them to friends and little ones as gifts. As a special collections librarian, I also purchase them to complement and strengthen our antiquarian collections. To my immense satisfaction, I am literally surrounded by them. I understand that my passion for picture books is intense, but picture books are essential to feeding the child’s imagination and developing his or her critical thinking skills. A simple keyword search on the University of Alberta Libraries’ online catalogue revealed numerous peer-reviewed articles about the ways that picture books open up imaginative worlds to children; with this richer understanding of stories, children gain a greater understanding of themselves and the world they live in. If we acknowledge that picture books encourage children to construct meaning about characters, events, settings, and so on, then it seems only natural to conclude that picture books are essential to preparing beginning readers for pictureless chapter books. The author of the Times article reported that many parents are saying “My kid doesn’t need books with pictures anymore”, which is utterly shocking especially when we know the important role that pictures play in communication. When we introduce picture books to young readers, we allow them to make connections between their own life experiences and the illustrator’s use of colour, imagery, perspective, characterization, and dramatization. Picture books can provide powerful learning opportunities for children. I am always astonished at how much there is to learn about reading pictures. Whenever I open a picture book, I take great delight in the interpretive process. Indeed, interpretation is the essence of picture books, which is why sharing picture books with children is one of the best ways to develop their critical thinking skills. Are picture books dying “a sad little death”? The answer is obvious. I think not. I hope you enjoy this issue and please do get in touch if you have comments or questions. Robert Desmarais, Managing Editor

scholarly journals The Orphan and the Polar Bear by S. Qaunaq

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Polar Bear ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Human Form ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
The Common ◽  
Push Down ◽  
The University

Qaunaq, Sakiasi.  The Orphan and the Polar Bear.  Iqaluit:  Inhabit Media, Inc., 2011. Print.One of the common themes in Inuit stories is that of the orphan child alone on the land.  In this version, told by Arctic Bay elder Sakiasi Qalinaq, who learned his stories from his grandmother, the orphan is abandoned by hunters from his village and adopted by a village of polar bears.  The bears teach him to hunt and survive on the land and, when he is grown, return him to his people.  The image on the cover of the book showing the child riding the polar bear is an iconic one. This mythological relationship between child and polar bear is also found in non-Inuit literature, most notably in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. In the bears’ village the orphan is trained to hunt and survive on the land.  The bears also teach him their traditional wisdom.   For example, when one of the bears wants to go “push down” some humans because they “look so silly standing on their skinny legs”, a wiser elder bear says, “Never talk that way…don’t make humans our enemy.  Stay clear of them and their camps.” The book is primarily a picture-book. Unlike many of the other books of Inuit legends published by Inhabit Media, the pictures are not scary.  Rather they are quite beautiful.   The extra width of the landscape format gives artist, Eva Widermann, the opportunity to spread her illustrations across two pages reflecting the wide expanses of the Arctic.  Text usually takes up one corner or a few lines of a page.  Widermann’s images are realistic.  However, because this story is from a time when animals could shape-shift into human form, she sometimes gives the bears human postures and gestures.  For example, in the image on page 15, the polar bear is standing with a harpoon grasped in its front paws, handing it to the orphan.  Bears are also shown in their human form in three images. In the image on page 20, depicting the inside of an igloo in the bears’ village, a woman with human form is tending the fire.Overall this is a lovely rendition of the story.  While designed for an elementary school audience, anyone with an interest in traditional Arctic tales will enjoy it.  Recommended for elementary schools and public libraries. Recommendation:  4 out of 4 starsReviewer:  Sandy CampbellSandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.

scholarly journals Cicadas’ Singing by Jiani

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
Book History ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Private Tutor ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The University

