Are We There Yet?

January 4, 2016
A dark-haired boy and his mother drive to his grandmother’s house, and before they’re even out of the neighborhood, he’s asking the question of the title. The voyage turns out to be anything but ordinary as increasingly surreal sights appear in the ever-changing landscape. In a desert, a distant volcano erupts, and a T. rex emerges from behind a heap of rocks; a detour under the ocean offers a glimpse of a parrot in a diving suit, while the final leg of the trip sees them traveling through a cosmic wormhole in what appears to be an homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Laden (Once Upon a Memory) keeps the text to the exchanges between mother and child (“Are we there yet?” “No”) while McCauley (Smarty Marty’s Got Game) toys with recurring motifs as jackalopes, minotaurs, butterflies, cowboys, and more reappear in signage, topiaries, and unlikely environments. The twisting, cyclical movement hints at deeper metaphysical quandaries (where is “there,” exactly?). In the end, “Are we there yet?” is the least of the questions raised. Ages 3–5. Author’s agent: Laura Rennert, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

January 15, 2016
The trip to Grandma's house goes through many remarkable places. A light-skinned child with short dark hair, surrounded by scattered toys and pictures and crayons, hardly seems ready when Mom announces that it's time to go. They're barely out of the neighborhood before the first "Are we there yet?" And that question is repeated over and over as they drive their little red car on a highway filled with various vehicles, across a long suspension bridge, and through farm country and then a desert. Even these ordinary settings have weird touches in McCauley's vivid, posterlike double-page spreads: there's a worm riding in a giant paper airplane near the bridge; a minotaur stands in the farm's field; and a T. Rex looms in the desert. The locations grow quirkier, going underwater and even into outer space, where a young three-eyed extraterrestrial in a flying saucer echoes, "Are we there yet?" Finally at Grandma's house (which is surrounded by topiaries of many of the figures seen along the way), the child astonishingly pronounces the journey: "Boring." McCauley's mixed-media illustrations are bright and slyly amusing; readers will thrill at picking out the peculiar details, most of which have their roots in the child's toys scattered at the beginning. Was the duo's anything-but-boring journey all in the child's head? Regardless, the cynical punch line seems to undercut what appeared to be a celebration of the boundless imagination. Surreally unsatisfying. (Picture book. 3-5)

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March 1, 2016

K-Gr 2-The mundane car ride question and standard answers are in speech bubbles set against landscapes that get increasingly more fantastical with every page turn. The journey to Grandma's begins in a room that opens into a garage where the car and the boy's mother are waiting. Everything seems normal enough, though there remains a slight feeling of purposefulness in the choice of having a picture of a surfer riding a wave framed on the wall, a pet frog in the aquarium, and a parrot perched on a stand alongside the detritus of a child's play-drawings, toys, and stuffed animals. The first few stages of the excursion are regular cityscapes where animals similar to the boy's toys may go unnoticed, since they are drawn to scale and do not seem at all out of place. As the road winds through more audacious scenes (farm to desert to a coastline matching the surfer picture, under the sea, through outer space), the figures become either more prominent or incongruent with their surroundings. Readers will enjoy coming to this realization and spotting the familiar objects, making the boy's final assessment of the trip all the more humorous. VERDICT Visual storytelling at its best. Get ready for multiple readings.-Joanna K. Fabicon, Los Angeles Public Library

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