Betsy Bird's Blog, page 314

Press Release Fun: Crystal Kite Winners Announced

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 30, 2013

Sara Rutenberg

sararutenberg@scbwi.org

323-782-1010

THE SOCIETY OF CHILDREN’S BOOK WRITERS AND ILLUSTRATORS ANNOUNCES THE WINNERS OF THE ANNUAL CRYSTAL KITE MEMBER CHOICE AWARDS

The SCBWI is excited to announce the winners of the 2013 Crystal Kite Member Choice Awards for our fifteen regional divisions:

Africa

●      Neil Malherbe – The Magyar Conspiracy (Tafelberg Publishers)

Australia

●      Meg McKinlay – Ten Tiny Things (Illustrated by Kyle Hughes-Odgers) (Fremantle Press)

California/Hawaii

●      Katherine Applegate – The One and Only Ivan (HarperCollins Children’s Books) 

Southeast (Florida/Georgia/South Carolina/North Carolina/Alabama/Mississippi)

●      Augusta Scattergood - Glory Be  (Scholastic)

Mid-South (Kansas/Louisiana/Arkansas/Tennessee/Kentucky/Missouri)

●      Sharon Cameron – The Dark Unwinding (Scholastic)

Middle East/India/Asia

●      Benjamin Martin – Samurai Awakening  (Tuttle Publishing)

Midwest (Minnesota/Iowa/Nebraska/Wisconsin/Illinois/Michigan/Indiana/Ohio)

●      Aaron Reynolds – Creepy Carrots (Illustrated by Peter Brown) (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

 

Southwest (Nevada/Arizona/Utah/Colorado/Wyoming/New Mexico)

●      Jean Reagan – How to Baby Sit A Grandpa (Alfred A. Knopf (Random House Children’s Books)

 

New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island)

●      Jo Knowles – See You At Harry’s (Candlewick Press)

 

New York

●      Kate Messner – Capture the Flag (Scholastic)

Atlantic (Pennsylvania/Delaware/New Jersey/Wash DC/Virginia/West Virginia/Maryland)

●      Ame Dyckman – BOY + BOT   (Illustrated by Dan Yaccarino) (Alfred A. Knopf (Random House Children’s Books)

Texas/Oklahoma

●      Lynne Kelly – Chained (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.)

The Americas (Canada/Mexico/Central & South America)

●      Jennifer Lanthier - The Stamp Collector  (Fitzhenry and Whiteside)

UK/Europe

●      Dave Cousins – Fifteen Days without a Head  (Oxford University Press)

West (Washington/Oregon/Alaska/Idaho/Montana/North Dakota/South Dakota)

●      Kim Baker – Pickle   (Illustrated by Tim Probert) (Roaring Brook Press (Macmillan Publishers)

About the Crystal Kite Awards

The Crystal Kite Awards are given by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators to recognize great books from the seventy SCBWI regions around the world.  Along with the SCBWI Golden Kite Awards, the Crystal Kite Awards are chosen by other children’s book writers and illustrators, making them the only peer-given awards in publishing for young readers.

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 multimedia. The organization was founded by Stephen Mooser (President) and Lin Oliver (Executive Director), both of whom are well-published children’s book authors and leaders in the world of children’s literature.  For more information about the Crystal Kite Award, please visit www.scbwi.org, and click “Awards & Grants.”

###

From Blogging to Books: A Tour of Child/YA Lit Bloggers

The road to publication is not a straight line.  It’s not even a single line.  Sometimes it feels to me that there are as many ways to publish a book as there are books to publish.  I started out as a children’s librarian. From there I started to blog.  Then from blogging came some books.  I never began the blog with the specific intent to publish someday.  Some do, I suppose, and all power to them.  For me, it was just a natural outgrowth of what I already do: Write every day.

So I got to thinking about others in my field who have followed similar paths from blogging to book publication.  The successes, if you will.  With that in mind, here are some names that come immediately to mind and in no particular order:

Jules Danielson – Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (and, by extension, the late and great Peter Sieruta of Collecting Children’s Books) – I tapped Jules and Peter to write a book with me which is now slated for Spring 2014.  The title?  Wild Things!: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature.  It will effectively put down the notion of children’s authors as fluffy, silly individuals.  It was also, no surprise, a hoot to write.

Jay Asher – The Disco Mermaids – Oh, how quickly folks forget.  But long before he came to fame via 13 Reasons Why, Jay Asher was one of three blogger/writers known as The Disco Mermaids.  I should know.  I have one of their coffee cups in my cabinet even as I write this.  The blog officially ended in 2009 (I am trying not to think of how long ago that was) but it remains in our hearts and minds, and on our servers, still.

Tanita Davis – [fiction, instead of lies] and Finding Wonderland – Want to know how dedicated Tanita is to blogging?  Well, her first post went up in 2005 and she hasn’t stopped yet.  All this in spite of the fact that she’s written such YA showstoppers as Happy Families, Mare’s War, A La Carte, and the more that are sure to come.

