The Vanishing Pumpkin by Tony Johnston

The Vanishing Pumpkin by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Tomie DePaola

Rating: 4 stars

With wonderful, just-spooky-enough illustrations by the one and only Tomie DePaola, Johnston's silly, just-spooky-enough story unravels:  A (to say it nicely) elderly couple--a 700-year-old woman and 800-year-old man--simply wants to bake a nice pumpkin pie when they realize their pumpkin has vanished.  They go to find it, accusing everyone in their path of swiping it.  The pattern--first with a ghoul, then a rapscallion, followed by a varmint, then finally a wizard, is the same:

When told that he is guilty of stealing a giant pumpkin the creature looks around himself in a silly, kid-giggle-inducing fashion but cannot find it.  The annoyed-for-no-reason Old Man does a trick on the creature in order to prove that it is hiding the pumpkin somewhere.  The ghoul is turned invisible, the rapscallion is turned upside down in the air, the varmint is turned into a flea-filled cat, and the wizard...  oh wait, you can't trick a wizard or he'll trick you right back.  Each trick is applauded by the Old Man and the Old Woman and even the trickee himself.

It turns out that the wizard hasn't snitched the pumpkin--he's borrowed it so he could make a smiley jack-o-lantern.  And he's baked the pumpkin pie (which he's forgotten is under his hat) to share.

Johnston adds in some quirky quips that kept me chuckling: "Lucky lizards!" and "Snitched!" and "Don't be fresh with an 800-year-old man!" and "Great grizzlies!"

This is a very cute, slightly older Halloween book (1983!) that most kids probably haven't seen before...a great one to read at a Halloween party near you!

My Abuelita by Tony Johnston

My Abuelita by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Yuyi Morales

Rating: 2.5 stars

Confession: I don't really like clowns.  Or dolls.  So this book definitely freaks me out. 

I'll try and explain the story first, which is pretty good, though not stellar.  This little boy lives with his abuelita, who is an odd character to put it mildly.  Colorful is probably more polite.  But he, of course, loves her and thinks she's the best thing since sliced bread.  The book is mostly the little boy just describing her routine in the morning, as she gets ready for work.  And that's the big mystery Johnston really wants us to wonder about, because he mentions it on almost every single page, making me think to myself in my most inappropriately sarcastic voice:  OK!  WE GET IT!  WE'RE CURIOUS ABOUT HER WORK!  In the end, we find out she is a storyteller, and the little boy wants to grow up to be one, too.

And now, the illustrations.  I had to find out the background on these strange things, and I found this neat You Tube clip of Yuyi Morales describing how she made it.  The video is a wonderful illustration of how illustrations come to be--how painstakingly time consuming and detailed, and how much talent and time are both involved. 

It's pretty neat (and I'm not even a fan of the end result), but if you don't have 3 minutes and 42 seconds to watch it, here's the short version: She made the abuelita, the little boy, and the cat, then gathered together all the other stuff you see on the pages and took photographs of them, over a three year period.  For me, the illustrations in the book are a bit creepy, voo-doo-like and just not my thing.  That said, they are very different and it's great to show kids different styles so they can find one or more that they like.  That's what art is all about, right?

Lorelei likes this book because there is Spanish sprinkled in with the text.  And she thinks she can speak Spanish, just like my cousin did when he was a preschooler (he's now in high school--oh my!).  She'll say some jibberish and then, kindly, translate it for me.  It makes me laugh everytime. 

For me, a strange book, but...it might be someone else's favorite.