Betsy Bird's Blog, page 307

Review of the Day: The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt

The Day the Crayons Quit

By Drew Daywalt

Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

Philomel (an imprint of Penguin)

$17.99

ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3

Ages 4-8

On shelves now.

It is possible to read too much into a picture book. A funny statement since what were talking about is literature for people who haven’t even seen a decade of time pass them by. But historically picture books have been places where prejudices are both intentionally and unintentionally on display. Yet for every Denver by David McKee (a picture book about the beauty of trickle down economics) you’ll find fifty people reading WAY too much into something like Rainbow Fish (Communist propaganda) or Click Clack Moo (inculcating kids into unionism). The thing is, picture books are meant to teach and inform our children. Yet along the way a parent or gatekeeper might be worried about the unintentional messages getting pushed along the way. At the end of the day you have to weigh your reactions carefully. You can’t be pointing fingers left and right, claiming authorial intent where there is none. Okay. So round about now you’re trying to figure out what the heck any of this has to do with The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. I mean, talk about an innocuous title. Why am I going on and on about unintentional messages in works of children’s fiction in preface to talking about this book? Well, here’s the trouble. I have a major problem with this story and it’s entirely possible that it’s just in my own head. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to lay out the facts as they stand and you can judge for yourself whether or not this book does indeed make a major you-can’t-do-that-in-the-21st-century mistake, or if I’m simply suffering from a case of Reading Too Much Into It. Either way, it sure makes this Daywalt/Jeffers collaboration into an interesting point of discussion.

Duncan’s your average kid. Not the kind of person who’s going to expect that when he reaches for his crayons at school he is, instead, going to find himself with a bundle of letters. Each letter is from a different crayon voicing their complaints. Says gray, “I know that elephants are gray but that’s a lot of space to color in all by myself.” Or pink saying, “Could you please use me sometime to color the occasional pink dinosaur or monster or cowboy?” Red and blue need a rest, white feels empty, yellow and orange both claim the sun, and all black ever wanted in life was, for once, to color in a rainbow or a beach ball. By the end of the letters Duncan wants to make the crayons happy. And that’s when he comes up with the perfect solution to everybody’s woes.

Now let’s talk crayon history for a bit. This is fun. In 1962 the U.S. Civil Rights Movement was underway. America was going through big changes. Assumptions that had lain dormant for years were finally getting challenged and even crayons were getting a double glance. You see 1962 was the year that Crayola decided to officially change the crayon known as “flesh” to “peach”. You see where I am going with this, I suspect. While white children certainly would use the color as flesh, it wasn’t exactly on the up and up to assume that white was the de facto skin color. Fast forward to 2013 and the publication of The Day the Crayons Quit. Peach does indeed make an appearance in this book and in that section complains vociferously that its wrapper has been removed. “Now I’m NAKED and too embarrassed to leave the crayon box. I don’t even have any underwear!” That Daywalt is linking peach to flesh again is no crime. Interestingly, on the previous page the pink crayon has been making a very different complaint about never being allowed to draw cowboys or dinos or monsters. The monster that it HAS drawn is covering its private parts, obviously believing itself to be naked as well, as the dinosaur points and laughs. So. Pink and peach are clearly equated with flesh tones.

Then what’s the deal with brown?

There is only one vaguely brownish crayon in this book and it is the much maligned beige. The official brown does not make an appearance it would seem. Beige’s sadness is the fact that while “Brown gets all the bears, ponies and puppies . . . the only things I get are turkey dinners (if I’m lucky) and wheat.”

Mmm hmm.

This is precisely where the difficulty comes into play. How much am I reading into this through my own prejudices? Let me give you a bit of comparison. This year is also seeing the publication of The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers. In that particular book a little white rabbit keeps seeing a “scary” big black rabbit that he runs away from. The black rabbit is, in fact, the little rabbit’s own shadow and at the end he comes to love the big black rabbit after all. A librarian recently commented to me that it would have been far preferable if the little rabbit had been brown or some other color. Otherwise you have a book where a white character fears a big black one. At first I was inclined to agree, but after thinking about it I wasn’t so sure. After all, the white rabbit’s fears are entirely in its own head. There’s also the fact that the book, I believe, is originally Australian, so the author wasn’t working with a lot of the codes and keys common in American culture. I was even reminded of the huge brouhaha surrounding The Rabbits’ Wedding by Garth Williams. In 1958 the Alabama state library system removed the book from circulation because it featured a black rabbit and a white rabbit getting married. But sometimes a rabbit is just a rabbit.

So is a crayon just a crayon? I think the difference may lie in what a kid gets out of reading this book. In the case of The Black Rabbit, few kids are going to equate themselves with fluffy bunnies. Even if they do, the black rabbit is ultimately the hero of the story. There’s a bit of a difference with crayons. Kids are constantly coloring themselves and the people they love with the crayons they have on hand. Crayola, knowing this, even released a brand of multicultural crayons of varying brown tones in response to the public’s desire for that very product. So to produce a book where pink and flesh are equated with skin tones and that possibility isn’t even considered with beige or brown makes for a complicated reading. It’s an easy mistake to make if you’re not thinking about it at first, but you would have thought that someone in the course of editing this thing might have brought the point up with Mr. Daywalt. Heck, they might have brought it up with Jeffers too, since he’s the one who came up with the naked monster picture in the first place.

Getting away from brown, beige, and peach crayons entirely, let’s look at the book in terms of its other merits. When I was a kid I definitely ascribed personalities to inanimate objects. Not just dolls and toys, oh no. I could turn a game of War into a long drawn out romantic epic, thanks to the personalities ascribed to various playing cards. And crayons were no exception. Each one had a different part to play. They dealt with jealousies and romances, the whole nine yards. So in that frame of mind, The Day the Crayons Quit speaks to something very real. Kids like to believe that the objects that they play with are as invested in the experience as the kids themselves. So Daywalt has clearly found a unique but necessary niche. If he follows the book up with a story of playing cards we’ll know he’s on the right track.

