Why do adults read children's books?

You know, sometimes a hat is just a hat.

This recent article from The Independent references Cambridge University academic Dr. Louise Joy, who puts forth the theory that adults read childrens literature to escape the stress and demands of adult living; that they yearn for a simpler way of life, like you would find in a childrens book. Must be because being a kid is so easy, right? Her forthcoming book, Literature's Children, focuses on The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, and the works of Tolkein, Carroll and Dahl. Uhm....21st century anyone? By that sampling I think it would be fair to surmise that adults must read childrens books out of a yearning for anytime before 1950.

I think I'll overthrow self-consciousness and have a straightforward relationship now

I'm pretty sure the millions of adults (and I don't have an exact figure on hand, so humor me on this one) who have read The Hunger Games are not hankering after anything in that book. This is my theory: grown-ups read kids book because (wait for it......) they are good! They are enjoyable. They make you think, whether it is about home cooked meals (which according to this article is a staple of The Hobbit, yet not really what I remember the book for) or the morality of twenty-six teenagers slugging it out to the death. The best childrens books do what the best adult books do--they touch readers. No age requirement--or justification--required.

Cybils Nominee: Can I See Your ID: True Stories of False Identities

It's that time of year again--Cybils time! I'm a little late getting this plug in (you know--life and stuff interfering with my writing) but I wanted to mention it all the same. This will be my fourth year with the Cybils. After a year as a Round Two judge, I am back as a Round One panelist, which means a whole lot of reading and hopefully lots of great recommendations for this blog. I am serving on the Non-Fiction: Middle Grade & Young Adult panel (or NFMGYA for short.) You can see the rather impressive list of nominations here. Nominations will be accepted until the 15th of October, so there is still time to nominate your favorite NFMGYA title, or any title in ten different categories--including apps, for the first time.

I've started off with Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, by Chris Barton and illustrated by Paul Hoppe. Chris Barton was a Cybils winner in 2009 in the Non-Fiction Picture Book category for The Day-Glo Brothers and a 2010 Picture Book finalist with Shark vs Train. His latest book introduces ten individuals--mainly teenagers--who for one reason or another pretended to be someone else. In some cases the motivation was chutzpah, in others career advancement, and in at least two survival. Each story is told in the second person, a narrative choice I really liked because it puts the reader directly into the text. It felt like reading a Choose Your Own Adventure story, where each turn of the page might have dire consequences. It's hard not to feel a little anxious when you read the line, "There's nobody you can tell the truth to--nobody you feel you can trust." I was familiar with a few of the individuals in this book: Solomon Perel (whose amazing deception was the subject of the film "Europa, Europa") John Howard Griffin (author of Black Like Me, which I had to read in high school,) Forrest Carter (whose The Education of Little Tree caused a furor with Oprah,) and Frank W. Abagnale Jr ("Catch Me If You Can.") But the rest were a revelation.

One thing Barton does particularly well is to throw the reader directly into the deception. Along with the use of the second person narration, each fraud is already in full swing when the reader joins. Keron Thomas, the sixteen year old train spotter who decides that he would like to drive a New York city subway train for a shift, is already standing on the 207th Street station platform waiting for his carriages when the story starts. While the individuals involved might have had plenty of time to plan how they were going to carry out their impersonations, the reader does not and needs to be ready to run with the situation from the get-go. Barton does take a small step back to provide some background information, but then it is back to the business at hand, which is basically, 'will you pull this off?'

Barton's extensive research for the book, which included interviews with some of the individuals still living, shows the seriousness with which he approached this subject. At the end of each story there is a "What Happened Next" explanation where the reader discovers the consequences of the deception. In his afterword, Barton seems to be directly challenging the reader with the opening question "Who do you think you are?" As middle schoolers and young adults, they might be asking themselves that same question. But further reading seems to indicate that Barton is actually questioning himself as a writer, for having the nerve to investigate these stories. Aside from raising the morality of the rights or wrongs of tricking people, Can I See Your I.D. is essentially about having "the nerve"; the nerve to trick people who are ready to be fooled, the nerve to survive when you are condemned to die, the nerve to investigate the truth in the hearts of our neighbors, and the nerve to sell someone your story.

