The Brookeshelf

2007-10-18T16:20:00.000-04:00

The Brookeshelf Has MOVED!

Fed up with the capricious nature of the Blogger template, the Brookeshelf can now be found at:

http://brookeshelf.wordpress.com

Greener pastures, my friends. Greener pastures.

2007-04-19T20:55:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: The Fairy Tales

illustrated by Jan Pieńkowski
translated from Grimm and Perrault by David Walser
William Heinemann Ltd. and Gallery Five Ltd., 1977
Reissued in the U.S. 2006 by Viking

Here are my requirements for a good anthology of traditional folklore: the translations have got to be good, but most importantly, the illustrations have to be GORGEOUS. And there must be lots of them. On every page. In all of these aspects, Pieńkowski's treasure of a book fits the bill. This is the kind of book that seems to radiate magic.

Pieńkowski is known for a wide variety of illustration, including pop-up books, but I think he is most celebrated for his evocative use of sihouettes. In addition to fairy tales, Pieńkowski has illustrated books about Easter and the Nativity using silhouettes. In the religious works, the lack of direct facial details gives a sense of pagentry and grandeur. In these fairy tales -- "Sleeping Beauty," "Snow White," "Hansel and Gretel" and "Cinderella" -- the same form casts a spell of mystery and strangeness that is truly befitting of these stories. Exquisite scenes, either black-and-white or appearing on swirls of marbled color, present the stories in an extraordinarily unique way.

In order to add dramatic power to the scenes, Pieńkowski places the human figures in extravagantly emotional poses -- drooping to the ground to weep, flinging their arms into the air in joy -- characters are frequently given reams of twisty, flyaway hair or delicately lacy clothes to add layers of texture and interest. (Likewise, comic characters are amply supplied with knobby elbows and big teeth.) Frequently Pieńkowski sends spirals of vines, thorns, or flowers cascading across a page spread, on which the characters from the tales delicately act out their scenes.

Pieńkowski also makes no bones about some of the gruesome aspects of these stories -- the thorns surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle are littered with skeletons, and hostile animals peer down at Hansel and Gretel as they wander through the forest. However, the effect is more spellbinding and old-fashioned than repulsive. Large illuminated capitals and a typeface reminiscent of Wanda Gág's completes the look of a book that seems ages-old and yet ageless.

A bit of biographical information about the Grimms, Charles Perrault, and both Pieńkowski and Walser are given at the front of the book, but I do admit that it would have been nice to have a bit more information about the textual sources of the translations. But that seems a minor quibble -- this is a book designed for pure reading enjoyment, not academic folklorists.

May I also say a few words about the lavish construction of the book? The pages here are thick and lie marvellously flat, begging to be thumbed and stroked by fingers over and over again. The printwork is sharp and clear, allowing the tiniest holes in Snow White's basket, the lace on Sleeping Beauty's dress, or the curled tail of the tiniest of Cinderella's mice to appear. And while the book is satisfyingly heavy, it isn't unwieldy -- at 9.7 x 8 inches, it is just the right side for propping up on your chest while reading in bed.

And yes, you certainly must read it in bed. Books like this are bound to inspire some lovely, big dreams.

2007-04-17T20:45:00.000-04:00

New Book Micro-Reviews

The Baptism by Shelia P. Moses

Many weeks ago, Fuse#8 created a list of books that she think might be Newbery contenders for this year (and, alas, I cannot find the original post). This book was on the list, citing the excellence of The Baptism's prequels: The Legend of Buddy Bush and The Return of Buddy Bush. The main question was if a reader unfamiliar with the prequels would be able to read The Baptism as a stand-alone. Where oh where could such a reader be found?

Twa-ta-ta-taaaaa! Brooke to the rescue!

And here's the bad news: The Baptism does not work as a stand-alone. It could have -- ohhh, it could have, if Moses had not been so intent on connecting this book to its two predecessors.

Here's the premise: twelve-year-old Luke lives in North Carolina, circa the 1940s. His mother wants him to get baptized at the local church in one week. The book chronicles Luke's musings and misdeeds during that week, including scrapes with the local landowner's son, feelings of enmity against his stepfather, and the guilt over pulling his twin, Leon, into constant "sinnin."

The story is almost a play-by-play of Luke's thoughts, so the narrative tends to ramble and go off on tangents. I was fine with that -- Moses' grasp of the Southern vernacular is masterful -- although some young readers might find it frustrating. The thing I found strange was the long passages Moses devotes to having Luke recap the events of the first two books in the trilogy. It seemed tacked on, and had no apparent relation to what was presently going on in Luke's life. Luke's summary of Buddy Bush's adventures don't have much dramatic power in truncated form; it's obvious that Luke thinks they were important, but it's unclear to readers why. Then you get to the end, where there is a bit of a surprise twist, and I wonder if the whole reason for the back story was to lead up to it. Because I didn't have any particular feeling for the stories in the first two books, the ending came off as more random than surprising.

Personally, I think the book would have been better if it had stuck to Luke's story and left Buddy Bush out of it. Luke is a funny, picaresque character, and his ruminations on life, race, and spirituality could easily have stood on their own.

Okay . . . that review was not a micro-review. Time to change gears . . .

Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis

One of my Rules of Thumb for rating the merits of a book for young readers is if it describes child experiences in such an authentic way that it immediately brings to mind memories from my own childhood. Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Tarshis has done the job right in this regard. This story presents the perspectives (in alternating chapters) of two very different girls: Emma-Jean, who is analytical to the point of being completely detatched from her classmates, and Colleen, who is sweet, kind, and cares more about her relationships with others than anything else. What happens when Emma-Jean decides to start connecting with Colleen and other fellow seventh-graders (using a letter-writing scheme worthy of Anastasia Krupnik) is both funny and heartbreaking; both girls are incredibly, believably innocent in their own ways. Part of the journey to friendship for these girls -- to seeing and accepting yourself and others for what they are -- involves falling a bit, and being better off because of it. Tarshis gives us an excellent portrait of life on both sides of the popularity fence, and I think girls everywhere would benefit from giving it a good read.

Dimity Dumpty by Bob Graham

Okay, here are the reasons why you need to read this book:

1. It's about Humpty's little sister, who exhibits some serious quick thinking and you-go-girl-ness when it comes to rescuing her brother from his famous fall-off-the-wall.

2. The writing is concise and gorgeous, just like in Graham's other books.

3. The illustrations are to-die-for cute (the Dumpty family travels in a wagon made out of an egg carton! Which is pulled by a chicken! SWEET!).

4. The name "Dimity" is cool. Just admit it, people.

Rainstorm by Barbara Lehman

A boy is stuck indoors on a rainy day, when he finds a key under an old chair. After a bit of hunting, he finds that the key unlocks a chest that leads him to a sunny, idyllic world, with a bunch of kids to play with.

Over at the excelsior file, Elzey wonders if this book might be exhibiting a little bit of classism -- the protagonist (a white boy) seems trapped in a mansion, complete with servants and teacups, while the kids in the trunk are multicultural and barefoot. Eh, I don't quite agree. I think that Lehman simply wanted to portray the environment least appealing to a kid (gloomy, stuffy mansion) and the escape to a kid's idea of the ultimate fun place (barefoot on the beach!). What I found disappointing is the lack of brilliant originality that we've seen in Lehman's other picture books (Museum Trip and The Red Book). The whole bored-kid-finds-escape-into-magical-world trope has been around forever. There was none of the mystery and excitement, the sense that some strange Other Powers might be at work, that were in her other books. But hey, you can't win 'em all.

2007-04-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

The Piper at the Gates of the 21st Century

So, last week Monica Edinger, who writes the most excellent blog, Educating Alice, gave her opinions on the new BBC production of The Wind in the Willows, but moved on to broader questions as to the relevancy of the book in today's kidlit world:

The story has such a dated feel; it is very much about a bunch of old boys (in the British public school tradition) and no girls “messing about,” there is some ugly class commentary (when you get to those inhabitants of the Wild Wood), one of the oddest odes to paganism or something ever, and there is hardly a female to be seen (not surprising since it sort of replicates a boys’ school).

I don't quite get the connection between Grahame's characters and British public schools -- unless Edinger meant to point out that the four main animal characters come off as wealthy upper-crust Brits. But to answer the question: how relevant are the adventures of Mole, Badger, Ratty, and Toad today?

First, I'll be the first to admit that Grahame's novel is not for every kid. There's some pretty fancy prose on display in this book, and the fact that we are given two completely different storylines -- the lyrical forest adventures of Mole and Rat, and the comic adventures of Mr. Toad -- with different moods and pacing. There are action-packed chapters followed by sequences in which almost nothing happens. The effect can be jarring, especially for kids listening to the story aloud.

And yeah, it's a shame that there aren't any assertive female characters, but to tell the truth, when I read this as a kid, I didn't see the characters as being particularly male or female, but as animals. Androgynous animals, whose gender didn't seem to apply to them as it does to humans.

I don't quite get Edinger's connection between Grahame's characters and British public schools -- unless Edinger meant to point out that the four main animal characters come off as wealthy, clubby upper-crust Brits. I don't know if Grahame intended for the four animal characters to come off as quite so snobbish as they might to some readers. Keep in mind that there is more economic diversity between them than you might think -- Mole, with his almost-abandoned burrow, seems solidly middle-class, while Mr. Toad is the quintissential foppish aristocrat. As for me, I never got the impression that the animals were anything but old-fashioned, close friends.

I am fortunate to have a own copy of First Whisper of The Wind in the Willows, edited by Grahame's wife Elspeth, which contains all of the letters that Grahame wrote to his son, Alistair, in which the book's stories were first created. Naturally, there aren't nearly as many descriptive passages in the letters as in the book, and in the beginning there are far more animal characters, including a sty of silly pigs.

Rereading these letters, I personally get the impression that Grahame was more interested in creating a fantasic world of talking animals for his son than he was in replicating upper class Edwardian life. The notion that there may be a hidden world of genteel forest creatures is part of what still makes this book appealing. It's the same feeling that I think is still echoed in a lot of today's animal fantasies, such as Russel Erickson's A Toad for Tuesday, Cynthia Rylant's Thimbleberry Stories and perhaps even Kate DiCamillo's Tale of Despereaux. Likewise, I think the lyrical sequences of the book have a direct descendant in Randall Jarrell's The Animal Family.

However, the crux of the matter over the book's relevancy seems to lie in this: Grahame's skill at evoking the beauties of nature, the comforts and connections to one's own home, and the a fascination with forest animals, is still as evocative now as it was in 1908. In an increasingly nature-deprived world, I think there's nothing better for kids than to revel in a description of woods, rivers, and the luxury of getting absorbed in the outdoors.

Likewise, whenever I find a child -- or myself -- coveting the latest technological gadget, I'm always of a mind to sit us down for a ride on Mr. Toad's motorcar. In an era in which we are increasingly encouraged to upgrade our material lives, the misadventures of Mr. Toad seems more necessary than ever. The next time you experience a power failure, and find yourself tearing out your hair from e-mail deprivation, get out the candles and spend some time "messing about in boats." It'll do you good.

2007-04-14T19:09:00.000-04:00

Ten Things About Brian Selznick

First of all, my apologies for not writing more posts this week. I had family visiting from out of town, and blogging somehow didn't get on the agenda. But I'm back, and with a special treat: Hot Man of Children's Literature #8, Brian Selznick, came to my library today to give a lecture, and I was able to slip in for it. The talk was given in conjunction with Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures' fabulous kidlit series, Black, White, and Read All Over. If any of you reading this are in the area for these great lil' features, I highly recommend coming on down for them. These lectures are always rather fabulous -- and we usually have punch and cookies in the children's non-fiction room afterwards. But let's get to the good stuff -- here are the best tidbits from the Selznick lecture, and I'm givin' 'em to you factoid style:

Pifft! Stop thinking about drinking punch and cookies in the non-fiction room! Focus! Focus!

1. Selznick began the lecture with a "reading" from The Invention of Hugo Cabret -- that is, he had the images from the opening sequence of the book projected on the lecture hall's big screen, then asked for the lights to be dimmed. While the black-and-white pictures of 1930s Paris flickered on the screen, Selznick played old-fashioned movie music on the lecture hall's sound system. It was absolutely thrilling, and I don't know if I've ever said that about a Power Point presentation. If anything, Selznick definitely has a flair for the theatrical -- something that I think has been reflected in many of his books.

2. Due to his love of drawing monsters and dinosaurs as a kid, Selznick was often told that he should illustrate children's books when he grew up. This, of course, lead to an intense dislike of the idea on his part. So, when he was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, he refused to take courses on children's illustration -- even though those classes were taught by the likes of David Macaulay and Chris Van Allsburgh.

Oooh, doesn't it make you wince? Just wince?

3. When Selznick did decide he wanted to illustrate for kids, he got a job at Eyeore's, a children's bookshop in NYC. While there, he re-discovered a book he had loved as a child:

In Fortunately, Selznick loved the way that the action of the story was directly controlled by page turns -- how that made the reader an active participant in the storytelling. This, of course, fed into the development of the style of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, one of the first illustrated novels ever created for kids -- where turning the pages creates an interactive-yet-cinematic experience. (Selznick now counts the creator of Fortunately, Remy Charlip, as his mentor.)

Now, I'm going to insert a disclaimer here. I'm not going to bother describing The Invention of Hugo Cabret, or synopsize the plot, or talk about why this book is so innovative. If you want that, read the Fuse#8 review. Because I think there's enough redundancy in the world. Enough.

4. The chief inspiration for the book was the work of Georges Méliès, the Victorian French filmmaker -- who also appears in Hugo Cabret. But Selznick also spent a lot of time looking at other French filmmakers from the 1930s -- especially the film Under the Roofs of Paris by René Clair. Clair wasn't that fond of the (then-new) addition of sound to films -- like books and paintings, Clair thought that film was best appreciated as a solely visual medium. So he would use sound, but in unconventional ways -- usually bursts of sound after long silences. Selznick took this idea to shape the format for Hugo Cabret -- in which there are bursts of text after many pages of illustration.

5. Oh -- Selznick liked the look of Clair's films so much, that he lifted several scenes from Under the Roofs of Paris for the illustrations in Hugo Cabret. Also, Selznick said that when he created the pictures for Hugo Cabret, he made them at 1/4 scale, and then had them enlarged for the book. He said that he liked the way the enlargement made the pictures "airier," and that it helped him work faster, even though he had to do most of the work under a magnifying glass.

Hey, all you illustrators out there: how common is this? Usually, I hear complaints from illustrators about how they dislike having their work shrunk or blown up, because it distorts the vision they had for the book. What gives?

6. Automation is also a big part of Hugo Cabret. Selznick spent a lot of time studying the automata at the Franklin Institute in Philedelphia:

When Selznick arrived at the Institute, he found that the automata was broken (and had been for some time). Selznick had an engineering friend, Andy Barron, who he was also consulting for Hugo Cabret. When told about the broken machine, Barron offered to fix it for the Institute. The automata will be the centerpiece of an exhibit on machines produced by the FI in 2008, and Selznick has been invited to do a presentation on Hugo Cabret as part of the festivities. Oh, and be sure to read more about this very cool machine right here.

7. When drawing human characters for his books, Selznick says that he gets an idea of what the character looks like in his head, and then keeps an eye out for real people who match that image, and then asks them to model for his book. So, for Hugo Cabret, he met a kid named Garret at the National History Museum in NYC who looked just like his idea of Hugo. Fortunately, said Selznick, his mom was keen on the idea of going over to Selznick's apartment for a photo shoot. The girl who modeled for Etienne was found in a pizza parlor.

Kind of amazing -- when I was a kid, I would have loved for that to have happened to me! It's like those Hollywood stories of starlets being "discovered" in Woolworth's, or whatever. Only, for me, being captured in a book seems so much cooler. Kind of an anonymous celebrity.

8. As a sidenote to this, Selznick asked Remy Charlip to do the modeling for the illustrations of Georges Méliès. You gotta admit, the two of them look very similar. Here's Charlip:

And here's Méliès:

Just . . . a little . . . eerie, no? You may also note that the book is co-dedicated to Charlip. (Awwww.)

9. Hugo wasn't originally intended to be an orphan when Selznick began writing Hugo Cabret; it wasn't until the passing of Selznick's own father that he realized that it would be a necessary part of the book.

10. OH -- and as if creating beautiful books weren't enough, Selznick also does toy-theatre-style puppet shows in his spare time. He created one about The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins a few years ago, which featured tiny antique cabinets containing scenes from Hawkins' life:

So, here's my request for Mr. Selznick: Is there any way, any way you could get footage of these puppet shows up online to be enjoyed by One and All? There's a load of fresh cupcakes in it for you . . .

2007-04-09T20:38:00.000-04:00

New Book Micro-Reviews

Time for some finger-lickin' fiction!

The New Policeman by Kate Thompson
This is the book I've been recommending the most lately; it's as sprightly and fresh as a springtime breeze. J.J. Liddy is the 15-year-old member of an Irish family with a long heritage of music. When his harried mother requests "more time" as a birthday present, he finds himself journeying to Tír na n'Óg, a.k.a. fairyland, a.k.a. The Land of Eternal Youth (rendered by Thompson in a subtly original way). In between meetings with figures from Irish folklore, J.J. discovers that time is leaking from our world into theirs, and also uncovers the answers to many Liddy family mysteries. This book is so winningly Irish, it makes me want to take a shower and start cutting up my soap with a pocketknife. I love the dialect, the intriguing characters, and the fact that Thompson gives us the sheet music for a different Irish melody at the end of each chapter. Plus, for bonus points, you can sing the title to the melody of Beck's "The New Pollution." Go ahead, sing it: "Sheeee's a-looone in the / Neeew Po-liiiiceman." Pretty apt description of my time spent absorbed in this book.

By the way, I don't know why this novel is being described as for "ages 11-15." There's nothing in here that would be inappropriate for younger kids -- J.J. could easily have been written as a ten-year-old, a la Susan Cooper. Perhaps it's the length that's kicking it up to YA? Eh, I have no idea.

Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins
Yes! A solid middle-grade novel set in Bangladesh! With a strong female protagonist! And information about microcredit programs in the back! It's short and easy to read! It makes for a good classroom read-aloud! Ms. Perkins, this book could be the answer to about a jillion questions on the reference desk. THANK YOU SO MUCH. And for all of you non-library types reading this: Perkins' tale of spunky Naima and her quest to earn money for her family is fun, colorful, and full of heart. And you gotta have heart.

Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce
Oo-er. This is the kind of fantasy novel with so many creative sparkles that it makes me feel as if my imagination were broken in comparison. Flora, the youngest member of a declining family with a rich military heritage, lives in a crumbling mansion with 11,000 rooms. And then . . . geez, I'm not going to bother explaining it. Just click on the link and read the synopsis there. The lowdown from my perspective? 1. The plot is interesting but a little convoluted, yet fun to read anyway. 2. This is the first fantasy novel I've seen in a while that takes inspiration from Latin American culture. The characters eat tamales, have a coming of age ceremony called a "Catorcena" (like a quinceañera), and the enemy empire to the south sounds a lot like the Aztecs, complete with chile-spiced cocoa, jaguar-skin bandoliers, and bloody sacrifice rituals. Oh, and there's a tiny floating matador merman that chatters in Spanish at our heroine. Cool. 3. Okay, okay, I like this novel -- quite a bit -- but it uses the word "magick." Eeeerg, that gets on my nerves, along with "faeries" and "dragyns" instead of "fairies" and "dragons." It's like parents who name their son "Myechkell." It's still "Michael," like it's still just "magic." So, I was kind of wincing on every other page of this book. But still. I'm a twit that way. Pretty good reading.

Off Topic Celebration

2007-04-05T21:39:00.001-04:00

So, you may have noticed that I've failed to create a new Forgotten Book review as well as a Online Exhibit tour.

Do you know why?

It's because I finished the first draft of my novel this week! Hurrah! 340 pages of turgent, craptastic prose! But still. All done.

