Amos McGee, an elderly zoo keeper, prides himself on keeping a regular schedule. “Every day Amos waited for the number five bus. ‘Next stop, City Zoo,’ the bus driver would call. ‘6 a.m. Right on time,’ ” Amos would reply. He then goes to visit his good friends — he plays chess with the elephant; races against the tortoise; sits with the shy penguin; loans his hanky to the rhino; and reads stories at sunset to an owl who is afraid of the dark.
One day McGee awakens with “the sniffles, and the sneezes, and the chills,” and calls in sick. His animal friends wonder where he could be. They take the number five bus to show their friendship. Philip Stead’s prose is elegantly concise, unafraid of letting the pictures speak. Using woodblock printing and pencil, Erin Stead enters the world of children’s books as if she’s been doing it all her life. McGee is not your generic old man in your generic picture book. He’s sharp as a needle, thin, baggy, bony, expressive, intensely lovable. Erin Stead’s style is realistic, character-driven, reminiscent of great American picture books of the 1940s and 1950s.
Few books are perfect; this one is. It will bear up under many rereadings, thanks to the firm structure of its prose, the visual jokes and surprises throughout.
I wish I were as enthusiastic about YALSA Award winner, “Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing’’ by Ann Angel. It has potential — a charismatic, complex central figure; triumph and heartbreak; living relations and friends to offer insight. But YALSA finalists Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s “They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,’’ and Paul Janeczko’s “The Dark Game: True Spy Stories’’ are powerful, well-written, in fact, dazzling in comparison.
