Betsy Bird's Blog, page 317

Press Release Fun: Children’s Literary Salon – The Alternative Children’s Library

New York Public Library’s Children’s Literary Salon is pleased to announce our next event on Saturday, March 23rd at 12:00 p.m. in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building’s South Court Auditorium:

The Alternative Children’s Library

Join a panel discussion highlighting librarians who work in alternative children’s library spaces.  Features Public Services Librarian Leah High of The Nolen and Watson Libraries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Librarian Jennifer K. Hanley-Leonard of The New York Society Library, Children’s Librarian Allie Bruce of the Bank Street College of Education, and Events and Library Coordinator Ayanna Coleman of the Children’s Book Council Library.

This event will be held in the main branch of New York Public Library.  Further information may be found here.

Review of the Day: The Dark by Lemony Snicket

The Dark

By Lemony Snicket

Illustrated by Jon Klassen

Little Brown & Co.

$16.99

ISBN: 978-0-316-18748-0

Ages 4-8

On shelves April 2nd

You do not know the temptation I am fighting right now to begin this review with some grandiose statement equating a fear of the dark with a fear of death itself. You have my full permission to slap me upside the head if I start off my children’s books reviews with something that bigheaded. The whole reason I was going to do it at all is that after reading a book like Lemony Snicket’s The Dark I find myself wondering about kids and their fears. Most childhood fears tap into the weird id (see, here I go) part of our brains where the unknown takes on greater and grander evils than could possibly occur in the real world. So we get fears of dogs, the color mauve, certain dead-eyed paintings, fruit, and water going down the drain (or so Mr. Rogers claimed, though I’ve never met a kid that went that route), etc. In the light of those others, a healthy fear of the dark makes perfect sense. The dark is where you cannot see and what you cannot see cannot possibly do you any good. That said, there are surprisingly few picture books out there that tackle this very specific fear. Picture books love to tackle a fear of monsters, but the idea of handling something as ephemeral as a fear of the dark is much much harder. It takes a certain kind of writer and a certain kind of illustrator to grasp this fear by the throat and throttle it good and sound. Behold the pairing of Lemony Snicket and Jon Klassen. You’ll ne’er see the like again (unless they do another picture book together, in which case, scratch that).

“You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you.” Laszlo is afraid but there’s not much he can do about it. Seems as though the dark is everywhere you look sometimes. Generally speaking it lives in the basement, and every morning Laszlo would open the door and say, “Hi . . . Hi, dark.” He wouldn’t get a reply. Then, one night, the dark does something unprecedented. It comes into Laszlo’s room and though he has a flashlight, it seems to be everywhere. It says it wants to show him something. Something in the basement. Something in the bottom drawer of an old dresser. Something that helps Laszlo just when he needs it. The dark still visits Laszlo now. It just doesn’t bother him.

There is nothing normal about Lemony Snicket. When he writes a picture book he doesn’t go about it the usual route. Past efforts have included The Composer Is Dead which effectively replaced ye olde stand-by Peter and the Wolf in terms of instrument instruction in many a fine school district. Then there was 13 Words which played out like a bit of experimental theater for the picture book set. I say that, but 16 copies of the book are currently checked out of my own library system. Besides, how can you not love a book that contains the following tags on its record: “cake, depression, friendship, haberdashery, happiness”? Take all that under consideration and The Dark is without a doubt the most normal picture book the man has attempted yet. It has, on paper anyway, a purpose: address children’s fear of the dark. In practice, it’s more complicated than that. More complicated and better.

Snicket does not address a fear of the absence of light by offering up the usual platitudes. He doesn’t delve into the monsters or other beasties that may lurk in its corners. The dark, in Snicket’s universe, acts almost as an attentive guardian. When we look up at the night sky, it is looking back at us. In Laszlo’s own experience, the dark only seeks to help. We don’t quite understand its motivations. The takeaway, rather, is that it is a benign force. Remove the threat and what you’re left with is something that exists alongside you. Interestingly it almost works on a religious level. I would not be the least bit surprised if Sunday school classes started using it as a religious parable for death. Not its original purpose but on the horizon just the same.

It is also a pleasure to read this book aloud. Mr. Snicket’s words require a bit of rereading to fully appreciate them, but appreciate you will. First off, there’s the fact that our hero’s name is Laszlo. A cursory search of children’s books yields many a Laszlo author or illustrator but nary a Laszloian subject. So that’s nice. Then there’s the repetition you don’t necessarily notice at the time (terms like “creaky roof” “smooth, cold windows”) but that sink in with repeated readings. The voice of the dark is particularly interesting. Snicket writes it in such a way as to allow the reader the choice of purring the words, whispering them, putting a bit of creak into the vocal chords, or hissing them. The parent is granted the choice of making the dark threatening in its initial lures or comforting. Long story short, adults would do well to attempt a couple solo readings on their own before attempting with a kiddo. At least figure out what take you’re going for. It demands no less.

The most Snicketish verbal choice, unfortunately, turns out to be the book’s Achilles heel. You’re reading along, merry as you please, when you come to a page that creates a kind of verbal record scratch to the whole proceeding. Laszlo has approached the dark at last. He is nearing something that may turn out to be very scary. And then, just as he grows near, the next page FILLS . . . . with text. Text that is very nice and very well written and perhaps places childhood fears in context better than anything I’ve seen before. All that. By the same token it stops the reading cold. I imagine there must have been a couple editorial consultations about this page. Someone somewhere along the process of publication would have questioned its necessity. Perhaps there was a sterling defense of it that swayed all parties involved and in it remained. Or maybe everyone at Little, Brown loved it the first time they read it. Not quite sure. What I do know is that if you are reading this book to a large group, you will skip this page. And if you are reading one-on-one to your own sprog? Depends on the sprog, of course. Thoughtful sprogs will be able to take it. They may be few and far between, however. The last thing you want when you are watching a horror film and the hero is reaching for the doorknob of the basement is to have the moment interrupted by a five-minute talk on the roots of fear. It might contain a brilliant thesis. You just don’t want to hear it at this particular moment in time.