To celebrate, I'm going to indulge in a little nepotism. The above clip is from a Jonathan Coulton concert at The Cutting Room in NYC. You may or may not be familiar with Coulton's goofy-yet-awesome music, but the important thing to see here is the presence of my sister-in-law, Kristen, playing the ukulele. Ain't she awesome?

Enjoy "Creepy Doll" and take it easy.

2007-04-04T21:29:00.000-04:00

For When You Hanker For A Hunk of Harry

My husband and I spent a bit of our free time this evening looking at the new cover for the U.S. version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had already seen it; he hadn't, and while I chose to make comments on the fact that Harry and Voldemort look as if they are engaging in a good round of Tai Chi, my far more analytically minded husband became obsessed with one thing and one thing only: how to use these pictures to guess how thick the book will be.

See, here's the full wraparound:

You can compare it to the front cover image to estimate where the spine will lay. After measuring the dimensions of our copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and doing some quick calculations, Brian has come up with an educated guess about the length of Book 7.

His guess: 1,086 pages. In other words, the book is a little over half as thick as it is wide.

Dude, this book could kill a squirrel!

I, personally, enjoy really thick books like this. When I get them new, I enjoy lifting them up into the air as if they were well-aged chunks of Gruyere cheese, and regarding them heavily as if I could already taste creamy dialogue and sharp descriptions that go down so well with a big wheat cracker.

Hmm.

I've got to stop writing these posts when I'm hungry.

2007-04-03T21:41:00.001-04:00

Tuesday evening is usually the time when I present another "Our Life in Books" entry, about my experiences raising young readers. But you know what, folks? This evening featured some legendary patience-testing moments of motherhood. I'm not going to go into details, only to say that the main event will hitherto be referred to as "The Great Poop Incident of '07."

Yes. Now, to shake that all out of your heads, I'm going to take refuge in presenting some delightful lil' clips from YouTube.

The clip here is a trailder for the Tom Davenport production of Bearskin. Not familiar with Davenport? In the '70s and '80s, he made a series of films for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting depicting Grimm Brothers folktales in various American settings. These films left none of the original gore or violence from the tales, so they were kind of controversial when they were first released, but audiences liked them. They remain pretty provacative and psycholocigally charged today as they were decades ago (albeit still pretty low-budget-looking, but I think that's part of the charm).

If you think "Bearskin" is spiffy (and I do), be sure to check out the trailers for Hansel and Gretel, Soldier Jack, and Ashpet (those last two are set during the WWII era -- cuteness!). Take note of the presence of legendary African-American storyteller Louise Anderson as the fairy godmother in Ashpet. Dude, she rocks.

Davenport Films has recently released all twenty-odd folktale films on DVD, but at $40 a pop, it looks like the sort of thing that only libraries could afford to buy. (Hint, hint, if you are a collections development librarian -- buy these and you won't be sorry!)

2007-04-02T21:30:00.000-04:00

New Book Micro-Reviews

It's Monday night -- do you know what that means? Teeny tiny reviews of new books! This week, I'm indulging in Non-Fiction-O-Rama. Sit back and let the information just wash over you!

Extreme Animals: The Toughest Creatures on Earth
by Nicola Davies; illustrated by Neal Layton
This book's kind of like a funky Guiness Book of World Records for the animal world, with the basic premise being "humans are wimps." Through this, Davies gives wonderfully consice, clear descriptions of how animals are tough -- how camels store water, how frogs can turn themselves into "popsicles," how thermophiles can co-exist with undersea volcanoes. Layton's loopy illustrations add just the touch of goofiness to this text to make it fun -- his multimedia creations look like groovy doodles someone left behind in a science textbook. Perfect for zoo nerds of all ages.

John Smith Escapes Again!
by Rosalyn Schanzer
Armchair travellers, hie ye hence to Schanzer's book! This book attempts to give a historically balanced, accurate depiction of early American explorer John Smith's life without beating around the bush about his 17th-century outlook on life. This book has "classic adventure tale" written all over it: pirates, wars, shipwrecks, and -- of course -- daring escapes. Best of all, it features a portrait of Pocahontas as she probably was: ten years old, nearly naked, and with a shaved-and-painted-red-head. Thank you, National Geographic Press. Keep 'em coming.

Great Estimations
by Bruce Goldstone
When you were a kid, did you ever enter those "guess how many beans are in the jar" contests? And take them really seriously -- trying to make a good guess of how many were in the jar? Jeez, what am I saying, "were a kid?" I still can't resist the urge to make a good estimate. In this lovely book, Goldstone explains the math behind estimations, plus why certain professionals -- like field biologists -- need to make them, and how to train yourself to make better ones. The pages are filled with photographs featuring clusters of small objects just perfect for the I Spy set -- can you tell if there are a hundred Gummi Bears? Five hundred pennies? Two thousand pieces of macaroni? The brain games here are addictive; give this number a read, and you'll find yourself estimating people in crowds, flower petals, and the words in this blog.

2007-03-30T14:39:00.000-04:00

Geez, Why Didn't I Think of This?

For the past few weeks, I've been following Elzey's excellent blog, the excelsior file, and its fabulous idea to read about a different fairytale from the Brothers Grimm once a day, and then create a post about a particular story once a week. Elzey calls them Grimmoires (oh, scrumptious word!) and they never fail to amuse. From the latest, "The Twelve Brothers" (you know . . . where the brothers get turned into swans, and Little Sister has to rescue them all without saying a word for seven years) Elzey writes:

One day a King -- some other generic king, different from the girl's father -- is hunting in the woods and his dogs find a girl sitting in a tree. My, but she's a beauty! he thinks I must have this mute girl sitting in the tree for my bride! An without a thought that she might be a dangerous environmental activist they agree to be married.

Yeah, why don't fairytale princes ever do background checks? It would save them ever so much trouble.

2007-03-29T21:10:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Book of the Week: Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain

by Edward Ardizzone
Oxford University Press, 1936
reissued: Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2006

Kids are famous for their obsessions. Dinosaurs, trains, princesses, natural disasters, Vikings, what have you -- I know several small people who are more than willing to spill all sorts of knowledge about their pet topic into a willing ear. What better topic for a picture book than a story of a kid whose favorite-thing wishes are fulfilled?

Enter Little Tim. He loves all things nautical, having grown up along the shore, and spends his time playing on boats on the beach and visiting his friend, the retired Captain McFee. How deep does his love of boats go? "Sometimes Tim would astonish his parents by saying, 'That's a Cunarder' or 'Look at that barquentine on the port bow.'" Tim, who appears to be about five or six years old, is crushed to be informed by his parents that he cannot become a sailor until he is an adult. However, when Tim is given the chance to visit onboard a steamer, he stows away until the ship is out to sea, but then works his way into the good graces of the crew and captain. When the steamer is shipwrecked, Tim bravely stays with the ship's captain until they are rescued, leading to a satisfying conclusion (complete with medals of honor).

There's a charming simplicity to the level of fantasy in this book -- it reads almost like a child's backyard pretend play. Tim heads off to sea without ever worrying if he will be missed, and when he returns home, Mother and Father greet him as complacently and cheerfully as if he had just skipped home from school. The steamer captain gives Tim a good scolding for stowing away (and -- horrors! -- makes him scrub the deck) but underneath, the captain is an old softy who doesn't mind slipping our hero the occasional cup of cocoa. Dangers lurk beneath the ocean waves, but there's always a lifeboat within easy reach to take Tim back to shore. It's just the sort of adventure that I would have relished -- and believed in -- when I was Tim's age.

Let's not forget the illustrations -- it's what Ardizzone is best known for (he was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal in 1956). The scenes in this book are good and salty, as all sea stories should be. Color spreads alternate with black-and-white ink drawings, and all of them manage to properly convey the briny air and slapping waves apropos to sea travel. Even the tones Ardizzone picked for the color illustrations look appropriately washed out, with plenty of greys and blues. The pictures already look as if they've been two years before the mast. Tim's figure is always lithe and big-headed, conveying the perfect blend of innocence and pluck necessary for his character.

This is but one of many "Little Tim" adventures, but is the only one that has been recently reissued. With luck, Frances Lincoln will choose to send out some more, for nobody deserves more adventures and outings than Tim and his very lucky readers.

Makes You Appreciate StoveTop So Much More

2007-03-28T22:22:00.001-04:00

Take a gander at this lil' lovely I dug up a few days ago. It's an animated version of Edward Lear's poem "Two Old Bachelors." Apparently, this was done as a graduation project by an animation student named Doug Wilson. I don't know the man, but you must give Mad Props to his sense of taste. (Take note of the mugging-via-baguette segment in this flick.) Mr. Wilson, I tip my hat to you.

2007-03-28T21:33:00.000-04:00

Our Life In Books: Herbs Ride Again

Ooooooooo! Today, Eleanor and I went thrifting together, and do you know what I found? This:

That's right! A Moulinex herb grater!

Well . . . ours is the 1970s version of this model, so it's bright orange, but basically still the same. If anything, this is certainly a reflection of the awsome effect that Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky is having on my culinary soul. Good grief, the descriptions of food were awesome in that book -- and they weren't necessarily all descriptions of good food, mind you. Lucky has descriptions of dishes from the entire Food Spectrum, from the cheese-in-a-box fried in bacon grease, to diner food to tartes aux pommes. Bar none, the passage that intrigued me the most was the description of the Frenchwoman Brigitte's use of a hand-held herb grater like the one above to sprinkle just about everything with parsley.

It sounded delicious to me when I read this; how the sprinkled parsley gave everything "a freshness, and herb-ness to it." But what I couldn't visualize was how it was possible to hold the grater with one hand, turn the crank with the other, and manage somehow to not have the herbs fall right out of the little feeder on top.

I mean, come on -- you have to manually push cheese into a rotary cheese grater. And onions into a food processor. Did Brigitte have to prop the grater up on the counter with her elbow to keep a hand free to shove the parsley into the grater? Did she jam it all down deep into the feeder? If so, wouldn't the grater jam up? What gives?!?

Sheesh. I mean, I trully can not believe there was such a kerfuffle over the word "scrotum" in this book when there was also THIS conundrum to figure out.

So, you can see why -- no matter what the current state of our overstuffed kitchen cabinets -- buying an herb grater became an Intellectual Imperative. You know. Up there with finding out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

Upon arriving home, we stuck the grater in the dishwasher and waited breathlessly for it to get clean, and once it did so I stuck some parsley in to try it out.

And then . . . drumroll, please . . .

The parsley got completely jammed up in the grater's teeth! Awwww, nuts!

But then . . . my son tipped the grater's cardboard box upside down. Out of the box floated a tiny scrap of paper with about five different languages in it. One of them was in English, and instructed us to turn the grater's handle in a pattern of two forward turns followed by a backwards turn. Whoa. Wax on, wax off, Daniel-san.

The new method worked! As I type this, we have an entire kitchen sink covered with charmingly miniscule flakes of parsley. Now all we need is a kitchen sink full of garlic bread to go with it, and we're set.

2007-03-26T21:07:00.000-04:00

New Book Micro-Reviews

Okay, okay. So I had this goal of doing a whole bunch of mini-reviews of new books once a week. But do you know what happened? The mini-reviews turned into mega-reviews. I mean, take a gander at the last one I did. It took me three flippin' hours to write, mainly because I had to do a quick scan of each book so I could remember what I wanted to say about it. Too much information.

So. I'm going to take inspiration from a favorite website of mine, which reviews Pittsburgh restaurants in just a few sentences. It's kind of like a Whitman's Sampler of book reviews. Hopefully, these little tates will tantalize you enough to learn more about these brand-new babes of children's literature.

Let it Shine: Three Favorite Spirituals
Adapted and illustrated by Ashley Bryan
Is it to early to state that this is the book I want to win the Caldecott Medal next year? Bryant's exuberantly colorful paper collages just makes you wanna stand up on a pew somewhere and belt out some tunes. Or better yet, hear Bryan sing 'em himself, 'cause that man is a big ol' walking ball of glad-eyed charisma. This book gives us pitch-perfect rainbow renditions of "This Little Light of Mine," "When the Saints go Marching In," and "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." It won't be hard to find this book in a store or library; you need sunglasses just to look at the pages. Golly, it makes my mouth water.

So Sleepy Story
Written and illustrated by Uri Schulevitz
A boy drifts off to sleep amongst the anthropormorphic objects in his room, but when a mysterious melody drifts through the window, everything wakes up and begins to dance for a while before snoozing once more. I love the sombre blue-and-grey palette of the illustrations, and the cute faces given to the chairs and plates reminded me a little of Remi Charlip's Sleepytime Rhyme. But the text! It seems great when you read it silently, but if you're roped into repeat out-loud readings with a child? So, so uninteresting ("sleepy cuckoo-clock/by sleepy dishes/on sleepy shelves/and a sleepy cat/on a sleepy chair"). Kind of a disappointment after the minimalist magic of his Caldecott Honor-winning Snow. But still. It's purty.

Bronzeville Boys and Girls
Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks; illustrated by Faith Ringgold
Revered poet Brooks wrote this collection back in the 1950s in homage to the kids she observed in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. The poems are as fresh and universal a portrait of childhood today as they were then -- we are given glimpses into tea parties, snow games, and the pleasures of sitting alone and dreaming; all the good stuff of childhood. Best of all, now these poems have supremely divine illustrations by Ringgold. Better yet, this is the first Ringgold work I've seen in a while that doesn't appear to be . . . um, Dali-esque. (Cough.) Ringgold gives the poems a world of glorious, thick-lined paintings that make you want to feel the summer heat on your back while you play hopscotch in the street. What could be better than that?

2007-03-23T16:02:00.000-04:00

Online Exhibit of the Week: The Pop-Up World of Ann Montanaro

Ann Montanaro is the head of Systems and Bibliographic Database Management at Rutgers University, which is all fine and good, but she's also something else. She's someone who has done something about which I (and perhaps many others) secretly dream: her personal library of children's books was made into a special collection of a major university library. And they named it after her! Wow! Now that's what I call immortality.

Montanaro's special interest in the world of children's literature is pop-up books. No big surprise there -- I know lots of people who collect them -- but Montanaro's expertise in the history of the genre is stellar. Not only did she publish a book-length bibliography of pop-up books of yesterday and today, but she also founded the Moveable Book Society, which not only produces a quarterly journal, but a biennial conference -- the perfect resource for anybody looking to collect these fragile yet fascinating works of art.

Pop-ups are one of the few kinds of literature that I find can entrance adults just as wholeheartedly as kids. There has been many a time that I've passed by my library's little shelf of pop-ups to find parents on the floor with their kids and One Red Dot, eagerly peering around the paper structures, gleefully lifting flaps and pulling arrows. I think it is both the transient nature of these books as well as the clever architecture that captures our imaginations: like a soap bubble or a butterfly, we all know that pop-up books don't last very long, and should be enjoyed whole-heartedly while they are around.

The collection on display in the online exhibit does a good job of giving a survey of pop-up books from the 1880s to the 1990s, with books organized into somewhat whimsical themes ("The Birds and the Bees," "The Beautiful and the Bizzare," "Man, You Gotta Move!") inviting armchair tourists to click through the collection at a leisurely pace. The books range from the charmingly Victorian to the bizzarre -- including a pop-up homage to the British royal family.

Each image is given a lengthy annotation describing the context of the book, the artist's other works, and what any visible tabs or flaps are for. Best of all, Montanaro has also contributed a brief history of pop-up books to the exhibit.

Apparently, this was the first online exhibit created for Rutgers, and it shows -- the design of the website is woefully dated, with an ugly grey background. Worst of all, the images of the books were all created with old-style film photography, then scanned to create JPEGs. Although the website provides detailed instructions on how to set your monitor to optimize clarity, the images still come off as grainy and blurred, as you can see from the images I have posted here.

The biggest oversight, of course, is the conspicuous abscence of the works of Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart. Only one Sabuda book, The Christmas Alphabet, is shown in the exhibit, and the list of pop-up book websites does not include a link to the Sabuda/Reinhart workshop, which is arguably one of the best resources on the Web about contemporary pop-ups.

Obviously, these oversights are due to the fact that this exhibit hasn't been touched since its creation in the 1990s. So what? one might ask. It's only an online exhibit.

Yes, but there's something to be said for making collections like these accessible to the public, and that includes the online public. There's nothing wrong with the occasional update, folks. You know, at least one a decade or so. I wouldn't be surprised to see this website showing up on bilbliographies for college courses about children's literature, and if a resource is being used in that way, it deserves to be kept up so it can remain a good source of information.

Okay, okay. I'll just put way my pop-up soapbox for now. (Wouldn't it be handy to have one of those?)

2007-03-21T21:21:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Book of the Week: The Duchess Bakes a Cake

by Virginia Kahl
Scribners & Sons, 1955
Reissued: Purple House Press, 1983

Baking mishaps seem like a recurring motif in children's literature, from "The Gingerbread Man" to "In the Night Kitchen" and onwards, and yet I don't ever seem to tire of it. I'm betting that a lot of kids don't, either. Which, of course, brings me to the delightful dottiness of Virginia Kahl's The Duchess Bakes a Cake. Here's how the book begins:

A long time ago there lived over the waters
A Duchess, A Duke, and their family of daughters --
Madeleine, Gwendolyn, Jane and Clothilde,
Caroline, Genevive, Maude and Mathilde,
Willibald, Guinevere, Joan and Brunhilde,
And the youngest of all was the baby, Gunhilde.

Whenever I read this intro, I can't help but be reminded of that other book from the 1950s about twelve little girls in two straight lines. But the similarity ends there. Kahl's story about the Duke and Duchess' prodigious family is set in a world given over to silliness, where adults and children alike play the fool. "They couldn't think often, and hadn't thought much."

The story begins with the angular, Olive-Oyl-Goes-Medieval-style Duchess, who usually likes to spend her time "reading and writing," growing bored and deciding to bake a cake. Being a noblewoman, she hasn't the faintest idea of how to go about making "a lovely light luscious delectable cake," but simply adds ingredients helter-skelter into the bowl:

In went the almonds, the raisins, the suet;
She added some vinegar and dropped in the cruet.
She added the yeast, six times for good measure.
(A light fluffy cake is really a pleasure.)

Predictibly, the cake rises to immense proportions, trapping the Duchess in the air on an enormous mound of dough. "I fear an improper proportion of leaven / Is taking my dear Duchess right up to Heaven," cries the Duke. How will she get back down? The castle folk all have ludicrously impractical ideas, but, of course, it is the Duchess's own children who create the best solution.

Kahl was a librarian, and you can tell: her rhyming text and clever rhymes beg for this book to be read out loud. As for her three-color illustrations, they seem like a cross between Lois Lenski and James Thurber. Thick lines delineate the characters and scenery, and Kahl uses little details to give the characters charm. The palace cook, with his long, upturned nose and spoon on his hip, looks like he fell straight out of a vintage New Yorker cartoon. The thirteen daughters, meanwhile, are simply adorable with their little red caps, white dresses and pudgy green arms. If I had read this book as a child, I would have loved to have a set of dolls that looked just like them.

Kahl wrote several books about the Duke and Duchess' family; this is the most well-known and is the only one that has ever been reissued. This loopy castle community is addictive; if The Duchess Bakes a Cake falls into the hands of any young readers you know, you may find yourself scouring used book markets to collect the whole set.

2007-03-21T15:11:00.000-04:00

Aristotle vs. Children's Literature: Tragic Heroes

Over at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy, there's a bit of interesting hash going on about the possibility of tragic heroes existing in children's literature. Apparently, this was a question posited by a library patron, and both Liz and the readers who posted comments are in a bit of a disagreement as to whether or not tragic heroes even exist in books for young readers. (Does the tree in The Giving Tree count as a tragic hero? Or just the kid who has to listen to that story?) A commenter named Andrew asked:

I wonder if it's possible to have a strictly Aristotelian tragic hero in a children's book. Do the flaws of even YA protagonists rise to the level of tragedy? I'm not making a qualitative judgment at all--a tragic hero isn't innately any better than another kind of hero. It's just that most YA flaws aren't fatal or insurmountable, and they don't tend to lead to a great reversal of fortune (i.e., death, eyes ripped from sockets, etc.). The flaws aren't but-for-this-he-would-have-been-a-great-King-of-Denmark type flaws. I think if YA had "tragic heroes," the books would have higher body counts.

