I was going to go with the traditional protest song “War” but then thought this Austin Powers clip delivered the anti-war message just as well through humor.

Through research, imagination, and an empathetic prowess Katey Schultz has provided us with glimpses of basic human desires stunted by war. Flashes of [...]]]>

Through research, imagination, and an empathetic prowess Katey Schultz has provided us with glimpses of basic human desires stunted by war. Flashes of War, her collection of war-based flash fiction and short stories, deftly cuts open the indistinguishable “us-and-them” masks of the combatants to reveal familiar faces.

Reading “Deuce Out”, Katey’s first person narrative about a sister joining her brother on the frontline in Afghanistan, I couldn’t help picturing Hilary Swank as her Million Dollar Baby character telling me the story. It’s her voice I hear and her face I see, wet with sweat from jogging to the bus stop with her brother’s free weights in her backpack. At the recruitment office, it’s her brow and wide lips, responding to the desk sergeant’s questions.

There is a twist at the end of “Deuce Out”. In fact many of Katey’s stories don’t end as expected. “Checkpoint” and “Refugee” are two stories where the endings summoned in me memories of Twilight Zone episodes.

In “Checkpoint” a seasoned Private heads a unit of rookies on checkpoint duty. It reminded me of the famous Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man”, where a misinterpreted signal leads to calamity for the natives.

The story, “Refugee” reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough At Last”. In that episode, Burgess Meredith portrays a severely nearsighted bank employee who hides in the bank’s underground vault to eat his lunch and indulge in his passion for books. He wishes he had more time to read his books. However, when his wish is granted, he is thwarted by an unexpected loss.

In “Refugee” an Iraqi man narrates his abandonment of his home in Fallujah with his wife and children. He then recounts his days in a refugee camp set up by Doctors without Borders in al-Hadrha before describing his journey back to his home. Needless to say, in true Twilight Zone fashion, he dream of returning to the home he left turns into a nightmare.

In Katey’s stories, just like in the really good episodes of the Twilight Zone, great care is taken to create a shroud of familiarity that when unfurled exposes something unexpected and raw.

Katey has taken the layperson’s understanding of war and gifted it with greater emotional depth. She believably portrays the Middle Eastern experience of war in stories like “Refugee”, “Into Pure Bronze”, and “Aaseya & Rahim”. However, she is much more successful at portraying the lives of the American soldiers and their families.

“Getting Perspective” is intimately told by a young mother recently widow by the war. Her husband has died in combat and she waits for his ashes to arrive in their hometown. Her story offers a record of the private emotional and external social struggles she encounters trying to acclimate to the new world that has resulted from her husband’s death; the new looks from old friends, the new sensitivities, and then managing the potential new beginnings.

If I were to find fault with Katey’s book it would be that there weren’t enough stories like “The Ghost of Sanchez”. But it’s not the story I wanted more of — It’s the characters. All of the Americans she created to tell their war stories were small town (assumably White) boys and girls. Sanchez was the only immigrant who played a prominent role in the stories.

I am confident that there are plenty of Second Generation children serving in the armed services today. The American armed forces is possibly even more culturally and ethnically diverse than a UN General Assembly meeting. So why isn’t this depicted in popular media? Why are these soldiers’ stories not told with the same reverence?

But these are questions for another time. I don’t want to end this review on this note. Flashes of War is a good book that successfully presents a very approachable and sympathetic human “eyewitness” account of war and its human costs.

You can’t really write a post about war and ignore this song.

If given the opportunity to speak with Joan Cooney and the other surviving Sesame Street founders, the first question I would ask them is “Do you think it worked?”

Did Sesame Street help the audience of economically disadvantaged kids whose plight was the inspiration for the show? Even though Sesame Street and [...]]]>

If given the opportunity to speak with Joan Cooney and the other surviving Sesame Street founders, the first question I would ask them is “Do you think it worked?”

Did Sesame Street help the audience of economically disadvantaged kids whose plight was the inspiration for the show? Even though Sesame Street and its characters are known worldwide, in the US economically disadvantaged kids still struggle academically. In fact, the current national cry is that US students have fallen behind their international peers in academic performance.

I don’t remember the first time I watched Sesame Street and there’s not an episode that I can honestly say left a lasting impression. I can say, however, that Sesame Street was a pervasive presence in my childhood, tween years, and adulthood. And it will probably accompany me into my geezer years and final days.