This is also an epistolary picture book. I don’t know if Daywalt knows this, but a common assignment given by a variety of different elementary school teachers requires kids to read epistolary books (Dear Mrs. LaRue, The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, etc.). As such, The Day the Crayons Quit is no doubt destined to remain on multiple children’s book lists for decades and decades to come.

Which is a bit of a pity since the book itself is tailor made for an adult readership. Sure, some kids are going to get a real kick out of it. But as I read through the book I kept thinking that were it not for the art of Oliver Jeffers, this title would be a difficult read. After all, it’s pretty much all about the words. Jeffers does what he can to give as much life and vitality as he can to the text, but there are twelve letters in here and around the orange and yellow crayons you’ll be forgiven if your attention starts to wane.

That’s why the success of the book (and success it indeed is) can be ascribed primarily to its illustrator. I began to notice that the childlike style of the art can really, believably be the style of a kid. This is undoubtedly why Jeffers was picked for the project in the first place. Aside from David Shannon it can be difficult to find artists that replicate children’s art styles without coming off as half-cooked. Jeffers has also taken great pains to put in as many small clever details as possible, and it makes for a very rewarding rereading. At first you wouldn’t notice. His Santa on a fire truck is straightforward. The dragon accidentally burning a clump of grapes is cute but for me the book really picks up with (no surprise here) the moment when Jeffers gets to draw a penguin. Even the paper he chooses for each crayon is interesting and significant. Admittedly I was a little surprised that the purple crayon’s letter wasn’t written on lined paper (since it’s such a stickler for staying inside the lines) while the gray crayon’s was. His faux coloring books are fun in and of themselves but it’s the final picture that’s worth it. There are a lot of hat tips to the crayons’ demands to be found here, from black rainbows to white cats. I think the character of Duncan still totally forgot to pay heed to blue’s request, but otherwise it’s on the up and up. You could even ignore that all the humans are drawn with pink or peach or white crayons, if you had half a mind to.

That’s sort of what makes the problems I have with the book such a bummer. There’s really good stuff going on here! Oliver Jeffers is fun to watch no matter what he does and Daywalt has the makings of a fine author for kids. The troubles come when you look at what the book is saying. Fans of a certain stripe are sure to disregard my concerns with a wave of their hand. “She’s reading WAY too much into this”, they might say. Probably. But it seems to me that you cannot write a book about crayons and mention peach and pink as naked without acknowledging that not every kid in the world thinks of those colors as a flesh tones. I mean, that’s just obvious. Here’s beige again: “I am BEIGE and I am proud.” Beige power, eh? Come on, little crayon. Time for you to think outside the box.

On shelves now.

Review of the Day: The Day the Crayons Quite by Drew Daywalt

The Day the Crayons Quit

By Drew Daywalt

Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

Philomel (an imprint of Penguin)

$17.99

ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3

Ages 4-8

On shelves now.

It is possible to read too much into a picture book. A funny statement since what were talking about is literature for people who haven’t even seen a decade of time pass them by. But historically picture books have been places where prejudices are both intentionally and unintentionally on display. Yet for every Denver by David McKee (a picture book about the beauty of trickle down economics) you’ll find fifty people reading WAY too much into something like Rainbow Fish (Communist propaganda) or Click Clack Moo (inculcating kids into unionism). The thing is, picture books are meant to teach and inform our children. Yet along the way a parent or gatekeeper might be worried about the unintentional messages getting pushed along the way. At the end of the day you have to weigh your reactions carefully. You can’t be pointing fingers left and right, claiming authorial intent where there is none. Okay. So round about now you’re trying to figure out what the heck any of this has to do with The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. I mean, talk about an innocuous title. Why am I going on and on about unintentional messages in works of children’s fiction in preface to talking about this book? Well, here’s the trouble. I have a major problem with this story and it’s entirely possible that it’s just in my own head. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to lay out the facts as they stand and you can judge for yourself whether or not this book does indeed make a major you-can’t-do-that-in-the-21st-century mistake, or if I’m simply suffering from a case of Reading Too Much Into It. Either way, it sure makes this Daywalt/Jeffers collaboration into an interesting point of discussion.

Duncan’s your average kid. Not the kind of person who’s going to expect that when he reaches for his crayons at school he is, instead, going to find himself with a bundle of letters. Each letter is from a different crayon voicing their complaints. Says gray, “I know that elephants are gray but that’s a lot of space to color in all by myself.” Or pink saying, “Could you please use me sometime to color the occasional pink dinosaur or monster or cowboy?” Red and blue need a rest, white feels empty, yellow and orange both claim the sun, and all black ever wanted in life was, for once, to color in a rainbow or a beach ball. By the end of the letters Duncan wants to make the crayons happy. And that’s when he comes up with the perfect solution to everybody’s woes.

Now let’s talk crayon history for a bit. This is fun. In 1962 the U.S. Civil Rights Movement was underway. America was going through big changes. Assumptions that had lain dormant for years were finally getting challenged and even crayons were getting a double glance. You see 1962 was the year that Crayola decided to officially change the crayon known as “flesh” to “peach”. You see where I am going with this, I suspect. While white children certainly would use the color as flesh, it wasn’t exactly on the up and up to assume that white was the de facto skin color. Fast forward to 2013 and the publication of The Day the Crayons Quit. Peach does indeed make an appearance in this book and in that section complains vociferously that its wrapper has been removed. “Now I’m NAKED and too embarrassed to leave the crayon box. I don’t even have any underwear!” That Daywalt is linking peach to flesh again is no crime. Interestingly, on the previous page the pink crayon has been making a very different complaint about never being allowed to draw cowboys or dinos or monsters. The monster that it HAS drawn is covering its private parts, obviously believing itself to be naked as well, as the dinosaur points and laughs. So. Pink and peach are clearly equated with flesh tones.