Canadians have a special relationship to the dark that Americans can’t quite appreciate. I was first alerted to this fact when I read Caroline Woodward’s Singing Away the Dark. That book was about a little girl’s mile long trek through the dark to the stop for her school bus. The book was illustrated by Julie Morstad, whose work reminds me, not a little, of Klassen’s. They share a similar deadpan serenity. If Morstad was an American citizen you can bet she’d get as much attention as Mr. Klassen has acquired in the last few years. In this particular outing, Mr. Klassen works almost in the negative. Much of this book has to be black. Pure black. The kind that has a palpable weight to it. Laszlo and his house fill in the spaces where the dark has yet to penetrate. It was with great pleasure that I watched what the man did with light as well. The colors of a home when lit by a flashlight are different from the colors seen in the slow setting of the evening sun. A toy car that Laszlo abandons in his efforts to escape the dark appears as a dark umber at first, then later pure black in the flashlight’s glow. We only see the early morning light once, and in that case Klassen makes it a lovely cool blue. These are subtle details, but they’re enough to convince the reader that they’re viewing accurate portrayals of each time of day.

The dark is not visually anthropomorphized. It is verbally, of course, with references to it hiding, sitting, or even gazing. One has to sit and shudder for a while when you imagine what this book might have been like with an author that turned the dark into a black blob with facial expressions. It’s not exaggerating to say that such a move would defeat the very purpose of the book itself. The whole reason the book works on a visual level is because Klassen adheres strictly and entirely to the real world. An enterprising soul could take this book, replicate it scene by scene in a live action YouTube video, and not have to dip into the film budget for a single solitary special effect. This is enormously important to children who may actually be afraid of the dark. This book gives a face to a fear that is both nameable and not nameable without giving a literal face to a specific fear. It’s accessible because it is realistic.

When dealing with picture books that seek to exorcise fears, one has to be very careful that you don’t instill a fear where there wasn’t one before. So a child that might never have considered the fact that nighttime can be a scary time might enter into a whole new kind of knowledge with the simple application of this book. That said, those sorts of things are very much on a case-by-case basis. Certainly The Dark will be a boon to some and simply a well-wrought story for others. Pairing Klassen with Snicket feels good when you say it aloud. No surprise then that the result of such a pairing isn’t just good. It’s great. A powerhouse of a comfort book.

On shelves April 2nd.

Source: F&G sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

Creepy Carrots by Aaron A. Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown


Singing Away the Dark by Caroline Woodward, illustrated by Julie Morstad


Bob & Co by Delphine Durand


Go Away, Big Green Monster by Ed Emberley

Professional Reviews:

A star from Publishers Weekly
Kirkus

Interviews:

Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Snicket) speaks to Terry Gross at NPR about, amongst other things, this book.

Misc:

Read an excerpt here.


And yes, the rumors are true.  Neil Gaiman is reading the audiobook.

Review of the Day – Matilda: The Musical

I do more than books from time to time.

On Tuesday night I had a bit of a treat.  Something I’d been looking forward to for years and years was finally within my grasp.  You see, a couple years ago my opera singer friend Meredith went to a performance of a musical in Stratford-on-Avon and came back to the States saying it was the best darn thing she’d ever seen.  And she sees a LOT of theater.  Not long after that Monica Edinger attended a performance of the same show in London and reported that she was thoroughly amused.  The musical was, of course, Matilda based on the novel by Roald Dahl and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Then, not long ago, the Penguin Young Readers offered some lucky schmucks in New York City a chance to see the show’s second night in previews.  And one of those schmucks?  This guy.

First off, we lucked out weather wise.  You might feel good and virtuous freezing your tuchis when there’s a show to be seen, but you can’t really enjoy it.  Fortunately the weather was mild and it was easy to find my crew.  Stacy Dillon from Welcome to My Tweendom was there as well as Roxanne Feldman from fairrosa, Monica Edinger from Educating Alice, Jenny Brown from Shelf Awareness, and a whole host of other folks.  Penguin gave us each a ticket as well as a copy of their new paperback edition of Matilda.  I didn’t notice at the time, but if you flip to the back of the book (which sports the musical’s poster as its cover) there are written sections by playwright Dennis Kelly and composer Tim Minchin that are great and really put the book and the show in context.

Inside we found our seats and faced a stage that looked like nothing so much as what you would get if you force fed a Scrabble game LSD.  Imagine squares of letters exploding in a kind of mini Big Bang with the stage at the center of the explosion.  There was little time to take it in before the director walked on.  That’s usually a bad sign.  Directors don’t tend to walk on stages.  They lurk in the shadows like that guy in A Chorus Line.  But this one, a Mr. Matthew Warchus it was, came on like it was the most natural thing in the world.  He reminded us that this was just the second preview and because of the complexity of the mechanics in the stage, things could go a bit wonky from time to time.  When that happened they would simply fix the problem and then continue with the show.  As it happens, his warning was completely unnecessary, but at the time it was good foresight.

Now admittedly I hadn’t re-read the book in the last five years or so.  I joked with folks before the show that I might have a hard time following out the plot now, but honestly I just wanted to have something to compare to what I was seeing.  I never saw the Mara Wilson movie version either, to be honest, though I’m aware it’s a cult favorite.

