Daisy's Secret Could Cause Some Problems

Secrets are tricky things. It can be very difficult to keep knowledge from people you care about, but sometimes there is value in staying quiet. In Daisy's Secret, part of Minnie 'n' Me: The Best Friends Collection, the secret is a surprise party, and the real surprise is that even most of the guests don't know what's going on. They just know that they've been given cryptic instructions to follow, and they're a little irritated that they're not in on the secret. Will the result be worth the hurt feelings, or will this big surprise be a big bust?

Surprise party stories abound in children's books, and usually it's the guest of honor who feels confused and neglected. In an effort to make that person feel special later, the friends usually first make him or her feel abandoned. Here, instead of one person being in the dark, it's several, except they know that something is going on and that eventually they will be in on it. It's an interesting twist on the formula.

This is not a series that I had encountered before. It has a very 90s look to it, particularly when it comes to the clothes that Daisy Duck and Minnie Mouse wear as they square off in basketball. More distinctive than the clothes, though, are the characters, who, instead of being adults, as they usually are, now look like kids.

Along with Daisy and Minnie, who are best friends, we have Clarabelle Cow, Lilly Lamb and Penny, who looks to be a dog of some type - Penny Pooch, maybe? Clarabelle, Lilly and Penny dress much more conservatively than Minnie and Daisy, wearing dresses that seem more suited to the first decade of the 20th century than the last, particularly at school. Minnie and Daisy do have comparable dresses, but they only wear them at the party.

The main idea in this story is that suspense increases enjoyment, so it's good to keep secrets on an occasion such as a surprise party, the whole purpose of which is to bring happiness to someone. One definitely gets the feeling that these five girls are good friends who value each other's feelings. I did notice that there isn't a single male character to be found in this book, and I'm curious whether that's true of all the books in this series.

Author Ruth Lerner Perle does seem to be trying a bit too hard to make this book as overtly feminine as possible; I certainly think boys and girls should be able to intermingle freely. Then again, if I were to venture a guess, it seems like these characters are in middle school, which is often a very awkward age when it comes to mixed-gender friendships. Still, I would hope that Mickey, Donald, Goofy and other male characters show up in other stories in this, which evidently was a mail-order series.

Speaking of mail, the book concludes with Minnie inviting the reader to write to her. It's like a proto-PostSecret: "Don't forget to send me the enclosed letter about a secret you had to keep." Of course, that letter is nowhere to be seen in the library copy I read, nor is Minnie's address printed anywhere. Then again, considering that this book is 20 years old, I highly doubt that letters would still be accepted at that address.

Daisy's Secret is a cute story about friendship, trust and patience. While it feels a bit dated and overly gender-specific, it's fun to see these classic Disney characters as kids with a strong network of friends.

Alice Helps Make New Moon Less Dreary On Film Than On Paper

I am not a fan of Romeo and Juliet. I suppose this means that I’m not much of a romantic, though I frankly don’t see what’s so swoonworthy about committing suicide in the wake of a loved one’s death. Especially when you’ve only known that person for a short period of time. In any case, I think the more romantic thing is to find a way of honoring the life of the one who has been lost. The only thing that makes Romeo and Juliet bearable for me is that the desperate actions of these two silly teenagers lead to the end of an equally silly feud between their families.

New Moon, the second installment in the Twilight movie series, makes the allusions to this Shakespeare tragedy apparent by showing Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) watching a movie version in class and discussing it. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, Edward starts in with the morbid talk, confessing how jealous he is of Romeo’s fragility. He comes right out and announces that if Bella ever dies - which she eventually will, as her birthday reminds her, since he steadfastly refuses to transform her into a vampire like him - he will kill himself.

Perhaps I should give him a break, since he’s lived more than a century and some world-weariness is bound to set in. But Edward has half a dozen people who care deeply about him, so it’s just as selfish for him to consider taking his own life as it would be for Bella, especially knowing that virtually the only way it could be done would be to go to the Volturi, the governing body of vampires to reside in Italy, and request that they tear him limb from limb, a pretty gruesome image for the rest of the Cullens to have to live with. But then when one is in love, there is a tendency to do things that don’t make a lot of sense, including tossing away life in the midst of despair.