First question: Andrew, do you want to reconsider The Chocolate War? Does a high body count alone merit a story as "tragic"?

But I'm going to put aside the discussion of YA literature for a bit to go over a bit of how we define "tragic heroes" today. And to do that, I'm going to reference a delightful interview of Ken Gros Louis, who teaches a college course about heroes through the ages at Indiana University Bloomington. About defining what a "tragic hero" is, he writes:

The phrase "tragic hero" has been interpreted differently at different times of history; indeed, the definition often depends on one's interpretation of what history is.
Thus, in classical times, the tragic hero was one who had a tragic flaw that inevitably led to his downfall. But in medieval times, bad things happened to good people, and in a sense, because of the deep belief in resurrection and the afterlife, things that happened in this world didn't matter that much. For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the tragic hero, like Hamlet or MacBeth or Othello, was one whose passions often overruled reason--or, put another way, one whose three parts of the soul were not in harmony. I could go on and on because the definition has really not been constant. Think of Job, for example--I'm not sure he would have been considered a tragic hero.

And does the classical definition of tragic heroes still apply in modern times?

The classical definition may work in certain circumstances, although I don't think the phrase "tragic hero" would necessarily apply. Thus, Bill Clinton may have a tragic flaw, but I doubt if most people would put him in the same category as the classical tragic heroes.

With this flexibility in mind, I'm going be a little bold and say that tragic heroes in children's literature can only exist in stories that end badly -- that are true tragedies. So, what are those?
In books for children, stories with truly unhappy endings tend to be tempered with that ever-pervasive "sense of hope" that leads us to believe that something good still exists for the protagonist in the future. Also, with the rise of realism in literature for kids, most disasters happen as a result of chance, or the consequences of a social system gone wrong. So, we have stories like Kira-Kira, Out of the Dust, Bridge to Terabithia, or even The Red Rose Box. In these stories, bad stuff simply happens. To find true tragic heroes, I think, you'd have to go back to a time before modernism hit the kidlit world. When the sensibility of the average children's book was still infused with the heady vapors of Romanticism.

That's right: I'm talking about Hans Christian Andersen. You want tragedy? Take a good gander at The Little Mermaid, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier. In terms of the Shakespearean tragic hero, these tales have protagonists whose passions truly rule over their reason and lead to their downfall. And yet, they are gorgeous, timeless stories. In Ruth Sawyer's classic novel, Roller Skates, tragic stories are explained to the ten-year-old protagonist as being something bad held within something incredibly beautiful, so we can stand looking such sadness in the face, and deal with it. In other words, tragic story is something that we need to psychically survive-- and that includes kids. Makes you think twice about throwing a singing crab into an Andersen tale, doesn't it?

2007-03-20T20:47:00.000-04:00

Our Life in Books: "Like Dolmens Round My Childhood, the Old People"

It's time once again, for a few true-life stories of kid-on-book action! See: the spines bent and splintered! See: the insistence of 300 repeat readings! See: the drool-stained pages!

Lately, my almost-two-year-old, Eleanor, has been going through an Identity Crisis.

Well . . . "crisis" is not the right word. Perhaps I should say "Identity Calm" or whatever the true opposite of "crisis" might be. Eleanor, in true toddler fashion, has been very firm and insistent on identifying herself as often and in as many ways as possible. When she catches a glimpse of her reflection, she says, "Nor-Nor." When she spots her be-strollered self on closed-circuit security television, she says, "Nor-Nor." And when her little shadow flits on the grass beside her? "Nor-Nor."

So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that my girl, this budding bibliophile, should find herself in all of the books she reads. She's identified herself as the bouncy toddler protagonist of Caroline Uff's Lulu's Busy Day, and also as the boy in Peter McCarty's quiet masterpiece Moon Plane.

The last few weeks, however, Eleanor has extended this book-identification to include her entire family. Especially when we are reading any kind of Mother Goose anthology. Eleanor is always Mary Mary Quite Contrary, or the good king's daughter in "Grey Goose and Gander." But my husband? He's Humpty Dumpty.

Yeah, Humpty Dumpty. Now, lest you immediately get the impression that Brian is a round, pale, bald guy, let me present a comparison. Here's Humpty:

And here's Brian:

Well . . . they're both in close proximity to a wall. Beyond that, I have NO IDEA why Eleanor thinks her Daddy is Humpty. (Although Daddy Humpty sounds like a great name for a rap star.)

And me? I'm always the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe:

Now, that might not seem such a stretch. The Shoe Lady is always pictured with a bunch of kids, so I can understand why she'd make the connection there. But Eleanor also makes sure to inform me that that I am also The Old Woman Tossed Up in a Basket:

When Eleanor made this little assertion, it hit me: she thinks I'm old. Mother-Goose-style old. That means being the kind of lady who wears a bonnet. And lives in non-traditional houses. Oldy-old-old. And to a two-year-old, that makes sense. I can't help but think of Paul Fleischman's poem, "Mayflies," when I think of a toddler regarding her ancient parents. "Your minute / Mayfly day / Your hour / Mayfly year." To her, someone capable of doing magical things like peeling a banana or turning on a night light must certainly be an Ancient Source of Cosmic Wisdom.

While my inner Narcissus is hurting, hurting over the comparison ("Noooooo! I'm only 29!!!) I can't help but be a little touched by this very real, honest perception of a child for her parents: as being something so safe, so strong, that they seem to have existed forever.

Like. . . sigh . . . Stonehenge.

2007-03-18T21:48:00.000-04:00

"Could his later cognitive struggles be the result of a typeof Shaken Bear Syndrome?"

I'm a children's librarian; my husband is a medical student. What happens when our worlds collide? This:

Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne

It was published as a lark back in 2000 by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ). Yeah, it's a joke that seems a bit tired, but what's impressive here is the lengths the authors went to to make this look like a legit journal article. The footnotes! The table! The bizarre suggestion that Kanga buy up the Hundred Acre Wood and turn it into a gated community!

And the medical perspective on all this folderol? My husband responds:

"It seems clear to me that Pooh is perfectly developmentally appropriate for a stuffed bear of his age and that he is a very high functioning individual in his sphere of activity, his eating habits and body morphology are also appropriate for his nature as an imaginary/stuffed bear. This is true for all of the diagnoses given. Whoever says Piglet has failure to thrive has never looked at the standardized growth chart for stuffed/imaginary pigs. "

"Owl is labeled as having a reading disorder from in this chart, but it is clear to all the other inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood and to me that he has advanced reading skill for any owl, living or stuffed. Show me another owl that can even get close to misspelling his name that well, and I will show you a well trained bird. Sure, if these individuals were adult humans they might have the diagnoses suggested in the article, but as clinicians we will have to wait until they are visited by the Blue Fairy, turned into real people, have problems adjusting, obtain health insurance or medical assistance, and visit us in the clinic to give them these or any other diagnoses."

Yeah, that's the man I love.

For further medicine-meets-kidlit fun, check out "Cinderology: The Cinderella of Academic Medicine," which analyzes doctors' use of the Cinderella story as a medical metaphor.

2007-03-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

Where's Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer?

Over at Read Roger, there's a stunningly intelligent discussion about the latest spat of kidlit which features girls who disguise themselves as boys. (Let's see . . . Alphabet of Dreams. Check. The Secret of the Rose. Check . . . ) Sutton calls it a "defining trope" or even a "motif" of children's literature. Responding to Kelly Harold, he writes:

I would argue that what you mean instead is that "in most eras and cultures, girls whom we wish to commemorate for our own culture and era have had to dress as boys, etc." What I mean is, did as high a percentage of Colonial era girls have as much trouble with their sewing as our historical fiction about them would have it?

Amen, brother! I'm sure there's a wealth of debate over the historical evidence of girls' relationships with the gender roles from ages past, but to tell the truth, whenever I come across a historical novel for kids that features girls who actually do attempt to fit into their society, it comes as a breath of fresh air. I think Joan Blos' A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal 1830-32 is one of the best examples of historical fiction with a female protagonist who is smart and strong, but exhibits these traits in a matter fitting her time and place.

Karen Cushman's Catherine, Called Birdy, on the other hand -- and which I really love and enjoy -- has a protagonist whose personality is so strong that it comes off as anachronistic. Yeah, girls like Catherine may have thought those things back in the Middle Ages, but would they have said them?

As for "girls whom we wish to commemorate for our own culture and era," let's not forget that stories of girls and gender-bending is a motif that stretches far beyond our own culture and era. Lousia May Alcott sent Jo out to shear her hair as part of a war effort (not quite the same as donning pants, but shocking to Victorians nonetheless). And during Alcott's time and before, the story of Joan of Arc -- one of the original cross-dressing hair-shearers -- made for popular reading among girls.

Speaking of Alcott, I think an interesting close to my post on this topic is to be found in Jo's Boys. Interested in how Alcott -- whom many view as a proto-feminist -- dealt with the balance between being smart and independent vs. domesticity? Read her description of the sewing circle created for female college students:

Mrs Meg was the first to propose enlarging this little circle; for as
she went her motherly rounds among the young women she found a sad
lack of order, skill, and industry in this branch of education.
Latin, Greek, the higher mathematics, and science of all sorts
prospered finely; but the dust gathered on the work-baskets, frayed
elbows went unheeded, and some of the blue stockings sadly needed
mending. Anxious lest the usual sneer at learned women should apply
to 'our girls', she gently lured two or three of the most untidy to
her house, and made the hour so pleasant, the lesson so kindly, that
they took the hint, were grateful for the favour, and asked to come
again. Others soon begged to make the detested weekly duty lighter by
joining the party, and soon it was a privilege so much desired that
the old museum was refitted with sewing-machines, tables,
rocking-chair, and a cheerful fireplace, so that, rain or shine, the
needles might go on undisturbed.
Needles undisturbed, indeed.

2007-03-15T22:24:00.000-04:00

Online Exhibit of the Week: The Charlotte M. Smith Collection of Miniature Books

Here's the first entry of what (I hope) is a regular Thursday night feature on this blog. I adore perusing rare and unusual children's books. I spent a fair share of my time in library school nosing my way through the Elizabeth Nesbitt Room, and it was always like some delightful combination of treasure hunt and picnic. The handpainted colors! The gilded binding! The fact that I had my very own pair of little white gloves!

Naturally, I still crave such moments (children and work now occupy my once-abundant research time), and I'm sure there's a goodly number of folks out there who do too.

Therefore -- once a week, I will highlight fun, interesting, and delicious online exhibits about children's books and media.

This week, I bring you "Tiny Tomes," otherwise known as the Charlotte M. Smith Collection of Miniature Books.

The story of the collection's origins will resonate with any bibliophile -- Smith was such an avid collector of antique books that her shelves sagged with the weight of them all. She made a deal with her husband that she would limit her collection to books that would fit in a "bookroom" in their house. Clever woman: because of the space limitation, she decided to focus her collection on teeny tiny books. She ended up with over three thousand of them, all less than three inches high. Now the collection is in the hands of the University of Iowa, where it is cherished and enjoyed.

Back in 2001, I had the opportunity to sit next to the lovely Leo and Diane Dillon at a conference lunch. I asked them what direction children's illustration would be headed next. They (naturally) had two answers: first, they said that they thought graphic novels would be huge (check), but that they personally were very interested in minature books and printmaking.

The Smith exhibit highlights why two world-class illustrators would find this so. The collection (which includes a fine portion of children's books and abecedarians, as well as other kinds of books) includes a wealth of different kinds of printmaking and bookbinding. The challenge of making a tiny book seems to beckon bookmakers and book artists into using the most exotic papers, handmade calligraphy, and detailed embossing possible. (Be sure to check out the image below of the spectacular 3"x2 1/4" pop-up book about the Great Fire of London.) Not all of the books are necessarily "antiques" -- there are miniatures that date up through the 1980s, showing how this art form has appealed to bookmakers through the ages. In fact, you can't help looking at a few of them without developing the itch to make a few tiny books yourself.

As for the online exhibit itself, it's extensive and informative but a tad disorganized; the only way to view the books is to flip through the exhibit pages like you would a catalog. Unlike a catalog, there is no linked table of contents or index, which makes it difficult to find particular books. The exhibit is best enjoyed, therefore, if you have some time to kill and don't mind loading a lot of images that you might not care to see.

Interested in creating your own collection of tiny tomes at home? Besides making your own, I'd highly recommend starting out by purchasing Maurice Sendak's Nutshell Library, or Trina Schart Hyman's A Little Alphabet. Oh -- and the miniature version of Margaret Wise Brown's Little Fur Family is especially amusing, as the book itself is bound with plush fabric (my copy has spent many hours being cuddled by small children).

It's difficult to find tiny books at libraries, or even big-chain bookstores, so I'd recommend hunting for them at independent bookstores or independent online retailers (make note of the book's dimensions before purchasing). Bring along a tiny magnifying glass, and happy hunting!

2007-03-14T14:01:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: The Space Child's Mother Goose

by Frederick Winsor, illus. Marian Parry
Simon & Schuster, 1956
Reissued 2001 by Purple House Press

Hey, did anybody notice that today is Pi Day? You know -- March 14 -- 3.14. A perfect day to celebrate all things clever and mathematical. Of course, it also makes an excellent reason to go out and eat some pie. Here's a treat to celebrate this rather irrational day:

Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When. S
he doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to Postulate How.

In the 1950s, architecht Frederick Winsor frequently contributed light verse to the Atlantic Monthly about science, math, and philosophy. In 1956, these and a few more were compiled to make The Space Child's Mother Goose. In an inspired move, the illustrator Marian Parry was asked to contribute to the book what she calls her "own peculiar drawings." Together, they created a world of whimsy just perfect for anyone with a love of word games, questions, and puzzles. Winsor has been described as kind of a distant cousin from the White Knight in Alice in Wonderland, and it shows. Almost all of the verses in this collection are parodies of familiar nursery rhymes, like this one:

Flappity, Floppity, Flip!
The Mouse on the Mobius Strip.
The Strip revolved, The Mouse dissolved,
In a chronodimensional skip.

Or this one:

Spin along in spatial night,
Artificial Satellite;
Monitor, with blip and beep,
The Universe -- and Baby's sleep.

Other verse sounds familiar, although it's all pure Winsor:

There was an old man in a Time Machine
Who borrowed a Tuesday all painted in green.
His pockets with rockets he used to jam
And he said, "I have thunk, so I cannot am!"

As you can see from this example, not all of the verses make particular sense, but sparkle instead with lovely rhythms and clever twists of language. Longer poems are included too, such as the science satire "The Theory That Jack Built" ("This is the Flaw/Based on the Mummery/Hiding the Flaw/The lay in th Theory Jack Built") and "A Space Child Would Exploring Go" ("With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach/Heigh Ho! says Anthony Rowley"). Oh, and did I mention that the "Probable-Possible" verse at the beginning of this review is presented in several different languages throughout the book? It's there in French, Greek, Chinese, and even one using Egyptian hieroglyphics. Egads.

(The Greek translation includes the line "She lays eggs in concept, being a sophist-bird.")

Feeling dazzled? Winsor includes footnotes to many of his verses, but even these exist as bits of doggerel -- to define "cortex" and "vortex," he gives us this: "[t]he cortex wraps around a core/Alas! there isn't any vore." For readers wanting some down-to-earth information, there is also an appendix called "Answers."

There are many verses about time travel in this book, and I can't help but wonder if that is part of the reason why this book has aged so well, despite the fact that it is fifty-plus years old. Yes, there are a few references to outdated technology (such as a "Hi-Fi") and one poem, "The Hydrogen Dog and the Cobalt Cat," is a vintage Cold War-era bit about nuclear paranoia. (It's also the most heavyhanded poem in the book.) But most of them, since they deal with timeless concepts, are still as fresh and fun today as they were fifty years ago.

Let's not forget the illustrations! Parry decorates each and every page of this book -- including the gorgeous indigo endpapers, and they are just as amusing as the poems they accompany. She uses delicate lines to create mawkish, birdlike people in old-fashioned dress.
Sheep float in parallel lines into another dimension, elaborate, button-lovely machines rattle and bang while mischiveous, wide-eyed children look on. A few pictures include figures created entirely out of curlicues. It's rare that you see an author and illustrator so happily matched.

The big question is, of course, who is this book for? Initially, I thought that nursery-aged children might be a bit young for these rhymes, but really, the nonsense here makes as much sense as the nonsense in any other Mother Goose anthology. Older children, especially middle-schoolers and up -- will certainly get a kick out of some of these, perhaps even more when introduced by a teacher or other adult friend.

Think twice about passing up this book -- it's true that these verses may not be for everybody, but as the culture of childhood is becoming more and more math-phobic (especially among girls), it's good to pass along something that makes thinking seem merry.

2007-03-13T16:21:00.000-04:00

Fat Lit Rides Again

A Utah-based fantasy author named Brandon Sanderson recently scored some dough in the kidlit market:

Sanderson recently received a six-figure advance from Scholastic, the "Harry Potter"-series publisher, for a children's fantasy series about a boy named Alcatraz who does battle with a cult of evil librarians.

Yeah, you read it correctly. Evil librarians. I don't know if this is hurting or helping the general image problem we librarians face. But the book's coming out in early October, and if it's any good, it might mean that I might have my Halloween costume problems solved right now.

Read the whole story here. And thanks to Justin for the link.

2007-03-13T16:06:00.000-04:00

Most Beautified Ophelia

In my last post, I waxed enthusiastic about the gorgeous cover of Lisa Fielder's new novel, Romeo's Ex. Didn't see it? Scroll down and get a gander o' that lil' beauty. Just after writing that post, I get on Amazon.com, and do you know what? Fiedler's other book, Dating Hamlet, has gotten a face-lift in paperback form, so the two books match.

Here' s before:
Here's after:

See? I mean, there isn't anything particularly awful about the first cover. It's cute and stylized and included lots of details from the novel. But in terms of catching a wandering eye hovering over the shelves of a bookstore or library? Not so great. Plus, look at the picture of Hamlet up there. He's a total square. You'd never expect that guy to say something enigmatic, melancholy, or romantic. And Ophelia looks like she's experiencing some serous neck cramps.

The second cover, on the other hand, does a perfect job at setting the tone of this frequently comic, dishy novel (although it looks like that dress is about to fall right off of the shoulders there). I'm also awarding bonus points for the phrase "Ophelia Spilleth the Beans!"

Well played, Henry Holt. Well played.

2007-03-10T17:36:00.000-05:00

New Book Roundup

I used to do these new book roundups quite a lot back when I first began this blog, but then I went through a busy period, and they fell by the wayside (geez, they take forever to do!) I've missed writing them, even though I always felt a little redundant, when there are SO many other bloggers reviewing new children's books. But eh -- it's good to partake of the ongoing dialogue about new books.

And keep in mind that when I say "new," I mean "published in the last calendar year." That's cutting-edge enough for me.

The Last Dragon by Silvana De Mari

The Plot: Yorsh is an orphaned elf, blessed with incredible magical powers, but finds he is the last of his kind on earth. Upon the discovery of an ancient prophecy, he goes on a quest to find the last of all dragons, and thus starts a chain of events that lead both him, the repressed people of his kingdom, and a clairvoyant girl named Robi, to freedom.

Ooooooh, I was in the middle of this book when it was awarded a Batcheleder Honor, and can I say that I did a little dance about it? There was an overwhelmingly high number of fantasy books published in 2006, and because this came out in autumn, I think a lot of people missed it.