Blog Tour: The Cheshire Cheese Cat: a Dickens of a Tale

Next year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. This lively novel, in which Dickens plays a supporting role--but his influence is evident throughout--is a good way to get the party started. The Cheshire Cheese Cat is about a cat who loves cheese, a mouse who loves language, a crow who loves Queen and Country, and a novelist with no opening line. The story is set in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, an actual London pub which was frequented by some of the most distinguished writers of the Victorian era. Skilley is a Fleet Street alley cat trying to survive on fish heads and smarts. He manages to install himself as mouser at the Cheese, where he quickly strikes up an unorthodox bargain with the resident mice. The mice, led by the wordsmith Pip, will bring Skilley cheese, and he will pretend to catch them, for the benefit of the humans who are unhappy about sharing the inn with the rodents. This works for a while, until the appearance of rival cat Pinch, a truly Dickensian ruffian, who has always despised Skilley. As Skilley tries to maintain his bargain with the mice, shield them from the ruthless Pinch, protect the secret of his cheese obsession, and uncover the mysteries of the inn itself, the action culminates in several revelations, a finale involving a chaotic visit from a royal--who is not amused--and, at long last, the perfect opener.

There is precedence in childrens literature for the successful partnership of cats and mice: Samson and Arthur the church mouse; Harry Cat and Tucker Mouse in Times Square. But I think this is the first instance of  a triumvirate of cat, mouse, and monumental literary figure. No prior knowledge of Dickens is required to enjoy this book, but familiarity adds to the pleasure. Pip and Skilley talk about "our mutual friend;" Dickens mentions that he has "great expectations" for the resolution of events at the Cheese; the innkeeper's daughter, Nell, bears more than a passing resemblance to the saintly heroine from The Olde Curiosity Shop. And how about this passage? Pinch, renamed 'Oliver' by the barmaid, is deposited before a skeptical Skilley, who thinks:

"Pinch--Oliver?
Well, this was an unwelcome twist."

And for self-referential meta fans (surely there are some in the 8-12 demographic?) there is this literary trivia: Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is alluded to in the text of A Tale of Two Cities, the book over which Dickens is laboring in The Cheshire Cheese Cat. Dickens' inability to write the perfect opening line for his new project is mentioned repeatedly, and some of his rejected attempts are deliciously, and humorously close.

Aside from the book's opening line--"He was the best of toms. He was the worst of toms."--perhaps the greatest tip of the cap to Dickens is Pip himself, who bears the name of the hero in Great Expectations. It is easy to imagine an 'a-ha' moment in the future for any young reader of this book, when they pick up Great Expectations in some high school or college literature class, and make the connection.

While having plenty of fun with Dickens (not to mention Wilkie Collins and William Thackery,) collaborative authors Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright (great name for an author!) make some observations about writing as a craft. As Pip tells Skilley, "There is more to writing than tossing down a few haphazard words; words must have context." In this case, the development of the story at the Cheese is within the context of the friendship between Skilley and Pip. The success of the entire operation depends upon their camaraderie and willingness to stand by the other. There is also the observational friendship between Dickens and the animals; his journal reveals that he has taken an interest in their ways and manners, which seem unlike any he has ever witnessed before. As a fellow known for his philanthropy towards the most vulnerable members of Victorian society, it seems completely plausible that Dickens would have cared about animal welfare as well--even the welfare of one so humble as a mouse or a stray cat with a crooked tail.

While Deedy and Wright have fun with language, composing short chapters which keep the action moving along, artist Barry Moser has graced the book with portraits of the cast of characters, humans and animals alike. They complement the text with grace, humor and sometimes pathos. The Cheshire Cheese Cat is that most wonderful of packages--a clever and entertaining book which respects its audience while at the same time challenging its readers to stretch beyond a given genre (animal story, historical fiction, mystery) to discover the context of a universal story. Or, to be more precise, it is a Dickens of a tale.

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The folks at Peachtree Publishing, who kindly sent me a copy of the book to preview, are clearly proud of The Cheshire Cheese Cat and have created a sublime interactive website with teacher resources, games, and further information about Ye Old Cheshire Cheese as well as Victorian London. There is also a blog which collates the stops on this blog tour. You can read all about it here. The book is available now, but I can provide a copy for one lucky reader (huzzah!) All you have to do is leave a comment and some way that I can contact you (email address, blogger id, twitter handle.) Entrants must be US residents.