There’s a lot of despair in New Moon, making it easily the hardest of the books for me to get through. The movie retains plenty of that, but it’s a little more tolerable, since we don’t have to put up with chapter after chapter of Bella’s morose narration.  Most of the voiceovers we do get are in the form of e-mails Bella writes to Edward’s “sister,” Alice, my favorite character in the series.  Although Bella isn’t actually sending them out, the very fact that she is framing these thoughts as writing to a friend - and such a relentlessly cheerful one at that - instead of wallowing in self-pity in complete isolation gives her musings a hopeful edge.

New Moon takes place three or four months after the conclusion of Twilight. Edward and Bella have spent every spare summer moment in each other’s company, often with Alice in tow, and now a new school year - Bella’s senior year - has begun. With it comes Bella’s birthday, which makes her despondent, since it means that she will now be older than Edward. Bella’s dad Charlie (Billy Burke) ribs her about her unsettled response to aging, as does Edward, while Alice is just overjoyed to be able to throw a birthday party for someone.

Bella’s misgivings about this plan stem from her own aversion to growing older, but it’s soon apparent that a birthday party in a house full of vampires is inadvisable for other reasons. A minor mishap leaves Bella bleeding and nearly lunch for Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), who hasn’t quite mastered the ability to control himself around human blood. It’s enough to convince Edward that she is fundamentally unsafe in his company, so he leaves, icily informing her that the family will be moving on, that she isn’t invited to join them and that she will never hear from them again.

The bulk of the movie involves Bella gradually moving away from her soul-deadened state. At first she moves through her days on auto-pilot, and night terrors torture her - and frighten her concerned dad - when the sun goes down. Still, somewhere deep down, she clings to the thought that Edward and Alice, who she misses nearly as much, will return one day. So when Charlie tells her he thinks she should move to Jacksonville to be with her mother and get away from the environment associated with so much sadness, she realizes that she needs to snap out of it if she ever wants to see them again.

On an outing with bubble-headed frenemy Jessica (Anna Kendrick), she discovers that when she is in a dangerous situation, Edward appears to her. Whether it’s just a product of her own imagination matters little, so deep is her craving for just the tiniest hint of Edward. This leads her to motorcycle mechanic Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the family friend who is as warm and jovial as Edward is cold and stiff. Lautner bulked up quite noticeably between the first two movies. There was talk of replacing the actor because he didn’t seem grown-up enough, but Lautner proves his mettle here in a performance that allows him to be both vulnerable and masculine while balancing his love for Bella with his strange new brotherhood with other members of the Quileute tribe. Like LOST’s Sawyer, he has a habit of taking his shirt off at every opportunity, and he’s got the muscles and the tan to pull it off. When Edward’s shirt comes off after we finally see him again toward the end of the movie, it’s not such a pretty sight.

This movie switches directors to Chris Weitz, which changes the tone a bit. In some cases, that’s good. For instance, the green-tinted scenery problem of Twilight is not present here; the cinematography looks much more natural, except during the action sequences, and then the special effects look pretty cheesy. Sadly, the sound mixing is, if anything, even worse in this second movie; not only does the music drown out the dialogue, but so do rainstorms and other ambient sounds. I wish I’d had the subtitles on because I know I missed a few things.

Speaking of which, my parents, whose knowledge of the books is limited to what little I’ve told them, frequently found the movie confusing, and I had to explain plot points to them. This suggests to me that the screenplay did not do a very good job of laying things out for those who don’t have book knowledge to help them connect the dots. And as in the book, the misunderstanding that precipitates Edward’s decision to seek out the Volturi is a pretty flimsy thing to hang the climax on. Additionally, while the violence is still pretty limited, there is a bit more of it than in the first movie.

On the plus side, we get a lot more of Alice in this movie, even if Ashley Greene still is only on the screen for maybe a quarter of the movie. This funky, effervescent counterpoint to all of Bella and Edward’s brooding just makes me smile every time she appears, even when she makes a couple of less than gracious remarks about Jacob, whose tribe has long been at odds with vampires. Just the device of Bella’s imaginary correspondence brings Alice’s character into greater prominence, which I appreciated.

I continued to enjoy Burke’s performance as the gruff but doting Charlie and, despite the brevity of his scenes, quickly grew fond of The Red Green Show’s Graham Greene’s chummy Harry Clearwater, one of Charlie’s closest friends. I also liked the introduction of Michael Sheen as the intriguing Aro, the member of the Volturi who does the most talking in the electrifying scene in which Edward, Bella and Alice have a private audience with them. He’s charming and has a giddy quality about him that almost reminds me of Arthur Weasley, Ron’s Muggle-loving dad in the Harry Potter series, but there’s also something deeply dangerous about him, as we see most plainly in an almost blink-and-you-miss-it scene that marks the conclusion of Bella’s whirlwind trip to Italy.