Go out now, people. This is the one you're going to want to pass on to your grandkids. Whenever I talk about it, I start to sound like the grandpa from The Princess Bride: "It's got everything! Sword fighting, dragons, magic powers, an evil overlord, daring escapes, true love . . ." In other words, most of what we see in De Mari's world is pretty standard fare for most fantasy novels, but is rendered with highly imaginative imagery, witty turns of phrase, and a certain genuineness to the characters that it transcends cliché. De Mari writes with an emotional sincerity that touches something basic and true in the heart, which is a hallmark, I think, of the greatest stories.

Plus, it don't hurt that the hero grows up to be a hottie ("as handsome as the sun," says De Mari). I'm just sayin' is all.

Alabama Moon by Watt Key

The Plot: Ten-year-old Moon is raised as a forest hermit, 19th-century frontier style by his Vietnam vet, government-hating father. When his Pap dies, his last wish is for Moon to continue their lifestyle in Alaska, but instead the state puts Moon in a boys' home. Moon makes friends at the home, escapes to the forest with them, and begins exciting nature survival/run from the law adventure. Meanwhile, Moon begins to question his father's beliefs, and creates new definitions of personal responsibility, friendship, and what it means to be part of a society.

So, if you were to take a truckload of Hatchet, sprinkle it with Holes, and crash-drive it into The Shawshank Redemption, this is probably the book you'd end up with. Watt Key has created a very rough portrait of the South in this story. This book is set WAY down deep in Dixie; I mean, this is a book wherein the local judge doesn't hesitate to lift his robes and take a whizz by the side of the road. However, this setting is tempered with Moon's gentle personality and Key's rich, fascinating descriptions of forest life and survival. (Moon makes mosquito repellent out of acorn oil! And an arrow out of squirrel bones! If he were on Gilligan's Island, he'd be the one to make the coconut transistor radio.) The plot is gripping and quick, and while I think the villain (a cop trying to catch the fugitives) is a bit of a mustache-twirler, it doesn't dampen the book's emotional impact.

I noticed this book on a few mock Newbery lists last year, but it didn't actually win an ALSC award, and do you know why I think that is? There's a long sequence in the middle of the book in which Moon and his friends use a machine gun to blow away empty beer bottles in the middle of a mudpit. There's a lot of boy-with-gun action in this book, and while I know that this is a reality for a lot of kids, there will be many adult readers who may have a problem with it (I personally thought it was a hoot, storywise).

Vive La Paris by Esmé Raji Codell

The Plot: Paris McCray, a fifth grader from inner-city Chicago, is sent to elderly Mrs. Rosen for piano lessons. The two of them form a quirky friendship, the benefits of which -- learning to see the world through rose-colored glasses -- trickle down to the other happenings in Paris' life, particularly her troubles with bullying classmate Tanaeja. When Paris learns that Mrs. Rosen is a survivor of the Holocaust, she momentarily loses her faith in humanity, viewing the world as a place where bullies always win. But with the help of friends and family, she slowly learns to be hopeful again, and learns how to truly care for others in the process.

There's a lot going on in this book -- in addition to the Holocaust and bullying, this book also touches on teen pregnancy, religious faith, racism, and much, much more. The book almost drowns in this mass of issues, but what keeps it afloat is Codell's spot-on ear for child voices, for the politics of classroom relationships, and for the ups and downs of life in a big family. Paris is spunky, smart, and fiercely loyal to her family; her fall from innocence is pretty painful to read, and just a wee bit heavy-handed, but leads to a satisfying conclusion. This book is described as a "companion" to Codell's previous novel, Sahara Special, but stands pretty firmly on its own.

My only request, Ms. Esmé: please, please give us a novel about Darrell, the renegade member of Paris' class! He rocks my world!

Romeo's Ex: Rosaline's Story by Lisa Fiedler

The Plot: It's Romeo and Juliet as told from the perspective of several of the minor characters, principally Rosaline, the girl who rejects Romeo before the play begins. In this story, Rosaline is an apprentice healer as well as Juliet's best cousin and friend; the intelligent girl finds Romeo's advances "nauseating," but finds new affection both in Benvolio (who rescues her during the fight that begins the play) and Mercutio (who takes credit for said rescue).

Okay, okay, I try to limit my book reviews to those for readers ages 0-14, and this is pushing that upper limit, but hey! Look at that pretty, pretty cover! Who can resist that gorgeousness?

There are quite a few novelizations of Shakespeare plays for young readers out there, but I've a special fondness for Fiedler's. Not only does she give the story a decidedly feminist spin, but she has an infectious love for Elizebethan language; the text sparkles with wordplay, double meanings, and quite a few bawdy puns ("To Honor!" Mercutio toasts. "Get on her, and stay on her!"). Dialogue taken directly from the play is given new levels of meaning with the fleshing out of all the minor characters -- what was Mercutio up to during the Capulets' party? Exactly how did Rosaline dump Romeo? -- and even though Fiedler takes liberties with the plot, her characters remain characteristially Shakespearean: they fall in love, rage with fury, and experience major changes of heart almost instantaneously; the plot is peppered with bumbling, dimwitted mechanicals and a rather humbug undertaker. Several chapters are narrated by Tybalt's ghost, allowing readers to see scenes inaccessible to the other characters. Sly references to other plays are also here; the seedy tavern in Verona is named The Untamed Shrew.

While the book does require some advance familiarity with the play, the fun and drama in this book is pretty addictive; the entire time I was reading it, I kept wanting to IM my friends with dishy gossip about the characters ("OMG, Rosaline is totally crushing on Mercutio!") Pick it up, and you'll be sucked in, too. You've been warned.

Oh, and speaking of Taming of the Shrew: I'm betting it's the pick for Fiedler's next Shakespeare spin. Ooooh, I hope I'm right!

2007-03-09T09:41:00.000-05:00

Poetry Friday: Avast, Ye Poetry Snobs!

So in the Feb. 19-26th issue of The New Yorker, Dana Goodyear gave us a portrait of the happenings over at the Poetry Foundation since Ruth Lilly gave them lots and lots of money. The portrait was, in a word, unflattering. Apparently, the Poetry Foundation has made significant efforts to make poetry commercially viable -- mainly by encouraging poetry that is more accessible to mainstream readers -- and you can just feel Goodyear's disdain for it, particularly in her description of the new Children's Poet Laureate prize, created by the Foundation:

In September, the foundation announced the latest of a group of prizes intended, Barr says, "to throw a spotlight of recognition on under-illuminated corners of the poetry world," and named Jack Prelutsky America's first Children's Poet Laureate. Prelutsky, who has published more than forty books of children's poems, is, you might say, the ultimate example of a poet who keeps his audience in mind. "I Have a Pet Tomato," from "It's Raining Pigs and Noodles," reads:
     I have a pet tomato,
 it doesn't have a stem.
 My friends have pet asparagus--
 why can't I be like them?
The Children's Laureate was Penny Barr's idea. "I'm not a poet," she told me. "I'm not versed in poetry, but I am versed in bringing up children. It's a natural for me. The adult poets have never heard of Jack Prelutsky. The big secret is that these people are making a lot of money!"

Wow, I had no idea that Jack Prelutzky was rakin' in the dough.

When Prelutsky was first announced as the first winner of this prize, there was a general feeling of "Really? Really really?" in the kidlit world. I don't know what bothers me more, the fact that the creator of the prize openly admits that she doesn't know anything about children's poetry, or the obvious fact that Dana Goodyear doesn't, either. She uses an out-of-context snippet of Prelutsky's poetry to snipe at the mission of the Poetry Foundation, and you gotta admit, that's kinda low.

I'm gonna bet that a lot of poets my age or a little older may not recognize Jack Prelutsky's name, but they'd remember with a wistful sigh The Random House Book of Poetry for Children. Or It's Valentine's Day. Or the scads of other Prelutsky works that, because child readers often have trouble remembering authors' names into adulthood, continue to be underappreciated.

What Goodyear obviously forgets is that without poets like Prelutsky, Douglas Florian, or Naomi Shihab Nye, a lot of kids would miss out on poetry -- most kids I know love the stuff! And without kid poetry enthusiasts, you're unlikely to have very many adult poetry enthusists. There's nothing wrong with rewarding the hard work and effort that goes into the task of bringing kids to poetry, regardless of its economic power.

2007-03-08T16:04:00.000-05:00

Our Life in Books: Ding Dong, the Bells are Gonna Chime

"Our Life in Books" is a feature I've been meaning to add to this blog for a while -- descriptions of my children's reactions to the books they read -- how they are influenced by them. Some of these may involve Grand Gestures of Cuteness. This is coming from my four-year-old son Jeffrey, and my two-year-old daughter Eleanor.

Yeah, scenes from my home life. This, actually, is what a lot of people wanted when I was being requested to begin a blog. But I wanted to write about the kidlitosphere.

So: the compromise. I'll write about my family only if it has some direct link to children's literature. Like the time I read The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, and I later caught Jeffrey stuffing apples and lettuces from the fridge in a real, actual red handkerchief. Or the time I caught Eleanor kissing a bottle of salad dressing . . . um, but that story is for another post.

For example, take Jeffrey. He's really interested in weddings. A lot of kids his age spend time thinking about family relationships, especially marriage, so this doesn't surprise me. What's interesting is the level of obsession. He's always talking about marrying his best friend Liesl and having four children -- two girls, two boys. "We are falling in loooove," he says.

Yesterday he stumbled out of bed with the stomach flu, stood at the top of the stairs, and announced, "TODAY IS MY WEDDING DAY!" And when it came time to go to bed that evening, he looked at me sadly and said, "Mom, I forgot to marry somebody today." I patted him on the arm and told him that there are always more fish in the sea, and he can always get married another day.

Aww.

But what has been really interesting is watching Jeffrey make preparations for his upcoming "wedding." When I picked him up from preschool today, he was busy snipping construction paper into bits, "for the wedding." He frequently marches about in his pirate costume and a top hat "for the wedding."

This afternoon, he was spending time playing with my childhood collection of twenty-something Beatrix Potter books (Benjamin Bunny among them), and discovered the dark green hardbacks underneath the white books' dustjackets. Delighted, he then removed all of the books' dustjackets and spent time making elaborate stacks of them around the living room.

When I began to clean up the mess later, he got upset. "Those are decorations for my wedding!" he exclaimed, instantly tearful at the dismantling of his affair.

"But you can have other decorations," I explain. "Wouldn't you like some pretty flowers or music for your wedding?"

"No," he replies, folding his skinny arms and jutting his chin in the air. "Books are the most beautiful decoration."

Couldn't agree more.

2007-03-08T15:22:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Kids and Technology . . .

Over at the always lovely blog Educating Alice, Monica Edinger (as part of her ongoing series of articles about teaching with blogs) has posted quite a few podcasts of her students' Literary Salons -- times when kids eat cookies and read aloud from their favorite books. Take a minute to enjoy fourth-graders' presentations of The Lightning Thief, Magyk, Rules, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. These aren't booktalks (like on Reading Rainbow) -- just kids indulging in their favorite stories. Good stuff.

2007-03-08T14:58:00.000-05:00

Teen Tech Week Part II

The week is almost over, but there's still time to celebrate all things adolescent and electronic. Have you hugged a texting teen today? Bowed down before a Nintendo Wii? Done a dance in your library's computer lab whilst strewing flowers in a display of almost-spring ecstasy?

No?

Then take a gander at a few more of my favorite little tidbits about teenagers and technology:

First up, take a look at BrainCake.org. It's a website created by the Girls, Math & Science Partnership (in conjunction with the Carnegie Science Center here in Pittsburgh), with the aim of giving girls an online world where its acceptable to enjoy genomes, cosines, and the like. Not only is BrainCake absolutely beautiful and very fun, but it also has information about the Click! program:

It is the first program of its type – part Charlie’s Angels, part Real World. Click! uses specialized tablet computer interfaces, location-aware mobile devices, and digital documentation to engage girls in a six-day camp. After five days of training, Click! girls have an all-day Saturday adventure at Carnegie Science Center that, if successful, will earn them a new status level in the Click! agency.

They run around the city and solve mysteries and stuff! Using cool techie gadgets!! It's like living out all of your Kiki Strike fantasies!!! Why can't I be a 13-year-old girl again? (Geez, something I thought I'd NEVER say.)

Anything that wants to bring more teenage girls to science gets a raised glass from me. Good work, guys.

If that doesn't satisfy your Teen Tech cravings, then take a gander at John Green's vlog posting on the video game Nerd Fighters. Quoth he:

“Using the English Nerd when you’re playing “Nerd Fighters” is kind of like picking Toad when you’re playing Mario Kart.”

Yeah, I'd say that's a pretty apt description. There's no WAY I could have taken down a Band Nerd when I was in high school. They're far too muscular, carrying around those instruments and stuff. And don't even get me started on their cunning ability to walk and make music at the same time. Yikes.

Also, take a look at the Brief History of Time Travel. One of my favorite essays from years past. Um, it has nothing to do with teenagers. But I'm sure teenagers would like it.

2007-03-05T15:31:00.000-05:00

Holy Samoleons, It's Teen Tech Week!

This year the Young Adult Library Services Association decided to band together for the first-ever Teen Tech Week, lasting March 4 - 10, a "celebration aimed at getting teens to use their libraries for the different technologies that are offered there, such as DVDs, databases, audiobooks, electronic games and more." Very groovy. If you don't mind me bragging, I think my library's YA department has the inside track on this idea with its collection of circulating X-Box games.

I thought it wouldn't hurt to contribute to this week-long technorama. After all, I earned some serious tech cred back in the days of my youth:

Yeah, that was pretty much me, circa 1991. If you haven't seen the full exploits of Teen Girl Squad, you can find them here; although the humor doesn't quite work for everybody, it amuses me immensely.

Anyway. Teen Tech Week. For starters, I thought it would be absolutely necessary to present to you:

The Girls' Guide to Geek Guys

and its companion piece,

The Guys' Guide to Geek Girls

Interestingly, both of these pieces were written by women -- the first for the now-defunct Bunnyhop magazine, and the second by a the good lady who heads up an organization for women in computer science. Oh, and it contains the immortal line, "the 'spandex in space' phenomenon is EVIL . . . unless it happens to be Picard in his riding pants. Mulder in his speedo, while not technically in space, is quite acceptable also.". Read and learn, my people. Read and learn.

Oh, and a new Forgotten Book will be up tonight. Sorry about the delay!

2007-02-25T19:53:00.000-05:00

By Request, I'm Chiming In

So, I've had many people request my opinion on the whole deal with the latest Newbery Medalist, The Higher Power of Lucky and its use of the word "scrotum" in the first chapter.

First, just let me say that the reason I haven't contributed anything about this topic previously is because I felt that so many other people were already writing things about it. You can read a summary of the affair here, and some other clever thoughts here and here. I just didn't think that people wanted more to read about dogs' bollocks. But apparently, I was wrong, and who am I to second-guess my readership? Plus, whenever I am ever specifically requested to blab about a topic, I'm usually happy to oblige. (And oblige and oblige.)

So: I think that anyone who has actually read the entire book would think that this knee-jerk censorship is rather silly. Librarians who have stated that they have seriously considered the book and still wouldn't purchase it under the softy excuse that "it just wouldn't be appropriate for our patrons" are wimps.

Come on, people! It's about a dog getting bit by a snake in the crotch! Do you think that your library patrons have never watched America's Funniest Home Videos? Sheesh!

But if you want to censor the book, fine. I guess I can't come over to your library and stop you. However, I can give you a slam-bangin' good plan for doing the said censoring of said book.

1. Find as many copies of The Higher Power of Lucky as you can.

2. Turn to the pages that contain the word "scrotum."

3. Black out the word and write the phrase "dirty pillows" above it.

As we all know from the book and movie Carrie, substituting all references to human and animal anatomy with non-descript guilt-inducing catchphrases will result in the spontaneous development of telekenesis.

That's right -- an entire generation of American children will grow up with the ability to move objects with their mind and be tormented ruthlessly by their classmates in high school, and then go on to wreak bloody havoc at their senior proms. No, really!

So, as a warning: don't chaperone the dances for the Class of 2015. Just to be on the safe side.

2007-02-25T19:13:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: Chimney Sweeps Yesterday And Today

by James Cross Giblin, illus. Margot Tomes
Harper & Row, 1982
TRAGICALLY, TRAGICALLY OUT OF PRINT

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen: my very first non-fiction book review for the Forgotten Bookshelf!

(Hurrah!)

I sometimes think that non-fiction is the neglected sibling of the big kidlit family. I know of few people who have fond childhood memories of curling up with a non-fiction title and a flashlight after lights-out. And it's difficult for non-fiction titles to have staying power on library shelves because, with our ever-changing world, titles frequently become outdated and discarded. Usually only biographies, memoirs, and and the odd book about math have the chops to be For the Ages. And then there's the little gem about an overlooked, intriguing topic that is not only timeless but makes for a suberb read-aloud.

Chimney Sweeps, Yesterday and Today, is one of those books. Here's why: thanks to Mary Poppins, every kid (and most of the adults) I know absolutely loooooves chimney sweeps. James Cross Giblin manages to put together a set of facts and portraits about chimney sweep life that manages to be compelling, entertaining, and full of pathos as well. His writing is exceedingly well-paced and accessible, making this a great book for the middle grades (and perhaps a read-aloud for kids as young as second grade).

Now, here's the lowdown on the goodies that make this book so fabulous.

1. You find out why good luck will be yours when a sweep shakes hands with you, or why you can blow 'em a kiss, and that's lucky too.

2. The book features photographs of modern-day sweeps, who apparently still enjoy wearing top hats and tails as they go about their business. (Chapter 8 features a photo of a sweep in the act of jauntily leaping from a rooftop. Egads.)

3. Chapter 5 is devoted to the recreation of a day in the life of a 19th-century boy chimney sweep. This chapter reaches Dickens-levels of teearjerker-ness, yet manages to be fascinating. This is the one for teachers to pull out during Social Studies -- absolutely fabulous writing.

And the number-one reason why you should read this book . . .

From Chapter 7:

Farmers in England and Europe often used live geese as chimney sweeps, and many American colonists did also. A settler would climb up onto the roof of his one-story cabin or house and drop a large goose with a rope tied loosely around its feet down the flue. He raised and lowered the goose several times, and trusted that its flapping wings would remove most of the soot from the chimney. Then he gave the dirty, frightened bird a bath.

Whoa. I know that the PETA people will hate me for saying this, but hands-down, that is the BEST THING I've read in a children's book in a LONG, LONG TIME.

Go, people. Find this book at your library or used bookshop. Flip to Chapter 7 and read this paragraph to everybody and anybody you can find, and relish in the ensuing hilarity.

Goose in the chimney. Ah, it makes me happy.

Um . . . And Yet Another Video

2007-02-23T20:23:00.001-05:00

Hello, dear bleaders -- I've dug up yet another little morsel for you on You Tube. This is an animated version of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll. Er . . .I would say "animated" using only the strictest definition of the word. This looks like it was put together with PowerPoint, but there's something oddly charming about it. Probably one of the few times you'll see the worlds of Alice and Elvis connect. Enjoy!

2007-02-19T16:50:00.001-05:00

Because Romantic Math Allegories Are Good Any Time of Year

So . . . I wanted to post some lovely little romantic thingie here on Valentine's Day, but I couldn't find anything worthy . . until now. Here it is: the Oscar-winning animated short, "The Dot and the Line," based on the book by Norton Juster (yes, of "Phantom Tollbooth" fame -- hey, I even have the proper kidlit reference with this thing) and directed by Chuck Jones.

I don't think a cartoon can get a better pedigree than that. You'll need to turn on your computer's speakers to understand what's going on -- or just find the book, and read along. Enjoy!

2007-02-17T16:50:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: The Saturdays

by Elizabeth Enright

Henry Holt, 1941, reiss. 2002 $16.95

This is the kind of sweet, old-fashioned family novel that makes you insanely jealous of the characters. Oh, how I want to be them!