Jiani. Cicadas’ Singing. Edmonton: Gold Mum Publishing, 2011. Print. Cicadas’ Singing was published last year by newly established Gold Mum Publishing, which specializes in bilingual books for children. I had been taking Mandarin lessons from a private tutor recently, so this seemed like an ideal opportunity to review a book with English, Chinese characters, and pinyin (the system to transliterate Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet). The story is about a girl named Huahua who lives in 1960s China with her divorced mother. We learn that this is a difficult time to be divorced because divorced women were thought to be “dirty”, but no reason or context is provided to help readers understand this form of discrimination. Following the word “dirty” is a clumsy transition to a description of Grandma Du, who is introduced as a garbage collector; she apparently is also considered dirty, “but not in the same way”. Huahua develops a friendship with Grandma Du and they begin spending time playing with homemade toys and singing songs. Knowing that Huahua desperately wants to go to kindergarten, Grandma Du offers her some advice: “Huahua is a pretty girl and will marry a wealthy man.” Once again, the story introduces to us a cultural curiosity that begs further description, nuance, or context, but instead the story makes another rough transition, this time to the day when Huahua is old enough to attend kindergarten. Huahua goes off to school and starts to avoid her older friend because “others thought Grandma Du was dirty”. Huahua pretends not to know Grandma Du, so they no longer see each other and soon thereafter we learn that Grandma Du has died. Huahua attends the funeral with her mother where they notice an unusually large number of singing cicadas, hence the title. The first problem with this book is the story, which will likely be difficult and unsatisfying for young readers. The English text has a number of problems with punctuation, diction, and grammar, and the brief cultural notes in the appendix are woefully inadequate to explain many of the cultural references. The illustrations have a certain appeal, but they are too often overwhelmed by dense layers of text. Here’s hoping that this series improves with time. Not recommended: 1 out of 4 starsReviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember.

scholarly journals Animals Illustrated Series by Inhabit Media

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Polar Bear ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Reading Level ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Related Text ◽  
The University ◽  
Natural Histories

Inhabit Media.  Animals Illustrated SeriesFlaherty, William.  Polar Bear, illustrated by Danny Christopher. Inhabit Media, 2016.Awa, Solomon.  Narwhal, illustrated by Hwei Lim. Inhabit Media, 2016.Niptanatiak, Allen.  Muskox, illustrated by Kagan McLeod. Inhabit Media, 2016. There are many picture book series that introduce the natural histories of various animals, often including Arctic animals.  However, few of these are created in the Arctic. These three authors all have first-hand knowledge of the animals.  William Flaherty is a conservation officer in Iqaluit and Solomon Awa is an Inuk from Igloolik, NU, who has lived a traditional lifestyle and Allen Niptanatiak is a hunter and trapper who lives at Kugluktuk, NU.   Polar Bear, Narwhal and Muskox the first three in Inhabit Media’s new Animals Illustrated series. Illustrations are usually spread across two pages with related text overprinted.  The illustrations, by Danny Christopher for Polar Bear and Hwei Lim for Narwhal are similar in style.  Both make extensive use of light blue, dark blue and white to represent the animals in their snow and water environments. Kagan MacLeod’s drawings for Muskox are brighter and show the more colourful tundra scenes.   There are also detailed drawings of the animals’ skeletons in each book.All of the books follow the familiar format of a natural history, with sections covering physical characteristics, range, skeleton, diet, reproduction, habitat and interesting information specific to the particular animal.  The interesting fact about the narwhal is that they have been known to dive more than 1,500 meters.  At the end of the polar bear book, there is a short description of the nanurluk, the mythological giant polar bear. The “Fun Fact” about the muskox is about how they use their horns.  There is also a “Traditional Uses” page that notes the use of the hides, meat and qiviut (muskox down).   Inhabit Media lists the audience for these books as ages 4-6, but the reading level of the text is Grade 4 and above. Younger children will enjoy the illustrations, but will need help to understand the text. These are excellent books that would be good acquisitions for school and public libraries, however, they contain little information that would not be found in similar works already held by many libraries.  Libraries with limited budgets might want to spend their money on some of Inhabit Media’s other works that contain unique content.  Highly Recommended: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer:  Sandy CampbellSandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines.  Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.  

scholarly journals Why We Broke Up by D. Handler

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Mead-Willis
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
English Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Rare Book ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Object A ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Sexually Explicit ◽  
The University