Gwenda Bond – Shaken & Stirred – Don’t be fooled by its fancy new URL.  The original Shaken & Stirred premiered in 2002, making Gwenda perhaps the earliest children’s book/YA blogger-to-author crossover I know of.  Her two books Blackwood and The Woken Gods prove her customary voice is capable of coming out in fiction as easily as through a bloggy format.

Colleen Mondor – Chasing Ray – People ask how I’m able to blog and write, but c’mon.  I write picture books.  How Colleen balances the two is beyond my ken.  The author of The Map of Dead Pilots, Colleen’s blog (named, unsurprisingly, after Ray Bradbury) is remarkable not just because of the insightful plunges into hot topics in YA and juv literature, but also because she dedicates so much of her time to causes like helping to buy books for the Ballou Library.  She’s a good man, Charlie Brown.

Monica Edinger – Educating Alice – Those who know Monica are aware that there are few individuals as keenly dedicated to the world of children’s literature as she.  That’s why it was such a thrill to finally hold in my hands a galley of her upcoming Africa Is My Home: A Child of the Amistad, slated to be released by Candlewick this fall.  An early chapter book filled to brimming with facts and illustrated beautifully by Robert Byrd, if you read only one book this October, read this one.  She has bridged the gap between blogger and author (of children’s books, since she’s written many professional ones in her time) ably.

Lenore Appelhans – Presenting Lenore – Blogging and writing is one thing here in the States.  Now imagine blogging and writing in Germany!  Not only that, Lenore has managed to write both a YA novel (Level 2) as well as a picture book (Chick-O-Saurus Rex, which was illustrated by her husband Daniel Jennewein) all at the same time, practically.  Talk about wild flexibility!

Liz Burns – A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy – Professional resources can be a lot more difficult to write than fiction.  It is probable that nobody knows this better than Liz, the librarian/blogger who isn’t afraid to use her SLJ site to dissect hot topics no one else has the chutzpah to discuss.  Pop Goes the Library: Using Pop Culture to Connect to Your Whole Community was written alongside Sophie Brookover came out a couple years ago but Liz continues to plug it even now.  THAT is how you do it, folks.

Sarah Stevenson – Finding Wonderland – It seems a bit unfair that someone like Sarah Stevenson should not only be an amazing blogger and not only a great author (check out her The Latte Rebellion if you don’t believe me) but also a top notch artist on top of it all.  Seems to me a person should have to choose.  One or the other.  Instead, Sarah’s a triple threat and a heckuva nice gal.

Kelly Fineman – Writing and Ruminating – Too few of the people I’ve mentioned here moonlight as poets on the side.  Kelly breaks with that tendency.  The results are evident in picture books like At the Boardwalk while her poems have shown up in books like The National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry and Dare to Dream . . . Change the World amongst others.  Well played, Kelly!!

By the way, I think it’s interesting to note that of the bloggers mentioned here, my agent represents four of them.  He rules!!

I’m sure there are other children’s/YA literary bloggers turned authors (authors turned bloggers need not apply).  If you can think of any, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

 

Video Sunday: Little Known Fact – Viola Swamp drinks at Starbucks

It seems to me that if Raina Telgemeier, Art Spiegelman, Roz Chast, Stephan Pastis, Mo Willems, Dave Roman, and other cartoonists who double as children’s book creators can have the chutzpah to participate in this video where they speak out against gun violence, the least we can do is to post it.  Frequently.  And everywhere.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

In a switch of gears, here are happy authors talking about happy Newbery calls and what it means to be “chosen”.  So to speak.  Sort of works double duty as bragging rights from Random House on how many Newbery Award and Honor winners they have too.  Certainly they’ve had a good run in recent years.  Would love to see other houses doing something similar.

Thanks to Mr. Schu for the link.

Okay.  Now let’s watch the world’s most adorable children.  Teacher Arturo Avina contacted me recently about his Kindergarten class.

“My students and I recently took this classic story and adapted it for the small screen. What started off as a class project on school and community became an epic production that blended technology, music, and dramatic arts, and at the same time, developed reading comprehension, vocabulary, and oral language skills. The students were encouraged to be creative and work collaboratively, and the results have been rewarding to say the least. The reaction to our movie has been enthusiastically positive by all who have watched it so far. At this point, several parents and teachers have contacted me to let me know that their kids absolutely LOVE it!”

The result is Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard.

Thanks to Arturo Avina for the link.

By the way, I’m sure I don’t have to tell YOU that for the first time in history a Judy Blume novel is coming to the silver screen.  What you may not have known was that it’s Tiger Eyes.  Yep.  Surprised me too.  Here’s the trailer:

Speaking of classics hitting the screen, three words: Phantom. Tollbooth. Documentary.

Check out the full website here.  Thanks to Marjorie Ingall for the link.