The Melendy family has four children – Mona, Rush, Randy, and Oliver – and in my opinion they have everything that’s good in life. They have a boisterous family with four creative, sophisticated children (aspiring actress Mona quotes Shakespeare, mischievious Rush plays piano, Randy paints, and Oliver . . . um, is six). They make their home in 1940s Manhattan, living in a rambling brownstone with a special kids-only clubhouse on the fourth floor. They have a ridiculously faithful housekeeper/nanny. Best of all, they have the cleverness and friendship necessary to create the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club.

What’s that, you say? One rainy afternoon in the clubhouse, the Melendy kids decide that once a week they will pool together their allowance and take turns allowing one of them to have an adventure all on their own in the city. The Saturdays follows each of them as they take their excursions all over the city – going to art museums, the circus, or to a salon for a manicure.

Why couldn’t my childhood have been like that?

Each outing leads to a surprising conclusion, whether that be discovering a new friend, adopting a lost dog, or simply feeling a little queasy at the end of a busy day.

There’s two things to get excited about with this book: first of all the Melendy kids are beautifully realized, down-to-earth kids. Their characters and conversations are sprinkled with just the right amount of bickering and cooperation to make the family seem ideal without being idealistic. It’s like Little Women with a few boys thrown in to the mix.

The second thing to enjoy here is the setting – 1940s New York – which was purely contemporary at the time of the book’s publication, but which has mellowed and aged into nostalgic perfection for today’s readers. Ah, a time when 50 cents was a generous allowance! When you could rely on friendly traffic cops to direct children through the city! When a family could develop a deep friendship with the furnace man! These are details that might go over some kids’ heads, or create a conversation about the Good Old Days for others.

Together, these elements create a marvelous introduction to the world of Elizabeth Enright; fans of the Cheaper By the Dozen books will feel right at home here. And then might stay a bit longer – there are three Melendy sequels.

Henry Holt reissued this book in 2002, with an odd new book jacket – it makes Mona and Rush look like they are in their mid-twenties – but the original ink drawings are preserved inside. . It’s the kind of book that would make great reading on a Saturday afternoon of your own.

2007-02-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

The Cybils Have Landed!

Yes, indeed. For those of you who have been reading this blog (or any other kidlit blog, for that matter), the first annual Cybils -- youth literature awards betstowed by the blogging community -- were announced yesterday afternoon. I was lucky enough to be on the judging committee for the Middle Grade Fiction category, and enjoyed it immensely.

I'll talk more about the Amusing Judging Experience tomorrow. For now, let's bring on the winners (or, as I term them, the "Cyblings").

Winner of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Category:
Bartimaeus Trilogy #03: Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud

I've only read the first in this trilogy, and it was under Extremely Awful Reading Conditions -- in a dimly lit car, with a migraine -- and my experience was therefore sullied (i.e. I really hate remembering this book). But here's the lowdown: Stroud creates a world in which magic is used the way we might expect in reality: full of snobs, beaurocrats, and back-stabbing politics. Add to this mix a plucky-yet-sallow young wizard Nathaniel and the hard-rockin' all-powerful trickster djinn Bartimaeus, and you have a rip-roarin' good story. Start with the Amulet of Samarkand and strap yourself in for a good ride.

Winner of the Fiction Picture Book Category:
Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt

Aw, shucks -- I can't help but feel a twinge of disappointment that this book was the winner, simply because my favorite picture book of 2006 -- Emily's Balloon -- was one of the other finalists for the prize. Well, win some, loose some. Scaredy Squirrel is simply hilarious; this tale of a paranoid critter on an unexpected path to self-discovery is guaranteed to be a staple of storytimes everywhere. Probably the only picture book in existence that uses the phrase "antibacterial soap" to good effect.

Winner of the 12-and-Under Graphic Novels Category:
Amelia Rules! Vol 3: Superheroes by Jim Gownley

Hum. I haven't seen this book anywhere, and chances are you'll have a hard time finding it as well. But the everyday neighborhood antics of Amelia and her friends look simply charming. If you haven't stumbled upon the world of graphic novels for kids, you're missing out.

Winner of the 13-and-Up Graphic Novels Category:
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

This also won the Printz Award -- the ALA's prize for young adult fiction -- so it comes as no suprise that it showed up here. This tale combines Chinese folklore with contemporary race and identity issues in a story that is simply stunning. And would you believe it started as a web comic? Ladies and gentlemen, we've come full circle.

Winner of the Middle Grade Fiction Category:
A Drowned Maiden's Hair by Laura Amy Schlitz

Yay! The one I helped win! I wrote the blurb about this book that currently resides on the Cybils website, so it's kinda hard to write something new. Hey, I know! Go here and read my original spiel; that way I can preserve my brain power for Higher Things like . . . er. . . quoting The Simpsons ad infinitum. You know. Stuff.

Winner of the Non-Fiction Category:
Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Russell Freeman

Freedman won the Newbery Medal some years ago for his stellar Lincoln: a Photobiography, so you can pretty much know what to expect here. Stellar, clear and concise writing plus scads of interesting photographs. Anything that breathes new life into the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott will be welcomed by teachers and schoolchildren everywhere.

Winner of the Non-Fiction Picture Book Category:
An Egg is Quiet by by Dianna Aston; illustrated by Sylvia Long

Quite frankly, one of the most beautiful non-fiction books out there. This collection of facts and stories about all kinds of eggs is paired with delicately colored watercolors and calligraphy -- it looks like pages dropped from a 19th-century naturalist's sketchbook. Perfect for slowly perusing while nestled in some woodsy thicket.

Winner of the Poetry Category:
Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beth Krommes

This is the sequel to last year's Caldecott Honor book, Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems, which was illustrated by Beckie Prange. Both books feature mind-bogglingly gorgeous hand-colored woocut illustrations and whimsical poems that function as nature riddles. Pair this lil' beauty with An Egg is Quiet and you have a perfect set of books for camping, hiking, and backyard safaris.

Winner of the Young Adult Fiction Category:
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

A whirling, sexy he said/she said It Happened One Night with about a million music references. It seriously rocked my world when I read it last summer. Here's the thing: I really, really wish it had been written about twenty years ago, beacause this would have made the purr-fect pre-sellout John Hughes movie. You know: prep-rock Molly Ringwald as Norah and a punked-up John Cusack for Nick. Shut up, don't you even TRY to tell me that wouldn't be awesome.

2007-02-14T21:01:00.000-05:00

Quote of the Day: Dirt

My four-year-old son, Jeffrey, has never sucked his thumb, or used a pacifier, or nibbled on the same corner of a favorite blanket. It is kind of a parenting freebee that I don’t have to wean him off of non-nutritive sucking needs, but the upshot of this is that Jeffrey puts every single other thing in the world in his mouth.

I thought it would stop when he turned three, but no: on an almost daily basis I find myself fishing buttons, chess pieces, pencils, fuzzy Mystery Candy, Fisher Price Little People, and – shudder – his sister’s shoes out of his mouth. Nothing is sacred.

This of course means that any amount of snowfall our fair city immediately turns into the Epic War of Mom vs. Jeffrey’s Snow-Laden Mouth.

Oooorgh, he’s always stuffing it in there, sometimes without really realizing that he’s doing it. And we’ve just been graced with a whopper of a snowstorm: four inches of snow followed by a thick layer of freezing rain, then topped off with four more inches of snow. It’s the tiramisu of blizzards – how can any preschooler resist digging in, much less my ridiculously orally-fixated kid?

The only strategy that has managed to penetrate his consciousness so far has been the constant warning that snow is filled with dirt.

“Jeffrey, that snow is filled with germs and dirt,” I say, to which he responds in amazement:

“What? Dirt is bad?”

And so I am frequently quizzed on the Impenetrable Mysteries of the Nature of Dirt. It’s as if he’s checking up so often just to make sure that there won’t be some wonderful chance in the future in which dirt will suddenly be okay to eat.

“Mom? Does dirt still make you sick if you eat it?”

“It sure does, honey. Very sick.” [internal monologue: Hurrah! It’s finally sinking in!!!]

“Sick? And then it will turn your body inside out and you’ll turn into an alien?”

“ . . . [pause] . . . I don’t know about that. Who told you that dirt will do that to you?”

“Pfft! Why, you did, Mommy! You’re so silly!”

Huh. So is this what I get for reading Mooncake aloud so often?

2007-02-10T20:27:00.000-05:00

Great Minds Think Alike

About a week ago, MotherReader penned a delightful post about the formation of a new children's literature organization: Bloggers Against Celebrity Authors. Oh, happy day -- if there's ever any kind of sign-up sheet, I totally want my big John Hancock on it. The Madonnas of the world really, really need to be fenced in. Or picketed, whatever.

But the acronym "BACA" struck a chord that jingled and jangled through my mind for hours.

BACA. BACA. Where had I heard that before? Then I remembered:

Oh yeah, baby. Quite frankly, I think the two organizations could easily be combined, depending on whether or not you consider reading Judge Judy's Win or Lose By How You Choose! to a child constitutes child abuse. (I do.) Plus, this move could give the kidlit world some seriously needed street cred.

If the kitlitosphere were to form a biker gang, what would the name be?

Don't nobody mess with Hell's Bunnies.

2007-02-09T20:50:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Bookshelf Review: Miss Jaster's Garden

Miss Jaster's Garden
by N. M. Bodecker
Golden Books, 1972 (reiss. 2001)

As I write this it is a whopping nine degrees outside, and I'm wearing about four layers of clothing while sitting inside my drafty old house. Two nights ago a case of Dr. Pepper froze and exploded in the trunk of my car, leaving a giant pile of what appeared to be brown dirty snow sitting on top of a collection of oddly punched-out cans.

Time for some spring? You betcha. And Miss Jaster has just what we need to get us through these winter doldrums.

Residing in Villa Pax, a charming English seaside home, Miss Jaster loves nothing more than to tend her spacious, flower-filled garden. She tends and cares for all of the garden's inhabitants, especially Hedgie, the hedgehog who lives quietly in a corner of the grounds and enjoys both saucers of milk and Strauss waltzes from his landlady.

Hedgie is so content with his life, that he does not even bother to wake when Miss Jaster is sprinkling seeds over the patch of ground where he is napping, nor when she combs a rake over him; "he rather enjoyed having his back scratched." Nobody is more pleased than Hedgie when flowers sprout and grow among his quills ("I believe I shall be quite handsome,") but when Hedgie wishes to skip and stroll far from home in a burst of springtime ecstacy, Miss Jaster is startled by the "runaway flower bed" and summons the constable to catch the "thief."

All a simple misunderstanding, of course, and readers will know from the start that this story will have a pleasant ending, but like any outing in the springtime, the journey is just as important as the arrival.

N. M. Bodecker is best known in the U. S. for his illustrations for Edward Eager's Half Magic books -- elegantly lined drawings of loose-limbed children with comically expressive faces. Miss Jaster's Garden was his first original story, and the illustrations are much more austere than in his other works. Miss Jaster is slim and wiry, with impossibly tiny feet, and her home is rendered with a wealth of fine-lined architectural detail -- each groove on every urn in the garden is given its due. The figures look almost motionless, giving the effect of statues carefully placed on a lush lawn, and in that sense the watercolors reminded me very much of Edward Gorey, only without the macabre sensibility. Think of the style as something like Gorey-Meets-Monet. One of the more appealing parts of the book is how the entire garden is lovingly rendered in the form of a colorful "horticultural survey" map on the endpapers, just begging to be explored by fingertip again and again.

If anything, this is a book to be savored -- the length and whimsical details of the text make it an excellent book to be read in one or more sessions. At the end, you'll be tempted to spend time as Miss Jaster and Hedgie do -- spending long afternoons outdoors, accompanied by a tray of tea and "nothing but peace and sunshine and a touch of Sweet William."

2007-01-30T20:38:00.000-05:00

The Trials of Being a Media Snob

A few Saturdays ago the local movie theater near me had a special viewing of the newest straight-to-DVD Disney flick, Cinderella III: A Twist in Time.

That's right, number three. What, you missed the second one?

The show was free, was rated G, and I needed something to do on a Saturday morning while my husband, a medical student, was busy at the hospital. So I packed up the troops (21-month-old girl, 4-year-old boy) and headed down to Lowes'.

What to think? The whole shebang was sponsored by Radio Disney, kids were wearing costumes, everyone got free balloons at the end. Pretty wholesome, tame stuff. And yet I felt the Heavy Hand of Guilt hovering over my head the entire time.

To wit:

1. I felt guilt because I was taking my kids to what amounted to a giant advertisement for a DVD, Mr. Walter Disney's Version of the World, and cheesy radio DJs. Shudder.

2. I felt guilt because I was exposing my daugther to Prissy Princesses. And my inner feminist said that this was a Very Bad Thing.

3. I felt guilt because I was the only one who noticed that the animated Prince had been given very big eyelashes in the close-up shots, giving him an eerie resemblance to Speed Racer. You know, this guy:

Look at those lashes! They're the size of meadowlarks!

I was a bad, bad mom who couldn't stop snickering the whole while.

Should I have felt this way? Or should I just sit back and relax? As my advisor told me back in library school, anybody who wants to work with kids and does nothing but listen to NPR and watch PBS is going to have a hard time of it.

Someday I'll be able to teach my kids all about Irony and Pop Culture Omnipresence, they'll be snickering in the back row with me. Until then, I suppose . . .

2007-01-30T19:32:00.000-05:00

If Jenna Bush Wrote a Young Adult Novel . . .

This is what it might be like. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Thanks to bookshelves of doom for the link.

2007-01-26T16:54:00.000-05:00

Children's Literature In Your Pants

A few days ago, bookshelves of doom pointed me to John Green's video blog, which he shares with his brother and to which I have since become heavily addicted. A few days ago John featured a long bit about the "In Your Pants" literature game. Basically, you find book titles that go very well with the phrase "in your pants" tacked on to the end. John went around his house and found a bunch of books that play this game well, and presented them to the camera. (The best part is watching him desperately try to keep a straight face while doing this.)

Watching this, of course, made me immediately run to my own bookshelves to find titles that could play. (My husband's response as I eagerly held them over my head was to sigh heavily and mutter something about "immaturity." Okay, fine.)

Of course, 99% of my books are for kids, and the problem was that too many of them worked. Take these, for example:

The Tale of Two Bad Mice In Your Pants
(very, very bad mice)

What Katy Did In Your Pants
(the thrilling tell-all confessional!)

Millions of Cats In Your Pants
(ouch)

Nobody Asked Me If I Wanted A Baby Sister In My Pants
(it's only common courtesy to ask)

And Finally . . .

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day In Your Pants

So, boys and girls . . . can you think of any other good ones?

2007-01-23T14:26:00.000-05:00

Go, Greased Lightning!

That's right -- your eyes aren't fooling you -- it's a library book cart with a spoiler, fuzzy dice, and . . . . um, afterburners. Just in case things get revvin' in the stacks.

It's all part of the Overshelved comic strip's first-ever Pimp My Book Cart contest. I first heard about this thing back in November, and I've been waiting excitedly ever since to see the results. Was this red-hot beauty the winner? Only by clicking here will you ever know for sure.

Mmmm . . . tasty.

2007-01-22T14:01:00.000-05:00

In Which Brooke Returns from the Dead to Prattle On About the ALA Youth Media Awards

Okey-dokey, so I kinda dropped out of the kidlitosphere for a while there, but I have a good reason for doing so: The Evil Demons of Morning Sickness. Yea, verily -- I am expecting a baby in July (this would be #3 for me). This week is one of the first that I've been able to withstand the aroma of garlic, ginger, eggplant, and salsa. Posting on a blog was one of those little luxuries that fell by the wayside in the name of settling dramatically on a couch, putting a lily-white wrist to my fevered brow, and moaning for hours on end.

But I'm back now, with a passle of Forgotten Books with which to regale you all. In the meanwhile, let's get down to business about the ALA Youth Media Awards:

I've Got a Lot To Say About The Newbery Medal

This is the biggest, baddest, oldest kidlit award of 'em all, and this year the winner and honor medals were all bestowed on white female authors who wrote novels with white female protagonists.

Hmm.

And the committee that picked these was comprised mostly of . . . ? (cough)

Aww, but I'm being persnickety. I'm very happy with the winners -- this is the first time in my career as a children's librarian that I've read all of the Newbery winners ahead of time -- and they're all quite excellent (two of them, Rules and Hattie Big Sky, made my personal list of favorites for 2006). You won't go wrong putting them in the hands of any young reader . . . unless that reader happens to be a boy.

The winner:
The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
I read this over Christmas, having felt a bit of sixth-sense buzz about it. It came as no surprise to me that it won the Newbery -- it's a book worthy of the award, and I'm happy to see the committee choose a book that's a solid middle-grade read.

However -- my Inner Critic thought it a tad oversentimental, and that the character of Brigitte wasn't fleshed out enough. In the grand tradition of The Tale of Despereaux, this is an occasion when I feel that the Newbery was given to a slightly overrated book. But, only slightly. Because I'm a schnicklefritz.

Really -- give this thing a well-deserved read. The residents of Hard Pan, California are worth a visit from any of you, and they will all make you want to move to the desert, write essays about tarantula hawk wasps, and eat chili out of a Fritos bag while searching for your own Higher Power.

The runners-up:
P e nn y From Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm
Yup, no surprises here. I actually received a postcard from Random House before this book was published -- I'm assuming they got my address from the ALSC mailing list -- to pitch it to me as a future Newbery winner. The book merits the honor, but still. Bleh to hype-generating postcards. This is Holm's second Newbery Honor, making her an official Newbery Bridesmaid (and hopefully, someday a Bride). My only suggestion to Holm: Please, PLEASE do not ever again pose for your backflap author photo wearing a vintage-era strapless prom dress in soft focus! PLEASE!!!

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson
Yay! I'm always getting lots of requests from kids who want books about Fiesty Young Women on the Unforgiving Frontier, and this is one I'm happy to recommend to all of them. The level of research that went into this baby is astounding. Read it and rejoice in the fact that you haven't ever frozen your hands to a waterpump.

Rules by Cynthia Lord
Ahh . . . this is the book I wanted to see win the Medal. But being a runner-up is pretty good, too. It's a tale of a smart kid realizing what she's capable of, and in that sense it kinda reminded me of E.L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday. And for bonus points, it has a duckie on the cover, and one of the best references to Frog and Toad are Friends ever.

And, Of Course, the Books That I Wish Had Gotten Some Newbery Action:

A True and Faithful Narrative by Katherine Sturtevant
Yeah, Hattie Big Sky has a wealth of historical detail, but it's got nothing on the life and times of Meg Moore.

Why it Didn't Win: That scene where Meg's in bed, thinking about a man's hands going up her shift. Yup, the kiss of death. Plus, most kids have no idea when the Restoration was.

The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
Hands down, Turner's Eugenedies is the most fascinating, complex protagonist to hit town this year. (Ooooh, and he's so dreamy.)

Why it Didn't Win: It doesn't stand on its own when read apart from its series, blah blah blah blah blah. I can cite precidence on this count in the annals of Newbery Winners: Lloyd Alexander's The High King. Scary, gory, and absolutely incomprehensible if you haven't read the previous four volumes in the series. And yet it won the Medal. Huh.

Sigh . . . I guess Megan Turner will have to find comfort for herself in her legions and legions of ravenous, worshipful fans . . .

The Road to Paris by Nikki Grimes
What? You didn't read it? Go find it now! This book excells in its beautiful, clean-cut portrait of a girl longing for home. More poignant than The Higher Power of Lucky and Hattie Big Sky put together.

Why it Didn't Win: There are no funny parts in this book. Not. A. Single. Joke. But it's a runner-up for the Coretta Scott King Award, which makes me rather pleased. I takes what I gets.

Year of the Dog by Grace Lin
Oh, yeah -- remember this book? This lil' cutie was a breath of fresh air for me back at the beginning of 2006. It changed the way I look at Thanskgiving turkey, Vitamin-C pills, and red eggs. I looooove recommending it to kids new to chapter books who love stories about best friends.