Then what’s the deal with brown?

There is only one vaguely brownish crayon in this book and it is the much maligned beige. The official brown does not make an appearance it would seem. Beige’s sadness is the fact that while “Brown gets all the bears, ponies and puppies . . . the only things I get are turkey dinners (if I’m lucky) and wheat.”

Mmm hmm.

This is precisely where the difficulty comes into play. How much am I reading into this through my own prejudices? Let me give you a bit of comparison. This year is also seeing the publication of The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers. In that particular book a little white rabbit keeps seeing a “scary” big black rabbit that he runs away from. The black rabbit is, in fact, the little rabbit’s own shadow and at the end he comes to love the big black rabbit after all. A librarian recently commented to me that it would have been far preferable if the little rabbit had been brown or some other color. Otherwise you have a book where a white character fears a big black one. At first I was inclined to agree, but after thinking about it I wasn’t so sure. After all, the white rabbit’s fears are entirely in its own head. There’s also the fact that the book, I believe, is originally Australian, so the author wasn’t working with a lot of the codes and keys common in American culture. I was even reminded of the huge brouhaha surrounding The Rabbits’ Wedding by Garth Williams. In 1958 the Alabama state library system removed the book from circulation because it featured a black rabbit and a white rabbit getting married. But sometimes a rabbit is just a rabbit.

So is a crayon just a crayon? I think the difference may lie in what a kid gets out of reading this book. In the case of The Black Rabbit, few kids are going to equate themselves with fluffy bunnies. Even if they do, the black rabbit is ultimately the hero of the story. There’s a bit of a difference with crayons. Kids are constantly coloring themselves and the people they love with the crayons they have on hand. Crayola, knowing this, even released a brand of multicultural crayons of varying brown tones in response to the public’s desire for that very product. So to produce a book where pink and flesh are equated with skin tones and that possibility isn’t even considered with beige or brown makes for a complicated reading. It’s an easy mistake to make if you’re not thinking about it at first, but you would have thought that someone in the course of editing this thing might have brought the point up with Mr. Daywalt. Heck, they might have brought it up with Jeffers too, since he’s the one who came up with the naked monster picture in the first place.

Getting away from brown, beige, and peach crayons entirely, let’s look at the book in terms of its other merits. When I was a kid I definitely ascribed personalities to inanimate objects. Not just dolls and toys, oh no. I could turn a game of War into a long drawn out romantic epic, thanks to the personalities ascribed to various playing cards. And crayons were no exception. Each one had a different part to play. They dealt with jealousies and romances, the whole nine yards. So in that frame of mind, The Day the Crayons Quit speaks to something very real. Kids like to believe that the objects that they play with are as invested in the experience as the kids themselves. So Daywalt has clearly found a unique but necessary niche. If he follows the book up with a story of playing cards we’ll know he’s on the right track.

This is also an epistolary picture book. I don’t know if Daywalt knows this, but a common assignment given by a variety of different elementary school teachers requires kids to read epistolary books (Dear Mrs. LaRue, The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, etc.). As such, The Day the Crayons Quit is no doubt destined to remain on multiple children’s book lists for decades and decades to come.

Which is a bit of a pity since the book itself is tailor made for an adult readership. Sure, some kids are going to get a real kick out of it. But as I read through the book I kept thinking that were it not for the art of Oliver Jeffers, this title would be a difficult read. After all, it’s pretty much all about the words. Jeffers does what he can to give as much life and vitality as he can to the text, but there are twelve letters in here and around the orange and yellow crayons you’ll be forgiven if your attention starts to wane.

That’s why the success of the book (and success it indeed is) can be ascribed primarily to its illustrator. I began to notice that the childlike style of the art can really, believably be the style of a kid. This is undoubtedly why Jeffers was picked for the project in the first place. Aside from David Shannon it can be difficult to find artists that replicate children’s art styles without coming off as half-cooked. Jeffers has also taken great pains to put in as many small clever details as possible, and it makes for a very rewarding rereading. At first you wouldn’t notice. His Santa on a fire truck is straightforward. The dragon accidentally burning a clump of grapes is cute but for me the book really picks up with (no surprise here) the moment when Jeffers gets to draw a penguin. Even the paper he chooses for each crayon is interesting and significant. Admittedly I was a little surprised that the purple crayon’s letter wasn’t written on lined paper (since it’s such a stickler for staying inside the lines) while the gray crayon’s was. His faux coloring books are fun in and of themselves but it’s the final picture that’s worth it. There are a lot of hat tips to the crayons’ demands to be found here, from black rainbows to white cats. I think the character of Duncan still totally forgot to pay heed to blue’s request, but otherwise it’s on the up and up. You could even ignore that all the humans are drawn with pink or peach or white crayons, if you had half a mind to.

That’s sort of what makes the problems I have with the book such a bummer. There’s really good stuff going on here! Oliver Jeffers is fun to watch no matter what he does and Daywalt has the makings of a fine author for kids. The troubles come when you look at what the book is saying. Fans of a certain stripe are sure to disregard my concerns with a wave of their hand. “She’s reading WAY too much into this”, they might say. Probably. But it seems to me that you cannot write a book about crayons and mention peach and pink as naked without acknowledging that not every kid in the world thinks of those colors as a flesh tones. I mean, that’s just obvious. Here’s beige again: “I am BEIGE and I am proud.” Beige power, eh? Come on, little crayon. Time for you to think outside the box.

On shelves now.

Video Sunday: Pondering Book Trailers with Live Actors

Normally I don’t ascribe much in a way of topics to my Video Sundays.  They have a tendency to be a haphazard blending of whatever happens to catch my eye in a given week and saved links from peculiar sources.  However, after a conversation with fellow blogger Gregory K about book trailers I realized that I’ve never seen an accounting of a relatively recent phenomenon: Book trailers starring live actors.  These are the trailers that try to cling the closest to movie trailers in one form or another to varying degrees of success.

