SQUEAK, RUMBLE, WHOMP! WHOMP! WHOMP!
effect that both Danika and the illicit music have on him: “Each tiny glance sets my body humming. The songs themselves set me humming. They get inside me and tear apart all I ever was. They break me free.” Patrik and his family live in fear that his father, a psychiatrist who’s pressured to declare people “unfit,” will himself be arrested before they have a chance to escape to America. The strain of trying to tell which of their neighbors is trustworthy wears on them. Patrik, living on the edge between childhood and adulthood, dares to make a difference. Inspired by a true story, this easily accessible novel should appeal to teens who, like Patrik, are keen observors of the chaos that surrounds them. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)
Marsalis, Wynton Illus. by Rogers, Paul Candlewick (40 pp.) $15.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-7636-3991-4
Marsalis and Rogers, who collaborated on the scintillating Jazz ABZ (2005), reunite for this sonic celebration for the younger crowd. Marsalis contributes 10 three-line verses that crackle with invented sound words. Most verses link a couple of everyday sounds with one made by a musical instrument: “Big trucks on the highway RRRRUMBLE. / Hunger makes my tummy GRrruMBle. / The big bass drum goes ‘Bum! Brrrum! BRRRUMBLE!!!!’ ” Rogers’ digitally colored ink drawings depict a New Orleans setting. The narrator, an African-American boy in white high-tops, exudes curiosity and cool (and plays trumpet). Those onomatopoeic words, elegantly red-dressed in Caslon 540 Italic, will challenge readers and delight listeners. Marsalis’ choices seem just right: “Chrrrick chrrrick chrrrick chrrrick—buttering my toast.” An upright bass emits “Doom, Doom, Doom, Blap! Doom, Doom, Slap!” Rogers’ hip, playfully cartoonish spreads pop with clever visual allusions to jazz tunes and players. Hand-lettered lyrics to a popular funeral song blow out of a church band’s instruments; indeed, the tuba’s bell forms the “O” for “O[h] didn’t he ramble.” An ambulance’s side reads “U.M.M.G. Ambulance,” a brilliant reference to the Billy Strayhorn tune whose titular acronym means “Upper Manhattan Medical Group.” The final spread rounds up a cacophony of sounds, from “Squeak” and “Schuk-chuk” to “BAP!” Loud and clear, the creators show how tuning into everyday sounds can inspire music. Clap, clap, CLAP! (Picture Book. 3-7)
JEPP, WHO DEFIED THE STARS
Marsh, Katherine Disney Hyperion (384 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-1-4231-3500-5
Part coming-of-age novel and part paternity quest, this late-16th-century tale earns its distinction by virtue of its narrator: a dwarf. Edgar Award–winning author Marsh (The Twilight Prisoner, 2009, etc.) has written a fast-paced adventure, abundant with period details, that comprises about two years of the diminutive Jepp’s life. Jepp’s account begins at a perilous point in his story—“ imprisoned in [a] star-crossed coach, bumping up and down bone-rattling roads”—which leads to an exposition of the events that have brought him to this fate. Eventually his tale moves to a time beyond the hazardous coach journey and on to a satisfying, if overly contrived, ending. The book has three parts, loosely linked to three crucial northern European settings: the rural inn where Jepp was raised by a loving mother; the kingdom of Coudenberg, where he endures the luxurious but humiliating life of a court dwarf and is involved in a horrible tragedy; and the palace of Uraniborg, renowned for astronomical research, where Jepp’s status rises almost miraculously from pet dog to that of a respected scholar as well as a favored suitor for his beloved. Despite the fact that the third part of the book pales in comparison to the first two, the honest and humorously self-deprecating voice of Jepp moves readers to rejoice with him as he seeks and manipulates his destiny. (Historical fiction. 12-18)
MY OWN REVOLUTION
Marsden, Carolyn Candlewick (192 pp.) $16.99 | Oct. 9, 2012 978-0-7636-5395-8
A vivid portrait of life under the Communist rule of 1960s Czechoslovakia. Getting their hands on a bootleg copy of a Beatles single is just one of the small acts of rebellion that Patrik and his friends engage in. They face real reprisal if they’re caught painting over the two last letters of a sign that says “Long Live the USSR!” and urinating on a statue of Lenin. At 13, Patrik’s feelings for Danika, who lives upstairs, are starting to change, and he wants to be more than friends. Meanwhile, Danika seems more interested in the new boy at school, a party loyalist from Bratislava. Marsden captures the tension of Patrik’s adolescent longings with evocative descriptions of the 1948
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1 september 2012
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children ’s
&
teen
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kirkus.com
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