Why it Didn't Win: It's written for kids new to chapter books who love stories about best friends. Also, it used a pretty funky font. Newbery committees always look down on funky fonts. (Or, at least they do in Brookeworld.)

And Now for a Few Brief Comments on Everything Else:

The Caldecott Medal went to David Wiesner's Flotsam. I'm cool with it; I didn't see any other picture books that dazzled me as much as that one. But still -- another Wiesner book?!? That makes three wins and two honors for him. Eh, but I love his books so much, I really don't mind. Dude, it's like even the air around him gets more talented as he walks through a room . . .

I was very happy to see the Printz Award go to Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese, and that Mark and Siena Cherson Siegel's To Dance was a Siebert runner-up. Hooray for graphic novels! Hooray for validation! Bring us more of both!

The only Batchelder winner I'm familiar with is Silvana De Mari's The Last Dragon, but I'm happy it got a bit of spotlight, because more people need to read it. Post-apocalyptic novels with elves and dragons should be on everyone's to-read list.

Also, it's about time that the Zelda and Ivy books got some recognition. I hereby give Mad Props to the Geisel Award committee for a job well done.

And, finally, can I say how relieved I was that absolutely no favors were given to The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane? That book gave me the jibblies. I can breathe easier knowing that fewer children will be required to write book reports about Edward Tulane as a school assignment. Or that there will be teachers required to grade said reports.

(Ahh, there it goes . . . in . . . out . . . in . . . out . . .)

2006-12-18T20:39:00.000-05:00

Children's Films in the Days of Yore Yore Yore Yore Yore

Grumble, grumble. Last week on NPR's program Day to Day, Mike Pesca gave a piece about the recent increase in animated children's films. Here's the intro:

Happy Feet is just one of a string of successful feature films aimed at children. Why are so many movies being made for young audiences? Is quality declining as a result?

Basically, Pesca describes how, in the good old days, a Disney full-length animated feature would only be released every one or two years, and it would be a Major Event in the lives of kids everywhere -- something worth "two weeks of good behavior for your parents to take you to it" -- and how every one of the Disney films were of high quality. Nowadays, there's a new CGI children's film in the theatres every month, and most of them are pretty lousy. Kids get taken to all of them, and is this one more way that Childhood is Being Destroyed?

What Pesca has created here is a kind of dangerous sense of nostalgia. I don't know how much he read about the history of children's film for this article, but when Snow White was relased in 1937, it was just one of many, many children's films produced that year. It was a time period when many kids (in fact, the U.S. popluation in general) would frequent movie houses on a weekly, or sometimes daily, basis. For every Dumbo and Pinocchio there was a bevy of Shirley Temple, Tarzan, Buck Rodgers, and what-have-you flicks created at the same time. Plus, one must also take into account that the bulk of animated films made during the "golden years" of Disney were shorts, many of which were also of dubious quality. There was a lot of dreck; I imagine the good-stuff-to-dreck ratio was just about the same then as it is now.

As Lore Sjöberg would say, those who do not study the past are doomed to listen to a dance re-mix of it.

And for those of you who think that every child in America was completely enchanted by Snow White, go out and read Tomie de Paola's 26 Fairmount Avenue. The first-person account of the film's premiere -- and the author's reaction -- is absolutely delicious.

Thank you to A Fuse #8 Production for the link.

2006-12-14T14:33:00.000-05:00

Rapunzel á la Lego

Grrr. . . for some reason, I can't post clips from You Tube here using Blogger Beta. Anyone have any hints? But anyhow, here is a darling little version of the folktale we all know and love . . . done entirely with Lego bricks.

2006-12-13T19:12:00.000-05:00

Frickin'. Awesome. Children's. Library.

It's called The Trove, and it's the children's department of the White Plains Public Library. It features not one, but two different programming spaces, a pirate ship for lounging, a tiny dome with a flat-screen TV for film presentations, a puppet theater that doubles as a playhouse . . . wowzers.

It also has the Alice Collection -- a non-circulating special collection for the adult research of children's literature.

And if that weren't sweet enough, their web site is profoundly well-organized and easy to navigate. Look and learn, my people. Look and learn.

2006-12-12T18:40:00.000-05:00

Red-Hot Ruby in the Smoke

The BBC film version of this fabulous book is in post production. If you haven't read this fabulous victorian thriller, get thee to a library and read away! (And be prepared to stay up all night doing so as well.)

The Ruby in the Smoke is on my list of ten children's books that oughtta be movies. Only nine more to go . . .

2006-12-10T21:36:00.000-05:00

The Kolbert Report

The December 4th issue of The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert surveys several picture books published in 2006. Within it, I found the single most cynical statement about children's literature I've seen this year:

If, as Joan Didion famously put it, "we tell ourselves stories in order to live," why do we tell stories to our children? In my experience, mostly it is to get them to shut up. A book read to a toddler who, after running around the house all day, has had to be stuffed, quite literally, into his pajamas, may traffic in imaginative freedom and wonder, but it is still an instrument of control. I will read this to you, and you will go to sleep. End of story.

Whugh! The last thing I need is a heapin' helpin' of guilt loaded onto my family's bedtime reading, but there it is: the whiny little devil on my shoulder during our evening read, whispering, "innnnnstrument of controlllll, innnnstrument of controlllll!" in my ear.

I disagree with her almost reflexively, and yet I can't come up with an argument that counters her strongly enough to satisfy me. What parent, after a particularly trying evening with L'Enfant, can't wait to get those darn stories over and done with to have a little peace? But then again, what parent doens't want to pass along the best moments from his or her own childhood for their kids -- which frequently includes sharing favorite children's books?

The idea of children's literature as an opiate doesn't sit well with me.

Kolbert also describes Good Night, Gorilla thusly:

On the last page, the animals are uncaged and -- I assume -- like more and more kids across America, still fooling around after the adults have conked out.

Whoops. Read it again, Liz.

2006-12-09T17:03:00.000-05:00

Reason #45 Why I Wish I Lived Closer to Boston

They've got the Eric Carle Museum.
They've got the Make Way for Ducklings statue.
They've got the Horn Book.

And now they've got this.

Sure, the Remus Lupins were in Pittsburgh this past Tuesday, but it wasn't a full-blown Yule Ball.

Sigh . . .

2006-12-07T12:01:00.000-05:00

O Holy Moly Night

Over at The Sneeze a few days ago, there was a delicious posting that involves possibly the worst recording of "O Holy Night," ever. Bad to the point of reducing its listeners to fits of gut-busting laughter. So bad, that I'm kind of surprised that it wasn't part of the 365 Days Project. But I digress. If you want to hear the song, click here.

Oh, this song brings back a lot of memories of Christmas Concerts Past, mostly involving disastrous performances. Such as the one when my favorite music teacher, Mrs. Benko, performed the song in a cathedral lit by only two candles right in front of her. When she hit the high note in the song, she accidentally blew the candles out.

Or the last Christmas party I attended at my parents' church, which had a musical program that wasn't very well organized, and three different people all performed "O Holy Night"; one of them on the clarinet. Poor people! Poor third performer, who began her piece only to hear a toddler in the audience yell out, "not again!"

2006-12-02T20:06:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: A Necklace of Raindrops

A Necklace of Raindrops by Joan Aiken. Illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. Knopf. $5.50.

Oh, is there anything more succulent than a collection of Joan Aiken short stories? I don't think so. This collection, originally published in 1968, is one of the best examples of that most gossamer of genres, the bedside tale. Here Aiken has strung together eight little gems of stories, and each one shines with just the perfect combination of whimsy, humor, and wonder that is the hallmark of the best children's literature. One of the many reasons I became a children's librarian was so I could find out about all the good books I had missed reading as a child, and pass them on to my kids. For me, A Necklace of Raindrops is exactly that kind of book.

Aiken's stories have a timeless, folkloric quality tinged with contemporary motifs. "The Cat Sat on the Mat" concerns a schoolbus-dwelling family who recieve kindness from a fairy; "There's Some Sky in This Pie" is a silly story about people and animals riding a flying pie all over the world, searching for a parking spot. Characters from books spring from their pages to play with lonely children in "The Elves in the Shelves" (a great name for a children's bookstore if ever there was one), and lonely train engineers find happiness where they least expect it in "The Three Travelers." My favorite of the bunch is the title story, which concerns a magical necklace that can control water and rain -- it's just the kind of tale I would have feasted on as a child.

Many of the stories contain bits of poetry or songs that are repeated over and over, in the grand tradition of oral storytelling. This volume would be perfect for reading aloud, although the language is simple and lyrical enough for readers new to the world of chapter books. A shimmering little treat for anyone who wants a good mind-ride at bedtime, breakfast time, anytime.

Knopf brought this book back into print back in 2001, and is still available in paperback (although it's easy to pick up a used hardback online).

2006-12-01T22:24:00.000-05:00

Ta-Dah!

Clocking in at 74,855 words . . . my novel-of-a-month! Actually, it's going to be something more like a novel-of-six-weeks. That's right: it's not finished yet. But I did reach the 50,000 mark, and then some. The whole experience is a little anitclimactic.

The Question on Your Mind: does this mean that I'll be posting on the Brookeshelf, or not? Well, that remains to be seen. I was going to post a book review, but my husband had to do homework, and monolpolized the computer all evening.

(Love you, honey.)

And tomorrow I work all day at the library. So, hopefully things will be back in Full Swing soon. Thanks for all of your support during the last month, it's been quite a ride.

2006-11-17T17:02:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay . . . I give!

So, those of you who may still actually be reading this thing are probably wondering why I've suddenly disappeared into the void. I truly do aplologize . . . there are only so many times a person can load up a blog and be presented with hypnotic snowmen. Am I traveling? Sick? Alas, no . . . I'm writing a novel.

Yes -- I'm cringing as I admit this -- I am madly participating in the seasonal spectacle known as National Novel Writing Month. See? I even have the icon to prove it:

Wah-woo. The goal is to write 50,000 words by Nov. 30, and truthfully, I'm definitely going to hit that goal (I'm at 40,089 words right now), but whether or not my novel will be finished by the end of the month is another question. Egads, people -- the story's only about 65% done! Arrrgh! I spent too much time doing character development and describing puffy clouds!

(Nooooo! Not puffy clouds!)

So, while I have a pile of delicious Forgotten Books to tell you about -- not to mention a run-in with John Scies . . . Sciezsk . . .Sciehuzzz . . . you know, the Stinky Cheese Guy) -- it may all have to wait until Dec. 1. I know! The horror! Curse you, puffy clouds!!! But I know (er, hope) that you will all be happy to wait until then for more interesting tidbits from the Brookeshelf.

Wait until December, my dearies . . . and I'll be back!

2006-11-10T19:44:00.000-05:00

Pretty Darn Relaxin'

Here's a lovely little book trailer for Scott E. Franson's "Un-Brella," a picture book due to be published by Roaring Brook next spring. It involves perky little snowmen parading through a pastel seasonal landscape. Ahhh, almost as good as a massage.

2006-11-08T21:31:00.000-05:00

Look at Them Young'uns Go!

For those of you not aware of the phenomenon known as National Novel Writing Month, let me fill you in: it's a wild literary spree whose participants make a goal of writing a 50,000 word novel from November 1-30. People all over the world are already typing like the wind in this year's "NaNoWriMo," but what's interesting is that this year the program has expanded to include writers under the age of twelve. Yup, there's scads of elementary and middle school students everywhere, madly whizzing out plotlines and character sketches, all striving to meet that lofty 50K goal.

On the "Young Writer's Program" section of the NaNoWriMo website, you'll not only be able to read downloaded excerpts from kids' budding novels, but you can also find a feature called "Stump the Librarian," in which Karlyn Pratt, the program's resident reference grunt, answers questions that kids ask when they need help figuring out particular details from their story.

Past questions have covered the making of ostrich jerky, the likelihood of head injury leading to amnesia, and queries about the possible ethnicity of a character named "Kriznakh." (Karlyn's answer: "Russian male. Maybe.")

Take a look-see to get a glimpse of the ambitious young writers of tomorrow. 'Tis amusing, my friend.

2006-11-08T21:04:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: Thistle and Thyme

Ghosts. Fairies. Bewitched Hares. Have a hankering for some gorgeous folk tales? Look no further than Sorche Nic Leodhas' Thistle and Thyme, a sweet little sampling of tales and legends from Scotland.

You may recognize the author's name from the Caldecott-winning picture book, Always Room for One More. And just for kicks, let me inform you that this author's real name is Leclaire Alger. Yup. I would have picked up a nom de plume if I had been settled with that sucker, too.

Leodhas posesses the rare talent of being able to write in a dialect without it overpowering the text. There's just enough of the Celtic idiom in the stories to create the essence of the time and place without it becoming artificial. Plus, it makes it darn fun to read aloud: just try this sample out from the first story in the book, "The Laird's Lass and the Gobha's Son":

An old laird had a young daughter once and she was the pawkiest piece in all the world. Her father petted her and her mother cosseted her till the wonder of it was that she wasn't so spoiled that she couldn't be borne. What saved her from it was that she was so sunny and sweet by nature, and she had a naughty merry way about her that won all hearts. The only thing wrong with her was that when she set her heart on something she'd not give up till she got what it was she wanted.

Lawks, what a beginning! It makes me want to pull my best Groundskeeper Willy impersonation out of the closet and just go with it. A pawky piece, indeed!

As for the content of the stories, they've got everything: evil wizards, knights, tricksters, changelings, mermaids, and even a demon or two thrown in for kicks. It just makes you wish for a particularly dark and stormy night in which to curl up under a rug with a few good listeners. Just turn a few pages, and you can transport them away to a land of adventure and grand romantic gesture.

Leodhas' has written scads of other Scottish folklore anthologies, but this one shines out from the throng. One thing to note if you're looking for a used copy online: this book was published in two different editions, one with more stories than the first. Either one promises lots of fun.

2006-11-06T22:18:00.000-05:00

The Forgotten Bookshelf

Here's a big list of all the "forgotten" books I've reviewed on this site, for your joyous perusal (and also for some light housekeeping on my part). This is the feature of my blog that I think people enjoy the most, so it's worth organizing a bit. You'll notice that there's a link to it at the top of my sidebar. The list may be small for now, but it's growing. The books are listed by year, and sublisted in alphabetical order.

Forgotten Books for 2006

City Poems by Lois Lenski (09.30.06)
The Church Mice by Grahame Oakley (09.21.06)
The Dollhouse Caper by Jean S. O'Connell (09.30.06)
Hobberdy Dick by Katherine Briggs (08.08.06)
The Little Book Room by Eleanor Farjeon (09.10.06)
The Loner by Ester Wier (10.16.06)
Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm by Alice and Martin Provensen (11.05.06)
Piping Down the Valleys Wild, edited by Nancy Larrick (10.05.06)
Sleepy Time (and other works) by Gyo Fujikawa (09.14.06)
The Story Vine, by Anne Pellowski (10.10.06)
Thistle and Thyme by Sorche Nic Leodhas (11.08.06)

2006-11-06T12:45:00.000-05:00

It Pretty Much Kicks the Tail off of Halloween Here
Or, the Off-Topic Topic of the Day

Good. Gravy. This. Blog. Is. Deliciously. Awesome.

2006-11-06T12:23:00.000-05:00

Are You a Celebrity Interested in Writing Children's Books?

Here are a few hints from a delightful article in the Australian periodical The Age for you:

Rule one: why use simple names for characters when you can invent fanciful and, frankly, ridiculous ones? The celeb authors probably think they are being Dickensian, but they just come across like Salman Rushdie on one of his flowery days. Madonna stands out in this regard. Meet the English Roses' new teacher, Miss Fluffernutter. If that doesn't convince you of the author's creative prowess, eight pages later we are introduced to Candy Darling (yes, we know, Andy Warhol's chum) and Bunny Love.
Rule two: make sure you have a moral point to make, and ram it home to your young readers. Madonna leads the pack here yet again: "The next time you start to feel jealous of someone, try to feel happy for them instead. Good things will come your way, too." And: "You can't just love your friends when they are nice to you. That's when it's easy. You have to love them when they are being complete dorks, too."

Rule three: if you can't think of a suitable moral to the story, anything eco will do. Estefan has her animal characters saving the lives of endangered baby sea turtles. Jamie Lee Curtis, whose writing otherwise shines out from the rest of the pack, also succumbs to this weakness. "Make friends and love well," she exhorts us. "Bring art to this place. And make the world better for the whole human race."

Ohhhhh, nuts. So much for that draft of "Mary Ate a Little Panda" that's been lying at the bottom of my desk, waiting patiently for my fifteen minutes of fame.

Thanks to Chicken Spaghetti for the link.

2006-11-05T21:59:00.000-05:00

Something Definitely Worth Checking Out

Down at the University of Florida is a little something called the Center for Children's Literature and Culture, which produces a spiffy little radio program called Recess. Every weekday, the program gives a lovely three-minute spiel on a topic relevant to child life and history around the world. This month will feature a piece about the anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are, another about Children's Book Week, and an interview with Tomie DePaola

Interspersed with all of this kidlit grooviness are children's CD reviews, information about astronomy, and Korean holidays.

Transcripts and audio files of all the programs (dating back to 2001) are available on the Recess! website. Fine, fine work, my people. Keep it up.

Thanks to CCBC for the link.

2006-11-05T21:53:00.000-05:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: Our Animal Friends at Maple Hill Farm by Alice and Martin Provensen

What is it about the autumn that makes me want to go out and visit a farm? There’s something about the crisp air and fragrant earth that makes me want to go out and enjoy it more, I suppose. However, dropping the day’s already-made plans and hoofing it out to the countryside isn’t an option for everybody. In lieu of that, may I proudly present this lovely picture book as a possible substitute?

This volume is more closely related to a sketchbook than a conventional picture book – it contains a wealth of large and small watercolor illustrations of all the animals that inhabit your run-of-the-mill small family farm, from the horses, sheep, and pigs down to the woodpeckers and moths that are occasionally seen flitting around the farmhouse. The Provensen’s illustrations show the same folk-art style that is exhibited in their well-known books The Glorious Flight and A Visit to William Blake’s Inn, but are more casual here – the animals and human figures sport a heavier line and rounded, almost cartoonish bodies, but this gives the book an authentic, intimate feel, as if they had been penned this morning just for you on the front porch.

What is really remarkable here is the Provensen’s ability to give a real sense of the animal’s personalities and behavior. Each one is allotted just a paragraph or a few sentences, but it manages to capture the essence of each creature in a clear, straightforward way, such as in these samples:

Ichabod and Comanche [two horses] are very sure-footed and the love to gallop . . . they are afraid of silly little things like unexpected pieces of paper.

[The geese] bully the dogs, complain to the cats, and pinch the sheep’s ears. That’s the trouble with geese, who are otherwise nearly perfect.

Whiney [the sheep] is never sure where her own lambs are. This confuses her and makes her cry. She faints when her wool is being shorn. But Whiney has a good friend who likes her and looks after her – a billy goat named Sam.

With its large size and gentle text, this is a perfect outing for animal lovers of all kinds. Like the family at Maple Hill Farm, “the animals that were, the animals that are, and the animals that will be bring joy, laughter, and life.”

2006-11-03T16:43:00.000-05:00

Another Belated Belater Thing

So, once again, I have managed to confuse the dates of Teen Read Week (Oct. 15-21) with Children's Book Week (Nov. 13-19). Rats! I missed celebrating Teen Read Week in the best way I know how, with Tina the Troubled Teen. So here she is anyway, in all her surly glory. In theory, she'll have a new piece of snarkiness for you every couple of days. Enjoy, folks!