This is by no means an exhaustive listing of these trailers, by the way.  If such a list is your goal the closest I can offer you is Random House’s YouTube feed.  They seem to do these kinds of trailers with the most consistent frequency.

This phenomenon of which I speak is by no means new.  Live action book trailers have been around for years and years and though I’ve noticed them vaguely over time, I never stopped to think about the thought process that goes into a decision to do a trailer in this style.  If you’re willing to put the money into it, trailers tend to be Flash animation affairs, ridiculously creative, or live action (though certainly this doesn’t preclude either Flash or live action to be creative too).

Now the first of its kind that I ever saw was for a long since forgotten (by me) fantasy novel that’s I’m fairly certain was produced by Harper Collins roughly 6 or 7 years ago but that doesn’t appear to be on their YouTube page.  A pity I can’t remember the title because the trailer itself shocked me.  We were allowed to do this now?  Film trailers that looked like movies?

Worst case scenario, a live action trailer feels like a sad pale imitation of a B-List movie trailer.  Best case scenario?  Behold:

See, that’s how you do it.  If I’m not too much mistaken, this was entirely created by author N.D. Wilson himself.  Everything from the shots to the actors (including Joel Courtney from the film Super 8) to the locations.  This is a rarity in a business where, by and large, these live action trailers are created by the publishing companies themselves.  For an author to take on something of this scope . . . well that’s an uncommon anomaly.  Worth it when it came to sales, I hope.

Books that already have a big push behind them have also gone this route.  I don’t think Wonder by R.J. Palacio necessarily needed the help of this trailer but its 89,000 views probably didn’t hurt it either.

So what’s the thinking behind these?  That kids will be tricked into wanting to read these books?  How are they supposed to even find these trailers in the first place?  Are they supposed to go viral?  Maybe so.  I certainly saw firsthand the effectiveness of these trailers when I watched the Cinder one with the kids in a book group I ran.  In spite of the somewhat jarring narrator’s voice, the kids watched this trailer roughly 10 times in a row, picking apart the casting and insisting on pausing time after time again.  Final Conclusion: The prince is insufficiently cute but they liked the casting of Cinder herself.

Here in 2013 I’ve actually not run into all that many live action trailers.  Possibly this marks a shift away from that style of marketing.  More likely is the fact that since I eschew YA book trailers, most of the live action work is taking place for teen readers.  Exceptions include The Tribe: Homeroom Headhunters by Clay McLeod Chapman.

In the end, until we see some hard numbers that say whether or not a book trailer, to say nothing of live action trailers, have any kind of impact on a book’s success we may as well just sit back and enjoy the creativity at work.  If this is a trend it’s a sporadic one.  Let’s just see if it has any kind of legs.

Exclusive Book Trailer Premiere: Chick-o-Saurus Rex

Giveaways don’t make my heart beat faster and blog tours leave me cold.  But offer me an exclusive on a cover release or a book trailer and look how excited I get.  I’m positively giddy.  Today’s is particularly exciting for me because it’s a chance to highlight a fellow blogger-turned-author.  Over the years I’m sure a number of you have stumbled across Lenore Appelhans and her blog Presenting Lenore.  Well, Lenore and husband Daniel Jennewein have collaborated yet again and the result is Chick-a-Saurus Rex.  It’s the logical extension of the idea that if birds evolved from dinosaurs, surely that might give some of those fowl grandiose ideas.

So here, ladies and gents, is the official trailer of said book.

For more videos and info on the book you can go here.  Or, as Lenore described it, “Also, if you want to see me with swamp hair, check out this CHICK promo video where Daniel and talk about our process and we share a hilarious dinosaur joke.”

Fusenews: Gray skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face!

Fusenews Fusenews

Fusey Oozy Fusenews

Fusenews Fusenews

Eat it up . . . . YUM!*

Oh we are high spirits here in New York now that the weather has cooled down a tad.  So let’s keep the party going strong.  It’s news time!

Undoubtedly many of you encountered the recent New York Times article “I’m Tired of Reading Out Loud to My Son, O.K.?” by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic.  Eschewing knee jerk reactions, anyone who has ever read to a small child for long periods of time will recognize what Lucianovic is saying here.  However, it was Jules Danielson who created the best possible response to the piece in her Kirkus blog post Reading Aloud.  Jules is dead on in her assessment.  God, can you imagine only having books like Goodnight Moon and Rainbow Fish to read to your child?  It’s enough to make me want to send a care package of Barnett/Blackall/Santat/Rex/Scieszka/Gravett and more to poor Ms. Lucianovic, just to spare her.


Years ago Erica Perl wrote an article for Salon called Great kids’ books about financial ruin.  Since the piece came out in 2008 it’s a bit out of date and the slideshow, for whatever reason, no longer works.  Still, fear not.  If it’s titles for a moneyless age you crave, look no further than this U.S. News and World Report piece The Best Children’s Books for Money Lessons.  Make that The Best Children’s Picture Books for Money Lessons, since chapter books are few and far between here (always excepting the exceptional Ramona).  A little baffled by the inclusion of that pluck-out-your-eyeballs bad Dolly Parton title, but otherwise it’s an interesting list.


Wantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantwant . . . .

…. wantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantwantwaaaaaaaaaaant . . .

In other news the kids of Bank Street have wrapped up their thoughts on Allie Brosh’s book jacket project.  But even before they did that they got to actually discuss these issues with honest-to-god book editors.  Sheesh!  Some lucky kids!


Out of professional jealousy I rarely link to reviews other people have made of upcoming children’s books that I myself intend to review.  That said, I clearly haven’t been paying enough attention to Teach Mentor Texts.  Their review of Peter Brown’s Mr. Tiger Goes Wild covers whole swaths of interesting stuff.  Clearly I need to read their site more often.


