The Boy Who Lived in a Shell

Starred review from January 1, 2025
Is it poetry, or is it philosophy? Only child readers can tell. It's clear that Himmelman has too long reined in his instincts to fit the picture-book form. Now he's let loose with a cavalcade of delightfully chaotic, boisterous, and thought-provoking verse. The book calls them "snippets," most would dub them "poems," and while both are correct, that label is also insufficient. The titular hero writes brief stories on the walls of the shell for one and all to read. Punctuated by interstitial pen-and-ink illustrations, each story/poem works by its own peculiar internal logic; many are imbued with a dry wit. A wizard turns a potato into a different potato ("one that lookedjust like /the first one") to oohs and aahs; as Himmelman points out, "It didn't take much to be a wizard in those days." Some turn achingly poignant, such as several poems that follow a pair of dogs attempting to reunite; another asks, "Can a shadow have a shadow?" If Shel Silverstein were pared down to his core elements, you might end up with such a volume. By turns humorous, charming, and bizarre, these stories will keep readers musing; they'll especially appreciate the postscripts on how all the various characters turn out in the end. Characters have skin the white of the page. Overflowing with oomph and pizzazz, this collection will take up space in children's minds for years to come.(Poetry. 7-12)

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November 25, 2024
This dreamy collection by Himmelman (Albert Hopper, Science Hero) starts with a
boy named Ivo floating out to sea in a large shell: “He was scared at first. But he grew to love it so.” Ivo passes the time by writing stories (“Bombo the giant baby was too big for his cradle,” one opens). Tight line drawings with a buoyant feel bring Ivo’s stories to life, as when depicting a miserable Bombo perched on top of the earth. Bombo gladdens once he rotates toward the sun: “It was bigger than he was!” Ivo ideates more similarly larger-than-life feeling characters before looping back to revisit them, allowing the initially fragmented stories to take shape. What is Bombo doing now? He’s outgrown the sun and is floating through space. The volume’s most engaging episodes star dogs Toby and Pip, who—due to a brief separation by their owners—yearn to reunite. Closing sentences in each of these installments, addressed directly to readers (“Sometimes stories make you want to know what happens next”), pose sly questions about storytelling and invite the audience in on the action. Human character skin tones match the hue of the page. Ages 7–10.

March 1, 2025
Grades 2-4 In an outing as quirky as the title suggests, Himmelman chronicles in a scattered mix of free verse and sketchy small drawings both the journey of Ivo, a tiny boy who climbs into a large snail shell that floats out to sea, and the adventures of over two dozen engaging characters whose stories Ivo records on the shell's walls--from Bombo the giant, who outgrows in succession his house, then his planet, and ultimately even the sun, to a ghost named Teresa, who can't frighten anyone except herself, to Crabby the singing crab: "Everything stinks. / Nothing's worth doing. / You're all too smelly. // Blah! Blah! Blah!" The tangled story lines are hard to keep straight, and some have sad moments; still, the overall tone is tongue in cheek, and the author ties them off neatly in the end--even for Ivo, who after years of travel is transformed into an actual snail and crawls off, leaving the shell on the beach to wash away with another small human inside. Beguiling fare for readers who like their poetic ventures on the surreal side.

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