And it’s just not a Video Sunday without a good book trailer.  And brother?  This one is good.  It even has its own theme song.

A fun Kickstarter page also brought itself to my attention this week.  Done in conjunction with 826LA (a group I particularly like) “students wrote short stories about their imaginary friend that I had professional artists illustrate to.”  The group partnered with illustrators from Pixar, Disney, Nickelodeon, and DC Comics to bring the stories to life and they’re donating at least 25% of proceeds from the book sales to 826LA.  Further info is found here: http://www.grworks.com/pentopaper/

The kickstarter closes on May 5th, so there you go.

And as per usual, my off-topic video could probably be considered on-topic… but it’s just too weird.

Thanks to Ben for the link.

Review of the Day: Picture a Tree by Barbara Reid

Picture a Tree

By Barbara Reid

Albert Whitman & Company

$16.99

ISBN: 978-0-8075-6526-1

Ages 3-6

On shelves now.

If you weren’t a teacher or a librarian you wouldn’t necessarily be aware of how critically important tree units are to our school systems. They’re huge. Each and every year when I worked as a children’s librarian I would watch as mountains of tree-related picture books got sucked out of my branch by teachers and kids assigned arboreal units. The end result tended to be a hyperaware state where whenever I found myself within a close approximation of a tree picture book my internal radar would start ah-beeping. Imagine, if you will, little invisible antennae rising up on my head when I found myself inextricably compelled to pick up and read Barbara Reid’s Picture a Tree. From its magnificent cover to its jaw-dropping interior spreads, Reid has just upped the bar on the whole “tree genre”, such as it is. From here on in, when a kid asks a librarian for a tree book, that library had better have a copy of the Caldecott winner A Tree Is Nice on the one hand, and Picture a Tree on the other.

Endpapers display trees in a myriad of forms, from thunderstruck deciduous to the mushrooms that grow on a trunk. Says the text, “There is more than one way to picture a tree”. You might consider that the tree sporting birds or snow is engaged in a game of dress-up. Or you might think a tree-lined walkway a tunnel or (seen from above) an ocean. Delving deftly into the many different ways that trees can be seen and interpreted and equated with the humans that dart above their roots, Reid creates all new ways of looking at and enjoying our fine leafy friends. Her final words, “Picture a tree. What do you see?”

I’m a sucker for a glorious glob of Plasticine. Seems I can’t get enough of that colorful little substance. My first encounter with it in a children’s picture book was the remarkably lovely (and catchy) City Beats: A Hip-hoppy Pigeon Poem by Kelly S. Rammell, illustrated by Jeanette Canyon. In this particular case author/illustrator Barbara Reid is hardly a Plasticine newbie. Her work on books like Perfect Snow cemented her early on as one of our premiere picture book Plasticine artist experts. In Picture a Tree Reid has committed “a Peter Sis”. Which is to say, she’s made her job harder than it needs be and ended up with something truly beautiful as a result. I don’t know Ms. Reid so I can’t say whether not she actually said to herself, “Today I’m going to make a book that will require me to make five billion teeny tiny individual Plasticine leaves.” Regardless, that’s what she’s done here. “Five billion” might be a tad bit of an exaggeration but I suspect that if you were to corner Ms. Reid at a party she would admit that’s what it felt like in the end. A book of this sort could have worked perfectly well if the trees had been big blobs of color rather than little bitty dots of delightfulness. Hat tip to the artist for going the extra mile.

There are some artists out there (who shall remain nameless) for whom a tricky medium is an end in itself. Were they to work in the realm of Plasticine they would think it a triumph to merely produce something coherent. So what really allows Reid to stand apart from her peers isn’t necessarily her love of a relatively new artistic technique but that technique’s blending with great storytelling to boot. The fact that she’s able to discuss trees in a fun and interesting way without ever sounding cutesy or saccharine is remarkable. Playing in leaves really does feel like “A wild good-bye party” the way she displays it. Ditto a blanketing of snow as a “snowsuit”. The text shown here takes its time and carefully considers different seasons and the ways kids interact with trees on a day-to-day basis. Best of all, it balances out urban tree experiences with rural tree experiences. You don’t have to live in the suburbs to get what Reid is doing here. Hers is a tree book for all comers, all seasons.

The trick to any good picture book is the marriage of text and art. If you were to frame the art in a picture book, would it stand on its own and in its own right, free of context? And if you received a manuscript of this book with only the words, would you consider it a strong read? What I love about Picture a Tree is that it not only makes for an eye-popping visual jaw-dropper, and that it not only reads like a dream, but that it also fulfills a purpose. Kids need tree books. Good tree books. Original tree books that won’t bore them to tears. Reid delivers. Hers is a book you can enjoy any time of the year in any context, tree assignment or no tree assignment. Celebrate Arbor Day early. Grab yourself a bit o’ tree. A book that makes its pulped paper proud.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

A Tree Is Nice by Marc Simont


This Tree Counts by Alison Formento


Who Would Like a Christmas Tree?: A Tree For All Seasons by Ellen Bryan Obed

Blog Reviews:

Books My Boys Love
Mommy Kat and Kids
Storytime Standouts
Our Big Earth

Professional Reviews:

A star from Kirkus
Quill & Quire

Misc:

For fun, check out all the awards and honors this book garnered in Canada.