Heads up, francophiles!  Guess who’s coming to the States in November?  Stay tuned for more details.  Meanwhile, if you’d like a handy dandy PDF of the best French children’s books (in French, not English) available in the States, my fellow NYPL librarian Libbhy Romero whipped up this list.


Happy news for happy people (it’s just that kind of day).  Terry Pratchett is still writing his books and giving talks.  Hooray!


You’re never too old not to enjoy a rousing alternative epilogue to Harry Potter.  Zounds!


Royal baby news is finally abating.  As such, I was delighted to read this poem for the occasion by Michael Rosen.  Right on, man.  Thanks to Playing By the Book for the link!

 

I have a perpetual list going right now of all the children’s literary statues in the United States that I know of.  Sadly, most of the time I don’t hear about them unless they’ve been stolen or vandalized.  Such was the case when a Runaway Bunny got the brunt of it recently.  Who knew there even was one?

 

Happy Highlights news is out there for all you incipient writers.

The Highlights Foundation in northeastern Pennsylvania has openings in some Fall workshops for writers for children and young adults. Fairy Tales Revisited, Advanced Illustration, Biography, Picture Books, and much more. To find out more, go to:

http://www.highlightsfoundation.org/upcoming-workshops

 

I love this recent SLJ encapsulation of the Maureen Johnson coverflip creation and where it has led in the end.  Always nice to get a conclusion on these types of things.


Daily Image:

I could actually go so far as to read the New Yorker blog The Page Turner’s piece Internet Book Fetishists Versus Anti-Fetishists. I really could.

OR . . . I could just post a picture of “Withdrawn from Circulation” by Wendy Kawabata. I think you know where I’m going with this.

Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

*To be sung to the tune of Fish Heads.

Press Release Fun: SCBWI Summer Conference

July 29, 2013, Los Angeles— This weekend the most prominent names in the field of children’s books will gather for the Society of Children’s Book Writers Summer Conference August 2-5, 2013 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Century City. The conference will boast an array of specialized workshops and intensives given by top agents, editors, and award-winning authors and illustrators of children’s books. This year’s exciting lineup of speakers include: Laurie Halse Anderson, Mac Barnett, Matt de la Peña, Bruce Degen, Jarrett Krosoczka, Peter Lerangis, Carolyn Mackler, Richard Peck, Jon Scieszka, David Wiesner, and many more.

 

The conference offers attendees the unique chance to progress their careers with a variety of workshops and showcases given by leaders in the industry.  The Summer Conference hosts sample manuscript and portfolio critiques and agent and editor panels discussing the state of the market and genre trends.

 

During the three-day event, conference goers will have the chance to meet with icons in children’s publishing, and perhaps become an icon in the making themselves; SCBWI’s Executive Director Lin Oliver says, “Over the years we’ve been doing the conferences, literally hundreds of authors and illustrators have been discovered.  It’s a pleasure to see people who were once attendees now on the faculty and leaders in our field.”

 

Live coverage from SCBWI’s TEAM BLOG as well as post-conference photos and highlights can be found at www.scbwi.blogspot.com  and on www.scbwi.org. Interview requests with Lin Oliver and Stephen Mooser can be directed to SCBWI Conference Coordinator Sara Rutenberg at sararutenberg@scbwi.org.

 

 

About SCBWI

 

Founded in 1971, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is one of the largest existing writers’ and illustrators’ organizations, with over 22,000 members worldwide. It is the only organization specifically for those working in the fields of children’s literature, magazines, film, television, and multi-media. The organization was founded by Stephen Mooser (President) and Lin Oliver (Executive Direc-tor), both of whom are well-published children’s book authors and leaders in the world of children’s literature.  For more information about the Summer Conference, please visit www.scbwi.org.

Review of the Day: Locomotive by Brian Floca

Locomotive

By Brian Floca

Atheneum (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)

$17.99

ISBN: 978-1-4169-9415-2

Ages 4 and up

On shelves September 3rd

Many childhood obsessions come down to sheer scale. Whether it’s dinosaurs or trucks (the modern, smog belching dinosaur equivalent) or even princesses (adults are large, no matter how you approach them), size matters. But the kids who loves trains hold a special place in every children’s librarian’s heart. Train lovers are the nerds of the toddler world. They revel in complexity. And as with all obsessions, some kids grow out of them and some become even more enthralled. What sets Brian Floca’s Locomotive apart from the pack is the simple fact that not only does his book speak to these older children who never quite let go of their love of the choo-choo, but there is enough unique text in this book to rope in readers both young and old who’ve never given two thoughts to the train phenomenon. Couching his unique work of history in a you-are-there framework, Floca gives context to a slice of American history too often glossed over. The results, quite frankly, surpass any nonfiction work for children that has ever dared to try and bring to life the power and grandeur of the railroad system.

“Here is a road made for crossing the country, a new road of rails made for people to ride.” As we read these words we are standing in the center of some railroad tracks staring on a beautiful sunny day at the horizon where they disappear. A couple pages cover the creation of those tracks that were part of the transcontinental railway system, and then we meet our average family. In Omaha, Nebraska, 1869, a family waits for their train. When at last it arrives they board, bound for San Francisco. From here, Floca takes you through every step of this trip. He introduces people like the brakemen or the conductor. He discusses what makes the train run and the places you pass along the way. Everything from toilets and food to sleeping arrangements and rickety bridges are discussed. By the end the family arrives in one piece in San Francisco, grateful to the train but relieved to be off it once more. Backmatter includes an extensive “Note on the Locomotive” as well as a useful listing of various sources.

