The Truly Terribly Horrible Sweater ... That Grandma Knit by Debbie Macomber & Mary Lou Carney

For his birthday, Cameron's Grandma Susan made him a bright, colorful sweater with big buttons. That he will never, ever wear. So he spends a lot of time over the course of the year trying to hide it, get rid of it, ruin it, and otherwise ensure that he'll never be seen wearing it.

Until Grandma comes, and he finds out why the sweater is so special. Carter gets a wider view of the love and care that went into his birthday present, and maybe a wider view of the world.

Sometimes your gifts aren't received with the grace that was intended, and this is a cute book with a lovely ending. But the text is a bit awkward in places, and once I was even convinced that I must be missing a page because the transition was so abrupt. Overall, it's an interesting book, but could have used better editing.

A Winter Concert by Yuko Takao

Music adds color to a black-and-white world, and that color spreads as we carry the music with us into the world. Perhaps it's a big topic for a small picture book, but WOW is this book awesome!

The simple art is amazingly rich with details, and the swirling pointillist color of the music employs all the senses in the audience's aural enjoyment. Don't I sound like an art critic? :)

Trust me. Genius!

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

I can't convey how it pains me that I didn't love this book. It took me six months to read this book (a relative LIFETIME), and I refused to give up - I even re-started it once, trying soooo hard to understand and love this book. To no avail.

Future humans aren't really our kind of human - they're created, live, get sick, are healed and even destroyed based on the colors they can see. Marriage among complimentary colors are forbidden, and most people have arranged marriages based on bettering themselves and their offspring on the color scale. Society is based on a set of rules, merits, and feedbacks (like ebay escaped into real life), the past is being systematically erased, and trees can eat you.

It seems like Fforde has great aspirations of current social criticism with this story, but either I'm too obtuse or too American to get it (Fforde is British).

I have loved, loved, loved his other books - laughed out loud while reading them and hand-sold them to tons of our library patrons. But this one passed me by. Unfortunately, Fforde says this is the first in a series; he's got titles for the next two books at the end of this one.

I wish he'd put his efforts elsewhere.

The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton

Nonfiction can be tough - how to express what really happened without getting bogged down, and still be interesting? Well, authors take note: 1) find interesting subject matter.

This tale of Bob & Joe Switzer's invention of glow-in-the-dark and then glow-in-the-LIGHT colors is a catchy idea with a fantastic implementation. It's a story told pretty simply - the brothers aren't really alike, they fall on hardships, they work together (even though it's usually apart) and eventually they have success they could hardly have expected.

The book's artwork is retro - it looks kind of like the funky, old Disney educational videos - and is rendered in predominantly black and white. Color is only introduced to the tale as the brothers develop it.