And here are the bulk of the other reviews.


Play a memory game with the book.

Videos:

Here’s the book trailer for this one.

And here’s a little behind-the-scenes peek into the art.

 

The Unreliable Narrator in the Picture Book Format

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Pop Culture Happy Hour where employees of NPR dissect some aspect of pop culture in a smart and funny way each week.  The show works for me because as I age I become worse and worse at knowing what is out there and this show allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of youth with the additional benefit of a thick veneer of class.  A recent podcast spent half its time dissecting the Mad Men debut and the other half discussing the idea of the unreliable narrator in film, books, and music.

Listening to the talk, it sounds as if the unreliable narrator breaks down into at least three different types: The narrator that purposefully leads you astray, the narrator whose view of the world is so strident that by sheer force of will they are attempting to lead you astray, and the narrator who does not attempt to lead you astray but does by dint of their youth and inexperience.  And though they cited mostly The Catcher in the Rye and Room as examples of that last type, I found myself drifting into thinking about how this applies to the picture books of the past and the present.

This isn’t just idle speculation.  With the rise of the Core Curriculum kids are beginning to learn more about opposing viewpoints and alternative perspective.  They’re walking into libraries asking for first person narratives in picture book formats.  Which means, it might not be long before savvy teachers start to provide elementary school insights into what is a remarkably advanced concept.

On the aforementioned podcast, Glen Weldon says the following: “It [the unreliable narrator] puts you in the head of somebody else… it exaggerates your faults.  Where YOU think the world is this way and you’re willing to kind of assert it until the dam busts.  And it’s a way to teach a moral lesson without doing it in a very heavy-handed way . . . It’s the ultimate post-modern thing where this thing we’ve trusted for centuries, the narrative voice, is now called into question.”

This caught my ear since picture books are, in some cases, meant to be repositories of moral lessons.  And if a person can give a moral lesson without didacticism they are seen as doing a very good job.  I am starting to write picture books myself.  Now imagine being able to write for kids and impart ideas without sounding preachy.  It can be done!  Examples?

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith – If you Google the term “unreliable narrator” and “picture books” this is pretty much the only thing that comes up.  Probably because it’s the best of the genre.  If Scieszka is remembered for nothing else it will be for applying sophisticated ideas to picture books, ending with products that both inform and amuse kids and adults (keep a VERY sharp eye out for his Battle Bunny this fall, co-written with Mac Barnett, and a game changer in a different way altogether).  Of course no brilliant idea comes without a price.  This book started the trend of villains telling their sides of their tales in picture books.  It’s an idea we’re still suffering through, to a certain extent.

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen – Interesting because it’s actually a shift.  The narrator begins as reliable and then becomes unreliable by the end of the book.  Is this a tale about the hero’s journey?  Or is it actually the hero’s fall?  All I care is that the bunny had it coming.

This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen -  I didn’t mean to cite the most recent Caldecott Award winner but the Horn Book referred to this as a book featuring an unreliable narrator.  I would argue that it’s not so much that he’s unreliable as much as he’s just wrong.

Olivia Saves the Circus – If Scieszka’s wolf is the kind of narrator trying to lead you astray then Olivia is a force of will, attempting to make you believe precisely what she too wants to believe.  She tests the tensile strands of precocious tolerance and gets away with it.  Probably because the text is so good on this one.  My favorite Olivia book, bar none.

Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters From Obedience School – Author Mindy Hardwick came up with this one (read her post for suggestions on writing an unreliable narrator if you’re interested in making your own).  This book has the dual advantage of not only being unreliable but an epistolary picture book as well.  Kids ask for such things already.

Mention the others if you can!  I wouldn’t mind putting together a list of as many as folks can conceive of.  It would be interesting to note the years they started becoming more common.

Chicago, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo: I’m Gunnin’ for Ya

Folks, I’ll be stepping away from the desk/office/city/state for the next few days as I do a tiny little self-propelled book tour.  In fact, if you happen to live in Chicago or Grand Rapids, MI or Kalamazoo then you are in luck.  I’m nigh!  Here are the appearances for the next few days:

April 25th at 6:30 p.m.

The Magic Tree Bookstore - 141 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, Il.

April 26th at 10:30 a.m.

Pooh’s Corner – Breton Village – 1886 1/2 Breton Rd. S.E., Grand Rapids, MI

April 27th at 3:00 p.m.

Bookbug – 3019 Oakland Drive, Kalamazoo, MI

Hope I see a small chunk of you soon!