I suspect that on a first glance Locomotive appears to be intimidating. Not just in terms of the scope of the outing but also the fact that when you first lift the cover you are presented with two packed pages of information (and those are just the endpapers!). Before your beamish eyes is a map of where the Pacific Railroad ran in 1869, some post-Civil War context, and background on the golden spike. Lift the bookflap and you’ll discover an ad for the railroad (Floca is always very careful to completely cover this area of the book, just in case libraries glue that flap down. You would be forgiven for thinking that the back endpapers of the book would be a replicate of the front endpapers . . . and you would be wholly and entirely wrong. At the end you’ll find an in-depth explanation of what it is that makes the steam train go. Written sections and diagrams galore. If there is a downside to all this it would have to be the fact that for the skittish, these endpapers seem to make the book seem too old for them. One hopes that they’ll flip another page or two and see that, in fact, Floca has taken pains to write in a simple style that can be appreciated by young and old alike. Maybe the title page with its family photograph and telegram from a father urging his family to come west will properly set the stage for the story to come.

I stare at one picture in this book in particular. It’s not the most awe-inspiring shot you’ll find in Locomotive. Most people will probably pass it by without a second thought, but I can’t stop looking at it. It’s an image over the shoulder of either the fireman or the engineer past the engine, down the tracks. You’re behind the man and you can see the soft fold of his ear and the tiny hairs all along his jaw line, throat and cheek. It’s remarkably intimate, but just one of countless beautiful images spotted throughout the book. Floca has always played with his watercolors, inks, acrylics, and gouache like a master, and what he has done here is not all that different from what he did in his previous book Moonshot. In that title, Floca was going for awe. Indeed, he is probably one of the very few nonfiction artists I know of that even dares to attempt to inspire awe in his readership. For Moonshot the feeling came from witnessing not just the moon and the earth from space, but the accomplishments of the people who sent the first humans there. In Locomotive, Floca replicates both the wonder felt at seeing the trains in all their glory, as well as the awe deserved of those men who built it in the first place.

Recently I heard someone comment that though Brian Floca is appreciated as a master of the watercolor form, he has never been fully appreciated as a writer. That’s the long and the short of it all right. From the start of this book Floca has the wherewithal to put his tale in true context. The first people you see in the book are the Chinese workers who helped build the tracks from the East. On the opposite page the Irish and African-Americans who built it from the west (and you’re a better man than I if you can keep yourself from thinking about scenes from Blazing Saddles at this time). He takes care to note the different ethnicities that were responsible for the transcontinental railroad’s creation (as well as the people it displaced along the way). As you read you can’t help but taste some of his words across your tongue. He didn’t have to fill his book with delicious turns of phrase. The fact that he did is part of what sets this book above its kin. For example, “Hear the clear, hard call of her bell: CLANG-CLANG! CLANG-CLANG! CLANG-CLANG! Hear the HISSSSSSSSS and the SPIT of the steam! Hear the engine breathe like a beast: HUFF HUFF HUFF!” As odd as it sounds, Floca has created an older nonfiction readaloud picture book for large groups or one-on-one reads. Note too how for all its length, Floca has synthesized the experience of the ride of this train down to its most essential parts.

It’s not a new phenomenon by any stretch of the imagination, but I am rather interested in a narrative nonfiction technique that Floca uses here that has really taken off lately. Thanks to the rise of the Core Curriculum there’s this increase of interest in creating interesting nonfiction. One surefire way of getting the job done? Pull the old You Are There trick. This allows the author the freedom of fiction writing within the confines of pure unadulterated fact. Recent examples include Ick Yuck Eew Our Gross American History and You Are the First Kid On Mars (to name but a few). Floca did something similar when he wrote Moonshot a couple years ago, but Locomotive takes the format to a whole new level. We are with the kids every step of the journey, but since the children themselves aren’t real doesn’t that make the book fiction? Not a jot. Because the kiddos are average travelers and because they haven’t names or identities, they’re representative of the whole. Even better, the book doesn’t say what “they” do or “they” see but rather directs its instructions and information at “you” the reader. They are you, you are them, and that makes the whole journey a lot more interesting than it would if you were simply thrown a series of dull, dry facts.

There is only one objection that can seriously be lobbed at Locomotive at this time. I am referring, of course, to its size. We live in an era where there is an understood and prescribed number of pages for every book we read. Picture books, whether they be fiction or nonfiction, are expected to be 32 pages, 48 at the most. Locomotive clocks in instead at a whopping 64 in total. Could it have been reduced and cut? Certainly. A buzz saw could have cut through the descriptions and facts. It’s just that the feel of truly riding on this train and experiencing not just the smells, sights, and sleepless nights of the journey, but also the sheer amount of time it truly used to take the trek across a couple states, would have been gone. There is a method to Floca’s madness. He’s not being loquacious out of sheer indulgence. He’s cultivating a reading experience above and beyond anything else out there. So the second person narrative works in tandem with the number of pages, with the final result that if nothing else a kid is going to look up from this book at the end and understand, maybe for the first time, that just because we can run a girdle around the globe now, time was that a man, woman, or child couldn’t just jet set across large swaths of land without ending up a different person on the other side.

I don’t particularly care for trains. Don’t think about them much either. In the 21st century a person could be forgiven for going years without the wisp of a thought of a train ever entering their consciousness. But even as a train-neutral adult I cannot help but find myself caught up in Floca’s enthusiasm when I read this book. The transcontinental express changed everything for America, and yet, until now, it has never been properly lauded in a book for children large and small. Locomotive fulfills that need, and then goes above and beyond the call of duty to give its readers the thrill of being there themselves. Would that all works recounting history could be imbued with Floca’s wit and sense and scale. It’s a big, long, dense book and frankly after reading it you won’t have it any other way. Ride the rails.