Right off the bat you are plunged into the show bodily.  The world’s most acutely trained cast of child actors, with believable British accents firmly in place (now that the Broadway musical of Mary Poppins is closing it’s good to see that children’s speaking like Brits will continue to take up theater space unabated) proceeded to perform a tightly constructed and perfectly choreographed opening number called “Miracle”.  It’s a helicopter parent song and bridged Dahl’s 1988 text to the modern day.  It also allows Matilda to come on a sing a single line that breaks your heart and makes her sympathetic right from the get-go.

I should mention that when Mr. Warchus, the Director, gave his little pre-curtain speech he declared that he was under the distinct impression that his show contained the youngest actress to ever headline a Broadway show in the history of Broadway itself.  As such, the role is played by a different girl, one of four, each night.  We were getting Ms. Sophia Gennusa in what must have been her Broadway debut performance.  Sophia had never been on a Broadway stage prior to that night, and her only theatrical background was Purchase College’s Conservatory of Dance’s production of The Nutcracker.  You never would have known, though.  She blew the roof off the house and was good from start to finish.  Not one flub.  Not one mistake.  A pro to her bones.

Let’s break this review up with a couple clips. Here’s the American TV spot for the show:

As the show went on I found that all the performers were actually quite amazing.  It didn’t hurt matters any that the woman playing Miss Honey and the man playing Miss Trunchbull (a role that won him an Olivier Award) were from the London performances (and Trunchbull had actually created the role back in Stratford-on-Avon!).  The fellow playing Mr. Wormwood was particularly excellent as well.  He had a distinctly Dick Van Dyke quality to him, and the costume designers seemed to take extra care to highlight is extraordinarily long and agile legs.  Mrs. Wormwood felt like nothing so much as an escapee from The Real Housewives of Brixton.

It was when I noticed Mr. Wormwood’s costume, and how closely it adhered to the one in the Quentin Blake illustrations to Matilda, that I did a bit of comparing and contrasting.  Mrs. Trunchbull too may as well have walked off the pages of the book, though Bertie Carvell (the actor) gave her this extraordinary combination of barely restrained (or not restrained at all) insanity and tiny girlish quirks.  If they ever turn the Harry Potter books into a musical I nominate him to play Dolores Umbridge.  That was sort of what he was going with here, only with a LOT more scenery chewing.  The silliness combined with the true frights meant that Carvell could terrorize the kids in the audience as much as the ones on stage and get away with it.

Honestly, if I had seen the show at seven it would have frightened me to death.  I was the kid that couldn’t take it when Violet Beauregard turned into a blueberry in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  So imagine how I would have reacted to descriptions of Trunchbull’s “The Chokey” (which, for some bizarre reason, poor Bruce Bogtrotter got sent to after his triumphant sequence), or the (briefly) scary upper classmen.  No, this is a show for the 9 and up crowd, I think.  They’ll be the ones that get the most out of it.  Particularly the special effects.

Because you see, dear readers, I didn’t really expect the show would allow Trunchbull to grab a girl by the pigtails and whirl her into the air.  Oh me of little faith.  Lord knows what harness was attached to that little girl’s hair.  Whatever it might be it is a wonder of mechanics, and the moment was complete with a fake dummy worth of Monty Python plummeting back down to earth.  Other special effects wow just as much (there’s one at the end that caused the audience to burst into sporadic applause), giving the whole evening a rather joyous feel.

Here are some clips from the Brits, but it looks the same as what I saw:

And then there’s the music itself.  Very clever lyrics with honestly catchy songs.  As I was leaving the theater I think I may have made some off-handed comment about the fact that the songs were great but the only one I left humming was the one that they sang during the bows.  That was before I woke up the next morning to find myself singing two others.  You can’t help but love songs with double meanings like the oh-so appropriately named “Revolting Children” sung by the children themselves.  One of my favorites, as it turned out, was a song Miss Trunchbull sings in the second act called “The Smell of Rebellion”.  It begins normally enough and then at one point turns into a Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds-esque vault into true wacked out weirdness, complete with references to a dwarf and a multi-colored light show.  And any show the dares to get strange and goofy has my utmost confidence.

Here’s one of the songs, actually.  It’s the song that comes right before Matilda discovers her powers:

The musical is officially going to premier at the Schubert Theatre in April of this year, if you’re at all interested.  And you can read Monica’s write-up of the night here.

There are actually loads of cool videos out there, most of them of the British version of the show (which seems to be quite similar to the American).

There’s this preview trailer:

This look at one of the dance sequences in rehearsal (the music playing sounds like a muzak version of the actual song):

And an interview with playwright Dennis Kelly and composer Tim Minchin.

Here’s the song “Naughty” (the one you’ll be hearing in auditions across the country instead of “Tomorrow” from Annie or “Castle on a Cloud” from Les Miserables):

And here are various New Yorkers talking about it alongside the show’s creators, in terms of the book itself:

A big kiss and thank you to Penguin Young Readers for giving me this glimpse into what is clearly going to be an epic little show here in the States.  And to Monica too for the photo of myself with the book and ticket which I stole off of her site.

Fusenews: Hidey-holes

Tra la!  It’s May!  The lusty month of May!  The time that  . . . . what?

It’s March?

Seriously?  Forget it then.  I’m going back in my hidey-hole.  Call me when it’s May.  But before I go, here’s a swath of delicious Fusenews.  Good for what ails ye.

First off, a gem.  I got the following email from buddy and Top 100 Polls guru Eric Carpenter: “So this weekend while working on a project on Weston Woods for one of my school library media courses (yes, I’m getting a library degree!!!) I came across Gene Deitch’s blog/website. http://genedeitchcredits.com.  Not sure if you’d seen this but if not take a look, just understand it might be a long, long look.”