Fusenews: Mysterious Edges, Heroic Worlds

Well sir, it’s a heckuva week.  Book stuff is happening out the wazoo, but for a moment I’d like to concentrate on what else is going on in the wider children’s literary world.  What say we Fusenews it up a bit, eh?

Of course there’s no way to begin today without a hat tip to the late, great E.L. Konigsburg.  The only person, I believe, to win both a Newbery Award and a Newbery Honor in their debut year.  Top THAT one, folks!  The New York Times pays tribute to one of our luminaries.  We had managed to do pretty well in 2013 without losing one of our lights.  Couldn’t last forever.  Godspeed, Elaine.


Speaking of deaths, I missed mentioning my sadness upon hearing of Roger Ebert’s passing. Jezebel put out a rather nice compilation of Roger Ebert’s Twenty Best Reviews.  I wonder if folks ever do that for children’s book critics.  Hm.  In any case, amongst the reviews was this one for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  It’s rather brilliant.  See for yourself.

12. On the original Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
“Kids are not stupid. They are among the sharpest, cleverest, most eagle-eyed creatures on God’s Earth, and very little escapes their notice. You may not have observed that your neighbor is still using his snow tires in mid-July, but every four-year-old on the block has, and kids pay the same attention to detail when they go to the movies. They don’t miss a thing, and they have an instinctive contempt for shoddy and shabby work. I make this observation because nine out of ten children’s movies are stupid, witless, and display contempt for their audiences, and that’s why kids hate them….All of this is preface to a simple statement: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is probably the best film of its sort since The Wizard of Oz. It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren’t: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. Willy Wonka is such a surely and wonderfully spun fantasy that it works on all kinds of minds, and it is fascinating because, like all classic fantasy, it is fascinated with itself.” [January 1971]

New Blog Alert: Now I would like to brag about my system’s children’s librarians.  They are uniquely talented individuals.  Smart as all get out.  One that I’ve always been particularly impressed with is Stephanie Whelan, a woman I trust more than anyone else when it comes to finding the best in children’s (not YA) science fiction and fantasy fare.  Now Stephanie has conjured up one doozy of a blog on that very topic.  It’s called Views From the Tesseract (nice, right?) and it looks at a lot of science fiction and fantasy specifically with side views of topics in the field.  You’ll find posts with subjects like A Matter of Taste: Preferring One Genre Over Another, Five Fantasy Pet Peeves, and the fascinating delve into the world of Tom Swift in The Swift Proposal.  Stephanie also has access to galleys so be sure to check out her early reviews for books like William Alexander’s Ghoulish Song and Sidekicked by John David Anderson (which I’m reading right now on her recommendation).


Turns out that the Mental Floss piece 11 Book Sequels You Probably Didn’t Know Existed spends an inordinate amount of time looking at children’s books.  Check it out for mentions of the 101 Dalmatians sequel (missed that one), the E.T. sequel The Book of the Green Planet (which, if memory serves, was illustrated long ago by David Wiesner and is the only book he no longer owns the art of), and more.


Nice blogger mentions this week.  Thanks to Sara O’Leary for mentioning my new website and to Jen Robinson’s for the nice review of Giant Dance Party.  I appreciate it, guys!  Plus Jen is the first review I’ve read that draws a connection between my book and the Hunger Games series.  Few can say so much.

Speaking of reviews, I owe Travis Jonker a debt of gratitude for reviewing Marguerite Abouet’s Akissi.  I read that book in the original French a year or two ago and was completely uncertain if it would ever see the light of day here in the States due to a final story that, quite frankly, DEFIES anything I’ve seen in children’s literature before.  The kind of thing that makes Captain Underpants look tame.  You have been warned.  Great book, by the way.  Let’s not lose sight of that.

Not too long ago I spoke to a group of 6th graders at Bank Street College’s school about contemporary book jackets and how they’re marketed to kids.  Only a portion of my talk was dedicated to race or gender.  Fortunately, the kids have been thinking long and hard about it.  Allie Bruce has posted twice about a covers project the kids have participated in.  Be sure to check out race and then gender when you have a chance.  Food for thought.


For a certain kind of person, the title of this website alone will cause a flutter and palpitation of the heart: The Last Unicorn Screening Tour (featuring Peter S. Beagle and fans everywhere).  You know who you are.  Big time thanks to Marci for the link.


Newsflash: Americans Still Love Libraries.  Comes with its own infographic, so you know it’s true.  Thanks to Lese Dunton for the link.


What do Pinkalicious, A Ball for Daisy, and Square Cat all have in common?  Read ‘em to your kids and you’ll be teaching them that consumerism is king.  So sayeth a 196-page thesis called “Cultivating Little Consumers: How Picture Books Influence Materialism in Children”, as reported by The Guardian.  And they might have gotten away with the premise to if they just hadn’t brought up I Want My Hat Back .  Dude.  Back away from the Klassen.  Thanks to Zoe Toft (Playing By the Book) for the link.