On shelves September 3rd.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

Train by Elisha Cooper

The Last Train by Gordon Titcomb, illustrated by Wendell Minor

The Stourbridge Lion by Karl Zimmerman, illustrated by Steven Walker

Professional Reviews:

A star from Kirkus
A star from Publishers Weekly

Other Reviews:

Shelf Awareness

Video Sunday: Gingerbread houses, red carpets, and virtual toilet paper

How do, folks.  Well, as you might have heard, this past ALA Caldecott/Newbery/Wilder Banquet saw me interviewing hoards of famous people alongside the multi-talented Jim Averbeck and partner-in-crime Kristin Clark.  Those videos have now all appeared online at a single solitary location: Kidlit Red Carpet.  It is very unfortunate that my interview with Laura Rodgers failed to fully record thanks to a dying camera battery.  Sorry, Laura!

Of the multitude of interviews on the site (including almost every single one of the winners) I am going to eschew the usual suspects and post here my talk with Roger Sutton.  In this interview Roger reveals the strangest Newbery/Caldecott Banquet he ever attended.  And no, it wasn’t the Stephen Gammell year.  Check it:

Next up, a book trailer that (for once) is guaranteed to make you want to see the book itself firsthand.  If I’m not too much mistaken Once Upon a Northern Night by Jean E. Pendziwol and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault already has a star from Kirkus.  This video then does a splendid job of setting the mood.

Speaking of mood, this edition of Hansel and Gretel by Sybille Schenker may not be available in the States yet, but I have it on good authority that it’s coming soon.  Phew!

Of course the nature of the internet as it is, once you start noticing the related videos on the side of the screen it’s all over.  That’s how I found this French production of Hansel and Gretel anyway.

As many of you already know, when it comes to children’s literary podcasts the pickings can be slim.  That’s why it’s such a pleasure to listen to Katie Davis.  Recently Katie conducted a webinar and, generous soul that she is, made it available online.  In her own words this video provides:

150 Resources for Writers
answers to a listener’s question by Kelly Light, Diandra Mae, and Peter Brown
how you can create drag and drop animation with my art using Powtoon!
how I got the deal going to do this
how you can request images for me to draw and Powtoon to put into the Katie Davis theme

It’s in your best interests if you’re a writer and afraid of some aspects of self-promotion available to you, to check this out.

And for our off-topic video, is it really all that off-topic?  Certainly it isn’t the first French video today and the message will certainly resonate with a whole swath of you.  I don’t usually post ads, but once in a while I make an exception.

Thanks to Mom for the link.

Press Release Fun: A New Education Director at The Carle

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

Announces New Director of Education

 

Amherst, MA (July 25, 2013) The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art is pleased to announce that Courtney M. Waring will be joining the staff in July as the Director of Education. Waring takes over the helm for Rosemary Agoglia, who retired in June after more than ten years with The Carle.

 

For the past ten years, Waring has worked at the Delaware Art Museum, serving in the role of Director of Education since 2007. Prior to that, she was an educator at The Barnes Foundation and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In addition to her extensive museum education work, she has experience as a classroom teacher at an elementary school in Pennsylvania.

 

Waring has served as a grant reviewer for The Institute for Museum and Library Services and the Smithsonian Community Grants. She has been an Education Committee representative for the American Alliance of Museums, where she has made numerous presentations, and received awards for her work. She was also a contributing author to a book entitled An Alliance of Spirit: Museum and School Partnerships. Waring holds a Bachelors of Arts in Art History from Rosemont College, a Masters of Arts in Art History from The Pennsylvania State University, and a graduate level certification in elementary education from West Chester University.

 

“We are delighted to welcome Courtney to this important position. She brings a passion for teaching, art history, and museum work,” said Alexandra Kennedy, executive director. “The Carle has a talented education team doing some very exciting, innovative work, which was all spearheaded by our very talented founding education director, Rosemary Agoglia. Courtney comes to us with the experience and the creativity to further grow and develop our educational reach.”

 

As the Director of Education, Waring will direct the Museum’s educational programming and represent The Carle in the national and international dialogue about the educational value of picture books.  The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, has been expanding its educational programs every year. This year, the Museum received two important awards for its educational work. In February, The Carle accepted the Massachusetts Commonwealth Award, the state’s highest honor in the arts, humanities, and interpretive sciences. The Museum was recognized in the category of Creative Learning, highlighting The Carle’s work in early literacy and art appreciation. In April, The Carle received its second Art Works grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. This $20,000 grant will immerse teachers and young students and their families in the arts, open doors to reading, and bring nationally-acclaimed artists to schools.

 

“The Carle is still a young museum,” says Kennedy, “But we are clearing making a difference in the lives of educators, parents and children. We look forward to having an even greater impact on early literacy,” Kennedy said.

 

About the Museum

The mission of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, a nonprofit organization in Amherst, Massachusetts, is to inspire a love of art and reading through picture books. The only full-scale museum of its kind in the United States, The Carle collects, preserves, presents, and celebrates picture books and picture book illustrations from around the world. In addition to underscoring the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of picture books and their art form, The Carle offers educational programs that provide a foundation for arts integration and literacy.

 

Eric and Barbara Carle founded the Museum in November 2002. Eric Carle is the renowned author and illustrator of more than 70 books, including the 1969 classic The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Since opening, the 40,000-square foot facility has served more than half a million visitors, including 30,000 schoolchildren. Its extensive resources include a collection of more than 10,000 picture book illustrations, three art galleries, an art studio, a theater, picture book and scholarly libraries, and educational programs for families, scholars, educators, and schoolchildren. Educational offerings include professional training for educators around the country. Museum hours are Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday 12 noon to 5 p.m. Open Mondays in July and August and during Massachusetts school vacation weeks. Admission is $9 for adults, $6 for children under 18, and $22.50 for a family of four. For further information and directions, call 413-658-1100 or visit the Museum’s website at www.carlemuseum.org

Review of the Day: The Center of Everything by Linda Urban

The Center of Everything

By Linda Urban

Harcourt Children’s Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

$16.99

ISBN: 978-0-547-76348-4

Ages 9-12

On shelves now.

