Bookami

Masterpiece by Elise Broach with Illustrations by Kelly Murphy

For those readers not quite ready for the intensity of Balliett's Chasing Vermeer or The Wright 3, Masterpiece offers budding sleuths a sweet, pleasant history-mystery.  James Pompaday lives with his mother, stepfather, and baby brother in an apartment in NYC.  He is a thoughtful, shy eleven-year-old boy who rarely warrants, good or bad, the attention of his family.  For his birthday, his dad gives him a pen and ink set.  While he tries to act excited, James is unhappy with the gift and sets it aside.  Ah, but one boy's junk is one beetle's treasure, and that is where Marvin comes in.  Marvin and the rest of his beetle family live under the kitchen sink in the Pompaday's apartment.  He often finds himself feeling bad for James and decides to provide him with a spectacular gift.  With the ink and his amazingly agile beetle legs, Marvin leaves James the most detailed miniature drawing.  James, of course, gets all the credit for the picture, and before they know it, James and Marvin find themselves in the middle of an elaborate plan to help recover a famous stolen miniature by Albrecht Durer.  Thus, an unlikely friendship is born.

While not as fast-paced as Chasing Vermeer or The Wright 3, I found I enjoyed the simplicity of Masterpiece.  Broach doesn't knock you over the head with facts about Albrect Durer, nor are her characters nearly as obsessive as Petra and Calder in Balliett's works.  Broach has written a satisfying linear mystery with a bit of beetle charm and wisdom to entice even the most reluctant readers.

It's Only Temporary by Sally Warner

So this was a fun, enjoyable read.  Kind of a cross between Harriet the Spy and the much heralded Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but unless I post my review, It's Only Temporary has zero reviews on Amazon while Diary of a Wimpy Kid has 143.  Why is this?  I don't think it's price.  Sure, It's Only Temporary is $3 more, but it's still within the price range of most intermediate hardcovers.  Both have quirky cartoon art, and both novels chronicle the day to day life of their middle school-aged protagonists.  The only major difference that I can see is that It's Only Temporary has a female main character while Diary of a Wimpy Kid has a male protagonist.  I know that it's harder to get boys to read, but I don't think that means It's Only Temporary deserves less attention because it's a story about a girl.  It's not as if Jeff Kinney is the first author to write a story about a whiny, sarcastic young boy.  I mean in many ways isn't it just a more realistic step up from Captain Underpants?  It seems to me that boys and girls have similar feelings about school life, and I have a pretty good example from which to pull this observation since I have a twin brother.  Sure, how we responded to situations was often different but if asked our feelings about a particular event, we often felt the same.  When I liked a boy and he didn't like me back, I was sad.  When my brother liked a girl who didn't like him back, he was sad too.  I'm not saying that I didn't like Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  It was hilarious, but does it deserve to be called ground-breaking just because it's told from the perspective of a guy?  No, and I certainly hope that as my sons get older, it won't be shoved down their throats as required reading just because it's an illustrated book about a guy.  I'd like to think our education system can do better by all boys. 

Diary of Wimpy Kid & Diary of Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules by Jeff Kinney

Synopsis: Greg Heffley hopes to be famous one day, but for now he's stuck in middle school where he is smaller than just about all the kids in school.  At home, he's the dreaded middle child, stuck between his evil big brother, Rodrick, and his cute little brother, Manny.  Add dealing with his parental units, and life is not easy for Greg, but it is hilarious, and he writes about and illustrates it all in his diary, I mean, journal.  After all, guys don't write in diaries.

Review: Okay, so I'm a believer.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Rodrick Rules are truly hilarious.  The humor in these illustrated novels falls somewhere between Dav Pilkey's Captain Underpants series and The Simpsons.  And without giving too much away, the whole Cheese Touch storyline in the first book made me think of the family brown towel situation in David Sedaris' memoir, Naked.  And much like Naked, I think I will find myself reading these novels over and over again.

Kinney really gets what it is to be a kid in middle school, sugar-coating nothing.  In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I love Greg's explanation for his friendship with Rowley.  "It's been great having him around, mostly because I get to use all the tricks Rodrick pulls on ME."  Or when it comes time for the wrestling unit in P.E., Greg is the lightest kid in the class, and he's worried that he might have to wrestle this really big dude, Benny Wells.  "But then I found out who I DID have to wrestle, and I would have traded for Benny Wells in a heartbeat."  Greg has to wrestle, Fregley, the only other kid in his weight class and about as low on the school popularity scale as he can get.  It would be better to get beaten up by one of the big guys then get beaten up by a dweeb.

In Rodrick Rules, Kinney's insight is applied more to Greg's family dynamic.  The family motto, at least amongst the siblings, would fall along the lines of "eat or be eaten."  "The truth is, Rodrick can pretty much treat me any way he wants, because he knows there's nothing I can do about it.  See, Rodrick is the only one who knows about the REALLY embarrassing thing that happened to me over the summer, and he's been holding it over my head ever since.  So if I ever tell on him for anything, he'll spill my secret to the whole world."  And things with little Manny aren't all that much better for Greg.  When Greg plays a trick on his friend, Rowley, Manny sees the whole thing.  Greg thinks he's got it covered by bribing Manny with candy, but no such luck.  "Manny told Mom everything.  He even told her about the horror movies.  Don't even ask me how he knew about that."  Poor Greg.  He can't even catch a break from a three-year-old.

Both of these novels are a great read and fun to look at too.  The illustrations are simple and reminiscent of traditional newspaper comic strips. (Does anyone else think that the drawings of Greg's Mom look like Marcie from Peanuts?)  I can't wait until my four year old is a bit bigger so I can read them to him.  And if I can't wait, I suppose I can always cover them with brown paper so that no will know I'm reading a kid's book on the subway.  Even at 35, there's peer-pressure.