In retrospect, I tend to think of the first two books in this series largely as set-up for the last two, which I find much more compelling and less self-involved from Bella’s perspective. I don’t find Bella quite as insufferable in the movie version of New Moon, largely because there’s just not nearly as much time for her to moan about the heart-shaped hole in her chest. The movie only squeezes in two or three references in comparison to the book’s dozens of mentions. By the same token, while she still turns into a bit of an adrenaline junkie in the movie, she only does three really dangerous things before Alice shows up at her door to find out whether the suicide she thought she saw in one of her visions was actually true. So she’s easier to put up with here, though I still find her annoying.

Ultimately, I think I would mostly agree with my dad, who said he didn’t like the second movie as much as the first, but I did like it better than the book, and I think it sets us up nicely for the more interesting story to come in the third. I’m ready when you are, Netflix...

Henry Shares His Special Day With More Than Just Mudge

Two of my favorite people have birthdays tomorrow. I'm not sure how they plan to celebrate, but I hope each of them has a day as joyous as Henry's in Henry and Mudge and the Best Day of All. In this fourteenth installment in the series of easy readers by the prolific Cynthia Rylant and illustrated by Sucie Stevenson, it's not only Mayday, it's Henry's birthday, and Henry's parents are pulling out all the stops to make sure it's a great one.

As with most of the books in the series, Henry and Mudge and the Best Day of All is 35 pages long and broken up into several sections. In this case, it's four: The First Day of May, A Colorful Morning, Crackers From the Sky and Best Day. The first two parts involve Henry waking up, realizing what day it is and making special note of the occasion with his family. The second half of the book, meanwhile, focuses on the elaborate party his parents throw for him.

In the majority of the Henry and Mudge books, Henry spends a large amount of time with no one but his great big slobbery dog Mudge, so it's a little strange to see so many children eagerly gathered for his party, but I suppose they are friends from school, where Mudge isn't allowed to go. Anyway, he certainly has a big crowd, and there's no shortage of activities to keep them occupied.

They have ring toss, fishing with magnets and potato-sack races, all with fun prizes. They have a pinata in the shape of a blue donkey. Apparently the point of this pinata has much more to do with collecting candy than seeing who can break it because Henry whacks away at it until the candy comes bursting out, and nobody seems to mind. There are plenty of goodies to go around, including lots of crackers for Mudge and the other dogs in attendance. But the kids have to stash their candy rather than eat it because a massive cake decorated like a fish tank is still to come. The party culminates in the opening of Henry's stack of fancily wrapped presents, with a little something for Mudge thrown in.

The odd thing about this book is that while it describes a highly exciting event, while the party is actually happening we feel rather detached from Henry and Mudge, since we don't get a lot of insight into their thought processes. Because of this, I actually prefer the first half of the book because it is more centered on Henry and Mudge, not to mention Henry's parents, who shower the birthday boy with balloons and strawberry pancakes and take all sorts of pictures.

So it is that while Henry has a fantastic birthday party, the best moments of his special day are those in which he is able to quietly appreciate what he already has. With that kind of outlook, each day can be the best day of all.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Putter!

About a month ago, my 26th birthday came, heralded by cards in the mail, presents on the table, dinner at Olive Garden, chocolate cake in my dog's stomach... Well, that last one wasn't really planned on. I had hoped to eat my birthday cake without Mokey's help, but she had other plans. Other plans expansive enough that a new cake was in order, to the soundtrack of some very strange canine intestinal noises. It was a good birthday.

In Mr. Putter and Tabby Make a Wish, part of the series written by Cynthia Rylant, author of the Poppleton and Henry and Mudge books, and illustrated by Arthur Howard, balding, pot-bellied, bespectacled Mr. Putter suddenly remembers that it's his birthday. But Mr. Putter is no longer a child who can expect parties full of laughing kids, cakes full of candles, shiny boxes full of extravagant toys, ceilings full of brightly colored balloons. "I am too old for birthdays, Tabby," Mr. Putter sighs. But then he decides, darn it all, he wants one anyway! And at least he can create a more festive air by inviting his neighbor, Mrs. Teaberry, over.

