Library & Literary Miscellany

Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff (2007)

Omnes mundum facimus
(We all make the World)

Omnes mundum facimus is a central belief of the branch of a secret crime-fighting organization known as the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons (nickname: Bad Monkeys). The Bad Monkeys department works alongside other branches of the organization such as the Department for Optimal Utilization of Resources and Personnel (nickname: Cost-Benefits) and the Department of Ubiquitous Intermittent Surveillance (nickname: Panopticon) to expunge evil from the world by whatever means necessary.

Bad Monkeys kicks off with Jane Charlotte, a woman claiming to be a Bad Monkeys operative, narrating her story from within the walls of the psychiatric ward of the Las Vegas Clark County Detention Center. Dr. Vale enters “the nut wing” to interview/interrogate her, ostensibly to determine her sanity. Jane obligingly recounts for him all of her experiences leading up to her present position in the nut wing (in addition to possible insanity, she’s being held for murder).

Jane tells Dr. Vale that her actions with the Bad Monkeys organization have all been for the express purpose of ridding the world of evil. As Bad Monkeys personnel, she has the authority and the intel to eliminate “bad monkeys” who have evaded society’s usual modes of justice.

Jane’s conversation with Dr. Vale shifts back and forth between present day dialogue and flashbacks of Jane’s J.D. (juvenile delinquent) youth. Jane details her life pre-Bad Monkeys as well as her experiences after joining the Bad Monkeys.

As Dr. Vale listens to Jane’s story, he frequently requests clarification and points out incongruities. While Jane always has a ready answer, readers are left to wonder about the veracity of Jane’s tale and about the very existence of the Bad Monkeys organization.

Organization tools such as the N.C. (natural causes) gun nudge the book over into the realm of science fiction, but there’s a great deal of psychological drama and suspense here as well. In a book replete with plot twists and page turning events, just who’s a bad monkey and who’s not Ruff leaves up to debate until the book’s final pages.

Bad Monkeys is an adult book that may well also enthrall many young adults. For those looking for more, there’s always Ruff’s other works and/or the Bad Monkeys super secret website to explore (shhhh…). Or you could try choosing a book from one of the following booklists:

Overbooked: Psychological Suspense Crime Fiction Booklist This list contains “Darkly atmospheric stories, disturbing mind games, engrossing and compelling characters - stories that generate a sense of unease . . .” which seems to aptly match up with the ambience of Bad Monkeys.

Hennepin County Library: A Child’s Look into an Adult World: Quirky Psychological Fiction “This list is made up of books that deal with heavy subjects but are narrated by children, offering a somewhat innocent look at the highs and lows of modern life. If you appreciate a good mystery told from a psychologically unique perspective, some of these books are absolute winners!” (Note: the books on this list are Bad Monkeys read alikes in the sense that they contain psychological drama, but, by and large, they don’t have as much emphasis on the crime and/or suspense aspect).

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Sky Village Book 1 (Kaimira) by Monk & Nigel Ashland (2008)

“Human hatred for meks and beasts ran deep…After decades of war followed by only a few years of uneasy peace, humans had learned to stick with their own kind.”

In a post-Trinary War world, Earth is populated with meks (machines), beasts, and humans. With meks and beasts constantly warring and pillaging, it’s all humans can do to find a place to call home. Some are laying low on ground or underground and others have taken to the sky.

Mei is one of those who (reluctantly) takes to the sky when her father sends her off to live in the Sky Village. Hovering high above China, the Sky Village is a community tied together through a maze of interconnected hot-air balloons and a shared history; Mei is forced to do some serious adjusting–both in her balance and in her life outlook. Half a world away in what remains of Las Vegas Rom fights his own demons (literally). In an attempt to save his sister, he enters the Demon caves where he finds himself embroiled in a gladiator-style competition against demon hybrids for the entertainment of the masses.

With Mei above Earth in China and Rom below Earth in Las Vegas, the two find themselves joined through the Tree Book. The Tree Book is a book of stories and other wonders that that their parents have always guarded. They have never before seen inside its pages. Now with their parents absent from their lives, Mei and Rom take the Tree Book into their own hands and find each other. In their friendship, they develop a certain sense of stability in the midst of a world of uncertainty. In the Tree Book, they find the beginnings of answers to their past and more enigmas about the future.

Mei and Rom discover that they are both carriers of the Kaimira gene–a genetic mutation endowing them with characteristics of human, beast, and machine. The Kaimira gene provides an intriguing basis for the plot for this story and for the future of the series.

