‘A Gift from Greensboro’ leads our children’s book roundup

"A Gift From Greensboro" by Quraysh Ali Lansana, illustrated by Skip Hill, Penny Candy, $13.95, ages 5 and up

Two boys, two bikes, a department store doubling as a summer hangout. No big deal, right? Chicago poet Quraysh Ali Lansana finds the drama in the ordinary in this tale of two tweens, one black and one white, reveling in the "technicolor days" of a 1970s summer. The department store is in Greensboro, N.C., where in 1960, African-American students staged a famous protest against segregation.

The boys' friendship, formed casually at the dawn of a new era, is the fruit of such protests, but Lansana, who tells his story in verse, doesn't tell us that at first. He gives the boys' perspective: "we knew every corner / of that department store / from the bird droppings / in the basement / to the scent / of musty popcorn."

And then, with a gentle jolt, he injects history into the scene: "we dared lunch counters innocently / we laughed in the face of history / him, golden locked and chubby nosed / me, bubbling hot fudge."

Younger kids may have questions: "Why is that boy made of chocolate?" But they'll be good questions, and language-loving parents will have fun answering them.

Lansana's moving, semi-autobiographical poem about a friendship that survives the growing complexities of adulthood is accompanied by an author's note about the events that inspired the story. Skip Hill's charming ink drawings enhance the nostalgia and add a touch of psychedelic whimsy.

"The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra" by Marc Tyler Nobleman, illustrated by Ana Aranda, Paulsen, $17.99, ages 5-8

Three candy-colored goats are enjoying a picnic dinner when, far off in the distance, atop a glowing hill, the terrible wolf-fanged, bat-winged Chupacabra emerges from his lair. Tonight could be the night, the first goat reflects: the night the Chupacabra joins them for dinner. The second goat is alarmed: "On such short notice? But we have nothing prepared!"

"Let's put it this way," the first goat says. "He would not join us for dinner. He would eat us for dinner."

"How impolite," the third goat says.

This tale of goats confronting their worst nightmare is fresh, funny and genuinely suspenseful, thanks in part to a winning text by Nobleman, who takes a fairly standard formula — herbivores face off against a carnivorous villain — and makes it his own. The goats track down the Chupacabra, in a just-scary-enough sequence, and try to distract him from their own tastiness with a series of increasingly improbable treats.

A highlight is the inspired folk-art in watercolor, ink and gouache. The Chupacabra, who first appears in angular black, is just the right balance of ferocious and adorable. Later when we see him in his full purple-coated, orange-fanged, flower-festooned glory, the image almost pops off the page. The increasingly frazzled goats complete the tableau, and the visual storytelling is impressive. Both the text and the illustrations can stand by themselves, and they complement each other beautifully. No weak links here.

"Well, That Was Awkward" by Rachel Vail, Viking, $16.99, ages 10 and up

Tall, witty, not-so-athletic Gracie Grant is joking around with her friends when she suddenly locks eyes with her old pal A.J. He's taller than she remembered, and — how could she have missed this before? — so very handsome. He's looking into her eyes, really considering her, in a way that's both thrilling and terrifying. Gracie's face turns red. Breathing became a major challenge.

"It occurred to me that I could be having some sort of weird allergy attack," our 13-year-old heroine tells us. "I had never had an allergy attack before, so maybe that was how it felt. Or a seizure. Or, like, it could be a mental breakdown. Or maybe this is how the zombie apocalypse begins. In which case, I should warn somebody."

Yep, whip-smart Gracie has a major crush on A.J., the star athlete, who turns out to be pining for Grace's beautiful best friend, Sienna, who isn't so sure how she feels about A.J. Meanwhile, A.J.'s brainy, not-so-tall best friend, Emmett, may or may not have feelings for Gracie. Gracie loyally agrees to help Sienna send flirtatious texts to A.J., who in turn proves to be even more adorable in writing than he is in person. What could possibly go wrong in this scenario? Everything, of course, and that's the joy of this hilarious and heartfelt novel of tween love.

Nara Schoenberg is a Tribune lifestyle reporter.

Copyright © 2017, Chicago Tribune
A version of this article appeared in print on March 09, 2017, in the Arts + Entertainment section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Children's book roundup" — Today's paperToday's paper | Subscribe
42°
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/sc-childrens-book-roundup-books-0308-20170306-story.html
www.chicagotribune.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-17
200396
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:EFIMI3GLVVLB4XLTBRB7DBVXPW223MWQ
<urn:uuid:7ede1eee-c731-4170-bb46-3f61f68776db>
2017-04-30T11:51:36Z
23.62.6.18
sha1:FIBFUX3WNCUK7LVZRZUGAIUXTH4N6C3X
<urn:uuid:3ed06217-04e8-4df0-b79b-1bff6f840cc6>
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/sc-childrens-book-roundup-books-0308-20170306-story.html
response
<urn:uuid:98332194-a65c-4cf3-93c4-f54e4069bb99>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-17
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf