"Akiko on the Planet Smoo" by Mark Crilley

Okay, everyone, listen up!  Time for a little “Stranger Danger” review.  Suppose you are ten years old and receive a cryptic, silvery metallic letter that does not bear a return address and is emblazoned with the warning that it is to be read by you alone “and no one else.”  Would you show the envelope to your loving and attentive mother hovering outside your door?  Lets say you push on and open this mysterious envelope as your best friend looks on giving you advice (yes, you ignore that pesky “for your eyes only” command).  Imagine that it contains a note saying, “We are coming to get you.  Meet us outside your bedroom window tonight at 8:00.  Don’t forget your toothbrush.”  Lets recap, stranger-danger pupils: “We are coming to GET YOU”  (emphasis added by a concerned mother). Perhaps it would be wise not to listen to your best friend tell you that it’s probably a joke and heed your years of instruction and hand that note over to a supervising adult.  NOW.  Finally, assume that you shrug off your extensive stranger danger training and wait until 8:00 to make your decision.  At the appointed time, you discover that two aliens have arrived in a spaceship to take you to the planet Smoo.  Would you balk when they produce a robot in your exact likeness to replace you for the two weeks you’ll be gone?  Well, as a mother, I am happy that you are bringing your toothbrush but am not too keen that you are ready to hop in that spaceship and take off!   In a stranger danger scenario, you would be evaluated (kindly) as “Needs Improvement.”  But as an adventurer and children's fantasy book  heroine, you would be deemed intrepid and engaging.  Just like Akiko!
Akiko is the heroine of ten fantasy adventure books by Mark Crilley.  Akiko on the Planet Smoo launches this popular series, based on Crilley’s comic book series of same name.  The books are humorous, highly readable texts that chronicle Akiko’s adventures as she leads a cohort of misfit alien characters on missions for King Froptoppit.  In this first book, Akiko and her companions embark on a mission to rescue Prince Froptoppit from the evil and crazy Alia Rellapor, the sworn enemy of the King.  On Earth, Akiko was reluctant to become captain of the fourth-grade safety patrol but when called upon for this mission on Planet Smoo, she girds herself and agrees to serve as leader. 

Crilley employs a light conversational tone and displays a flair for dialogue in this humorous and lighthearted book.  This alien world is bright and positive and poses few frights or sad moments.   His short chapters are manageable and serve to drive the action at a strong pace.  In addition, Crilley remains true to his cartoonist roots and offers charming illustrations that support his plot.  For example, he describes Poog, one of Akiko’s stalwart companions, as “really little more than a floating head.  He had two eyes, one mouth, and no nose.  He was almost perfectly round and covered by pale purple-white skin that shimmered like smooth leather.”  Fortunately, Crilley juxtaposes this passage with a detailed drawing of Akiko’s introduction to Poog, thus scaffolding our understanding of the appearance of this key character.

The Akiko series is appropriate for third grade readers and above.  On www.markcrilley.com, the author introduces the Billy Clikk series and “Miki Falls” manga books, his other fantasy books geared for older readers. My son enjoyed the Akiko books from third to sixth grade.  I remember him laughing out loud at Akiko’s encounters with alien life and eagerly sharing funny stories from the first five books in the series.  I had never read the books myself.   I appreciate the humor and the appeal to young readers and certainly would recommend their inclusion in a classroom library.  The Akiko books might prove highly appealing for independent reading, especially for students who gravitate to fantasy, science fiction, adventure, or a text with a comic sensibility.

"A Long Way from Chicago" by Richard Peck

Richard Peck offers a glimpse of Depression era rural Illinois in his masterful episodic “Novel in Stories” that is A Long Way From Chicago.  Peck is the author of more than three dozen novels for young adults. His 1998 Newbery Honor book is ideally suited as a read-aloud for older elementary students.  The stories provide strong characters, humor, and relatable depictions of life told from the perspective of a boy visiting with his younger sister for a week with their grandmother.  It might be an annual trek a long way from the bustling excitement of Chicago but siblings Joey and Mary Alice find small-town domestic adventure in the house alongside the railroad tracks.  Peck depicts the small pleasures of immersing a bare arm in a cool ice bucket on a hot August day as well as the chills and scares of walking home from an outdoor viewing of a Dracula movie.

Grandma Dowdell is a strong quirky woman who is decidedly not the sort of grandma who smothers her visiting grandchildren in hugs as they step off the train.  Instead she’s the kind of woman who is certainly not averse to bending (or breaking) a few rules (or laws).  With her two city grandchildren following behind, Grandma sits up overnight with a corpse, brings them poaching for fish, lies in wait for robbers, and tells many a whopper of a tale looking straight in the eyes of her neighbors.  However, Grandma stands up for her view of justice.  She feeds hungry drifters being escorted out of town, hides a young girl from her abusive mother, and succeeds in restoring a foreclosed home to her “worst enemy.”

As the novel progresses and the children grow from young children to teenagers, Grandma Dowdell also transforms.  In glimpses, we see her soften.  A gift plane ride is wrangled in one story and a tear is wiped away in a later tale.  Slowly a more nuanced portrait emerges of a woman who was first presented as a towering and uncommunicative enigma.  Words of familial love and affection are not depicted in Peck's novel.  Even during the children's last summer visit, protracted grandmotherly squeezes and cuddles are not proffered:  “She came to the depot to see us off on the day we left.  It was to be our last visit together, and I suppose she knew.  But she didn’t say so.”  Commitment and love are shown through Grandma Dowdell’s fierce loyalty and actions.  In the final page of this humorous and ultimately poignant novel, Grandma Dowdell’s love for her grandson blazes with light out into a dark night and my tears flowed. 

Tomorrow, I’m heading straight to the library to get Peck’s sequel: 2001 Newbery Medal winner, A Year Down Yonder.  Years ago both of my children enjoyed and recommended these two novels yet I did not read them.  Perhaps I was too engrossed in my own reading or simply busy with work.  What a lost opportunity to share these wonderful tales in our family.  Time to rectify my omission.  Stay tuned.  I wonder if my now-adult children still remember Grandma Dowdell.  I am unlikely to forget her.  Especially that last image of an old woman waving at a passing train in the wee hours of a wartime morning.