Be sure to check out the other stops on The Cheshire Cheese Blog Tour:

A Word's Worth
Maestra Amanda's Bookshelf
There's a Book
Through the Looking Glass
Booktalking
Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers  
Peachtree Publishers

It is a far, far better thing to do (with apologies to Dickens!)

Blog Tour: I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

Would you deny this bear his hat?

Poor Bear. He's lost his hat. Then he finds his hat! The end.

A simple enough story. But read between the lines, and you will discover a book which can be appreciated as a funny read-a-loud or a sly peak through the fourth wall. I Want My Hat Back, the first picture book to have been both written and illustrated by the supremely gifted Jon Klassen, is a dead-pan pantomime starring an unlikely cast of woodland creatures. Like Pirandello's six characters in search of an author, they seem to have stumbled into a story by accident. One of them has stolen Bear's hat. One of them does not even know what a hat is. One is stuck behind a rock. Little dramas; big laughs.

It all starts with the cover. Klassen has stated that his first idea for this book was, in fact, an image in his mind for a cover. (You can read more of his insights in the Q&A at the end of this post.) Just look at that bear--he's on a mission! Focused and determined, he wants his hat back, and readers should be in no doubt as to whether or not he will find it (and woe to the one who stole it!) But once the story begins, and the bear proceeds to ask of each character his simple, unfailingly polite question--"Have you seen my hat?"--the negatives begin to pile up. Yet the bear's ignorance is the reader's bliss, because the thief of the hat is immediately evident. Once discovered, it is just a matter of giggling at each misstep until the bear finally realizes his error and does, indeed, find his hat. It is a storytelling technique which works remarkably well.

Klassen's previous experience with video (he did design work on a BAFTA nominated ad for the BBC, the film Coraline, and the video for U2's I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight,) is evident in the theatricality of the book. In some ways, the action of the story is a direct result of the reader's perspective. The reader sees what happens, but needs to provide the context. There is no back story, no motivation, other than the intensity of the bear's desire to get his hat back. It is a sentiment to which children can instantly relate. And because they can see the hat before the bear does, you can be sure that holding this book up during either a storytime or a one-on-one reading will elicit cries of, "There it is! It's behind you!" Not to mention, plenty of scope for trying on a multitude of voices. Storytime as reader's theater!

The book weighs in at an economical 253 words, but the images speak volumes. With visual laughs for the kids, and a touch of black humor for adults, I Want My Hat Back is a cross-generational hit.

As part of this blog tour, author and illustrator Jon Klassen kindly took some time to answer a few questions.  


NJFK: In creating this book, did you have an image first or the story? Did you enjoy the freedom of creating both, rather than working from a story written by someone else?

JK: I had the idea for the cover first, but not the character or the story for a little while. Just the title, and somebody not wearing a hat. I did enjoy working on both the writing and the pictures, though I was nervous about it, because I don't usually write things. There are less ways to hide in writing than there are in illustration. But when it became just dialogue, I got more comfortable because it's less formal.

I was also glad to work on something very simple. When you get something from someone else, it's often harder to make it simple.   

NJFK: Despite the fact that little seems to happen in the story, there is a sense of theatricality because of the perspective of the audience. Reading the book reminded me of watching a pantomime (“He’s behind you!”) Did your experience of working with film and video influence the creation of this book in any way?


JK: Yes! I'm glad you noticed that. Because I was nervous about the writing, and also because I like drawing characters that aren't doing very much, I wanted to try and make it seem as though it was a badly rehearsed play with animals who were sort of brought in for the day to read these lines. That's why they are looking at the audience instead of each other, which is how the bear misses seeing the hat early on. Later, once he's found out what has happened, it's like the bear forgets he's in a play and gets as mad as he would if this had happened to him in real life and goes and does what a bear would do.

I think the way the end is done is a little more like a storyboard from a film instead of maybe how a book would be. It's hard to stop thinking about stories that way if you've been doing it for a while.

  

Author and illustrator Jon Klassen

NJFK: How is a book created both digitally and in Chinese ink? One process seems modern and the other traditional.