The show’s impact may have become muted due to the current mass of pre-school, early elementary educational programming available through cable and satelliteTV and the internet, but it’s Sesame Street that I sought out decades ago on my parents 12″ black-and-white TV set. Sesame Street was the first educational TV show that I watched loyally as a child.

Begun as an experiment to help economically disadvantaged students succeed academically, Sesame Street has evolved into an iconic American brand. According to Michael Davis, its creators were the first to successfully apply commercial television approaches to an educational public television show. I would have never made the Laugh In connection. But once it was pointed out — the pacing, the contemporary comedy, the slapstick — I wondered why I didn’t make the connection myself? It now seems so obvious.

Michael Davis’ Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street reminds me a lot of Jean Stein’s Edie: An American Biography because of the depth of the information both authors chose to include about their subjects. Jean dedicates much of her volume to the older roots of Edie’s family tree (her grandfather, great grandfather, and maybe even her great great grandfather). The depth of information Street Gang provides helps us appreciate the “luck” and coincidences that worked together to bring the program’s founders together.

Michael expertly seasons the facts with just enough of prosy drama to keep you reading. Like its subject, Street Gang is great edutainment. After a prologue that has us following Joan Cooney through a dense crowd of mourners at Jim Henson’s funeral, he officially begins his Sesame Street story with a description of Lloyd Morrissett’s daughter climbing out of bed at 8AM to wait out the test pattern on the family television set.

“Sarah (Morrissett’s daughter) understood that if she waited patiently, the Indian (test pattern graphic) would soon vanish. An announcer would then begin the broadcast day with a recitation of FCC-mandated station identification drone, followed by the National Anthem, played over a film that panned Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty, and, depending on whether you owned a color or a black-and-white set, either amber waves of grain or amorphous waves of gray.”

His Sarah tale is demonstrative of the prose he uses throughout Street Gang. Its tone reminded me of my own childhood in Queens. Saturday mornings. My sister and I in our pajamas parked in front of the family television waiting for the cartoons to start. It’s these instances — the shared anticipation among children of “my programs” coming on the air — that provide the narrative with additional depth and appeal.

In addition to the personal connection, the portrayal of the Children’s Television Workshop as a “real job” drew me. Watching the sensible ways the citizens of Sesame Street solve their problems (external and with each other) is inspiring but unrealistic (and unacceptable as we get older and “wiser”). The revelation that Sesame Street might not have happened, that it didn’t always enjoy the broad acceptance it does now, and that it is very much a business that needs to continue to innovate in order to survive help to ground the book and make it a more believable story.

Bowling for Soup make suffering painful teen (tween) cliques fun.

Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time is the fourth Lisa Yee book I’ve read. I was introduced to her writing through a contest at the Rice Daddies blog. Lisa had generously donated five sets of her Bobby Ellis-Chan [...]]]>

Bowling for Soup make suffering painful teen (tween) cliques fun.

Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time is the fourth Lisa Yee book I’ve read. I was introduced to her writing through a contest at the Rice Daddies blog. Lisa had generously donated five sets of her Bobby Ellis-Chan books as prizes (Bobby vs Girls (Accidentally) and Bobby the Brave (Sometimes)).

Even though my children and I read the Bobby books together over a year ago and there have been many books since, every now and then they will act out the scene where Bobby’s little sister discovers that goldfish poop and pee in the same water that they eat and play in. They’ll recite their lines and just start giggling uncontrollably. For me, this is the best testimonial to Lisa’s talent as a writer.

The Bobby books, Warp Speed, and Stanford Wong are all set in the fictional community of Rancho Rosetta. But only Warp Speed and Stanford Wong share the same characters. Bobby still has a year or two to go before he’s old enough to join Marley (Warp Speed) and Stanford in middle school.

Maybe it’s because I read the books in reverse order, I started with Bobby and ended with Stanford (with Marley in the middle), or maybe it’s just because I have more in common with Marley (Star Trek, superheroes, and AV Club) than with Stanford (basketball), but it took me a little longer to finish Stanford’s book. It seemed a little clichéd.

Bobby’s stories introduced me to a single stay-at-home dad, a former football player who struggles to impress his kids in the kitchen. Marley’s family struggles to maintain a rundown movie theater. But Stanford seems to be your average run-of-the-mill (albeit superbly written) dumb jock. She gives him his “Stress Mess”, a quirky stress relieving habit he has, but that’s about it. The rest of Stanford’s life seems to be one cliché after another — failing school, bullying other kids to stay in good with his “friends”, pining away for a girl who seems out of his league, etc.

What might have made him more interesting is how Stanford might have had to fail or do poorly in a class in order to retain the company of his friends. Forget Millicent (the brainiac girl from Lisa’s first book who tutors Stanford). What if the story was that Stanford was a very good student up until he gets to middle school. He sees all of the good students tormented by the jocks and popular kids, so he purposely fails tests to maintain a C+/B to fit in.

He might then have an awakening of some sort (maybe as a result of meeting Emily Ebers or a result of something traumatic happening to his grandmother). His ailing grandmother might punctuate a lesson to always be true to yourself. Stanford might have walked between the worlds of jock and bookworm.

Just a thought…

I’m not saying Stanford was a bad book. I have to admit the ending like the ending of the second Bobby book made me have to tilt my head back and tell my children an eyelash had gotten in my eye. But overall, Stanford simply wasn’t as good as the ones that followed it.

I don’t remember the previous volumes well enough so I have to ask is Volume 4 the first time the vampires in American Vampire have a little “color” to them? The book begins [...]]]>

American Vampire, Vol. 4 by Scott Snyder

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don’t remember the previous volumes well enough so I have to ask is Volume 4 the first time the vampires in American Vampire have a little “color” to them? The book begins with an American Indian vampire and concludes with an African American vampire. There is also an insinuation that there are East Asian vampires in the final story in the book (though there were Japanese vampires in Volume 3). Sandwiched between the ethnic vampires is the story of Travis Kidd. It’s his story that is the most interesting of the three collected in this volume. Calvin the Taxonomist being the second and the opening story revealing the childhood friendship between Jim Booker and Skinner Sweet being the third.

The story of Travis Kidd is interesting because he establishes a third side in the struggle between vampires and human and Old World vampires and the American Vampire. His story also reveals a secret about Skinner Sweet. Travis is a “free agent” of sorts, unbound by the rules and allegiances formed by the Vassals. You sort of wonder if there are two vampire sides (Old World and American) is Scott Synder setting the story up to introduce a second vampire hunter side (the Vassals and as-of-yet-unidentified human vampire hunter organization)? Will the Vassals have to contend with containing a new human “problem” in addition to the vampire one.

American Vampire is one of my favorite recent discoveries but like Sweet Tooth (another recent favorite) I learned at the 2012 NY Comic Con that it is going on “hiatus” (i.e. “coming to an end”). I’m looking forward to Volume 5 but with the trepidation that there will be a potentially humungous gap between the last issue and the next new issue.

View all my reviews

I picked up Fables, Volume 16 from the library, after reading Bill Willingham’s introduction to Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ Unwritten. His heralding the age of the LAF (Literary-, Animal-, Fairy Tale- [...]]]>

Fables, Vol. 16: Super Team by Bill Willingham

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked up Fables, Volume 16 from the library, after reading Bill Willingham’s introduction to Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ Unwritten. His heralding the age of the LAF (Literary-, Animal-, Fairy Tale- based comics) Triumvirate made me curious about the differences between superhero comics and the ones that he felt a kinship towards. I enjoyed reading both Volumes 1 and 2 of Unwritten and I remember enjoying his Fables comics. I think I got up to Volume 4 before I stopped reading. I think I just got to a point where I simply wanted something different.

It had been a while since I read Fables. I was a little worried that I had missed too much to get back into the story. Happily, the prologue and the chart of relevant characters were enough to provide me with enough background to understand that the Fables (the namesakes of the series) had barely survived a battle with a powerful enemy called Mister Dark. The Fables retreated from their hometown, Fabletown, to a farm and then again to a place called Haven. In Haven, the Frog Price uses a magical incantation to surround the town with a protective barrier. Pinocchio has either been appointed (or self-appointed himself) to recruit and train a group of “super Fables” to protect the town.

Having read Bill’s introduction to Unwritten made the stories in Volume 16 particularly interesting because it placed LAF characters in a superhero universe. Pinocchio is befuddled by the difficulty he is experiencing from the recruitment of Fables that meet superhero cliches. For example, there is a funny scene where Rapunzel informs him that her long hair is not “living” and cannot pick up objects. She accuses him of being lecher because of the costume changes (he makes all of his recruits wear spandex outfits). Pinocchio looks aghast. He’s much more interested in meeting the comic book criteria for superheroes than well-drawn blond girls.