Eric couldn’t have been more right.  Gene’s a fascinating fellow and he’s quick to recount his Weston Woods days working with Maurice Sendak, with Morton Schindel, with Jules Feiffer, or with E.B. White!  And that’s not even counting all the good stuff you’ll find if you go here.   Eric, buddy, I owe you yet again.

So I told myself that I wouldn’t read any reviews of my own book Giant Dance Party (due out 4/23).  I figured that was a pretty safe promise to keep.  I mean, I review books myself.  Why invite trouble by reading other folks?  And that noble intention lasted me all of *checks watch* 45 seconds before I caved.  Not much is out yet, but I can say with certainty that 8-year-old Jacob at City Book Review liked the book.  He is a man of fine and discriminating taste.  Well played, young Jacob.


A special congrats to Mara Rockliff for winning the 2013 Golden Kite Award for her truly awesome Me and Momma and Big John for Picture Book Text.   Why I do so rightly believe I made that one of my 100 Magnificent Books of 2012, did I not?  Yup.  Surely did.


In other Me Stuff, this past Saturday I hosted a Children’s Literary Salon in the main branch of NYPL.  The topic was Diversity and the State of the Children’s Book and featured panelists Zetta Elliott, Connie Hsu, and Sofia Quintero.  It was also, to put it precisely, a hit.  We’ll have the audio up soon, I hope, but in the meantime Lucine Kasbarian has reported over at We Love Children’s Books.  Thanks, Lucine!


One of the many advantages of joining The Niblings (four numerical children’s literary blogs joined in bringing you only the best in children’s literary news and entertainment) is that I now have a way of actually keeping up with my fellow bloggers.  Trust me when I say that I’m ashamed of how rarely I read the best folks out there.  But now, thanks to the handy dandy Facebok page, I got to see the 100 Scope Notes Newbery Medal Infographic. I dare say I’m a better person for it too.


To be frank, I probably would have also have missed the recent 2013 Ezra Jack Keats Award winners too!  Back in the day these awards were given in New York Public Library.  Now they’ve moved to south where the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi makes the announcements.  And the winners?

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award Winner Is:

Julie Fogliano for And Then It’s Spring

And Then It’s Spring is illustrated by Erin E. Stead.

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award Winner Is:

Hyewon Yum for Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten!

VERY excellent choices.

And the Acme Powder Company strikes again.  This may be your favorite link of the day, I’ll wager.  Recently Robin Rosenthal of Pen & Oink took a trip to what may well be the world’s most adorable shared studio of children’s book illustrators.  Good looking too, if we’re going to be honest about it.  Hear them in their own words and get a glimpse into what an artist’s studio space ACTUALLY looks like.  Hint: Lots o’ creepy Victorian photographs.  Once you’ve finished with that you can then head on over to Sergio Ruzzier’s new and updated website.


Aw, what the heck.  You know I don’t usually like to do anything with YA stuff, but a friend of mine asked me to mention this and I don’t see the harm.  There’s a rather sweet little Delirium Fandom offer going on right now.  Prove you’ve pre-ordered Lauren Oliver’s Requiem and you can get a nifty little signed bookplate.  Aww.


Did you know that there was a conference out there dedicated SOLELY to children’s nonfiction?  Learn something new every day, eh?  Here’s the deets:

It’s a time of re-invention, re-education, and revolution in children’s publishing.  There are important developments that teachers, students, writers, and illustrators want to know about. A faculty of publishers, authors, illustrators, digital designers, and educators will inform and inspire at the 21st Century Children’s Nonfiction Conference at the State University of New York at New Paltz on June 14-16.

Topics will range from “Nonfiction and the Common Core Standards” to “Creating E-books and Apps.” The weekend will offer intensives, workshops, one-to one consultations and critiques, an illustrators’ showcase, book fair, meals, and a reception at SUNY’s beautiful Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Full details are at www.childrensNFconference.com.

Daily Image:

And last but not least, utterly ridiculous bookshelf wallpaper!

Thanks to BB-Blog for the link.

Fusenews

Tra la!  It’s May!  The lusty month of May!  The time that  . . . . what?

It’s March?

Seriously?  Forget it then.  I’m going back in my hidey-hole.  Call me when it’s May.  But before I go, here’s a swath of delicious Fusenews.  Good for what ails ye.

First off, a gem.  I got the following email from buddy and Top 100 Polls guru Eric Carpenter: “So this weekend while working on a project on Weston Woods for one of my school library media courses (yes, I’m getting a library degree!!!) I came across Gene Deitch’s blog/website. http://genedeitchcredits.com.  Not sure if you’d seen this but if not take a look, just understand it might be a long, long look.”

Eric couldn’t have been more right.  Gene’s a fascinating fellow and he’s quick to recount his Weston Woods days working with Maurice Sendak, with Morton Schindel, with Jules Feiffer, or with E.B. White!  And that’s not even counting all the good stuff you’ll find if you go here.   Eric, buddy, I owe you yet again.

So I told myself that I wouldn’t read any reviews of my own book Giant Dance Party (due out 4/23).  I figured that was a pretty safe promise to keep.  I mean, I review books myself.  Why invite trouble by reading other folks?  And that noble intention lasted me all of *checks watch* 45 seconds before I caved.  Not much is out yet, but I can say with certainty that 8-year-old Jacob at City Book Review liked the book.  He is a man of fine and discriminating taste.  Well played, young Jacob.