JK: Those two things are how I like to work best. I like working with traditional mediums at first, to give a looseness to things, and then bring what's been done into the computer to work over it and tighten it up. It's nice because you can make all sorts of mistakes and experiments with the traditional materials and know you still have that last stage to use whatever you're doing. In this case all the characters and plants were done in silhouette with chinese ink on paper, and then scanned in and the color and smaller details, like eyes and other features, were added digitally.   

NJFK: Will there be a sequel involving a blue, round hat, by any chance?

JK: There might be a blue hat, though I'm pretty happy with the shape of the red one. I might keep it pointy like that.  

NJFK: And finally, I have to ask--what was it like working with U2?!

JK: Well I didn't get to meet them or anything. David O'Reilly, the director, got to meet them afterward because he was working from Europe and they came through, and it really was David's video. But it was still pretty surreal sending them illustrations and getting approval and stuff. It was such a small production, it was weird knowing it was for this huge band that we'd all grown up with. They liked the video though! They even let us make the cover for the single afterward!

A big thank you to Jon Klassen for the interview, and to Candlewick Press for providing me with a copy of the book. Be sure to visit the other stops on the (global!) tour for more interviews with Klassen:

Tuesday, Sept. 20 – UK: Playing by the Book

Wednesday, Sept. 21 - AUS: Kids' Book Capers

Thursday, Sept. 22 - US: Not Just for Kids

Friday, Sept. 23 – UK: Bringing Up Charlie

Saturday, Sept. 24 - AUS: My Book Corner

Sunday, Sept. 25 – UK: Wahm Bham

Monday, Sept. 26 - Canada: Pickle Me This

Tuesday, Sept. 27 - US: There's a Book

Wednesday, Sept. 28 - AUS: My Little Bookcase

Thursday, Sept. 29 - US: Chris Rettstatt

More Kiddielit love for Ted Williams

I've been obsessing about the amount of attention Ted Williams gets within the realm of children's literature. Must be all those pin-striped covers I've been forced to stock over the years. I was well pleased to read Fred Bowen's No Easy Way , and I thoroughly enjoyed The Unforgettable Season by Phil Bildner, even if Williams did have to share the book with Joe Dimaggio. Now, I can look forward to two more books recognizing the accomplishments of the Splendid Splinter, both as a ball player and as a man.

October sees the release of Soldier Athletes, the third installment in Glen Stout's highly readable "Good Sports" series (shameless plug--mine is the Booklist review beneath Baseball Heroes.) Four athletes are featured, so of course there is a profile about Ted Williams and his distinguished career as a pilot during both World War II and the Korean War.

Then there is There Goes Ted Williams: the Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived by author and illustrator Matt Tavares. Tavares has already proven his Red Sox cred with Zachary's Ball, and his picture book biography Henry Aaron's Dream is not to be missed. There Goes Ted Williams looks to be really special. You can see get a peek at it here, but you'll have to wait until 2012 to get your hands on the book.

Last but not least, Dan Gutman is finally bringing Ted Williams into the Baseball Card Adventures fold with Ted and Me. And just in time for the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park. Now, I can't take credit for this, of course, but I did write that open letter to Dan Gutman all those years ago...... However it came about, Gutman's latest is a welcome addition.

Dead End In Norvelt Giveaway!

A few week ago I reviewed, with much enthusiasm, the upcoming middle grade novel by Jack Gantos, Dead End in Norvelt. Well, the book is "upcoming" no more--today is release day! The kind folks at Macmillan Audio saw that review, and they sent me a copy of the audio book to give away on this blog. So, in celebration of the book's release, I invite you all to enter for a chance to win this 6 disc audio book--READ BY THE AUTHOR! Yes, Mr. Gantos adds yet another layer to the fact-vs-fiction aspect of this book by reading it to you himself!

You can hear an excerpt of the audio book here. To enter the giveaway, all I ask is that you leave a comment on this blog. Make sure I can contact you if you are the winner! The winner will be chosen randomly one week from today. Good luck!

Non-fiction review: "America is Under Attack: the Day the Towers Fell" by Don Brown

As the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks approaches, I am forced to consider something I have thought about almost since that very day: how do I explain this to my daughter? She was eight months old at the time, oblivious to the knowledge that the world was changing. And now, ten years on, there is an entire generation just like her; children for whom September 11th is as much a part of history as George Washington or the lunar landings. While adults heed the call to never forget, our children don't even remember it.