You may have heard that Simon & Schuster finally announced that it will start making e-books available to all three New York City public library systems.  The press certainly picked up on the story and many articles have been generated.  Curious?  Then read these pieces in Mashable, The NY Daily News, MediaBistro (Galleycat and Fishbowl NYC), Publishers Weekly, Fast Company and The Associated Press.


Okay.  I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say it.  Marjorie Ingall has created, without a doubt the most impressive children’s book footwear post of all time.  Honest-to-god, if you don’t bow down before her for that English Roses shoe, you have no soul.


Required Reading of the Day: There are few authorial blogs out there even half as interesting as Nathan Hale’s.  And when the guy gets a fact wrong in one of his books, he’ll do anything to set it right.  Even if it means going to Kansas.  Here’s how he put it:

We made a HUGE historical error, and we are going to fix it! We are going to learn why Kansas wasn’t a Confederate state–why it was a “Free State,” and how it happened. We are also going to visit Kansas on an official apology and correction trip. When we are finished, all Hazardous Tales readers will know how to correct their own copy of Big Bad Ironclad! Stay tuned!

You can see the official ceremony here, but be sure to read all the blog posts he drew to explain precisely why Kansas was a free state anyway. You can see Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, and Part Six.

Daily Image:

It’s not the holiday gift giving season, but if you know a librarian in need of a unique gift, I have your number.

Awesomesauce.  Thanks to Marchek for the link.

Review of the Day: Giant Dance Party by Betsy Bird

Giant Dance Party

By Betsy Bird

Illustrated By Brandon Dorman

Greenwillow (an imprint of Harper Collins)

$17.99

ISBN: 978-0061960833

Ages 3-7

On shelves now.

Gotcha!

I’m just messing with you.  No, I’m not going to actually review my book here.  I’m not going to wax rhapsodic over the hidden meanings lurking behind the mysterious cupcake on the cover.  I’ll refrain from delving deep into how Lexy’s emotional journey with the giants is just a thinly disguised metaphor for U.S. / Russia relations between the years of 1995-2004 (it isn’t, for the record).  I won’t even talk about the twist ending since spoilers make for interesting, if sometimes heartbreaking, reviews.

No, I’ll just talk instead about how happy I am that publication day is here at all.  And how pleasant it is to share that day with my buddy / pal / illustrious illustrator Brandon Dorman.  I’ve had a couple chances to present the book so far (including one disaster that I’ll get to in a moment) and here is what I have learned.

1.  It is possible to read this book to 3-year-olds thanks in large part to the pictures.

This is true.  The text is bouncy, which doesn’t hurt matters any, but when one is dealing with very small fry it is also mighty helpful when you have eye-popping visuals on your side.  And let me tell you, kids like the art of Brandon Dorman.  More than that, they love it.

2.  It is possible to read this book to 4-year-olds thanks in large part to the mentions of dances.

I have discovered by reading this at a couple daycares that if you teach kids jazz hands, interpretive dance, the twist, and the chicken dance in the course of reading this book, they don’t get bored.  As a children’s librarian I was always the storytime reader whose peripheral visual would zero in on the single kid out of thirty that looked bored.  This flaw in the programming has carried over to reading my own book.  If one kid is bored I suddenly get this manic tinge to my voice and everything becomes a little more frantic.  Be warned, easily bored children.  I’m gunning for you.

3.  Etsy is the creator of and solution to all of life’s woes.

I learned this truth when I constructed a necklace out of Caldecott cover Shrinky Dinks.  To make the necklace I wanted something that featured fuses (as a nod to the name of this blog).  So what do you do when you get such an urge?  You go to Etsy and search for such a thing.  In the case of my book presentations I decided I wanted blue furry boots.  So I type “blue furry boots” into Etsy and what do I get?  Something even better.  Blue furry rave legwarmers.  Oh, they’re the pip.  Here’s what I look like talking to the kids in ‘em.

Dance for me, little children.  Dance, I say!

They are also very easy to snuggle, if snuggling is what you want to do.

Special thanks to Melanie Hope Greenberg for the pics.

4. When you decide to go to a bookstore you’ve never visited before, give ‘em your phone number.  Beforehand.

Fun Fact: Did you know that there are TWO bookstores in Brooklyn called Powerhouse?  As of Saturday, I did not.  And thus begins my tale of woe.

I think there’s a general understanding out there that authors have at least one bad author experience tale they can tell.  But that experience, as important as it may be, is not usually their VERY FIRST BOOKSTORE APPEARANCE.  Because, you see, on Sunday I knew I was speaking at Powerhouse.  So I Googled it, got the address in Dumbo, and merrily traipsed over there.  The poor staff was cleaning up from an event the previous night and had no clue what I was talking about.  Still, they were very nice and helpful and though they didn’t have any copies of my book I just figured folks might order it.  Mind you, “folks” was a pretty optimistic term to be using in my head since nobody was there.  I mean nobody.  Little tumbleweeds would have been my audience had I spoke.