In Sky Village, the Ashlands combine elements of future story, fantasy, survival, adventure, identity, and culture. The series reminds me a bit of Philip Reeve’s Hungry City Chronicles (Mortal Enginesand the like). Although Reeve’s series is aimed at a slightly older audience than the Kaimira series, both grapple with ideas about Otherness and possible ways of interacting with those who are different from ourselves.

Takeaway quote: Mei’s mother once told her, “If you know your enemy as you know your friend…then there is hope your enemy will become your friend.”

*review based on an advance reading copy

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Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson (2007)

“What you haven’t realized is that all libraries are far more dangerous than you’ve always assumed.”

When orphan Alcatraz Smedry receives a bag of sand as his inheritance from his long departed parents for his thirteenth birthday, he is confused (and disappointed) to no end. That confusion only deepens the next day when his Grandfather Smedry arrives proclaiming, “Lad, with those sands, the Librarians could destroy kingdoms, overthrow cultures, dominate the world!” The Librarians have stolen the sands and it is up to the Smedrys, as Oculators of the Free, to get the sands back.

From the moment of the sand’s arrival into his life, a whole new reality opens up to Alcatraz. It’s the Free Kingdomers with their champions the Smedry’s against the Hushlanders and the evil Librarians in a war that’s fought not about guns or swords but about information. The Librarians rule the Hushlands by controlling information (for example, only the Librarians know of the three extra continents, and now you do too, so shhhh…).

The Librarians were founded by a man named Biblioden who felt that the strangeness of the world required that it be “ordered, organized, and controlled”. The headquarters of the Librarians’ control is the Library, and, thus, Alcatraz’s Grandpa decides a full library infiltration is needed in order to recover the sands.

So the Smedry’s set out for the Library to face down the evil Librarians. Alcatraz is a bit skeptical about the likelihood of their quest’s success: “Let me get this straight. Our strike team consists of a loony old man, an anthropologist, a grad student, and two kids.”

Nevertheless, the four Smedry’s do not enter the enemies lair (the Library) unarmed. They possess unusual talents–Grandpa Smedry (arrives late to his own death), Sing Sing (can trip and fall to the ground), Quentin (can say things that make absolutely no sense whatsoever), and Alcatraz (skilled at breaking things). Plus, they have their knight protector, Bastille–she’s a Crystin who has pledged her life and her services to keeping the Smedry’s alive.

As Alcatraz’s first adventure draws to a close, Sanderson drops many hints pertaining to Alcatraz’s next adventures. The Smedry’s won this battle, but Grandpa Smedry says, “…there is a great deal to be done. The Free Kingdoms are losing the battle against the Librarians.”

In the book, Alcatraz gives readers a warning against books that others describe as important, meaningful, and thoughtful–these books often involve dogs and/or mothers dying. His book, by contrast, includes adventure with fights against Librarians, paper monsters, and one-eyed Dark Oculators while at the same time alerting readers of “the cult of evil Librarians who secretly rule the world.”

While no one would dare to ascribe to Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians such words as important, meaningful, and thoughtful, it is nonetheless a fun yarn that will appeal to conspiracy theorists, readers of alternative worlds fantasy fiction, and overall fast-paced adventure stories. If you enjoy imagining along with the sometimes outlandish, at all times entertaining imaginations of authors such as M.T. Anderson (Whales on Stilts and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen), Jasper Fforde (Thursday Next, Nursery Crime), and Terry Pratchett (Discworld), then you might want to give Anderson’s depiction of reality a try. You’ll be sure to find a copy of the book at your local library…

Quotes of Note:

“Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a ‘fantasy’ novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always makes sense. Rutabaga.”

“Information. The Librarians control the information in this city–in this whole country. They control what gets read, what gets seen, and what gets learned. Because of that, they have power. Well, we’re going to break that power, you and I.”

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I’m slipping in an oldie but goody book review of a book by David Weisner, the winner of this year’s Caldecott Medal (Flotsam published 2006). You really can’t lose when picking up any of his books. I waxed perhaps a bit too academic and perhaps a bit too long in this particular review, but there’s much to be said about June 29, 1999.

June 29, 1999 by David Weisner (hardcover, 1992).

What if giant vegetables fell from the sky? In Weisner’s June 29, 1999, this “what if?” becomes reality. Holly, the third-grade protagonist, may be small in stature, but she’s got a huge imagination. For her school science project, Holly launches vegetable seedlings in a balloon-basket contraption into the sky to investigate the affects of the extra-terrestrial atmosphere on plant growth and development.