Handler, Daniel. Why We Broke Up. Illus. Maira Kalman. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2011. Print. In 1975, Judy Blume published Forever, in which a girl meets a boy at a high school party, dates him, falls madly in love with him, sleeps with him, and then breaks up with him. The novel was the first of its kind— a frank and sexually explicit portrait of teen love, delivered by a modern, post-women’s-lib female narrator. And while the book scandalized some readers, it became a coming-of-age touchstone for others. (Indeed, this reviewer remembers getting a copy from her mother – a bit embarrassing, given all the sex that was in it – as a sort of warning of the pleasures and pains of incipient adulthood.) Fast forward thirty-five years to Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up, in which a girl meets a boy at a high school party, dates him, falls madly in love with him, sleeps with him, and then breaks up with him. Not quite the trailblazer of a story that it was in 1975, but a fascinating (and in many ways superior) revision of the doomed-teen-romance downer. Daniel Handler is, after all, known to most as Lemony Snicket, and readers may detect shades of Snicket in the sly wit and mordant humour that infuse this particular series of unfortunate events. But his improvements on Blume’s prototype do not stop at style. For one thing -- and this is a big thing -- Handler invents a far more interesting narrator to tell the tale. While Min Green encompasses the moods and caprices typical of the teen girl umwelt, she also displays repertoire of quirks unwedded to age or gender: an obsession with cult cinema, a wicked sense of humour, and a singular worldview disclosed to the reader in lyrical, synaesthetic morsels. (“Enormous as a shout” is how she first describes Ed Slaterton, her love interest.) Through Min’s voice, Handler creates something that is less a love story than a headlong plunge into the teenage psychic cosmos— that welter of sensory, emotional, and cultural bric-à-brac that young people accrue in their projects of self-creation. The book is cluttered with spurious allusions to movies that were never made, musicians who don’t exist, food and beverages not on offer anywhere outside the text. (Viper shots, anyone? How about a bottle of Scarpia’s Extra Bitter?) These are a clever device on the author’s part; instead of attempting to tap the vocabulary of teenage cool (and burden the novel with effortful hipness), Handler fabricates a pitch-perfect simulacrum. As befits a post-2000 story of young love, there is a visual counterpoint to Handler’s text. Each chapter begins with the image of an object -- a bottle cap, a comb, a pair of earrings – rendered in lush oil paint by artist Maira Kalman. All are mementos of Min’s and Ed’s relationship, and all are cast away as Min comes to grips its ruin. But just as love leaves a trace that cannot be easily expunged, so the images conjured by this novel will resonate, mournful and comic, long after the book is closed. Highly recommended:  4 out of 4 starsReviewer:  Sarah Mead-WillisSarah is the Rare Book Cataloguer at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. She holds a BA and an MLIS from the University of Alberta and an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria.

The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man by M. Chabon

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Merrill Distad
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Protein Delivery ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Story Line ◽  
Canadian Prairies ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Michael Chabon ◽  
The University

Chabon, Michael. The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man. Illus. Jake Parker. New York: Balzer & Bray, 2011. Print. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon recounts an archetypal small boy’s fantasy life as superhero Awesome Man. Equipped with all the requisite SuperPowers, including positronic-ray-blasting vision and a “thermovulcanized protein-delivery orb,” young Awesome Man, accompanied by Moskowitz, the Awesome Dog, does battle against the forces of darkness, including talking mutant Jell-O from beyond the stars.  After vanquishing Professor Von Evil and his antimatter Slimebot, the young hero battles his arch-nemesis, the Flaming Eyeball, and henchmen Red Shark and Sister Sinister. Returning to his “Fortress of Awesome, deep at the bottom of the deepest, darkest trench under the Arctic Ocean,” he finds his mother, the only one aware of his secret identity, awaits his return in the kitchen to offer him a restorative serving of cheese, crackers, and chocolate milk. Chabon’s thoroughly derivative story line, familiar at least since Super Man’s 1939 debut in Action Comics No. 1, is only redeemed by Jake Parker’s imaginative and charming illustrations. Adults reading this slight effort to children will at least be afforded a chuckle over Moskovitz, the Awesome Dog, named in honour of one of Sci-Fi’s most prominent students and proponents. Recommended with reservations: 2 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadMerrill Distad is Associate University Librarian (Research and Special Collections Services) and University Archivist, University of Alberta, and is the co-editor of Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies to 1953 (Toronto, 2003).  He is the author, most recently, of The University of Alberta Library: The First Hundred Years, 1908–2008 (Edmonton, 2009).

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