A special congrats to Mara Rockliff for winning the 2013 Golden Kite Award for her truly awesome Me and Momma and Big John for Picture Book Text.   Why I do so rightly believe I made that one of my 100 Magnificent Books of 2012, did I not?  Yup.  Surely did.


In other Me Stuff, this past Saturday I hosted a Children’s Literary Salon in the main branch of NYPL.  The topic was Diversity and the State of the Children’s Book and featured panelists Zetta Elliott, Connie Hsu, and Sofia Quintero.  It was also, to put it precisely, a hit.  We’ll have the audio up soon, I hope, but in the meantime Lucine Kasbarian has reported over at We Love Children’s Books.  Thanks, Lucine!


One of the many advantages of joining The Niblings (four numerical children’s literary blogs joined in bringing you only the best in children’s literary news and entertainment) is that I now have a way of actually keeping up with my fellow bloggers.  Trust me when I say that I’m ashamed of how rarely I read the best folks out there.  But now, thanks to the handy dandy Facebok page, I got to see the 100 Scope Notes Newbery Medal Infographic. I dare say I’m a better person for it too.


To be frank, I probably would have also have missed the recent 2013 Ezra Jack Keats Award winners too!  Back in the day these awards were given in New York Public Library.  Now they’ve moved to south where the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi makes the announcements.  And the winners?

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award Winner Is:

Julie Fogliano for And Then It’s Spring

And Then It’s Spring is illustrated by Erin E. Stead.

The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award Winner Is:

Hyewon Yum for Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten!

VERY excellent choices.

And the Acme Powder Company strikes again.  This may be your favorite link of the day, I’ll wager.  Recently Robin Rosenthal of Pen & Oink took a trip to what may well be the world’s most adorable shared studio of children’s book illustrators.  Good looking too, if we’re going to be honest about it.  Hear them in their own words and get a glimpse into what an artist’s studio space ACTUALLY looks like.  Hint: Lots o’ creepy Victorian photographs.  Once you’ve finished with that you can then head on over to Sergio Ruzzier’s new and updated website.


Aw, what the heck.  You know I don’t usually like to do anything with YA stuff, but a friend of mine asked me to mention this and I don’t see the harm.  There’s a rather sweet little Delirium Fandom offer going on right now.  Prove you’ve pre-ordered Lauren Oliver’s Requiem and you can get a nifty little signed bookplate.  Aww.


Did you know that there was a conference out there dedicated SOLELY to children’s nonfiction?  Learn something new every day, eh?  Here’s the deets:

It’s a time of re-invention, re-education, and revolution in children’s publishing.  There are important developments that teachers, students, writers, and illustrators want to know about. A faculty of publishers, authors, illustrators, digital designers, and educators will inform and inspire at the 21st Century Children’s Nonfiction Conference at the State University of New York at New Paltz on June 14-16.

Topics will range from “Nonfiction and the Common Core Standards” to “Creating E-books and Apps.” The weekend will offer intensives, workshops, one-to one consultations and critiques, an illustrators’ showcase, book fair, meals, and a reception at SUNY’s beautiful Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Full details are at www.childrensNFconference.com.

Daily Image:

And last but not least, utterly ridiculous bookshelf wallpaper!

Thanks to BB-Blog for the link.

Video Sunday: I’m only gonna break break your, break break your heart

Our good buddy James Kennedy alerted me to the fact that after his magnificent 90-Second Newbery show left New York City for other library systems in other states he received additional, incredibly funny and insane submissions that are worth seeing.  What we have here is a Tacoma-based Frog and Toad Together take on the story “The List”.  As James describes it it’s “done in the style of a French ye-ye music video or Wes Anderson movie.”

If you’d like to see the story that was based on you can see five stories from this book animated in five different ways.  I’m particularly fond of the one with the seeds.  There’s also a wholly fascinating take on The Story of Mankind that sort of has to be seen to be believed.

All right.  We’re gonna present this day by cheering you up, breaking your heart, and then piecing it back together a bit at a time.  That’s the kind of Sunday I’m dealing with here.  Now I don’t know if you read the recent SLJ article Kid Lit Authors, Illustrators Visit Sandy Hook Elementary School but you should.  And as it happens our roving reporter in the field Rocco Staino took some videos of the aforementioned authors and illustrators.  This one is of Bob Shea.  The very normality of it destroys me.  Utterly.

Now let’s do something nice.  In lieu of Kid President (which, correct me if I’m wrong, a whole great big swath of us have already seen) here’s “Obvious to you. Amazing to others,” coming at you via The Styling Librarian.

I’m not going to read too much into the fact that I live in Harlem and yet, until I heard from a Ms. Nicole Roohi this week, I had totally missed this whole “Harlem Shake” craze, as it were.  Fun Fact: Not from Harlem.  In any case, turns out there are a BUNCH of videos of this thing filmed in libraries across our fair nation.  You can find some here and here and here and here and here.  The one I will feature today, however, is from Goldenview Middle School in Anchorage, Alaska.

As Ms. Roohi told me, “The video production class filmed it, and the security guards starred in it (well, along with my assistant and myself).  The principal, teachers, students and even a bus driver joined in.”  Thanks for the link, Nicole!

In keeping with the peppy music today, if I lived in a world where every person had their own theme song that followed them around throughout the day, the tune that is featured in this trailer for Jesse Klausmeier & Suzy Lee’s Open This Little Book would be mine.  Granted, it would bug people, but I’d only turn it on when I was marching down the street.  Marching, I say.

Thanks to Mr. Schu for the link!

And finally, since we seem to be all trendy trendy today, let’s just end with something Downton Abbey-ish.  The fact no one else has done this yet is amazing to me.