Both front and back covers depict Holly’s plausibly engineered contraptions floating upwards into the clouds, thus creating a science-fiction ethos and enticing viewers to move beyond the cover to uncover the mystery of events occurring inside June 29, 1999. The inside layout is equally image driven—lush photo-realistic watercolor illustrations in rectangular frames splash over the majority of the two page spreads with minimal black text on white background appearing only on the left column of the verso. The story’s setting runs chronologically from the May 11, 1999 inception with the seedling launch until the June 29, 1999 surprise ending and geographically from US city to US city invoking realistic frameworks that enhance the story’s credibility even if young readers don’t yet fully understand time and geography. The deadpan third-person reporting of events accompanying ludicrous illustrations exemplifies picture book irony and creates cognitive dissonance between readers’ previously defined realm of possibilities and the reality defined by the narrative world.

Words and pictures work in symbiosis to create cognitive dissonance—the minimal, ordinary text extends in meaning through its juxtaposition beside maximized, extraordinary pictures. For example, the simple statement, “All over the country, the skies fill with vegetables” adjoins an intricate illustration showing gargantuan heads of lettuce cascading down on telephone lines and a dwarfed roadside diner. The text omits mention of a specific vegetable, landing locale, and any incongruities of size between the two. Such continuous play with semiotic codes (linguistic, size, position, frame, etc.) results in a fill-in-the-gaps-for-yourself picture book that encourages creating one’s own meaning.

The photo-realistic style of the watercolor illustrations—engendered through sagacious utilization of frame, line, shadow, perspective, and color—further encourages belief in the fantastic events. Rectangular frames are redolent of photographs, precise line differentiates pictorial entities, and shadows imbue the vegetables with dimensionality (e.g., delineating individual leafs on the heads of lettuce, bumps on the cucumbers, and rings on the turnips). Aerial perspective, developed by painting distant objects with less focus and lighter and duller hues as well as by placing them higher on the page, forges a depth analogous to reality. Frequent use of sundry hues of blues and greens further connects the fantastic to the natural world.

Fantastic (e.g., giant vegetables, aliens), natural (e.g., landscapes, seascapes), and scientific (e.g., portrait of Einstein, books on photosynthesis and Madame Curie, a wall chart of the periodic elements, bottles) images intermingle creating a visual smorgasbord that demands altered perception. As “Artichokes advance on Anchorage,” looming large over a tiny airplane, minuscule humans, and background mountains, onlookers’ perceptions of the possible broaden.

June 29, 1999 forces consideration of what children need in their literature—can adults accept that children need more than comfort, closure, and reassurance in their literature? Weisner surmounts human discomfort with the unfamiliar by altering reality within the bounds of “normalcy”—he defamiliarizes ordinary vegetables within recognizable earthly settings (a delightful dissonance for children and an acceptable level for adult purchasers). The majority of the book implies that the vegetables are indeed a consequence (following firmly established principles of cause and effect) of Holly’s science project. However, narrative tension rises mid-book when Holly sees a television news report that, “arugula covers Ashtabula”. While Holly’s face fills with consternation because arugula was not part of her experiment, an article in the Star magazine lying next to her foreshadows a different possibility: well-dressed space aliens.

In the final two illustrations, the cause of the vegetables’ appearance is evinced to be galactic alien tourists passing over earth who accidentally jettisoned their entire food supply of colossal vegetables. Exposure to page-after-page of reality replete with giant vegetables has prepared readers to consider this “alien” possibility. The aliens’ physical appearance (resembling nothing more than giant octopi in chef hats and dinner jackets) and their role as galactic tourists fully satirizes human fear of the unfamiliar. In contrast to the aliens-out-to-destroy-the-earth theme, this alien encounter with the unfamiliar has been a boon to earth’s economy; on earth, “vegetables have become big business”. The last page proffers a final ironic twist; as the perplexed aliens watch their supper float toward earth, tiny vegetables float towards their ship. Humorously, while Holly’s science project may have failed in its original intent to enhance vegetable growth by altering their environment, it succeeded in enhancing intergalactic sharing.