After giving it some time I packed up, the clerks apologized, and I went home.  Mildly mortifying that no one in Brooklyn came to see me, but it was 11:30 on a Sunday morning.  Not ideal.

And I would have proceeded in my merry little bubble for whole weeks at a time had I not gotten an email the next afternoon that made it very clear that I had gone to the wrong Powerhouse.  That there are, in fact, TWO stores out there with the same name.  Two.  Not one.  Two.  And my lovely publicist at Harper Collins had even gone so far as to send me a link to the event with the address front and center.  An address that was not in DUMBO at all but Park Slope.

So apparently (and this is where I sink into a puddle of 100% sheer uncut mortification) folks DID come to my event.  Folks I like.  Folks I would want to see.  Folks who would want to see me and who failed to do so because this doofus author merrily went to the wrong friggin’ store.

What have we learned here today, children?  Even if a publicist sets everything up for you, give the store your cell phone.  All this would have been solved if the store had had my info and had given me a ring.  There are other lessons of course (actually READ what your publicist sends you might be right up there) but you can bet I’ll be contacting all my future store appearances with my cell # right now.  Yup yup yup.

Onward and upward my patient fellows.

On shelves April 23rd (happy birthday to me!)

Source: Wrote the darn book.

Like This?  Then Try:

Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle


The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot by Scott Magoon


Abiyoyo by Pete Seeger

Blog Reviews:

Bookie Wookie Kids
A Book and a Hug

Professional Reviews:

A star from Kirkus
Publishers Weekly
School Library Journal

Misc:

For the Harper Collins site I came up with a little explanation of How to Throw a Giant Dance Party.  Electric blue Kool-Aid may or may not play a hand in it all.

Videos:

I would be amiss in not including them.

Video Sunday: Reading Rainbow fans are vast. They contain multitudes.

Admittedly I’ve been a bad blogger.  How long has it been since I did a Video Sunday?  Well, you can just bet that this one will be extra good to make up for it.

To be perfectly frank, nonfiction book trailers don’t usually look as good as the one I’m about to show you.  When you can find them at all, of course.  Rare little beasties, they are.  This one is for Mary Losure’s Wild Boy, a book that is circulating amazingly well in my system right now!

Speaking of lovely trailers, I couldn’t help but be impressed by this one.  It’s for the lovely fairy tale The Girl of the Wish Garden by Uma Krishnaswami, illustrated by Nasrin Khosravi, and based on Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina.  A prettier book, you could not hope to find.

Who is the patron saint of children’s literature?  To my mind it’s a toss up between Ashley Bryan and LeVar Burton.  Here, LeVar answers questions on CNN.

 

A shift in gears.  This past week was a tough one, what with the bombing in Boston.  I do appreciate it whenever anyone brings up the Mr. Rogers line about watching the helpers.  However, it is a little sad that the only time Mr. Rogers is mentioned these days is when there’s some horrible event in the news.  Here’s the man in happier times.  It was Travis at 100 Scope Notes and Zachariah Ohora that got the scoop on an old Mr. Rogers episode where he visits none other than Eric Carle.  It starts at 12:17 (just in case you don’t want to indulge in Fortune Cookie Man at this precise moment).

 

Now THAT is how you get paint on a smock, my friends.

Finally, for our off-topic video of the day, I had to go with this one.  Consider it a sample from the nonexistent television show I would most like to see someday.

Review of the Day: Maria Had a Little Llama / Maria Tenia Una Llama Pequena by Angela Dominguez

Maria Had a Little Llama / Maria Tenia Una Llama Pequena

By Angela Dominguez

Henry Holt (an imprint of Macmillan)

$16.99

ISBN: 978-0-8050-9333-9

Ages 4-8

On shelves August 20th

Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you a humbled woman. A woman who “knew” certain facts but, until she saw them working in her own personal life, was made up of knowledge that was almost entirely speculative. Case in point, as a children’s librarian I “knew” (there are those quotation marks again) that nursery rhymes were important to children. But until I had spawned my own sprog I never really saw their power at play. All it took was one little sing/reading of Tomie de Paola’s board book version of Mary Had a Little Lamb and we were off! Suddenly my kiddo had to have every possible version of that same song. So we grabbed titles like the Kate Willis-Crowley Mary Had a Little Lamb, the Laura Huliska-Beith Mary Had a Little Lamb, and even the somewhat misleading Mary and Her Little Lamb by Will Moses. Read enough of the same thing to your kid over and over again and they’ll open to reinterpretations. So when Maria Had a Little Llama walked into my life I was on board. It’s beautiful, bilingual, and a one of a kind little specimen that I’m pleased to report now has a home on my shelves. If you’re burning out on the same-old, same-old, consider cranking it up a notch by ditching the familiar for a little Maria/llama action. You’ll be glad you did.