Don Brown's latest addition in his "Actual Times" series is written for children who have probably heard about September 11th but have no frame of reference with which to relate to it (unless they were personally affected by it themselves. One of the statistics Brown mentions: about 3000 children lost a parent that day.) Carmen Agra Deedy's 14 Cows for America, or Jeannette Winters' September Roses, two excellent picture books already available on the subject, approach the event as storytellers. They focus on specific incidences related to the day. As they show readers how different people responded to the event, they are already thinking about a new reality--the one that began on 9/12. Don Brown is writing as a historian, documenting the day's timeline and presenting the personal accounts of people there. He is showing readers how it all started. 

Brown, who is both author and illustrator of the book, writes with a chronicler's need for detail; he presents facts with sensitivity for the age of his audience without shielding them. But he draws with a broken heart. The watercolors which illustrate the text are at times devastating:
               --a single plane flying over New York City, an everyday site which is so menacing in this context;
              --trapped men and women calling for help through the gash left at the first point of impact while a helicopter hovers helplessly nearby;
              --a man at a gas station looking over his shoulder to see a plane looming beside the Pentagon;
              --a woman blown out of her shoes by the force of the collapsing South Tower.
And the illustration which opens the narrative--a double page spread of nothing but blue, a plane in the top right corner. It's beautiful, just as the actual day itself was.

The bibliography at the end of the book is a testament to the research that Brown put into collating the information and crafting the illustrations. An Author's Note provides statistics from the day as well as a brief mention of America's response to the attacks. A discussion guide is available online, as is this excellent interview with Don Brown over at School Library Journal. America is Under Attack is dedicated to the 15 people from Brown's home town of Merrick, New York who were killed in the attacks, which reminds readers that the impact of history is most powerful when it is related personally. 

A list of my recommended picture books about September 11th is available here.

Boldly going into board books

I suppose after my tirade about the BabyLit series of board books, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't have a dig at what can only be described as this fall's geekiest offering for "the youngest reader." Well, call me a hypocrite--and completely illogical--because I am nowhere near as offended by The Star Trek Book of Opposites as I am by "Little Miss Austen's" and "Little Master Shakespeare's" gnawable classics. Perhaps it's because my Trekkie heart skipped a beat when I saw it. I wanted to buy it.....for myself. Because it looks hysterical. I don't get the impression that there are any bogus attempts to convince parents that their babies will learn about science by plunking this book in their lab. I'm not even sure babies will learn a whole lot about Star Trek from looking at it. Or grow up to be nerds themselves. But for those of us already inhabiting that place known as space, the final frontier--what's not to love?

Anticipated Arcs: Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

My experience of Jack Gantos consists almost entirely of Rotten Ralph. I haven't read the Jack Henry books, and I have only gotten as far as borrowing Joey Pigza. It was returned unread, another victim of a hydra-esque TBR pile. I mention all this because Gantos' latest book, Dead End in Norvelt, features a character named, funnily enough, Jack Gantos. But this middle-grade story bears almost no resemblance to the one he told in his compelling YA autobiography Hole in My Life--unless you compare a summertime grounding to a prison term. So I am at a bit of a loss when reflecting how the new book compares to his previous fiction (naughty red cat aside,) and utterly flummoxed if I try to match it to his actual life story. So let's examine "Norvelt" on its own merits.

The story takes place over the course of two months in the summer of 1962. Jack Gantos is the only child of a couple who might very well become Archie and Edith Bunker when they retire. They live in a Pennsylvania town called Norvelt, a cooperative social experiment created after the Great Depression and championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, after whom the town is (re)named. Grounded almost as soon as vacation starts, Jack finds himself hired out by his mother to elderly neighbor Miss Volker, a woman who doubles as coroner and obituary writer for the local paper. But her hands are so crippled by arthritis that she needs to dip them in hot paraffin just to regain temporary dexterity. She dictates her obituaries to Jack, concluding each with a history lesson which is sometimes relevant to the deceased, but usually is just a chance to pontificate about forgetting the lessons learned from history. Add to that: a best friend whose father runs the local funeral parlor, an invasion by a group of surly Hell's Angels, constant nose-bleeds, an inexplicably loaded Japanese WWII rifle, some human-deer interaction reminiscent of The Queen, (but funnier,) a never-ending supply of Landmark Biography references, a twelve-year old who drives a car, and a retiree who rides a tricycle. That goes only some of the way towards explaining how completely off the wall this book is.

