The Dog That Had Its Day

Because children aren’t given much say over what’s on the dinner menu, they’ve had to devise many creative ways to “clean” their plates of such objectionables as rutabagas, liver-and-onions and prune compote. Stashing the noxious fare within one’s cheek or sliding it half-chewed into a paper napkin, a comic book or even a pocket are time-tested methods, but in Susan Meddagh’s Martha Speaks (Houghton Mifflin: $13.95; ages 2-7), the old “slip-it-to-the-family-pet” trick has unprecedented consequences.

“The day Helen gave Martha the dog her alphabet soup, the letters in the soup went up to Martha’s brain instead of down to her stomach,” begins this funny picture book. Martha, an unprepossessing little mutt, begins to speak English, and her human companions jump at the chance to ask questions that have always bugged them (“Why do you drink out of the toilet?”; “Why don’t you come when we call?”).

Martha, meanwhile, finally gets her chance to set canine history straight (“Lassie is not all that smart”). She can even commiserate with a passing four-legged buddy about his chronic flea problem, phone the local butcher for a big delivery and fill the humans in on the plot of a TV show they’re trying to watch. The loquacious pooch also has a propensity for spinning endless, well, shaggy-dog stories at the drop of a dog biscuit, and a refreshing frankness marks her dealings with family friends (“Mom said that fruitcake you sent wasn’t fit for a dog. But I thought it was delicious”).

The world--or at least Martha’s family--as it turns out, isn’t quite ready for a talking dog. But Martha triumphs even so, a canine heroine in the tradition of (pardon us, Martha) Lassie--but much more amusing. So often picture books hook your eye with snazzy-looking art but disappoint with a story that’s either dull or just plain dumb. Here author / illustrator Meddagh (her previous books include “The Witches’ Supermarket” and “Maude and Claude Go Abroad”) does it all, merging child-oriented graphics, unpretentious text and broad humor wonderfully well.

Judith Caseley, whose first novel, “Kisses,” won the American Library Assn.’s Best Book for Young Adults Award in 1990, has also written the text for and illustrated many popular picture books (“The Noisemakers,” “Dear Annie”). Her wonderful new novel, My Father the Nutcase (Knopf: $15; ages 12 and up), features a wise-cracking heroine named Zoe Cohen with two problems about which it’s really tough to maintain your sense of humor: On top of dealing with a father who’s slipped into a catatonic depression, she has to sort out her own mixed feelings about traveling the pimple-strewn path to a high-school love life.

Filled with embarrassment about her formerly fun dad’s now shuffling gait and mopey demeanor, Zoe is also jealous of her older sister Cara’s unequivocal enjoyment of romance. “I’m beginning to feel,” Zoe thinks to herself, “like I’m the only one grossed out by some boy’s fat tongue entering the privacy of my mouth. . . . Four years of braces for that?”

Caseley’s rendering of teen-age Angst is as perfect as her comic timing. Her wholly lovable “My Father the Nutcase” is a book to make adults remember why they are glad to be grown up--and teen-agers feel that at least one adult remembers what it was like to be young.

One little-known aspect of World War II history is the vital role played by Native Americans in the U.S. armed forces; this is the subject of Nathan Aaseng’s Navajo Code Talkers (Walker: $14.95; ages 10 and up). In the later years of World War II, when U.S. Marines were struggling to roll back Japanese forces in the Pacific, hundreds of young Navajo volunteers left their isolated Southwestern reservation to help formulate--and implement--a vital communications network that baffled even sophisticated Japanese code-breakers, who couldn’t fathom the Navajo language. Aaseng’s book includes numerous black-and-white photos of Navajo “code-talkers” at work under the horrendous conditions of combat in places such as Saipan, Tarawa and Iwo Jima, where their communications network proved invaluable.

Also worth noting: Diana Yates’ Chief Joseph: Thunder Rolling Down From the Mountains (Ward Hill Press, Box 04-0424, Staten Island, N.Y. 10304: $10.95 paper; ages 10 and up) is a truly exciting account of the legendary Nez Perce Indian leader’s life. Reading Chief Joseph’s powerful, poignant story will leave you sadder and wiser about the “settling” of the West. . . . The paperback edition of Linda Atkinson’s gripping biography In Kindling Flame: The Story of Hannah Senesh, 1921-1944 (Beech Tree: $4.95; ages 12 and up) is a welcome event. It tells the tragic but inspiring story of a modern-day heroine, a young Hungarian Jew who died (executed at age 23, in prison) while fighting the Nazi occupation of her homeland. . . . Detective wannabes will find a wealth of how-to tips on such techniques as lifting fingerprints, identifying the pen used to write a ransom note and recognizing counterfeit money in Crime Lab 101: Experimenting With Crime Detection by Robert Gardner (Walker: $13.95)