Princess author balances the scales
Beach Books
Danny Fanny Saves Christmas by Chris Patton. $5.99, Patton Pending
Reviewed
Author Chris Patton gets a hug from wife Karen during an appearance at {pages}: a Bookstore.
Chris Patton of Manhattan Beach, a physician by day and a children’s author by night and on weekends, drew on his daughters for the inspiration for his first book, the girl-centric A Totally True Princess Story. Now, with Danny Fanny Saves Christmas, Patton evens the score.
“A lot of my daughters’ friends are boys, so I decided to write a boy’s book,” said Patton, 47.
The result is a warm, inventive picture book with semi-comic book sensibilities. It is a bit more tightly focused than Princess, but with the same zesty imagination. The title character is a boy superhero who must rescue Santa from his kidnapper, Anti-Claus, a villain who enters houses through the toilet instead of the chimney, and steals presents rather than giving them.
Along the way Danny recruits other boys and girls to help him, has numerous adventures, and learns about bad guys called Cooties from the South Pole.
The Danny Fanny story came from Patton’s mind without a great deal of effort, once he set his sights on a book for boys.
“I always liked superheroes,” he said, “so it was the first thing I thought of: he gets his superpowers from Santa Claus. Then what does he do with them? He rescues Santa Claus.”
As in Princess, local landmarks can be found within the pages of Danny Fanny. During an adventure at the beach, in which Danny saves another kid from a shark, the Manhattan Beach Pier with its distinctive roundhouse is seen in the background.
Danny Fanny’s artist, Luis Calderon, conveys the book’s likable characters – and its likably unlikable ones – with great expression, and brings the frequent action sequences to vibrant life.
Colorist Jamilyn Parks renders rich, deep nighttimes with purple-tinted hues, and moves to golden interiors and bright outdoor daytimes with smooth subtlety.
The book was designed and lettered by Chris Brandt, with a cover logo by Richard Starkings of Comicraft, a design and lettering outfit that’s well regarded throughout the comic book industry. (Starkings is also the creator of “Elephantmen” comics.)
Patton lives in Manhattan with his wife Karen and their daughters, 5-year-old Frankie and 4-year-old Sasha. He wrote his first children’s offering, the illustrated storybook A Totally True Princess Story, for and about the girls.
In Princess, Frankie and Sasha, princesses of the magical land of HooHooHaHa, must deal with a small but troublesome “bad kind of magic” put out by the Mean Queen of the kingdom of Vile.
Most of the magic in HooHooHaHa was of the good kind: babies’ smiles, flowers in bloom and trees that bear hot dogs. But the Mean Queen got angry and cast spells, turning raindrops into spiders and ice cream into lima beans.
At the story unfolds, the princesses realize that they can’t remember having any birthdays, and they can’t come up with their parents’ names. The revelations launch the girls on an adventure that crosses between two worlds, breaching the barrier between the reality within the book and the reality without.
“I don’t like the messages we get that girls have to sit there and be passive,” Patton said. “Girls don’t need to wait for a Prince Charming. They can be princesses themselves, Warrior princesses. Girls can be actors and not just be acted upon.”
With Danny Fanny Saves Christmas, the boys can continue sharing the hero role.
Danny Fanny Saves Christmas is available at Pages: a Bookstore, 904 Manhattan Ave., and The Comic Bug, 1807 Manhattan Beach Blvd., both in Manhattan Beach. Plans call for the book to be sold on amazon.com as well. ER