Rapunzel's Revenge

"Rapunzel’s Revenge" is an old western and comic book mishmash, which, unlike the traditional fairy tale, empowers the damsel in distress and gives her a mind of her own. In order to save her mother from the evil witch, Rapunzel teams up with Jack who has his own complicated past. The world has become cold and desolate and people have lost the ability to trust one another, but even so, Rapunzel and Jack create an unbreakable bond. This book is filled with eccentric characters, like Witchy Jasper, my personal favorite. Next I will check out “Calamity Jack” by the same authors and illustrators. This is an entertaining and unpredictable take on the classic fairy tale. I think you'd have to be the antagonist of this book to not enjoy it.

Zoozical

I had originally written a positive review of this book, but now that I think about it, I don't really like it. My sleep last night was broken up by intervals of alertness, and for some reason, "Zoozical" came into my head. I remembered the illustrations being very colorful and varied, and I remembered the rhyming language being lively and sophisticated, but it is long for a picture book, does not have any real characters or conflict and seems a little schizophrenic as far as style and color goes. I would say this book has multiple personality disorder, but I don't think this book focuses long enough on any characters to produce even one personality and that's the problem. It's just an eclectic, confusing buffet-style children's book.The illustrations by Marc Brown, creator of the Arthur books, are colorful and original, but I wonder if perhaps he was so tired of drawing the same anteater over and over again for years that he just wanted to go wild and draw every animal in the whole animal kingdom, except for anteaters.

I ordered "Zoozical" because the description sounded like a rhyming children's book I wrote a while back called "Jazz Dogs." Many editors shy away from rhyming children's books, which is why I'm curious to read the ones that are being published. I think this bias against rhyming children's books is what propelled me to write a positive review. I really wanted to dismiss those editors' opinions and just focus on the positive aspects of the book. Good writing is not always enough to make a book work. It's the most important ingredient, just like love in a relationship, but it takes more than that to make the cake rise.

In some books that deliver a message to children, the author's personal problems are transparent. The worst children's book I ever read, whose name I have forgotten, was about a rat with low self-esteem. For the right age group, that idea could have worked, but this rat's tale of woe was made into a board book for babies. The message of "Zoozical" seems to be "Don't be depressed." That's a good message, but children are more resilient than adults. I don't think they need rhyming self-help books as an antidote to depression.