Fables, Volume 16 is a nice reintroduction to the Fables series. It successfully plays with the superhero and LAF Triumvirate genres(?) in a humorous and engaging way.

View all my reviews

An infographic by the team at CouponAudit

]]>

An infographic by the team at CouponAudit

ImaJunation’s Bad Days is one of my favorite sources for superhero parodies.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS WARNING!

I liked the movies (the new ones and the old ones) and the TV shows (the cartoons and the live-action), but it wasn’t until I played the

I liked the movies (the new ones and the old ones) and the TV shows (the cartoons and the live-action), but it wasn’t until I played the Arkham City video game that I actually wanted to read a Batman comic.

With the help of Wikipedia I reacquainted myself with characters I had been introduced to through Batman: The Animated Series and updated myself on new developments like Barbara Gordon becoming the Oracle and Batman’s relationship with Talia al Ghul.

The Arkham City game is an intriguing interactive story set inside the city blocks that make up Gotham’s slums. They have been walled in and converted into an enormous prison complex by . Gotham’s mayor, Quincy Sharp. Mayoral appointee Dr. Hugo Strange serves as the prison’s warden. Unbeknownst to Mayor Sharp, Dr. Strange has his own plans for Arkham — Protocol 10.

The inmates of Arkham City struggle for power as they would on the outside. Each super villain — Penguin, Joker, and Two-Face — commands a band of somewhat loyal followers. To complicate matters, the Joker has transfused his own toxic blood into Batman. You play as Batman. Your mission is find the cure to save yourself and the Joker. In addition to the primary mission, there are several side missions involving the other villains.

The stories that contextualized the missions (primary and side) were so good that I was driven to finally read a Batman comic. Not knowing where to begin, I chose titles based on writers I recognized. I decided on Scott Snyder’s Batman: The Black Mirror because I liked reading American Vampire and his collection of short stories, Voodoo Heart.

The Black Mirror deserves the accolades it’s gotten on Goodreads. IGN voted it best comic in 2011. Despite my dated and superficial knowledge of the Batman universe The Black Mirror was relatively easy to get into. In fact, my lack of knowledge made it more intriguing.

Imagine Bruce Wayne changed after a near-death experience. He sets out across the globe to establish a network of “Batmen” (Batman, Inc.) Dick Grayson, the original Robin, takes on the role of Batman with the help of Barbara Gordon (formerly Batgirl, now Oracle) and Tim Drake (formerly another Robin, now Red Robin).

The interesting parts of the story for me are those moments when Dick has to contend with the original owner of the shoes he’s filling — Bruce Wayne’s Batman. There is one monologue in particular where he is thinking to himself about how Bruce didn’t like to fly over the city on patrol. It cleverly reveals Dick’s discomfort with the cowl or his attempt to assert his own “Bat-identity” from beneath the shadow of his predecessor’s.

Just like in Arkham City, the main story (the one involving the Commissioner’s son) in The Black Mirror has an interesting twist at the end too.

This is the third Lisa Yee book the boys and I have read together. Every once in a while, the boys will retell the scene from Bobby where his little sister asks him what his [...]]]>

Warp Speed by Lisa Yee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the third Lisa Yee book the boys and I have read together. Every once in a while, the boys will retell the scene from Bobby where his little sister asks him what his fish is doing and then break out laughing. Marley, the narrator in Warp Speed is older than Bobby but lives in the same Rancho Rosetta community. Looking on the book flap at Lisa’s other books, their interconnectedness makes me think that maybe Lisa is this generation’s Beverly Cleary. My youngest is reading Henry Huggins now. There is a similar sense of humor and accessibility.

Warp Speed effectively speaks to bullying and the isolation middle school children feel when they start noticing the social hierarchies that exist onto adulthood. It also effectively portrays the hurt children feel when good friends are pulled apart by natural changes in character and likes.



