Babymouse: Queen of the World by Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm

-




Jennifer L. Holm, is the winner of three Newbery Honor Medals for Our Only May Amelia in 2000, Penny from Heaven in 2007 and Turtle in Paradise in 2011. She and her brother, Matthew Holm, are also the creators of the HUGELY popular graphic novel series, Babymouse! and the spin off series, Squish (reviews of books #1 and #5 here). The series debuted in 2005 with Babymouse: Queen of the World. The 18th book in the series, Happy Birthday, Babymouse, is due out in April of 2014. As a bookseller, I watched this series fly off the shelves. As a volunteer reading tutor in a second grade class, I watched struggling students, mostly girls but also boys, embrace Babymouse! and feel excited to read, often for the first time. As a mother, I was ecstatic when my youngest stepped up from beginning to read books to the Squish series. I even caught him reading as he was walking home from school one day!



So what is so great about Babymouse! and Squish? In Babymouse, the Holms have created a character who is a bit of an underdog, a character who wants to be accepted by the "popular" kids and a mouse who has a fantastic imagination and a great best friend in her buddy and fellow monster movie enthusiast, Wilson Weasel. Also, Babymouse LOVES cupcakes and the little pink heart that is near the hem of all her dresses. Babymouse is funny, silly and sometimes fierce, but above all else, she is thoughtful.




In Babymouse: Queen of the World, Babymouse discovers the Felicia Furrypaws is having a sleepover party and she is not invited. Desperate to get in on what she is sure will be a fantastic party, Babymouse faces some tough choices and I think this is another reason that readers love Babymouse and Squish. Kids love seeing characters in a tight spot and the Holms have a brilliant, subtle way of putting their characters in realistic situations that make them think and act, and not always in the best way possible. Equally, the Holms also have a wonderful way of showing their characters working through these tough situations and making the right choice in the end. The Holms also do a superb job of capturing the school setting, making it feel real and just a little bit more-than-real at just the right times. Babymouse gives her book report to Felicia in exchange for an invitation to her party and breaks her plans to watch "Attack of the Giant Squid" at Wilson's. Once she gets to the party, things aren't quite as fun as she had imagined. The girls just want to talk and do their whiskers and paint their nails. Bored and bumbling, Babymouse scorches the rug when she drops the curling iron and covers Felicia in nail polish while trying to open the bottle. When she overhears Felicia calling Wilson a doofus, she realizes what she has done and rushes out the door to make things right!

Both Babymouse and Squish are characters I am happy for my kids to spend time with. I don't have to worry about them picking up sass or snark and I know that, while being completely entertained, they are also learning little lessons...  One book that especially hit home in my house was Squish: Game On!. When Squish's dad gives him money for his birthday, he plans to spend it on a new comic book and a trip to a comic convention where he and his dad plan to dress up like their favorite characters and spend the rest of his money. But, Squish changes his mind and spends his money on the hot new video game that his friends are playing. Besides getting sucked into the game and spending all his free time (and not so free time) playing it, Squish doesn't get his book report turned in on time and he gets a D. How mom, dad, Squish and his teacher handle all this is brilliant!




Holm is also the author of the very cool Year-Told-Thru Stuff series, featuring Ginny Davis, which is sort of like a graphic novel but with photographs of the stuff of life instead of illustrations. Holm collaborates with Elicia Castaldi to tell the story of Ginny's life through collage art and comic strips by Matthew Holm.
Babymouse # 17, EXTREME BABYMOUSE
 and coming in April of 2014, 
#18 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABYMOUSE!


Babymouse #1 - #16


Popular posts from this blog

Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala

-
Image
Be a Tree! by Maria Gianferrari illustrated by Felicita Sala Review Copy from Abrams Kids I picture-walked Be a Tree! three times before I actually read the words. Felicita Sala's illustrations for Maria Gianferrari's poetic text are mesmerizingly immersive and richly colorful within a palette of earth tones. Throughout the text, Gianferrari, who shares her inspiration for this book in the author's note ( Peter Wohleben's The Hidden Life of Trees ), gently maintains the human connection to trees and the connections (and communications) trees share with each other.  Be a Tree!  begins exuberantly, inviting the reader to "Be a tree! Stand tall. Stretch your branches to the sun. Let your roots curl, coil in the soil to ground you." From your spine/trunk to your skin/bark and your heart/pith, the words carry you inward and then zoom outward and up to the canopy and ultimately, the forest. "You are one of many trees," and our roots "twine with fung
Read more

Under Earth, Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel Mizieliński, 112 pp, RL: ALL AGES

-
Image
Under Earth , Under Water by Aleksandra Mizielińska and Daniel  Mizieliński is their fourth book I have reviewed here and their fourth book with the marvelous Big Picture Press , a publisher of oversized, highly illustrated, gorgeous books who believe that books should be "visually intelligent, surprising, and accessible to readers of all ages, abilities and nationalities." BPP definitely achieves this with every book they publish and, if you are a book lover, you will want to seek out all their titles. Under Earth , Under Water will appeal to anyone who likes to look inside things and understand how things work. With Under Earth, Under Water , the Mizielińskis, who have an illustration style that is filled with tiny details and a unique palette, take readers on a detailed journey, from the top of the page to the bottom, over and under land and then sea. The endpapers serve as the introduction and table of contents, with images scattered across the spread, page nu
Read more

Reading Levels: A Quick Guide to Determining if a Book Is Right for Your Reader

-
Image
While I wrote an article titled Reading Levels: How I Assign Reading Levels to Books, How the Publishers Do It and How You Can Help Your Reader Find the Right Book at the Right Time that discusses how reading levels are determined by professionals and amateurs like myself, there is more on this subject to discuss. Determining the reading level of a book from the children's section is never easy, mostly because there are several different standardized methods of determining reading levels. Add to this the fact that knowing their children's reading level is most often the only tool a parent is armed with when exploring the bookstore, library, website, etc, and the job becomes even more difficult. While I think that knowing a child's reading level is a very valuable tool if your child is reading below grade level, I think that it is a secondary consideration when finding books for children reading above, especially well above, grade level because, in most cases, content app
Read more