Building better inroads
Storybooks are of ten multipurpose, training their audiences how to read while (hopefully) striving to entertain. It’s in their best interest to do so, after all: win over the young and you have readers for life. Kellen Hatanaka’s Drive (Groundwood books, $17, 32 pp, ages 3-7) is a book of opposites explored through illustrations of a pastel-hued road trip. The concepts range from the tangible (“big” and “small”) to the abstract (“old” and “young”) to the slightly more off-kilter (“worm’s-eye view” and “bird’s-eye view”). In the same way alphabet books give the impression that xylophones and yetis are as common as apples and balloons (and sure enough, Hatanaka released Work: An Occupational ABC with Groundwood last year), Drive is a vocabulary primer that covers the essentials, but with the right amount of detours.
In the years I spent working at a children’s bookstore, I learned that there are few decisions with stakes higher than trying to find the perfect first chapter book for a new reader. Parents were usually quick to stick to the classics, forgetting that Treasure Island might be a bit longer than they remembered; kids tend to go more readily for gross-out humour and gimmicks.
The Jasper John Dooley series by Caroline Adderson (with illustrations by Ben Clanton) is about a boy that collects lint and whose idea of rebellion is wearing his “Days of the Week” underwear on the wrong days. In the latest instalment, Jasper John Dooley: You’re in Trouble (Kids Can Press, 124 pp, $17, ages 6-9) he accidentally receives an energy drink from a vending machine, which he slowly consumes over the course of a week releasing caffeine-fuelled terror with each sip.
Jasper John isn’t about to work its way into the literary canon, but the series isn’t trying to. The sentences are clipped and repetitive, designed to ease readers through the transition into longer narrative structures. The books are episodic — they don’t need to be read in order — but there is some continuity to encourage reluctant readers to delve further into the series. Jasper John is affable and just weird enough to appeal to kids who may have trouble relating to more mainstream heroes.