Mrs. Teaberry is Mr. Putter's best human friend. Not having read the volume in which she was introduced, I can't say for sure how long they've known each other. But in the flashbacks to Mr. Putter's childhood birthdays, Howard shows us a girl who looks suspiciously like a seven-year-old version of Mrs. Teaberry. Because Mr. Putter is so fond of his neighbor - and so polite - he doesn't berate her for keeping him waiting after he issues his invitation. But we can see just how impatient he's getting when his expression grows more and more aggravated each time she calls to tell him there's something else - doing the dishes, curling her hair, unclogging the tub, searching for Zeke's ball - she must do before she comes over. "Can you wait?" she asks. Mr. Putter begins to wonder whether he will end up waiting right through his birthday.

Tabby, too, seems to get more irritated by the hour, her watery blue eyes lowered in an expression of inquisitive annoyance. Eventually she gets so tired of waiting that she retreats to a bowl atop the fridge, where she curls up, peering suspiciously over the rim. Funny, I always thought my cat was odd for doing that; of course, the sight does prompt Mr. Putter to remark, "So far, this is a very strange birthday." Will Mrs. Teaberry and her dog Zeke ever arrive?

Mr. Putter and Tabby Make a Wish is divided into three sections: Good Heavens!, Can You Wait? and Finally. This is a funny and touching story about old friends coming together in celebration, and Mr. Putter and young readers alike will realize that you're never too old for birthdays.

Drivers Beware: Amelia Bedelia's Behind the Wheel!

Driving is a dangerous task. You hear about terrible crashes all the time, often with perfectly competent people behind the wheel. So the thought of a perpetually perplexed person rolling along down the road is not a very comforting one, but this is just the situation in Good Driving, Amelia Bedelia, written by Herman Parish, nephew to Peggy Parish, creator of the series.

It's Amelia's birthday, so Mr. Rogers suggests that she take his car and go off to visit her cousin, who is cursed with the one of the strangest names I have encountered. Cousin Alcolu will have to wait, though, because Amelia hasn't driven in years, so her boss offers to accompany her on a test run around the countryside. It's a good thing it's a sparsely traveled dirt road, because things don't go very smoothly. Well, what did Mr. Rogers expect with Amelia in the driver's seat?

Veteran Amelia illustrator Lynn Sweat is still in place here, lending greater continuity to a series whose reins have been passed to the next generation. Although she has the day off, she's still garbed in her black maid's dress with the white apron and the black flowered bonnet. Throughout the book, her face displays a range of emotions from glee to confusion, along with one very fearful scream when, as Parish drolly writes, "Mr. Rogers was about to blow up. The tire beat him to it."

Amelia tries to follow Mr. Rogers' instructions, but is it her fault that he's sending so many conflicting messages? Where is this fork that's supposed to be sitting in the middle of the road? Why is he cross when she turns right after he warns her about the bear to the left? My question is, How in the world did Amelia Bedelia ever get her license in the first place? Maybe she suffered some blunt force trauma to the head between the time she got her license and the time she started working for the Rogerses, addling her wits to an unnatural degree. I guess we'll never know.

One thing we do know is that Amelia Bedelia is as entertaining as ever in Herman's hands. This book is a little shorter than most in the series, and the format is slightly different, as it looks like a typical picture book rather than the I Can Read books, which are thicker but not nearly as wide. Everyone can get a laugh out of Amelia's misadventures here, and a sigh of relief that they're not the ones in the passenger seat.

Seuss Offers an Overblown Series of Birthday Oddities

I turned 26 on Monday, so when I happened upon Dr. Seuss's Happy Birthday to You! and realized I'd never read it before, I scooped it right up. As with other Seuss books such as Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! and Oh, the Places You'll Go!, this book directly addresses the reader, though in this case the good doctor doesn't have any sage advice to offer. Rather, he weaves a vibrant tapestry of fantastical happenings, all revolving around whoever is lucky enough to have been born on that day.

"I wish we could do what they do in Katroo," he begins, and he proceeds to demonstrate just how exactly the citizens of Katroo come together to create a memorable birthday celebration. This must be an exhausting city in which to live, because you would imagine that someone's birthday would fall on most, if not all, days, so there would be no time to recover from one day's revelry before preparing for the next.