2006-11-02T20:21:00.000-05:00

Special Report: Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen

Ahhh, the eternal grooviness that is the Magic School Bus. I'm tellin' ya, other quasi-psychedelic nonfiction book series come and go, but the Bus is here to stay, man. Would you believe that it's been 20 years since the first book came out? Anyhow, the co-creators of Ms. Frizzle and her class of kids came to town last weekend, and I hopped on down to the Carnegie Lecture Hall to see 'em.

Okay, before I get started on the report, I really need to share this memory:

When I was in high school, a lady who I knew from church was in charge of her local elementary school's book fair, and needed some people to dress up in the picture book character costumes that Scholastic had sent along with the rest of the promotional material. Because she knew that I was (a) a drama dork at my school, and (b) skint, she offered me a good $30 to spend an afternoon dressed as Ms. Frizzle. So, off I went to spend a few hours in a polyester octopus-print dress and a big red wig, and it would have been pretty uneventful, except that the guy who had been hired to wear the Curious George costume kept hitting on me the entire time. This included coming up from behind and grabbing my waist, frequently when I was in the middle of talking to a bunch of kids, and asking me sly, suggestive questions that I couldn't quite understand, owing to the fact that he was wearing a giant monkey mask. At the end of the afternoon, I discovered that the Man Behind the George was a kinda-cute German exchange student with an eyebrow ring (something that was considered a bit more risque in 1994 than it is now). Needless to say, I haven't been able to look at Curious George in quite the same way ever since.

But I digress. On with the lecture report!

Truth be told, this was not the most interesting lecture in the world. But here's the run-down:

Degen and Cole work very closely on their projects, which is something unique in the childlit world. (This is something that, alas, few people know.)
Degen likes to hide characatures of himself and Cole in the books -- making me want to go check them all out and go hunting.
The next Magic School Bus book will be about global warming -- an announcement that caused the entire audience to break into applause. Yay, doomsday!
They read their latest book, The Magic School Bus and the Science Fair Expedition, and the most interesting thing I found out from it was that Marie Curie's notebooks are so highly radioactive that they have to be kept in a special radium-proof case. (Wow, I'd love to see the archivist in charge of that.)
At the end of the lecture, Degen drew silly dinosaurs on a big sketchpad using suggestions from the kids in the audience. Such as a Bananasaurus Rex, a TriCerealBox, and a Divasaurus. It was definitely the best part of the lecture -- and gave me some very nice flashbacks to The Mickey Mouse Show reruns I used to watch. Good job, guys!

And dare I mention what a cute guy Bruce Degen is? You know, in that Burl Ives kind of way. Sweet!

2006-11-02T20:13:00.000-05:00

The Nearest Book

Via Fuse#8, Chicken Spaghetti, Book Moot and a buncha other people:

Do this...
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next four sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig around for that "cool" or "intellectual" book on your shelves. (I know you were thinking about it.) Just pick up whatever is closest.

Here's mine:

Should've kept my big mouth shut, thought Paris. But at least she was outdoors. And she was looking forward to seeing the garden in full bloom. It wouldn't kill her to help the garden get that way, now would it?

This is from The Road to Paris, the latest by Nikki Grimes. Hmmm, this is not exactly the most exciting group of sentences in the world, but the book is good, trust me. Kind of a more meditative Great Gilly Hopkins. So, let's try it again, shall we?

*Brooke is running at a random bookshelf in her house*

Okay, here's the Second Go Round:

"It was on the grimoire making the page greasy." He handed Lydda a pasty on a piece of paper. Lydda rose up on her haunches and took the pasty. She sniffed it. She sliced delicately into the crust with the tip of her beak.

Oh, now that's just so much more satisfying, wouldn't you say? And in case you couldn't guess, it's from Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones.

2006-11-02T12:24:00.000-05:00

Ooooh, a Freebie

Apparently, they have this lovely poster over at Walker Books touting "The Rights of a Reader" with lovely little drawings by Quentin Blake, and you can download a PDF of it for free.
Yummy. It's already found a cushy spot on my hard drive, tucked in with a nice wooly JPEG.

(Thanks to Read Roger for the link.)

And for further refreshment, check out Shannon Hale's Reading Pledge over at her blog (whoo, quoting her a lot lately). This is something that she makes classrooms of children do whenever she visits a school.

2006-11-02T11:59:00.000-05:00

Back From the Dead

Oh, the horror! Were you all aware that I had to spend the last two weeks with NO internet access at my house?!? The last posting I made was at the library, erlack. So: the internet's working again, the E-Mail Gods have been appease, and here I am again to regale you all with all the children's literature stuff that manages to pop in my head. But um . . . not right now. I haven't time to write all that I want right now, but I will this evening. Probably. Just . . . check back tomorrow, okay? I promise there will be something interesting. Or at least something for you to read.

2006-10-25T19:53:00.000-04:00

"You Should Never Take a Class That Requires You to Read Beowulf"

I've been noticing an increasingly relevant debate going on regarding what kids are assigned to read in schools -- whether required books are too difficult, to stale, or just misunderstood. Whaddya know -- there's been some pretty good thoughts posted on both sides of the argument. Here's a brief rundown:

Author Shannon Hale (Princess Academy) has frequently written and spoken about the lack of contemporary or genre literature that has been accepted as part of the high school canon.

Hale also quotes Laurie Halse Anderson (author of Speak) on this topic:

"Read this from a report of the National Institute
of Literacy: 'The ability to read and understand complicated information is
important to success in college and, increasingly, in the workplace. An analysis
of the NAEP long-term trend reading assessments reveals that only half of all
White 17 year olds, less than one-quarter of Latino 17 year olds, and less than
one-fifth of African American 17 year olds can read at this level.
By age 17,
only about 1 in 17 seventeen year olds can read and gain information from
specialized text, for example the science section in the local newspaper. This
includes:
1 in 12 White 17 year olds,1 in 50 Latino 17 year olds, and1 in 100
African American 17 year olds.'
I wish we had all of our 17 year olds to the
point where we could have them enjoy Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Thoreau, and, yes,
Hawthorne. But to get them to that point, THEY MUST LEARN HOW TO READ. Their
chances of developing into literate adults are greatly enhanced if we hand them
books that are interesting, engaging, and written in the vernacular. Most of the
Classics do not fit that definition.
(Sorry for the long quote; I couldn't quite find the link for this.)

Finally, Monica Edinger has posted a well-thought out, well written defense of required reading lists from an educator's perspective. Can I say how bedazzled I am by her?

2006-10-24T22:18:00.000-04:00

New Book Roundup

The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen by M. T. Anderson

As a rule, it’s a good sign when I enjoy a book so much that I can’t wait to finish. It’s an even better sign when I can’t wait to tell everyone I know about a book. M. T. Anderson scores on both counts. Is it possible for a book to be so funny and poignant at the same time?

Here’s the jist: Lily Gefelty’s two best friends happen to be characters from children’s serial novels: there’s Katie Mulligan, star of the Horror Hollow series (think Goosebumps) and Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut (think Danny Dunn). The three of them have decided that they need a break from solving mysteries and fending off the undead, so they head off to the Moose Tongue Lodge, where numerous other characters from popular series are staying (like the Manley Boys, the Cutesy Dell Twins, and Eddie Wax, star of the obscure “Newbery Honor” book, Stumpy Rides to Glory). Alas, soon after they arrive, they find that the famous Hooper Quints (think Bobbsey Twins) have been kidnapped, and a precious diamond necklace purloined. As Katie, Lily, and Jasper go about trying to solve the mystery, Anderson spends ample amounts of time parodying, satirizing, and down right pulling the underpants off of various clichés of children’s adventure novels. It’s precariously over-the-top at times; Anderson has nutty authorial asides, characters who are ludicrously stupid (the Manley Boys mistake a pepper grinder for a flashlight), and others who are downright bizarre (for example, a black-caped professor who studies bats, and spends time screaming every few seconds to mimic bats’ natural sonar capabilities). It’s a style that may come off as harried to some, but I enjoyed it immensely – Anderson’s ability to pull jokes out of left field and make them work reminds me of Douglas Adams. Here’s one of my favorite passages from the beginning of the book, and you’ll see why it’s so close to my heart:

Often, if you go down to a town library and under Keyword Search type “Jasper Dash,” you’ll come up with a list of his books – and beside each one, it says: “Withdrawn. Withdrawn. Withdrawn. Withdrawn.” This means that they are no longer in circulation. Some librarian has taken them off the shelf, wiping away a tear, and has opened the book to the back, where there’s a pouch for a card dating back to the time of the Second World War, and she’ll crumple up the card, and then she and her fellow librarians will take special knives and slice away at the book and will eat the pages in big mouthfuls until the book is all gone, the whole time weeping, because they hate this duty – it is the worst part of the job – for here was a boot that was once someone’s favorite, but which now is dead and empty. And the little cheerful face of Jasper Dash, heading off to fight a cattle-rustling ring in his biplane, will still be smiling pluckily as they take their Withdrawl Knives and scratch his book to pieces.

(My husband, after reading this passage, said, “Wow. I had no idea that’s what you librarians did in the back office.”)

For all the funny jokes, though, there’s an emotional side to the novel that is almost lyrical – Anderson uses the different series characters not only as a set-up for jokes, but also to elucidate the way that we tend to label and pigeonhole one another. Amazingly, Anderson manages to pull off a few elegiac passages at the end, and they manage to fit in with the rest of the zaniness seamlessly. It’s been a long time since I’ve met a book that made me laugh quite so hard, that made me smile so wistfully, and makes me eager to head over to the library to talk it up to the kids there. M. T. Anderson: I salute you.

Whoo. Long review on that one. Can you tell that I’m excited? Let’s make the others right quick, eh?

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

Fans of Ella Enchanted will be raring to pick up this book. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t want to pick it up – look at that cover! It got hit with the Pretty Stick. Anyhow, Fairest is set in the same world as EE, but in the next kingdom over – in Ayortha, whose inhabitants are intensely musical. Aza is our protagonist, and while her voice is miraculous, she’s as plain as day. Enter pretty but tone-deaf Queen Ivi, and suddenly Aza is “Singin’ in the Rain”-ing it for her. As the Queen’s lady-in-waiting (and vocal stand-in), she notices a magical mirror on Queen Ivi’s dressing table, and wonders if it could help make her pretty. But will the Queen be jealous of Aza if she becomes beautiful? And what would Aza’s new best friend Prince Ijori think? Yep, you guessed it -- it’s a retelling of “Snow White.” However, Levine’s world is so finely fleshed out -- you can just tell how much she enjoyed describing things like gnome caverns and magical libraries for us – that the story feels new again. It’s missing a lot of the humor that peppered EE so nicely, but this fits the story’s tone just fine (Snow White is a more melancholy tale than Cinderella, anyway). There’s a smattering of court intrigue and talk of politics, but the real focus is on Aza’s journey to accepting her body image – a message that can always be repeated in this day and age. There’s just one thing that bothered me – Queen Ivi is such a transparent clotheshorse bimbo that I can’t imagine why the King Oscaro -- who, we are told over and over again, is so wise and good-hearted – managed to fall in love and marry her. What in the world did they have in common?!? Sheesh. Men.

Hmm. That was long-ish, too. On to Round Three!

Adele & Simon by Barbara McClintock

McClintock is my favorite under-appreciated illustrator right now. Her ink-and-watercolor pictures abound in fine detail and wit, and manage to be frothy without being fluffy. In this sweet book, Adele is charged with escorting her little brother home through turn-of-the-century Paris. He manages to lose his possessions one by one as they traipse through the Louvre, pastry shops, the natural history museum, and a plethora of other picturesque places in the city. Each page spread shows a lovely scene of the journey, just bursting with detail – people, animals, and objets d’art are vividly portrayed against a ochre-colored backgrounds. In each picture, the reader is invited to find the object that Simon has most recently lost, in a “Where’s Waldo?” style. The journey ends at the children’s home – and the lost possessions make their way back, too, in a manner that is immensely satisfying. Fun for anyone who’s ever had to herd little brothers home – or who is harboring a secret desire for Paris.

Ah . . . the third one was juuuuust right. And now off to bed!

2006-10-24T14:17:00.000-04:00

But What About "Fake Tan Orange"?

As a children's librarian and a parent of two, I spend a lot of time around sweet little colorful things. You know, crayons. Lots. And. Lots. Of. Crayons. Just when I thought that I couldn't stand digging red-and-blue wax out from under my fingernails one more time, this cartoon came along. Ah, salvation. Before you watch it, just make sure you're in a place that tolerates sound -- from both the computer, and from you, guffawing away.

2006-10-22T18:51:00.000-04:00

Special Report: Fall Festival of Children's Books

Let me do a little explaining for those of you not from Pittsburgh: once a year for the past 45 years or so, various city institutions (universities, literacy groups, museums, etc.) pool their resources to have a little one-day children’s literature conference. They usually round up three fabulous authors or illustrators, bring ‘em in, and we all get to hear them talk whilst munching on free bagels. Due to such things as childbirth and vacations, I’ve missed the last couple of Fall Festivals, so I was very happy indeed that the stars aligned and I could attend this year. Especially since the conference featured Lynn Rae Perkins, who I am in intense awe of, Bryan Collier, who makes gorgeous pictures, and John Manders, who I didn’t know that much about before the conference, but whom I highly admire now. So: let’s cut to the chase. I know that nobody out there is probably all that interested in reading a minutely detailed play-by-play of the three lectures given by each speaker. Let’s just go with the Top Facts of Interest for each one, eh?

Lynne Rae Perkins

Is a local girl – she grew up just down the river from Pittsburgh
Is just as elegantly beautiful and whimsical as her novels and paintings
Spent time as a child coloring the mortar in her parents’ brick house with crayons to make it look prettier (and whoa, got in trouble for it)
Is the only children’s book author I know who can make a reference to The Talking Heads AND Blade Runner in the same speech, and have it tie in seamlessly
As a child, she attempted to teach her best friend how to play the piano using a cardboard replica of a keyboard. When her friend wasn’t satisfied with this, she realized that “if you want to bring someone close to beauty, you can’t forget the beauty part.”
Talked about what parts of her books were inspired by real-life events: the trailer in Home Lovely is based on a real building; on a school visit Perkins met the grandson of the trailer owner, with pleasant results.

Bryan Collier

Has deep reverence for the subjects of his books
Traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to do research on Rosa Parks for Rosa; actually walked from the bus stop to Parks’ house to see how difficult it was for her to do such a thing
The illustration of the boy in Uptown was modeled by Collier’s nephew. The nephew is now a college freshman and uses Uptown as a way of getting dates
Rambled a bit too much during his speech; it went overtime by a good half hour, leaving poor John Manders with only ten minutes of speaking time. Blah!

John Manders

Spent the bulk of his (alas, hurried) presentation describing the craft of painting and illustration
Is incredibly friendly and a pretty dynamic speaker
He passed around lots of thumbnail sketches, color samples, and storyboards for several of his books (very cool)
Has a pet parrot that likes to sit on the lower rungs of his desk while he works
Likes to use real-life locations as inspiration for his illustrations – the illustrations of the library in Clarence the Copy Cat are based on the architectural details of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, where I work in the children’s department. Yes – that’s our cast-iron hanging globe lamp! Our built-in honey colored bookshelves! Our little red-and-yellow storytime chairs! Our copy machine with the big green button! Ours, ours, OURS, mwah ha ha ha!!! Because of this, some of the original art from Clarence hangs in our director’s office. Rah-rah, team.

2006-10-18T21:50:00.001-04:00

You Oughtta Be On Stickers

Hungry to know about the best books for kids? Tired of seeing lame books win the big awards? Then step right up to see the Cybil Awards! That's right -- a brand-spankin' new youth literature award that is headed up by the childlit blogging community. And guess who gets to be on one of the awards committees? Me! Woo-hoo! I get to be on the judging committee for Middle Grade Fiction. ("Cybil Awards" is taken from what happens if you say "Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards" fast. Really, really fast. And maybe drunk. I likes it.)

Hmm . . . when I see it in writing, "committee member of obscure cyber-award" doesn't sound so hot. But it feels hot. I'm very excited, even if it means that I'll actually have to get around to reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Who wants to read about a bunny named after a university? But I digress.

The real question, I suppose, is what kind of shiny gold-foil sticker we would create, if we had the money and/or general clout and public interest to do so. The problem is that I can't envision one that doesn't feature the giant embossed head of Cybil Shepherd. Errrgh! Stupid, lame Moonlighting -- ruining my imagination forever!

Anyhow, if any of you guys out there in L'Internet Land have any brilliant ideas for a Cybil Sticker (oooh, say that ten times fast), write it up in the comments. I'll take the idea I like the best and draw it, then post it here for all to see. Then everybody can rejoice in mocking my drawing skills forevermore.

Go ahead and think about it: what would best represent the children's book award of the 21st century?

2006-10-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

Will jumping on top of it get you 100 points? Or, the Off-Topic Topic of the Day

Okay . . . this has nothing to do with children's literature, but this Mario themed wedding cake has to be the cutest, coolest thing I've seen in a long time (not counting my kids). The question is, if you were six, which part would you beg for? The pirhana plant? The gold coins? The turtle shells? So many questions . . .

2006-10-16T21:28:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: The Loner by Ester Wier

He is so alone that he does not even have a name. Traveling from place to place with migrant crop pickers, ignored and neglected, he has ceased to care for others, and watches out only for himself. However, one day he finds a friend – a young girl among the crop pickers who is just his age – who shows an interest and affection for him that nobody has before. But just as the two become close, there is a horrible accident, and the boy is left to wander by himself. During his journey he meets someone else, who does not seem very loving, but bit by bit gives him the first chance he has at finding a home.

This was something like the book talk that my advisor in library school gave for The Loner to me and my classmates, and it had nearly everybody in tears. Wier’s story of the homeless, nameless boy’s journey is told in spare, solemn prose, but with an insight and introspection that makes it touchingly beautiful.

The homeless boy, after leaving the migrant workers, is found on the Montana prairie by a sheep rancher who is known only as Boss – a tall, gruff woman who keeps mainly to herself.

I think we all know what happens next: there are scads of homeless orphans in children’s literature who run into gruff adults, and they always manage to work their way into the affections of the gruff adults, and get adopted by the end of the book. (See A Single Shard or The Midwife’s Apprentice.)

The boy takes the name of David (a Biblical shepherd) and the rest of the book focuses on the careful relationship that blossoms between him and Boss as they herd sheep together over the winter. Because of this, The Loner is a bit of a slow-moving book, although there are a few scenes involving an abandoned mine, coyotes, and a bear to spice things up. However, the heartbreaking journey of David from drifter to loyal shepherd is one that shouldn’t be missed – it’s one of those simple, earthy books that makes you want to smell the earth, run through the snow, and relish the pleasures of hard work. The Loner was awarded a Newbery Honor back in its day, so it’s easy to find a copy, but like many of the runner-ups, it has fallen by the wayside. Go ahead and seek it out -- like a sunrise on the Montana plains, it’s worth the wait.

2006-10-15T16:29:00.000-04:00

New Book Roundup

Aggie and Ben: Three Stories by Lori Ries; illus. Frank W. Dormer

Fans of Cynthia Rylant’s beloved Henry and Mudge easy-reader books will jump for joy over these adventures of Aggie the pup and her owner, a sweet boy named Ben. Anyone who has owned a dog (or has wished for one) will resonate with these stories as they perfectly capture new-pet ownership: carefully choosing the best dog at the store (“A dog would sleep on my bed and be my best friend,” says the thoughtful Ben); gleefully rolling around the living room floor with a furry new friend (“I am just like Aggie,”); being grossed out by the dog’s fondness for the toilet (“I am done being a dog”), and the satisfaction of feeling a tail wagging next to you as you curl up for the night. Ries’ text is well-tailored in its simplicity; it keeps the plot interesting and funny with a minimum of detail. Dormer’s chunky stylized watercolor paintings perfectly evoke the graceful chubbiness of both Aggie and Ben; they manage to be cute without being cutesy. A lovely addition to any new reader’s bookshelf.

