Jon Scieszka has a talent for goofy mischief. His first children’s book, “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!,” was a revisionist fairy tale narrated from prison by one Alexander T. Wolf. A manic follow-up, “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales,” also offered new takes on old stories: the ugly duckling grows into an ugly duck, and instead of the sky it’s the table of contents that falls on Chicken Little’s head. These were busy books, verbally and visually (Scieszka’s frequent collaborator Lane Smith illustrated both with hyperactive whimsy), and they positioned Scieszka as a sort of Dave Eggers for the Lego set — smart, sarcastic, knowing, silly.

Skip to next paragraph

From "Smash! Crash!"

SMASH! CRASH!

By Jon Scieszka. Illustrated by David Shannon, Loren Long and David Gordon.

Unpaged. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. $16.99. (Ages 3 to 7)

More Children's Book Reviews

'Adam Canfield, Watch Your Back!,' by Michael Winerip

'Unwind,' by Neal Shusterman

'Boy Toy,' by Barry Lyga

Bookshelf: More Children?s Book Reviews

Recent Children's Book Reviews

Children's Books Special Section: Fall 2007

Related

Stinky Cheese! Ambassador for Children?s Literature (January 3, 2008)

But Scieszka shares something else with Eggers: beneath the playfulness, he’s surprisingly earnest. Just as Eggers founded a student writing center, 826 Valencia, Scieszka runs a literacy initiative for boys (www.guysread.com), and his author bio emphasizes his previous gig as a teacher. In January, the Librarian of Congress named him the nation’s first “ambassador for young people’s literature.” Considering all this well-intentioned idealism, children may wonder if their hip teacher Mr. S. — whose new “Trucktown” series was created expressly for preschoolers and kindergartners — is suddenly going to ask them to eat their veggies.

Well, kids, Scieszka is still offering candy. The first book in the series, “Smash! Crash!,” is as rowdy and colorful as anything he’s written, if not quite as clever. The book introduces two best friends, a bright red flatbed named Jack Truck and his blue buddy Dump Truck Dan, who (true to the title) are a couple of young deconstructionists. “What should we do?” Dan asks, and Jack answers, “What we always do.” The scene on the next page is straight out of an action movie, with flying traffic cones and sawhorses and heavy black letters exclaiming “Smash! Crash! Smash-Crash!” Jack grins broadly through the mess; obviously, somebody else is paying his collision premiums.

The pair meet various friends in Trucktown and keep right on crashing even when they’re asked not to. Meanwhile, they’re pursued by an ominous shadow and a booming voice that turn the action movie into a suspense thriller. Will Dan and Jack get away? Will they face any consequences for their demolition derby spree? Stay tuned — or, O.K., buy the book. You won’t be the only one; it’s been on the Times best-seller list for almost two months.

Simon & Schuster is making much of the way the three illustrators on this series worked together to create a uniform visual style: a necessity, since they’re planning more than 50 “Trucktown” books. (Not all will be written by Scieszka.) Team drawing is common in animation, of course, and maybe inevitably the trucks here look like a cross between Speed Buggy and the crew from “Bob the Builder”: all googly-eyed headlights and expressive grills and bumpers. Though digitally rendered, they retain an appealing sketchy quality, and their bright primary colors are as insistent as wrapping paper is to a 3-year-old.

Parents probably won’t love this series the way they love “The Stinky Cheese Man,” but that’s only because as Scieszka reaches out to younger readers, he’s stopped trying so hard to please the grown-ups. I might miss his tap-dancing — in the end, I’m a grown-up too — but Scieszka knows his audience. The same children who chant “Can we fix it?” as they watch “Bob the Builder,” after all, turn around and yell “Can we break it?” as they attack their block towers. For them, Trucktown should be a smash.

(03-20) 04:00 PDT New York --

Morgan Stanley posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Wednesday, joining those from two of its rivals and indicating that Wall Street may be getting a better grip on the credit crisis.

The nation's second-largest investment bank was able to parlay aggressive stock and bond trading into offsetting more losses linked to subprime mortgages. Morgan Stanley - like Lehman Bros. and Goldman Sachs on Tuesday - was also able to top Wall Street's reduced expectations by a wide margin.

Morgan Stanley's results came during a tumultuous week. Just a few days earlier, rival Bear Stearns Cos. sold itself at a fire-sale $2 per share price to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in order to avoid declaring bankruptcy. That sent a shock wave through Wall Street as investors wondered if other investment banks might be in the same predicament.

But the strong results from Morgan Stanley, Goldman and Lehman helped assuage fears of a wider meltdown in the financial system - at least for now.