Much of the action involves the Great Birthday Bird, and I presume that he is only one of several; otherwise, if two citizens share a birthday, one of them is definitely going to get the short end of the stick. The bird guides the birthday boy or girl through the day, encouraging them to eat all manner of delectable foods and sniff the rarest and most glorious of jungle flowers; to hitch a ride on a cable car pulled by goats and accept such impractical gifts as a Time-Telling Fish or a good-natured Hippo-Heimer; to listen to a chorus of imaginary instruments and read a birthday message spelled out by Herrings.

A more nonsensical Seuss book would be hard to find, and indeed one wonders whether half of these things are something you would even want, though the closing sentiment - "I wish I could do all these great things for you" - is touching. Still, this book has more than its share of what appear to be rhymes for their own sake, which leads to a lot of superfluous-sounding lines. I've not yet decided whether the following series of absurdities fits into that category: "If you'd never been born, well then what would you be? / You might be a fish! Or a toad in a tree! / You might be a doorknob! Or three baked potatoes! / You might be a bag full of hard green tomatoes! / Or worse than all that... Why, you might be a WASN'T! / A Wasn't has no fun at all. No, he doesn't."

The pictures are certainly bright and eye-catching, and the book on the whole is obviously the product of a very imaginative mind. That said, I found it strange, and not in the delightful way I've come to expect from Seuss. Reading this book is a fun way to help recognize a child's birthday, but I suspect Happy Birthday to You! wouldn't get a whole lot of use outside of those times.

Eeyorish Ereth's Bad Birthday Leads to Big Responsibility

"We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it," gripes Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh, moaning that apparently some creatures, even those living in an enchanted and benevolent locale like the Hundred Acre Wood, are not entitled to happiness on their birthday. The old donkey feels rejected and neglected on what should be a joyous occasion, and so does the old porcupine who is the title character in Ereth's Birthday, a middle reader by Avi that is part of a series of tales about Dimwood Forest.

When Ereth wakes up on his birthday to find that his best friend, a mouse named Poppy, is off wandering the woods somewhere with her husband, he is so disappointed, disgruntled and downright disgusted that he decides to have a little adventure if he is to be denied a warm and fuzzy celebration. Hopefully the end result of his quest will be a birthday present for himself: a nice chunk of salt, his favorite thing in all the world. After a very long and gloomy walk, made more uncomfortable by a fresh sprinkling of snow, he finds just what he's looking for. In a cabin usually occupied by hunters. He's seen them leave, though, so he doesn't especially fear them. But his dreams of his desired delicacy are dashed when he hears someone crying out from a distance, wailing piteously, and despite his delight at his discovery, he cannot bear to gorge himself while some other creature is suffering.

So he investigates and soon finds the source of the sound: a luxurious vixen caught in a vicious steel trap that has gnawed at her leg for hours. With her last few breaths, she begs Ereth to go take care of her three kits. Though he grumbles mightily on the way to fulfilling her request, Ereth doesn't have the heart to ignore her dying wish and soon finds himself full-time babysitter to spirited Nimble, surly Tumble and timid Flip. As if their antics alone weren't enough, he is haunted by the knowledge that the surrounding area is littered with steel traps, all concealed by the snow. Moreover, his worries about what will happen if the kits' father doesn't show up give way to worries about what will happen is he does, and all the while, unbeknownst to him, a sinister pair of eyes studies him from a distance.

Ereth's Birthday is a charming and lively tale about a crusty curmudgeon remembering that he actually does care about those around him. In spite of the omnipresent covering of snow, the story is infused with warmth and tenderness, but Ereth's harsh exterior provides for plenty of comedic moments, particularly when he speaks, with a tongue as salty as his favorite treat. His alliterative, exasperated exclamations could put a sailor to shame. A sampling: "smidgen of slipper slobber," "dangling doggerels," buckled badger burgers," "chewed over cow cuds," "antelope uncles," "busted bug bottoms"... and that's just for starters.

Prior familiarity with the series is helpful but not essential to a reading of this book. Ereth is the only character from previous chronicles featured in prominence, and he is established quite firmly from the get-go, requiring no reliance on material from other installments. Each of the kits has a distinct enough personality that we can begin to see them as individuals as the story progresses rather than merely members of a threesome, which is important since the bulk of the novel deals with their interaction with Ereth. Adding to the appeal of the book are the detailed, expressive drawings of Brian Floca, illustrator for the other Dimwood Forest tales. A fairly breezy read at 180 pages broken into 27 chapters, Ereth's Birthday is great for existing fans of the series and for anyone who loves adventuresome animal stories and don't mind giving a lonely old porcupine a chance.