Museum Trip by Barbara Lehman

A young boy boards the school bus for a run-of-the-mill field trip to the city art museum that turns out to be anything but ordinary in this cryptic wordless picture book. Stopping to tie his shoe, the boy loses his way in the museum, and happens upon a secret door. Inside is a tiny room with a display case showing old etchings of mazes. Gazing upon them, the boy suddenly finds himself inside the mazes himself – leading to a quiet yet exciting adventure that will capture the imagination of anyone who likes puzzles, art, and a bit of mystery. Like in her Caldecott Honor-winning The Red Book, Lehman again relies on thick lines and bright jewel tones to describe the boy’s journey through sepia-toned mazes. An abundant use of white space is given to each page’s design to guide the reader’s eye through the story without distractions. Readers who have enjoyed the works of David Wiesner, Anthony Browne, and Chris Van Allsburg will find something exciting and intriguing here. This is a great book for a child who is always looking for something magical in the everyday – a place to let your mind travel a bit without straying too far from your own front yard.

One Potato, Two Potato by Cynthia DeFelice; illus. Andrea U’Ren

A familiar folktale is given a delightful new makeover: The O’Grady’s are so poor that they subsist on just one potato per day (“they called it breakfast, lunch, and supper, and considered themselves lucky to have it”) and have so few material possessions that they have to share everything. One day a mysterious pot is unearthed in the garden, which proves to have the magical ability to double whatever is placed inside – put in one potato, pull out two – and all their troubles are over. What really shines here is DeFelice’s text, which is brightened with clever Irish overtones (“Saints have mercy!” is the couple’s favorite exclamation). When the couple discover the pot, they don’t become greedy – they simply replicate as much food, provisions, and money as they think they will need to live comfortably, and then bury the pot “for someone else to find.” Most marvelous are U’Ren’s gently comic illustrations. The O’Grady’s are possibly the skinniest, gangliest picture-book characters I’ve ever seen, with overalls and stockings that seem to be held up by sheer will alone. A palette of earth-tones gives the illustrations a warmth that matches the humorous text. A perfect story for children living in an increasingly materialistic age.

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, Revised and Updated by Diana Wynne Jones
Can I say how tickled I am that this book has undergone a second edition? Jones takes the premise that all fantasy novels are really travel brochures and for the "PanCeltic Touring Agency," which takes people from our world for trips around "Fantasyland." This book is the essential a-to-z guide for such tourists -- in other words, a perfect platform for Jones to have tounge-in-cheek fun with every kind of cliché of the fantasy genre. Here you will learn everything about Fantasyland horses ("they are a breed unique to Fantasyland . . . they can be used just like bicycles") to princesses ("they come in two main kinds: 1. Wimps. 2. Spirited and wilful. A spirited princess will be detectable by the scattering of freckles across the bridge of her somewhat tiptilted nose") and color-coding ("black hair is Evil, particularly when combined with a corpse-white complexion"). Really, this book should be required reading for anyone who has ever given thought to writing a fantasy novel, and should appeal to fans of Jones' other work as well as for fans of Terry Pratchett. It's just laugh-out-loud funny.

2006-10-12T15:51:00.000-04:00

And Why Not Elect Toad of Toad Hall as Transportation Commissioner?

Tired of the candidates for this year's fall elections? A Seattle man named Matthew Baldwin has gone all pro-active and made campaign posters for various children's book characters. So, so inspiring . . . it's almost dazzling, isn't it?

2006-10-11T21:50:00.000-04:00

Pop-Ups A-Plenty

Whoo. Over at Roger Sutton's Blog earlier this week was a discussion regarding lousy survivor memoirs. As part of it, Sutton revealed that Barron's is publishing a pop-up book about the Irish Potato famine. Yoiks. After finding that out, I immediately surpressed my inner gag reflex and went on a mad hunt to find out more. Alas, there really isn't any more to be had (in other words: no pictures of the inside), but I did find this rather interesting digital exhibit featuring artsy pop-up and interactive books of all kinds. Not only did I find a book about the Irish potato famine (pictured at left), but one about the Washington, D.C. sniper shootings, one that features the characters from the Narnia Chronicles philosophizing about the meaning of life, and yet another that's shaped like a box of chocolates. Oh, and a very cute one about a circus that unfortunately was described by the artist thusly:

Warning: What you are about to see and hear may result in life-altering side affects such as awareness, thinking in a new light, wishing you were still oblivious, denial, emotional scarring, and most of all experiencing first hand appearance vs. reality...

Uh-huuuuuh . . .

And of course, if you like pop-ups but haven't visited this site, then you're just silly.

2006-10-10T22:07:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: The Story Vine by Anne Pellowski

So: I'm sure some of you are wondering what the heck this picture is about. Okay, fine. So I'm lazy. There's no picture of The Story Vine on Amazon or Powell's, my digital camera's out of batteries and I couldn't take a picture of my own copy, and after doing a Google Image search for "Anne Pellowski," this is the best I could come up with. This. It's a close-up shot from a folk sculpture of a storyteller -- see how the teller's mouth is open, and how there are lots of little people on her shoulders listening? Yeaaaaah, now you get it. I think it's Native American, but don't quote me on that. But enough of this -- on with The Review!

Oooooh, Anne Pellowski – the person I want to be when I grow up. (Erm, and maybe Virginia Hamilton, too.) This woman travels the globe for UNICEF, collecting folklore and teaching early literacy skills in economically-undeveloped countries. Or at least she used to. Pretty darn cool job, if you ask me.

Anyway, Pellowski has published several books of the many folktales she’s collected during all her world travels, and The Story Vine is one of the more stellar volumes. If you want to spend any time telling stories to children, you need this book.

Now, I must warn you – this isn’t like most traditional folklore anthologies. All of the stories contained in this book use some little “extra” to embellish it – whether it be a string-figure, a folk-doll, sand-drawings, or a simple fingerplay. Yeah, yeah, yeah – I know that there are lots of books out there that have stories like this (and which are kind of hokey), and I was skeptical of The Story Vine at first as well – but the amazing thing is that Pellowski manages to preserve an authentic sense of the culture from which she collected each story. She doesn’t just list each story with a title and a little “From Such-and-such Country” – she includes an brief essay explaining the history and significance of each particular type and style of story. You don’t just get a draw-and-tell story; you get anecdotes about Aboriginal Australians giving draw-and-tell stories all night long! You don’t just get a story that uses dolls; you get an essay about the origins of worry dolls and their significance to the indigenous peoples of Central America.

And did I mention that everything in the book is beautifully, concisely written and a pleasure to read? And that every section comes complete with its own bibliography for further exploration? Freakin’ awesome. Go. Go now. Go find this book at the library. What are you doing still drumming your fingers on your mouse? Go!

2006-10-09T20:06:00.000-04:00

What We Really Need Is a Big Billboard That Says, "No Fat Lit"

There's been a bit of a pattern I've been noticing in the children's literature blogworld lately: everyone's complaining, or commending, or commenting in some way about the recent glut of mediocre fantasy novels that have been hitting us over our collective heads in 865-page servings lately.

Roger Sutton made a comment or two on his blog, which garnered many, many repsonses.
Fuse #8 rejoiced over the novel The Road to Paris because it was a nice middle-grade novel instead of a chubby fantasy.
And on Oz and Ends, there's a big ol' full-blown essay about the whole thingamajing.

Three references is enough to qualify this as "the buzz," eh? My Take On It: yeah, fat fantasy trilogies are annoying -- I've always been a fantasy fan, and to tell the truth, I feel like one of those travel guide writers who are always complaining about how the beautiful little town, villa, or restaurant that used to be such a good secret is now flooded with tourists and their tacky souvenir stands. Traveling to Middle Earth, or Narnia, or Damar used to be something that few people did -- and whenever I met a fellow fantasy-traveler, it would be fun to talk about our favorite places, people, and that ripping little kiosk in Minas Tirith that sells dragon meat on a stick.

Now it seems that everybody's reading fantasy, and while it's kind of gratifying to see this genre recieve the attention that I always thought was its due, it's also frustrating to see so many lousy knockoffs of the Real McCoys. But like those tacky tourist stands, it supports the local economy -- in this case, fantasy authors -- who I hope will in turn separate the wheat from chaff and create better and newer attractions for us tourists in the future.

2006-10-08T22:19:00.000-04:00

New Book Roundup

Yes, indeed – ‘tis that time of the week again. Admittedly, I only have three new books to talk about this week, mainly because I’ve been having fun with Molvanîa: a Land Untouched By Modern Dentistry. If you missed seeing this delightful travel guide parody last year, I highly recommend giving it a good flip-through. But I digress – On With the New Books!

Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City by Kirsten Miller

Confession time: up until I had the chance to physically put my hands on this book and open it up, I thought it was a graphic novel. Can you blame me? The very-cool cover art just screams “graphic novel,” as does the book’s plot.

Drab Ananka Fishbein is friendless at her prep school when she becomes acquainted with her black-clad spy girl classmate, Kiki Strike. Kiki reminded me a little too much of Artemis Fowl – she’s parentless, lives in a house under video surveillance, and limitless wealth with which to do what she likes. However, Kiki uses her powers for good – or what she deems as good – instead of evil. When asked what she wants to be when she grows up, Kiki answers, “Dangerous.”

Together Ananka and Kiki discover and explore the “Shadow City,” a vast network of secret underground tunnels and rooms inhabited by criminals. Miller’s writing is fun, hip stuff – populated with renegade Girl Scouts, street gangs that force their victims to parade around in tutus, sly references to Alice in Wonderland, and interesting tidbits about the urban history of New York City. Chapters end with practical advice from Ananka about real-life spy work; preteen girls will just eat it up.

Waltur Buys a Pig in a Poke and Other Stories by Barbara Gregorich

Idioms have been played up for humor in children’s literature (paging Amelia Bedelia) but never with such sprightliness as they have in this book. Waltur is a somewhat bumbling but lovable bear who goes about buying a pet, earning money for honey, and digging holes for fun while his long-suffering friend Matilda gives advice like “don’t buy a pig in a poke,” or “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” Waltur follows her advice literally, which leads to hilarious dialogue reminiscent of old Abbot and Costello routines. For example, Matilda advises Waltur that he “can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Rankled by this, Waltur sets out to prove her wrong:

“Here’s the water,” said Waltur.

“So it is,” said the horse.

“I led you here,” said Waltur.

“Many thanks,” said the horse.

“Now you can drink the water,” said Waltur.

“Thank you, but no,” said the horse.

“Yes,” said Waltur. “Drink the water.”

“No,” said the horse. “I will not.”

“Why not?” asked Waltur.

“I don’t feel like it,” said the horse.

“Water is good for you,” said Waltur.

“So it is,” said the horse.

“Drink the water,” said Waltur.

“You drink it,” said the horse.

In other words, this little easy reader is enough to make a whole class of first graders dissolve into chuckles. Just don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

Now and Ben: the Modern Inventions of Benjamin Franklin by Gene Barretta

Swimming flippers, the Gulf Stream, writing desks, fire departments and bifocals: what do they have in common? They were all discovered or invented by Benjamin Franklin. With this delightful little piece of nonfiction, Barretta describes almost all of Franklins’ inventions – famous and not-so-famous – and shows their influence (or not) on the modern age. Page spreads are split into two, showing Franklin’s innovations “now” and “then,” along with how the inventions work and were inspired. Some of Franklin’s inventions that didn’t survive time are also on display here, such as the glass armonica and a rocking chair that churns butter. Bright, golden-hued illustrations have a whimsical touch to them, similar to those found in David Small’s illustrations for So You Want to Be President? to which this book makes a perfect companion.

2006-10-05T21:46:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: Piping Down the Valleys Wild, edited by Nancy Larrick

It’s a good sign when three of the first five poems in an anthology are by Karla Kuskin:

It’s full of the moon
The dogs dance out
Through brush and bush and bramle.
They howl and yowl
And growl and prowl
They amble, ramble, scramble.

Oooooo, after reviewing the kinda-melancholy City Poems earlier this week, I’m raring for something as gossamer-lovely as Piping Down the Valleys Wild. I’m usually kind of reluctant to paw through a somewhat-thick poetry anthology – especially one that doesn’t have very many illustrations – but this little number is g-o-o-d GOOD. I’ve been flipping around in it for hours and I have yet to find a poem that’s a dud. And while there’s quite a few familiar names here (Eliot, cummings, Milne, Margaret Wise Brown, Updike, Nash, Farjeon, Gwendolyn Brooks) almost everything is something that I haven’t stumbled on before. It’s arranged thematically and similar in tone to many other anthologies – most notably Prelutsky’s Random House Book of Poetry – but I must say that I am impressed on how the bulk of the poems here are definitely a cut above. Here’s another quote from a Kaye Starbird poem:

I went away last August
To summer camp in Maine,
And there I met a camper
Called Eat-it-All Elaine.

Although Elaine was quiet,
She liked to cause a stir
By acting out the nickname
Her camp-mates gave to her.

The day of our arrival
At Cabin Number Three
When girls kept coming over
To greet Elaine and me,

She took a piece of Kleenex
And calmly chewed it up,
Then strolled outside the cabin
And ate a buttercup.

Oooooo, lovely. The anthologist, Nancy Larrick, writes in the introduction that she personally road-tested all of these poems herself with kids of all ages, from nursery school on up. There’s poems in here for every age, but it isn’t condescending to the little ones or the big ones – this is simply a celebration of that most personal of art forms. Let me leave you with just one more, from Eleanor Farjeon:

Blow the Stars home, Wind, blow the Stars home
Ere Morning drowns them in golden foam.

It’s almost as good as chocolate, isn’t it? Lucky for us, this book was reissued recently, so it's pretty easy to pick up a copy -- so what are you waiting for?

2006-10-01T21:59:00.000-04:00

A So-Called "Potentially Awesome" Game

Skimming through the online edition of The Believer, I found this fabulous game called Overrated. It works like this:

Three-plus people make a bunch of cards with people, places, and things on them.

A card is read aloud.

Players silently contemplate the item’s true worth relative to its perceived worth.

Everybody does a kind of rock-paper-scissors motion.

And then simultaneously makes one of three gestures:
Hand in O-shape, held high: OVERRATED

Hand in — shape, held level: PERFECTLY RATED

Hand in inverted-U shape, held low: UNDERRATED

Then everybody discusses why people chose what they did. If you manage to get someone else to change their rating, you get a point.

So: all you people have to do is add The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane to the mix, and you're set for a fun, high-blood-pressure evening. Or possibly J.K. Rowling. Or The Newbery Medal. Or Barnes & Noble. Or . . . well, you get the picture.

Click here to download, sweeties!

2006-10-01T21:38:00.000-04:00

Hot Characters of Children’s Literature

Okay, when I first stumbled on the fabulous fuse#8’s regular feature, “Hot Men of Children’s Literature,” this is what I thought it was going to be. Granted, I was still pretty thrilled to read about real, actual, Hot People, but I still felt that it would be fun to highlight the various imaginary men that thousands of girls and women have harbored crushes on over the years. I’ve just compiled my personal Top Ten; if there are any Hot Characters I’ve overlooked, please feel free to make a bid for their inclusion. Now: Let the Hormones Roll!

Laurie from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

In my “Tearjerkers” booklist, one of my dear bleaders wrote that she can’t help but cry when Jo rejects Laurie’s proposal. Add to this the fact that Christian Bale portrayed him in the latest movie version of this story, and you can see why Laurie is the quintessential hottie of kids’ books.

Ged from The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin

It’s difficult for non-fantasy-types to get into LeGuin’s novels, but it’s worth it to get to know the dark-skinned wizard hunk of a Ged. In this book, he rescues and is rescued by a beautiful young maiden who has been trapped by a bizarre death cult . . . sighhhh . . .

The Beast from Beauty by Robin McKinley

Meg Cabot put it best in her Princess Diaries books: “Who wants a smoothie Prince, when you can have a big hairy Beast? That’s like choosing Cyclops over Wolverine, and who in their right mind would do that?” Although the Prince in McKinley’s book ain’t so bad, either. . .

Taran from Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

I choose this book out of the series, because it features Our Cute Hero wandering the earth, searching for his true identity, which makes you just wanna tuck him under your arm and take care of him, huh?

Prince Char from Ella Enchanted

Tall. Passionate. Firey temper. Fights ogres in spare time. Any questions?

Gilbert Blythe from Anne of Green Gables

Ahhh . . . the proverbial “boy from the farm next door.” (And he’s a doctor!) The best part of the Anne books is that you actually get to watch Anne and Gilbert’s relationship all the way until they’re grandparents. That’s what I call following through.

Peaceable Sherwood from The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Many of you have probably not read this book, but Peaceable is a dynamo of a Hot Character. He’s dashing, surprising, and kind of like a Robin Hood of the American Revolution. Plus, his family motto is “I always get what I want.” (Rowr!)

Christopher Heron from The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope

Okay! Okay! I tried not to list more than one Hot Character from the same author, but how can I help it – Christopher is a perfect brooding wordsmith of an Elizabethan. And Kate gets to rescue him in the end, a la “Tam Lin.” Yowza.

Theo Theodorakis from The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

I guess Theo’s the proverbial “boy from next floor.” Little Turtle Wexler has a crush on him the whole book, and after they solve the Westing murder and grow up, they get married. Awwwww.

Eugenides the Thief from The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

Okay, let’s do the Gen inventory: young, clever, smart, funny, and an excellent swordsman (though he hates to kill). And he keeps on loving Queen Irene even after she cuts off his hand. He’s just as hot in The King of Attolia, but it’s here when he’s at his crazy love-struck best. Yum.

Disagree or agree with what I wrote? Write away, right away!

2006-09-30T22:56:00.000-04:00

Forgotten Bookshelf: City Poems by Lois Lenski
I once thought I knew something about Lois Lenski, back when all I head read were her still-in-print books – happy little picture books about the seasons and things that go. Then I chanced upon City Poems, and whoa – the genesis of the New Realism movement. Who knew that back in 1954 there was a woman putting poems about street gangs and homelessness next to poems about birthdays and friendly policemen? For a moment, I thought I was re-reading The Inner City Mother Goose.

City Poems comprises a big bundle of verses inspired by Lenski’s life in New York City during the 1950s. Lenski was one of the first children’s poets to put what the introduction calls “honest realism” into her work. Most of the poems are clever little bits of rhyme about the kind of things you usually see in children’s poetry: snow days, making friends, The People in Your Neighborhood, and “Bus Stop”:

Bus stops at the corner,

Just stand right there and wait,

Here it comes, door opens,

Hop in and don’t be late.

Hop in, hop out!

Hear the driver shout.

There’s room for more

Don’t block the door,

Hop in, hop out!

It’s mostly sweet, gentle stuff with a bit of rhythm thrown in for fun – any of them could easily be adapted as a picture book (hint-hint, would-be illustrators out there). But then you stumble along a poem like “Slum Home”:

Faucet’s leaking,

Sink won’t drain;

Somebody broke

The windowpane.

Stuff a rag in

To keep out the rain.

No heat in the pipes,

The roaches play,

Chair’s broke down,

It rains all day.

Where’s my Mom?

She’s gone away.

The overall idea, I guess, is that Lenski is trying to give a loving-but-true image of the city she loves. The odd thing for me, I suppose, is that I don’t seem to see too many books for this age group – this books seems to be written for the 7-and-younger crowd – that deals with this kind of harsh reality. There’s plenty of this kind of stuff for older kids, but little-littles? Not really. (Unless you’re one of those people who considers Smoky Night appropriate for preschoolers, which I don’t.) Also, the rhymes’ sing-songy quality makes a few of the serious-subject-matter poems kind of silly. But some of them still manage to be touching. Anyway, the book is a touch dated (there’s a poem about an automat and another about an elevator boy) but it’s worth taking a look at, especially if you’re already a Lenski fan. Ooooh, and did I mention the always-excellent line illustrations? Here’s a sampling:

Love it. Oh, and please forgive the lousy cover image this time. That book was darn difficult to photograph!