Overall, the gargantuan vegetables provide a narrative focus that invites thinking about nature, technology, and possibility. In this work—part science, part fiction, part fantasy (depending on how narrowly one interprets what is plausible)—Weisner’s genius lies in his ability to challenge young minds to explore their worlds while simultaneously winning adult acquiescence to a certain degree of exposure to the unfamiliar by including humorous and distracting layers of familiarity (e.g., intertextual elements such as Potatoland’s failed attempt to replicate Mt. Rushmore, the Big Rutabaga replacing the Big Apple).

Throughout the book, characters react to the unknown in various ways. Holly’s teacher snickers and rejects her experiment as implausible, the hiker faints when he encounters giant turnips, and many people rope the red peppers to wrestle them to the ground. Yet, Weisner provides more options—beyond disbelief, fear, and domination—for reacting to the unfamiliar. For instance, the rabbits race toward their newfound sustenance in sheer delight, the farmer rejoices at the augmented crop yield, and Holly (notably a budding female scientist) continues to wonder about her world despite not completely understanding the giant veggies’ ontology.

Weisner’s final illustration of Holly portrays her seated on a giant broccoli piece with her face turned upward to the sky. Children need more than comfort and personal security in their lives as they grow; they also need to learn to question the way things are and the way they should be as they explore life’s possibilities. The “why and what if” questions of this book engender part of its appeal as these questions resonate with all young souls whose whole job it is to learn about their world and their place in it. June 29, 1999 forces speculation about the realities that are on its pages. Perhaps giant vegetables may fall again on September 26, 2006…Weisner’s readers will be ready if they do.

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Daisy Kutter: The Last Train by Kazu Kibuishi

In just four chapters, Kibuishi’s Daisy Kutter: the Last Train unites the western and science fiction genres. Saloons, general stores, outlaws, and sheriffs co-exist with security guard robots, holograms, and remote-controlled heavy artillery machines.

Chapter one introduces us to the intrepid Daisy Kutter whose attempts to go straight have nearly driven her crazy–or at least driven her to the point of plastering everything in her store with darts from one of her store’s dart guns. Daisy’s prospects perk up somewhat when learns of poker night at the nearby saloon. Although she has purportedly given up gunslinging, she’s still game for a bit of Texas Hold’ em. Unfortunately, she literally bets the farm (in this case store) in a round where the cards up her sleeve aren’t quite ace enough to match the cards her opponent (aka the book’s bad guy) has up his sleeve.

Chapter two finds Daisy pondering her losses; the result of all this thinking is that she finds herself agreeing to a mysterious offer to pull off one last job to get her store back. She also has a row with her old gunslinging, train-robbing partner, Tom, who is now the town sheriff. Their relationship is full of love and hate–some days it’s the former, some days it’s the latter. In Daisy’s mind, Tom has turned into a real square (a fact made literal when one considers his square face in the illustrations), but they still find themselves drawn to each other and to adventure.

Chapter three displays Daisy planning and implementing the job. Daisy explains to her new human and robot partners, “A simple plan is best. You can count on it getting complicated in the end.” The train heist provides Kibuishi with the opportunity to showcase Daisy’s on-the-job performance prowess while simultaneously wowing us with the way he imbues static images with cinematic effect. Daisy moves with the moving train, and, the plot moves too as the best-laid-plan goes awry.

Chapter four shows the aftermath of the train robbery and Daisy slinging her way to a some sort of resolution. Overall, two aspects of the book standout: the movie-like feel of the train robbery sequence and Daisy’s characterization.

Daisy’s gruff exterior, her sorely in need of anger-management temperament, her quick draw, her poker prowess—these all speak typical western hero. But the emotion written across her face, the alternating shoulder slump and pride in bearing, the complicated relationships, the nuances of her character—these all move her beyond stereotypes. Daisy, like so many others before her, is trying to find her place in the world and trying to decide whether that place is inside of or outside of the law. She’s not black or white.  Speaking of black and white, Kibuishi employs a masterful range of black, grey, and white hues throughout the novel’s many panels.

After Daisy’s story closes (although it doesn’t really close and there’s definitely room for many a sequel), Kibuishi provides additional chapters where he illuminates his story and character creation process. He includes many earlier sketches of Daisy that show her overall evolution as a character along with a “how it’s done” series of sketches that illuminate the graphic novel creation process as a whole.

In the extra material, Kibuishi even admits that drawing is not his favorite part of the creative process. Fortunately for use readers, he must grit his teeth and bear it, and he comes up with products like Daisy Kutter: The Last Train—a graphic novel that will have widespread appeal across the western, science fiction, and graphic novel audiences.

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