Though I would take issue with that Lady Crawley line near the end.  Doesn’t he mean she loves ‘em?

Review of the Day – Ariol: Just a Donkey Like You and Me by Emmanuel Guibert

Ariol: Just a Donkey Like You and Me

By Emmanuel Guibert

Illustrated by Marc Boutavant

Translated by Joe Johnson

Papercutz

$12.99

ISBN: 978-1-59707-399-8

Ages 9-12

On shelves now.

The French are different from you and me. They have better comics for their kids. Sure, America’s been doing passably well in the last few years, but take a look at the graphic novel shelves of your local library or bookstore and you won’t be able to help but notice how many of the names there sound distinctly French. Joann Sfar. Guillaume Dorison. Goscinny. The list goes on. While we’ve been frittering away our time with discussions of “New Adult” fads, the French have come very close to perfecting the middle grade graphic novel, and Ariol: Just a Donkey Like You and Me typifies that near perfection to a tee. School stories wrapped in the guise of animal characters, Emmanuel Guibert and Marc Boutavant have managed to create yet another GN that will be cluttering up our American shelves with its presence. And if we’re going to be honest about it, you’ll welcome Ariol with open arms. If the French keep producing books as good as this one, let ‘em. There’s always room for more.

Split into twelve short stories, Ariol follows the day-to-day life and small adventures of an average blue donkey, his best friend (a pig), his crush (a cow), and his friends. As we watch he and his best friend Ramono go to school, survive gym class, and participate in a disgusting but fun game. On his own Ariol contends with his parents, longs for Petunia (the aforementioned heifer), pretends to be his favorite superhero Thunderhorse, and plays pranks. Nothing too big. Nothing too epic. Just everyday school stories from a donkey you’ll love in spite of yourself.

It’s interesting to me how very everyday and down-to-earth Guibert’s stories are. In spite of the barnyard cast (complete with a talking teacher’s pet who also happens to be a fly) there’s nothing magical or out of this world to be found here. Ariol is sympathetic if flawed. His best friend’s a bit of a jerk, but for some reason you don’t hate him. His parents are well meaning without being pushy and his teacher’s put upon. In its review of this book Kirkus said it was “less vicious with the satire” than a lot of the Wimpy Kid type novels out that the moment. I’d agree, but that doesn’t meant the book doesn’t have bite. True it dares to get a little introspective from time to time (Ariol contemplating whether or not donkeys really are as stupid as the prejudiced say) but for every thoughtful contemplation there are at least two instances of characters sneaking fake vomit into their classmates’ changing rooms or nicking movie theater standees behind the backs of their grandmas. Let’s just say there will be plenty of stuff for uptight parents to object to if they really want to do so.

Author Emmanuel Guibert I knew from various graphic novels over the years like Sardine in Outer Space and The Professor’s Daughter amongst many others. Turns out, it’s Marc Boutavant who’s the surprise here. Not that I didn’t already know his work. It’s just that when you see a Marc Boutavant children’s book in America it inevitably stars big headed, wide-eyed children that seem this close to bursting out into a chorus of “It’s a Small World After All”. He’s . . . . cute. He does cute little books with cute little themes. There is nothing to indicate in All Kinds of Families or For Just One Day that the man is capable of giving life to a sardonic aquamarine donkey with superhero aspirations. Yet give life to Ariol he does. The art here is sublime. The style is just straight up panels. No messing with the essential design of the book or anything. Within these panels you can get one story from the text and another from the art. For example in the story “Moo-Moo” I got the distinct sense that the mother of the girl Ariol’s been crushing on was more than a bit aware of the boy’s feelings for her daughter. Little interstitial details make the whole thing fun too. I loved the tiny art at the beginning of each chapter. Some of it tells crazy stories, and others tell the story before the story (if you know what I mean).

The tales found here are universal in the best sense of the word. Yet like the Nicholas series by Goscinny (the series to which Ariol bears the closest resemblance) there is something overwhelmingly French about this book. I didn’t notice it at first. Not when the first story in the collection (“Match Point”) was essentially a one-donkey show of Ariol pretending to win a tennis match and become a rock star too while he’s at it. Not when the second story (“Rise and Shine”) compared the act of getting up to go to school with a person’s birth. Not when the furniture in Ariol’s living room looked more like something out of a doctor’s waiting room than a home. No, it wasn’t until we got to the chapter “Operation ATM” that it clicked. In that chapter Ariol engages in a raucous game of pretend in the backseat of the car as his dad drives. He leaps, he dances, he hides, he throws himself bodily all about and if you’re an American parent like me then you spend the better part of the chapter gripping your seat so hard that stuffing is coming out in clumps between your fingers as you growl through gritted teeth, “Where. Is. His. Seatbelt?!?” Kids won’t care a jot, but expect the parents to lift an eyebrow or two here and there.

Oh. And can I just give a special shout out to Joe Johnson for the translation here? Over the years I’ve come to recognize when a translator goes above and beyond the call of duty. I don’t think there’s a kid alive who will read this book and think the language is stilted or funky. Instead it reads like it was written in English in the first place. There’s only the most occasional slip-up and it goes by so fast that no one will ever notice.

In the end, a school set Animal Farm this is not. It’s just regular everyday stories with the slightest French lilt. American kids will gobble it up right quick and then hunger for more. New middle grade graphic novels are rarer in America than they should be considering their popularity. Here’s hoping funny imports like Guibert and Boutavant’s continue to make up for the lack we feel on our shelves every day.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

Nicholas by Goscinny


Amelia Rules: The Whole World’s Crazy by Jimmy Gownley


Big Nate: In a Class By Himself by Lincoln Peirce

Other Blog Reviews:

Comic Attack
The Comics Journal
Kid Lit Reviews

Professional Reviews:

Kirkus
Onion A.V. Club

Other Reviews:

The Lottery Party

Interviews:

Free Comic Book Day interviews both Guibert and Boutavant about the series.