How does that old tune go? Ah yes. “Mary had a little lamb / its fleece was white as snow / And everywhere that Mary went / the lamb was sure to go.” Of course, should one choose to set the book in Peru, the lyrics could take on a slightly different tone. Instead of Mary we now have Maria. Instead of a little lamb, it’s a little llama. And though the bones of the song are the same (the school, the children, the laughing) author/illustrator Angela Dominguez imbues her book with a distinctive one-of-a-kind flavor and feel.

It’s a surprise to few that children’s books containing Latino characters are rare beasts. In spite of a significant population nationwide, try coming up with a single early chapter book series starring a Hispanic kid. Go on. Name me one. Picture books fare a little better, but usually there’s a didacticism lurking in the wings. A book that contains Spanish words is so often trying to teach those words that the storytelling gets lost in the process. Naturally there are exceptions to this (if your local library doesn’t own a single Gary Soto written Chato title then I advise you to petition them immediately if not sooner) and Angela Dominguez has penned one such book.

Recently I was in Spain and I encouraged my kiddo to count to ten in Spanish for a waiter at a restaurant. When she finished he asked how it was possible that she knew Spanish. I told him that they teach Spanish in daycares these days and he looked puzzled, “Why?” I could have launched into a long explanation about the benefits to the human brain of knowing more than one language, but why get into that? Still, the fact of the matter is that more and more kids are learning Spanish every day and as a result the demand for books that cater to their growing knowledge are in the increase Add the fact that Maria Had a Little Llama sports a familiar tune we all know only sweetens the deal, really.

Some bilingual books for kids feel like afterthoughts. Sometimes this makes sense since the books were originally published in one language and then became bilingual in subsequent printings. But some books just don’t adequately prepare for dual languages even when they come out as bilingual the first time. I don’t want to get to deep into the world of typography, page layouts, and design, but suffice to say when you know you’ll have to make additional space in a book for a translation, inform the book’s artist. In this particular case, Dominguez is both author and illustrator, so she was prepared from the get-go. Part of what I like so much about Maria is the fact that the Spanish lines are apparent and easy to read while also occupying their own space. The English words tend to be in bold with the Spanish slightly less dark below. Then as you read the book the words leap around the page. My favorite comes when we get to the lines “That was against the rules / Eso iba contra las reglas”. Dominguez cleverly places these words on a little framed blackboard hanging on the wall, as if the allusion to the rules were the rules themselves. But what makes it nice is that the attention paid to one language equals the attention paid to another. It’s the moment that clarifies best that this book was meant to be bilingual from the moment it was conceived. Awesome.

Then there’s the art. Picture books set in Peru are not as common as all that on my library shelves. The notable exception I suppose would have to be Love and Roast Chicken by Barbara Knutson, which is a delightful folktale that involves the deliciousness of guinea pigs as part of the plot. Old MacDonald by Jonas Sickler, a lovely little indestructible book, shares the most in common with Maria since it sets its own nursery rhyme in a similar setting (and yes, there are llamas galore). Part of what I liked so much about Dominguez’s book was how seamlessly she integrates the background into the story. There are loads of clever details about the region worked in (at one point Maria walks past a map that shows everything from the Andes to Inca Trails to Machu Picchu) but they don’t feel forced. You are thoroughly immersed in Maria’s world, until an extraordinary wordless two-page spread when it is clear that the author/illustrator wants you to pay attention to something other than the words. The shot is taken from above, looking down over the roofs and houses to a market square where Maria and her llama approach their school. The watercolors do an excellent job of bringing out the reds and purples found in some of the clothing. I also loved that when we reach the last page of the book, not only is the clothing accurate to the region but the instruments some of the folks are playing are completely out of my wheelhouse. I found myself wishing that for all that I loved the book’s sparse, spare feel, it would be great if there was a tiny Afterword explaining what these instruments were. Particularly that harp-like thing on the big guy’s shoulder that’s tied around him by purple bands of ribbon.

Yeah, it sort of works on every level. You can sing it (and therefore use it in a storytime VERY easily), it’s remarkably beautiful, the design works, the multiple languages are awesome, and it stars a kid from South America, which is a rare bright jewel in the publishing marketplace these days. All told, it’s a classy and successful effort. Beautiful from tip to toe, and necessary, this is one of those purchasing no brainers. You’re just gonna love it anyway. Might as well go out and buy this sucker. Satisfaction guaranteed.

On shelves August 20th.

Source: F&G sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

Love and Roast Chicken: A Trickster Tales from the Andes Mountains by Barbara Knutson


Old MacDonald by Jonas Sickler


Moon Rope by Lois Ehlert

Interviews: Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast interviewed Angela this year, though admittedly the focus is on Angela’s other 2013 release.

Special Note: If you should find yourself with an F&G of this title, please note that the Spanish in the galley will not reflect the Spanish in the final edition. I had this book vetted by a friend from Spain and a friend from Mexico and they caught many mistakes. However, after checking with the publisher I learned about the changes being made to the final text.

Misc: A behind-the-scenes peek at the book.