"Fact is, like it or not, this is an inherently risky business where the returns will shift to those willing to take the most leverage," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Harris Private Bank. "Expectations had us in a tailspin."

The earnings results not only helped shares of the investment banks recover from the lows they hit Monday in the aftermath of Bear's sale, but also backed claims by the companies' chief executives that they could take advantage of the market's dislocation.

John Mack, Morgan Stanley's CEO, said the investment house known for its trading prowess "effectively capitalized on market opportunities and aggressively managed our positions." The company had $2.3 billion worth of write-downs linked to the credit and housing market crisis, but one of its best trading performances in history.

Morgan Stanley wrote down about $9.4 billion during last year's second half. Global banks and brokerages have so far claimed $200 billion worth of write-downs since last year.

"While many of our businesses are facing challenging market conditions that we expect to continue in the months ahead, we are satisfied with how Morgan Stanley navigated the ongoing market turbulence," Mack said in a statement.

The company said it earned $1.53 billion after preferred dividends ($1.45 per share), down 42 percent from $2.66 billion ($2.17) a year earlier. Revenue fell 17 percent to $8.3 billion from $10 billion a year earlier.

But the lower results easily topped analysts' expectations for a profit of $1.03 per share on $7.19 billion of revenue, according to Thomson Financial.

On Wall Street, stocks pulled back sharply Wednesday, erasing most of the previous session's big gains as investors grew concerned about the possibility that banks remain vulnerable to further problems from soured debt.

Some retrenchment was to be expected after the previous day's 420-point advance. But the decline also reflects investors' continuing uneasiness about the world's financial system and the U.S. economy. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 293, or 2.4 percent, to 12,099.66. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 32.32, or 2.4 percent, to 1,298.42, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 58.30, or 2.6 percent, to 2,209.96.

This article appeared on page C - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Stressed parents 'may be making their children ill'

Comments

The study showed a disproportionate amount of ill-health among youngsters whose parents were under stress

Most popular stories

1. 1,300 women have had at least FIVE abortions

2. I felt pins and needles in my breast...then discovered I had cancer

3. I was awake and could feel everything - but I was paralysed and couldn't speak. 'Pass the scalpel', said the surgeon ...

4. Tired? Don't assume it's your lifestyle - you could be diabetic

5. Owning a cat 'cuts stroke risk by a third'

More detailed results ?

Have your say

Do you suffer from back pain?

• Yes - frequently
• Yes - occasionally
• No

More polls » 

Boards & chat

Can magnets ease shoulder pain?

Join the debate » 

Email newsletter

Stressed-out parents are not only damaging their own health - they may also be making their children more vulnerable to illness.

Research shows that stressed mothers and fathers have more sickly children than their more chilled-out friends and colleagues.

While it is well-known that stress can affect a person's own health, putting them at higher risk of heart attacks and other ills, it now seems a parent's mental state can have a knock-on effect on their children's physical health.

The researchers, from the University of Rochester in New York, asked the parents of almost 170 healthy children aged between five and 10 to monitor their child's health over three years.

Although fathers were free to take part, mothers were more likely to volunteer for the task.

The parents were asked to record symptoms of illnesses among their children each week and take their temperature when they were unwell.

Every six months, the adults took a test designed to assess their own psychiatric health, including symptoms of anxiety and depression.

More than 1,000 periods of illness were recorded in the youngsters during the study period, with the children more likely to be unwell in the winter.

However, analysis showed a disproportionate amount of ill-health, including fever, among youngsters whose parents were under stress.

The team also measured the levels of immune cells in the children and found those with highly-stressed parents were much more likely to have heightened immune activity - a sign they were working hard to fight off infection, this week's New Scientist reports.

This contrasts with stressed-out adults, who tend to have weakened immune systems.

The researchers concluded that more work was needed on the factors behind susceptibility to infection.

Dr David Jessop, a University of Bristol expert on stress and the immune system, described the study as 'fascinating' but cautioned that the results could have been skewed by stressed-out parents being more likely to believe their children to be ill when they weren't.

"Parents should not become overly concerned because the study is quite small and raises more questions than it answers," he said.

"The number of illnesses in children could be over-reported because the parents are more anxious. We need to know much more about how parental stress can have this effect on children's health."

Previous studies have shown stress in pregnancy raises the risk of premature birth. High levels of stress hormones in the womb many also have long-lasting effects on the brain of the developing child, with stressed-out mothers-to-be running double the risk of their toddlers having lower than average IQs.

The children are also more likely to be hyperactive, have emotional problems, not do as they are told and suffer from stress themselves.