View all my reviews

My kids and I agreed that it isn’t as good as Hugo though it is nearly twice as thick. This doesn’t mean it is a bad book, however. In fact the story was a very good [...]]]>

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My kids and I agreed that it isn’t as good as Hugo though it is nearly twice as thick. This doesn’t mean it is a bad book, however. In fact the story was a very good one. I was just not happy with the balance between illustration and text this time around. It’s not my place to judge but WonderStruck seemed to be trying too hard to mirror the successful aesthetic of Hugo. If the publication date were stripped from both books, I would have thought Wonderstruck was written before Hugo. The experiment with form and then honing the technique.

Perhaps the most exciting results of reading both Selznick’s books is the curiosity they inspired in me and my boys about the World’s Fair, the American Museum of Natural History, the Queens Art Museum (and Science Museum) and George Melies.



View all my reviews

The Neverending Story is my first thing that came to my mind when I thought about the stories I’ve read and seen about books with magic powers.

WARNING: Potential Spoilers!

In his introduction to Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ first volume of Unwritten, Bill Willngham cleaves the history of comic [...]]]>

The Neverending Story is my first thing that came to my mind when I thought about the stories I’ve read and seen about books with magic powers.

WARNING: Potential Spoilers!

In his introduction to Mike Carey and Peter Gross’ first volume of Unwritten, Bill Willngham cleaves the history of comic book stories into two periods: The generation of super hero stories and the stories of the LAF Triumvirate (Literature-based fantasy, Animal fantasy, and Fairy Tale fantasy). Unwritten and his own stories (Fables) are associated with the latter generation.

Unwritten was one of those books I put off reading because there always seemed to be another book that I felt a greater urgency to read like American Vampire and Sweet Tooth. Another detractor was Unwritten is a text heavy graphic novel that deserves a greater time commitment than my morning commute would offer. Happily, after hearing Bill Willingham speak about a Fables “event” with Unwritten at the 2012 NY Comic Con, I did pick it up and dedicate my nights to it. I am a fan of the Fables books and am now a fan of Tom “Tommy” Taylor.

Unwritten tells the story of Tom “Don’t-Call-Me-Tommy” Taylor, the benign son of a famous father, Wilson Taylor, who just disappeared one day. In addition to the trauma of his father’s mysterious disappearance, Tommy also suffers the stigma of sharing the name of the central character of his father’s popular Harry-Potteresque book series, Tommy Taylor.

Discredited by genre critics as someone just milking his father’s legacy and worshipped by his father’s fans as the flesh and blood incarnation the “Tommy Taylor” from his father’s books, Tom Taylor struggles to maintain his sense of personal identity and self-worth. He is adamant that the people around him call him “Tom”, not “Tommy”.

His life as he knows it unravels at a fan convention when a woman’s question ignites a storm of gossip about Tom not actually being Wilson Taylor’s son. The gossip asserts that Tom is the result of a clever marketing campaign that has been going on since Wilson’s first book. Fans of the Tommy Taylor books splinter into groups that believe he is a fraud and groups that believe he is his the messiah. These events drive Tommy to an old castle his father used to own. He is determined to prove or disprove his existence as Tommy Taylor.

Unwritten takes its time to tell Tom’s story. I’m hesitant to refer to the pace as slow because that has negative connotations, instead I am going to characterize the Tom Taylor’s story as being steadily paced. The authors, Mike Carey and Peter Gross, effectively avoid the monotony that some stories with similar pacing suffer by using news articles and blogs positing theories about Tommy Taylor and his questionable history to impart plot information. These articles also help develop Tommy’s character tangentially through the eyes of his public.

Pullman, the antagonist whose touch can liquify objects into a silvery alphabet soup is introduced in the first book, “Tommy Taylor and the Bogus Identity”, but not much is revealed about him or his employer. The consequences of his actions begin the second book, “Inside Man”, where the a few of the laws and rules of the Unwritten world are revealed.

A friend told me once that he loved the part in those Saturday afternoon TV “kung fu theater” movies that showed the heroes learning new skills. In addition to the imaginative story, part of the fun of reading literature-based fantasy are the laws and rules that have been created to govern the actions of those who live in the story. In the “Inside Man” Tom takes on a “canker”, the result of a story that has been corrupted or become too complicated, “when the energy inside it gets poisoned… because of the contradictions” (as explained by Lizzie Hexam).

Unwritten succeeds as literature-based fantasy because the rules that govern its fantastical world make perfect common sense in the real world. Reality is stretched just far enough to spark your imagination without seeming like you are being force fed the surrealities of the story’s fantastical world.