Thankfully, Gantos maintains a sense of nostalgia which allows the reader to laugh at the ensuing wackiness in the context of an era so different from today--as opposed to just being weird for weird's sake. Although I'm pretty sure there is some of that, too, since I don't know which part of the book is factual and which he completely made up. Not quite historical fiction, not quite autobiography, not quite postmortem for an America that is long-gone, Dead End in Norvelt is definitely one of the funnier and more unusual books you are likely to read.

Reviewed from an Advance Readers Copy. Dead End in Norvelt--coming your way September 13, 2011.

Travels with Dodsworth

This summer saw the release of Dodsworth in Rome, the fourth volume in the easy reader series about Dodsworth and his accidental companion, Duck. It's an amusing book in a series which consistently entertains and has the capacity to continue for many volumes yet as the pair bumbles their way across the globe.

The journey actually started, sans Duck, in a junk yard, where the underachieving Dodsworth, whose motto was "try to do as little as possible" would seek out items to sell in his thrift shop. The Pink Refrigerator, the picture book which first introduced Dodsworth, is that rare achievement: dryly funny and infinitely wise at less than 35 pages. Unlike the protagonist of David McPhail's Mole Music, who actively seeks out meaning in his life, or the lackadaisical Al in Arthur Yorink' Hey Al, who learns to find paradise close at home, Dodsworth is quite content with the routine of the hum drum existence which asks so little of him. It takes the intervention of a magical refrigerator (yes--I said magical refrigerator) to open his eyes to the wonders of life not just around him but within his own grasp. It is from these philosophical roots that the more routine hijinks of the road trip emerge.

I have great affection for the Dodsworth series. Yet while I find the books to be a cut above many written at the easy reader level, I feel that they lack something of the magic of The Pink Refrigerator. The character of Duck irritates me more than he engages me. A reread of the books reminded me that Duck gatecrashed Dodsworth's world tour, and Dodsworth is now essentially stuck with Duck until he can return him to his home and friend at Hodge's Cafe. While Duck's (mis)behaviour often precipitates the action of the books, and as a result of wild-goose chases (so to speak) gives Dodworth an opportunity to tour a given city, his inability to learn from his experiences drives me nuts. Dodsworth has essentially become the straight man in his own series, which seems a little bit unfair since he sets off at the end of The Pink Refrigerator to "find an ocean," not babysit a cooky duck.


Still, the adventures of Dodsworth and Duck have a whimsical innocence which I can only describe as Capraesque. No sooner does calamity befall them (such as when Duck makes paper airplanes out of all their Euros and launches them from the top of Eiffel Tower,) then good fortune smiles upon them (a local bakery hires them to deliver bread.) In London, Dodsworth and Duck are separated, and find themselves in a trading places scenario reminiscent of The Prince and the Pauper and concludes with a sleepover at Buckingham Palace. And in Rome, it is actually Duck who has the best line in the book: when Dodsworth explains that tourists throw coins over their shoulders into the Trevi Fountain to ensure that they return to Rome someday, Duck asks, "Why leave in the first place?"

A fair question. But leave they eventually will--once they pay back all the money Duck pinched from the Trevi Fountain. There is a big wide world to discover (I'm still hoping they make it to Boston.) And although they ferried from New York to Paris, and crossed the English Channel in a hot air balloon, Dodsworth has yet to stand before an ocean and discover if its reality lives up to his own imagination. Can he return home a fuller--and fulfilled-- individual because of his experiences? Will he be able to do more than "just enough" once he is back home with his thrift shop and returns to everyday life, whose promises will be limited only by his own definition of "limited"? These are big questions for a series aimed at emerging readers, but they are at the heart of Dodsworth's quest. So even if Duck's hijinks tend to distract Dodsworth from his original initiative, the challenge of the pink elevator--"keep exploring"--is a mandate that holds relevance for readers of any age.