Press Release Fun: Kidlit Celebrates Women’s History Month

The popular, nonprofit, and educational Women’s History Month website returns in March.  Now in its third consecutive year, the blog, KidLit Celebrates Women’s History Month founded by librarians, Margo Tanenbaum of The Fourth Musketeer and Lisa Taylor of Shelf-Employed, brings together distinguished authors and illustrators of books related to women’s history with librarians and bloggers from across North America. Each day features a new essay, commentary or review by some of the most noted writers in the field of literature for young people. Contributors for 2013 include Jane Yolen, Sy Montgomery, Roger Sutton, Tanya Anderson, Michelle Markel and Kathleen Krull, among others.

The blog will publish daily from March 1 through March 31, and will once again feature original posts from well-known, award-winning writers, illustrators, and bloggers.  A complete lineup of contributors may be found on the site. Interested readers can sign up to “follow” the blog, or receive it via email. Visit the site at http://kidlitwhm.blogspot.com to see “following” options, an archive of past contributions, and links to educational resources.

Contacts:

Margo Tanenbaum,

Organizer

margo_tanenbaum@yahoo.com

The Fourth Musketeer (http://fourthmusketeer.blogspot.com)

Lisa Taylor,

Organizer

shelfemployed@gmail.com

Shelf-employed

(http://shelf-employed.blogspot.com)

Twitter:

@shelfemployed

Review of the Day: Doll Bones by Holly Black

Doll Bones

By Holly Black

Illustrated by Eliza Wheeler

McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)

$16.99

ISBN: 978-1-416963981

Ages 9-12

On shelves May 7th

I don’t watch much horror in general. I’m what you might call a chicken. When I do see it, though, I’m not particularly disturbed by random splattering and gore. The psychological stuff is far more of a lure for me. If I’m going to be honest, though, one of the scariest things I ever saw was on the cheesiest of television shows. It was this insider look into the world of ghosts and on the show we heard about a haunted home. It was a well-lit suburban house and we watched as a woman took off her shoes, walked over to the couch, and took a nap. When she woke up, the shoes were next to her. And that right there is what scares me half to death. Which is probably why a book like Doll Bones by Holly Black works for me on a horror level. Yet for all its creepy packaging, Black’s latest hides at its heart a remarkable, thoughtful take on what it means to grow up and pass from childhood into adolescence. Dark enough to attract fans of Goosebumps and the like yet able to make them actually think a bit about their own lives on a deeper level, Black strikes the perfect balance between the sensational and the smart.

By and large middle schoolers do not play with dolls. But Zach, Poppy and Alice have been playing “the game” for years and it’s only gotten better with time. Using dolls of every type they spin wild tales and live out personalities different from their own. That is, until Zach’s dad throws out his toys in an effort to stop the game. Ashamed, Zach lies to his friends that he no longer wants to play. This act leads to unforeseen consequences when, in desperation, Poppy releases a bone china doll from her mother’s cabinet, only to find herself haunted by the ghost of a long dead girl. Inside the doll are ashes and if any of the three is to get any peace they will have to bury the doll in a specific grave. If they succeed they’ll have fulfilled their quest. If they fail? They may suffer worse than a ghost’s wrath. They might be . . . ordinary.

Essentially what you’re dealing with here is what would happen if R.L. Stine every wrote a Newbery quality horror book for kids. And though it may not sound like it, this is high praise. I’ve always been fascinated with the nature of horror in books for children. Kids adore being scared. I recall well the adorable three-year-old who would return to my reference desk over and over again asking for “scary books” (I’d just hand him some very tame vampire or ghost fare and he’d be happy as a clam). The fascination fades for some, but for others it taps into the same instincts that drive adults to watch loads of horror films. The trick to writing really good horror literature for kids is to strike the right balance between the creepy and the safe. Go too far in one direction and you’re no longer writing for children but for teens. Go too far in the other direction and you’re not creepy enough, the kids tossing you aside the minute you bore them. Do not be mistaken. Doll Bones isn’t a chill-a-minute festival of screams. It’s smart and thoughtful and just happens to be about a doll constructed out of human marrow and stuffed to the brim with a little girl’s ashes.

To my mind Doll Bones fits neatly into two distinct trends I’ve picked up on in 2013. On the one hand, it’s a book that doesn’t give up its mystery readily. You can read this book for a long time before figuring out whether or not the book really is a horror fantasy or if it’s just an elaborate con by one of our heroes. A book that is similar in its reluctance to give up the goods too soon is the remarkable science fiction/mystery The Water Castle by Megan Frazer Blakemore. These authors appear to be inclined to believe that their readers will stick with their novels partly for the good writing and partly to see if the book lives up to the promises of its dust jacket and cover. They aren’t wrong.

The second trend in chapter books for the kiddos I’ve notices is a prevalence of titles where characters must say goodbye to childish things. The aforementioned Water Castle does this, and the new Jerry Spinelli Hokey Pokey does little else. In Doll Bones, Black separates this book from being yet another average ghostly tale by giving it a tragic edge. The tragedy is partly the characters’, sometimes admittedly inane, inability to talk to one another honestly about what’s going on in their lives. It’s also the tragedy of getting older and realizing that the friends you had as a kid may not be the friends you’ll have as a teen. What once you had in common with other people fades away in the face of looming adolescence (a theme of the Frances O’Roark Dowell book The Kind of Friends We Used to Be albeit with less sentient dolls).

