Sometimes you turn to the first page of a book and you instantly know that you’re going to want to read it through to the end. Which isn’t to say that the man hasn’t a sense of humor worth noting. The emotions are raw and very real for a children’s book, and somehow he manages to offer comfort without becoming schmaltzy. He could go smarmy in an instant, but he holds off. Later he starts thinking about Hillary’s dolls and says, “I picture doll family funerals and the sad dollhouses where now a doll dad has to deal with his doll kids and the doll mom who isn’t coming home.” Silberberg gets so very close to overplaying his hand. Milo’s vast dislike of men who shave their heads is explained when his narrative voice suddenly launches into a talk about how “some” people go bald because they can’t help it. It creeps into the narrative slowly, and then takes it over by the end. There’s one image of Milo seriously telling his problems to Hilary’s rescued doll collection that is just as serious as any moment of prose.Īnd the book handles the question of how a kid comes to terms with the death of his mom with great skill. He even manages to complement serious scenes with a drawing, once in a while. He always knows the best possible time to include a little cartoon or illustrated piece. Yet that’s a trap Silberberg miraculously manages to avoid time and time again. We’re dealing with some pretty heavy issues in this book, and it would jar with the readers’ senses if you were hearing about a particularly dark point in Milo’s life only to find that emotion alleviated by a sappy cartoon. Silberberg is clearly comfortable with this style of writing… and then he takes it a step farther. The comics are there to highlight and advance the plot, while offering a bit of color to the narrative. They use the illustrations in the book the same way a good musical uses songs. It’s never really all that fair to compare illustrated novels to Kinney’s books, though, since with the exception of Big Nate by Lincoln Peirce most novels are like Milo. However, once he makes a new best friend in a kid called Marshall and finds that the strange girl isn’t that strange after all, Milo discovers that there might be a way to come to terms with his mom being gone, and maybe find a way to remember her too.Ĭomparisons to Diary of a Wimpy Kid (as I’ve done in the very first sentence of this review) are inevitable. The kind of gal who would never give a boy like Milo the time of day. There’s this weird girl at school that keeps bugging him, and then there’s gorgeous Summer Goodman. Milo has found that his dad just sleepwalks through his days, and our hero’s not doing so hot himself. Everything from the “Apartment of Endless Stairs” to the appropriately dubbed “Stink Hole (The mystery smell was never found!)”. Ever since his mom died his dad has been moving both him and his older sister into different homes. Once again, Milo has become the new kid at school. A dead mom book that kids will really gravitate towards. This is a book that isn’t afraid to get a little sad and serious once in a while. Humor fans will like it, but so too will those kids who need a little extra meat in their fiction. Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze combines interstitial comics with a fun text and a gripping story to come up with a book that manages to be all things for all readers. He’s penned a funny novel that deals with the very real issue of how a family copes when one of its family members passes on and he’s done it with a combo of art and prose. Alan Silberberg has managed something that I would have deemed near impossible. It’s not how I’d sell it to an actual kid, though. “It’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid if the mom died.” BAM! Now that’s grabby, ain’t it? If I were a Hollywood executive I suppose that might be how I’d sell Alan Silberberg’s newest novel about a boy and his issues.
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