There are only two things I require from life: Donuts and good books. Obviously that statement is false, but it sure sounds good. I like donuts. I like good books. And a good book that involves donuts? Cosmic all-encompassing donuts that aren’t afraid to ask the big questions? Even better! Now I’ve followed the career of Linda Urban over the years and the simple fact of the matter is that with each of her books she gets better. Her latest, The Center of Everything follows its predecessors Hound Dog True and A Crooked Kind of Perfect into the familiar realm of quiet thoughtful fiction. A literary work of middle grade to its core, I’m not going to tell you that every kid that reads this book is going to love it, because it simply isn’t true. This is a book for the thinkers and the dreamers. Philosophical kiddos. Smarter than the average bear, Urban’s put her neck out there and written something big in a small package.

Everything hinges on Ruby getting this right. Today, after all, is Bunning Day, the most important day in Bunning, New Hampshire. It’s the day she’ll get up and read her award winning essay in front of everybody. And in that moment she’ll be able to make everything right with her best friend Lucy and her new friend Nero. They’ll forgive her. And that wish she made on her birthday, the one that is destined to come true . . . well, that’s a given, isn’t it? Trouble is, even the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go horribly awry. It’s Bunning Day. Ruby has her notecards in her hands. The parade has begun. Something is going to happen.

Some books are told in the course of a single baseball game (Six Innings). Some in a single day (33 Minutes). This book takes place in the course of a single parade route. It’s a trope that requires a fair amount of potentially confusing flashbacks, which, with any other writer, might be a bit of a problem. But since small town parades are their own little universes in and of themselves, it turns out that Ms. Urban has a lot to work with. In fact, I found that this particular point of view was utterly unique. Perspective, you see, is a very big part of The Center of Everything. I’ve rarely seen a book for kids so willing to switch focus without giving even a hint of whiplash in the process. Much of the book is written entirely in the present tense. Well, not entirely exactly. There is the occasional moment when the book leaps into present tense second-person (which is a trick in and of itself). The reason for this switch becomes apparent when you realize that for much of it Ruby is talking to herself. Thanks to her grief, Ruby suffers a kind of self-imposed disconnect from the world around her. She often equates this with being underwater. “Every action, every movement, took twice as much effort, as if it were happening in slow motion.” The moment of release comes when she laughs for the first time since her grandmother’s death. “Ruby laughs a real out-loud laugh, which is something you can’t do underwater. It requires real oxygen to laugh.”

Then there’s the aforementioned fact that parts of the book allow the minor characters in the parade to strut and fret their page or paragraph upon the stage, and then are heard no more. These glimpses into other people’s brains serves to distinguish the novel from one of those books filled with quirky small town characters. Small town these people are. Quirky? I’d say no. And in seeing them we give Ruby context outside of herself. We don’t have to spend the whole novel inside of her brain. There’s great good to be said of that.

Is there a term for much of what Urban is doing here? I almost want to call it kid-logic, but if I’m going to be honest that’s not quite right. Instead it’s this tricky combination of children’s intelligent observations coupled with superstitions, signs, and urban legends. These observations include things like Ruby’s technique for not getting called on in class. “In third grade she figured out that if you put your hand up in class when everyone else did, you probably wouldn’t get called on, but you also probably wouldn’t get called on when nobody put their hand up either. Teachers mostly picked the kids who never put their hands up . . . ” After that the author has managed to tap into the logical thought process of a kid dealing with illogical emotions, then translating them into kind untruths for the sake of the adults around her. How do you do that as an author? Then there are the urban legends. To my mind, urban legends that originate with children and as close as kids come to creating their own original religions. In fact without mentioning religion in any way, Ruby is trying to give a sense of order to the world, and the way she does that is through legend and superstition. Her moment of clarity comes when everything starts tumbling about her ears. “What if there is no supposed to? What if there is no one way things are meant to be? What if it all is just random and spinny and wild?” We all grapple with these questions sooner or later. This book just gives a nudge in the direction of “sooner”.

The biggest criticism the book has to face at this point in time is the pace. When you pick up a Linda Urban book, you are not going to encounter a car chase or an exploding helicopter or much outside of a human’s head. There’s a lot of internalizing in a Linda Urban book. That’s what drives some folks nutso. Of this book I’ve encountered at least two librarians who found the pace too slow for their liking. One even suggested that perhaps the narrative leap to other characters involved in the parade could have been removed to keep the book shorter. This of a 208-page title. So we can pretty much say with certainty that you shouldn’t hand this book to a reluctant reader or a kid who needs a death-a-minute to keep their eyeballs glued tight. This is a book for a good reader who can appreciate some fairly fine writing.

Literary children’s books are the ones unafraid to take it slow. In this particular case, slow and sad (but not depressing, which is a fine line to walk). They are not to everyone’s taste. Yet it’s no crime to write a book for kids that asks the big questions. Ruby never turns to the reader and says “Is there a God?” or “Why are we here?” but the questions and theories she does devise are part of the greater whole. Framed in a single day between realistic kids and near absent adults, Urban successfully pulls everything together. What a kid gets out of this depends on how much they’re willing to put into it. More thoughtful than most, this one’s a keeper. A book for children with an inclination to think.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

First Line: “In the beginning, there was a donut.”

Like This?  Then Try:

Mira in the Present Tense by Sita Brahmachari


When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead


The Book of Everything by Guus Kuijer

Other Blog Reviews:

Reading Rumpus
Fat Girl, Reading
Nerdy Book Club (includes Core Curriculum applications)
Secrets & Sharing Soda
mstmireads
Green Bean Teen Queen

Professional Reviews:

The New York Times
A star from Kirkus
Publishers Weekly

Interviews:

Publishers Weekly
Crooked Perfect

Misc: Read an excerpt here.