All this talk of letting go of your youth and babyhood is told in the context of dolls. The kids play with dolls and the storytelling relies on their physical presence. So is storytelling itself childish to kids? Playing pretend is, and Black has to provide her child readers with the question of whether creating stories is an act of adulthood or childhood. Certainly Zach is good at it. You can hear him standing in for millions of writers all over the world when it says, “He liked the way the story unfolded as he wrote, liked the way the answers came to him sometimes, out of the blue, like they were true things just waiting to be discovered by him.” Transitioning from pretend to some kind of a creative output is often so difficult people will just abandon the act when they become teens. You can feel Doll Bones fighting against this tendency.

In telling this tale Black holds herself back in a number of ways. She never shows too much of her hand when recounting multiple creepy moments throughout the quest. By the same token, she could easily have turned the kids’ fantasies with their dolls into separate narrative moments. You could have begun the book with a rip-roaring delve into the adventures of William the Blade and the hearty crew of the Neptune’s Pearl and then revealed that it was all the fantasy of three tweens. Instead, Black chooses to remain entirely in the real world. The gift of this book is that it feels like it could happen to the kid reading it. No one walks through a magic door into a strange land or encounters mystical creatures. These three kids have to get, on their own, to a graveyard far away and they have to deal with some VERY realistic problems like weird strangers on buses, bus tickets in general, suspicious adults, and cell phones (Black is to be commended for not ignoring their existence and instead weaving them skillfully into the plot). This grounding in reality is what makes the horror that much more engaging.

It is interesting to note that as of this review Ms. Holly Black is not a particularly well-known name amongst the younger set of readers. Years ago she helped Tony DiTerlizzi create the Spiderwick Chronicles and all the books in that series. Kids these days don’t remember Spiderwick all that well, though. So while Ms. Black continues to impress on the YA side of things, she hasn’t connected with children in a while. Happily, this solo outing does her proud. She indulges in smart wordplay and strong good writing for much of the book. I enjoyed lines like, “Before Lady Jaye, Alice’s favorite character had been a Barbie named Aurora who had been raised by a herd of carnivorous horses.” And the little details delight, like the fact that Zach’s cat’s name is The Party, or the fact that Poppy refers to her rear as her “buttular region”, or even the donut shop that has every possible donut flavor, from wasabi or acorn flour to Pop Rocks or spelt.

If the book has problems it probably has something to do with the suspension of disbelief. The entire story tips on the fact that Zach refuses to tell either Alice or Poppy why he won’t play the game any more. So why exactly does he make everything so monumentally worse by not telling them what his father did to him? For a long time this fact plays out as a convenient plot point and not a believable fact. It isn’t until you’re at the tail end of the book that Zach’s confession “ripped away the fog of numbness and made him grieve.” Until that moment he claims he doesn’t want to play the game because it’s easier than admitting he never can again. I buy it, but I didn’t buy it for a very long time before that explanation. Also unclear is the ghost/doll. It’s hard to root for folks to help something malicious. Was the doll evil and ghost good? Were they one and the same or different? All unclear.

It all comes down to something Poppy says near the end of the book. She’s upset that her friends are growing up and possibly apart from her. So she gives voice to a fear that so many children feel but are unable to verbalize on their own. “I hate that you’re going to leave me behind. I hate that everyone calls it growing up, but it seems like dying. It feels like each of you is being possessed and I’m next.” Pair that line with one earlier concerning Zach. “He wondered whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies.” Doll Bones positions itself to look like a simple ghost tale about a creepy doll, then sneaks in an engaging, thoughtful look at the ramifications of adolescence and storytelling. Consider this the thinking child’s horror novel. A devilishly clever read from an author too long gone from the children’s book genre.

On shelves May 7th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

Well Witched by Frances Hardinge


Juniper Berry by M.P. Kozlowsky


Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Other Blog Reviews:

Carina’s Books

 Misc:

Meticulous to the last, read Holly Black’s How I Wrote Doll Bones.  It shows the lot of the author bound to a word count a day.  And, as a native Kalamazoo girl, it makes me wonder what was so thrilling about Southwest Michigan in November!

A Call for Submissions: Re-Sendakify Sendak!

Last year the idea was simple if a bit odd.  I called upon my artist readers out there to consider in all that ample free time they have (why, oh why, is there no sarcasm font?) taking a classic Dr. Seuss book and drawing some aspect of it in the style of another children’s illustrator.  Result was the remarkably fun, if wacky, Re-Seussification Project.  The results, as I’m sure you have seen, were beyond splendid.

Now we find ourselves in 2013 and without our north star.  Maurice Sendak passed away on May 8, 2012.  This season his picture book My Brother’s Book has hit bookstore and library shelves nationwide.  To honor the man, his life, his books, and his characters, let us do so in the strangest way possible.  Ladies and gentlemen, I call upon you to Re-Sendakify Sendak.

The rules are simple.  Reinterpret a famous scene from any Maurice Sendak book in the style of another famous children’s picture book artist. Perhaps you’d like to do Pierre ala Ezra Jack Keats or Outside Over There in the style of Marcia Brown.  All power to you.  Whatever you prefer, if you think this is a fun notion send me a scan of your idea and I’ll cull together a post filled with some of the different submissions and post the results on the anniversary of the publication of Where the Wild Things Are (October sumthin’ sumthin’).  And if you want to do it in the style of someone living (Mo Willems, Kevin Henkes, etc.) it could be fun but let it be on your head.  Admittedly, last time Dan Santat did a Jon Klassen that was absolute perfection.

All submissions must be received at Fusenumber8@gmail.com by April 30st.