Bound To Stay Bound

Bulletin for the Center... - 03/01/2008 Summer can seem a long time away during the colder portions of the year, and summer books can hold a special promise and poignancy in the long run-up until the months of freedom. Truly stellar summer books, such as Lynne Rae Perkins’ Pictures from Our Vacation (BCCB 7/07), can evoke the weirdness and unexpected magic of summer’s free-form experiences even in the darkest season. Add in some snarky and boisterous grade-school humor, and you’ve got A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever. The two boys of the title are James and his friend Eamon, who are spending a week with Eamon’s grandparents Bill and Pam to attend the nearby Nature Camp. Nature Camp itself is, to put it kindly, a mixed success (James: “I think it should be called Sit-Around Camp”; Eamon: “Yeah, or Sweat-a-Lot Camp”), but the stay with Bill and Pam is an unqualified triumph. The boys scarf down Pam’s generous and indulgent cooking, deflect Bill’s obsession with Antarctica, and make the basement their kingdom, camping on an enjoyably bouncy air mattress and luxuriously overdosing on videogames, overall relishing the combination of grandparental doting and modest running wild. The book employs some ironic humor, allowing its illustrations to reveal the truth behind the straightlaced text in a way that will tickle kids on the funnybone right from the start (James “was very sad when his mother drove away,” the text assures viewers, while the illustrations show a beaming kid waving and encouragingly hollering “Bye!”). The irony is all the more delicious for its sly suggestion of subversion, with the well-meaning text offering the stodgy adult take on events while the knowing and irreverent illustrations divulge the kid reality. Yet there’s palpable affection here, and not just in the buddyhood between the two guys; in a conclusion that believably combines warm inclinations with the unrelenting urge to fiddle, the boys spend their last night out on the dock under the stars, making a mock Antarctica from beach detritus for Bill (the boys’ excited glosses on the elements, wherein “the white rocks are icebergs and the brown rocks are whales” and “this big stick is a big stick,” are dexterously authentic as well as hilarious). Frazee is probably best known for her illustrations, and they do the greatest share of the work here. The art marks roundheaded, skinny-legged J&E as virtually identical, especially when hats obscure their differently unruly hair; while the viewers can identify them by the color of their shorts (James’ are blue, Eamon’s are red), they may just follow Bill’s droll lead and refer to the pairing as “Jamon.” The pencil-touched watercolors run to appropriately beachy aquas, even as they focus on the kids rather than the natural world; the vignette sequences of the duo’s various hijinks convey the boys’ tireless exuberance, while speech balloons contain utterances in pure Kidspeak (of course Bill’s gift of binoculars requires the two to examine each other up close, each happily exclaiming over his friend’s repulsiveness). The pell-mell jokeyness extends to covers—bedecked with the price label “25¢ (you wish)” and offering a thumbnail guide to the characters—and even the back flap, which helpfully offers instructions on how to make your own penguin out of a rock and a mussel shell, just as the boys do. Overall, it’s a format that works for reading alone as well as reading aloud, with the comradely tone ensuring a feeling of cool inclusion for reader or readee. This sweetly captures the pleasures of youthful time-wasting in the company of your best friend with a keen understanding that those pleasures are best when they’re unsentimental. The result is just realistic enough to be perfect, a grade-schooler’s idyllic summer with limited demands for learning and bettering and a whole lot of reveling in kid priorities. A wonderful late-winter reminder that summer is coming, this will cheer up audiences by encouraging them to reflect on glorious summers past and even more glorious summers to anticipate. (See p. 292 for publication information.) - Copyright 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

School Library Journal - 03/01/2008 PreS-K-James and Eamon spend a week at Eamon's grandparents' beach house. The boys go to nature camp during the day and delight Bill and Pam (the grandparents) at night with their antics. Bill makes an earnest attempt to interest the young boys in his own hobby-studying Antarctica and penguins. He wears a penguin shirt and brings out maps and globes, but it appears that James and Eamon are not listening. Frazee brings out the typical energy of a couple of boys who may scoff at nature and seem to prefer watching TV, but it is through her artful illustrations that readers catch glimpses of just how savvy and creative these kids can be. The youngsters' circular cartoon faces are distinguishable only because of their small tufts of hair-one curly, the other straight. Endpapers depict a humorous variety of drawn photos that could have been taken during the week. A penguin craft is explained on the final end flap. This intergenerational story will elicit howls of laughter and requests for repeated readings.-Blair Christolon, Prince William Public Library System, Manassas, VA Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. - Copyright 2008 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 03/01/2008 Frazee offers another riotous story that plays deadpan words off of sly, subversive pictures. Best friends James and Eamon head to Eamon’s grandparents’ house on the Florida coast, where they will attend a nature day camp. The straightforward words describe their trips to camp and then earnest nature talks with grandparents. The gleeful pencil-and-gouache illustrations, filled with dialogue bubbles, tell a different story: the boys play computer-game marathons, create tents from their mattresses, and enjoy other raucous indoor fun while generally ignoring the great outdoors. But on their final night, the friends discover a world of natural fun on the moonlit shore. A few of the pictures’ winking references may hit more with adults than with kids, but plenty of children will see themselves in the high-energy scenes, particularly when the friends cheerfully disregard educational activities suggested by well-meaning grown-ups. Surprisingly few picture books celebrate the close friendship of two boys, and this boisterous story helps fill that gap. - Copyright 2008 Booklist.

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