book, book, book

Where Am I?

2011-09-21T01:06:00.000-07:00

Hi, all. *tap tap*. Is this thing on?

After a wonderful weekend at KidLitCon 2011, it occurred to me that I do have a book blog of my very own, sorely neglected though it might be. So, hi. I'm still here. Well, mostly not HERE, at least not at the moment. But around somewhere.

If you stumble upon this site and want to see what I'm blogging about these days, your best bet is the tor.com website, where I've been posting somewhat irregularly on science fiction and fantasy for kids and teens. I'm also on Twitter as elskushner.

Oh, and right before my birthday I won this picture-book manuscript contest. Then I screamed and babbled happily for a while. Now I'm waiting for more news and will share as it hits my inbox.

Back in the Saddle

2010-05-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

Well, hello there! Long time, no see!

I just found out that my last "Librarian Mom" post at the Scholastic Parent Voices website was just that: my last. Scholastic is switching to a new model with their upcoming new site design, and my services are no longer required. I'm bummed: it was a fun two-and-a-half years; I was thrilled to be part of Scholastic's site, and it was swell to be paid for writing about something that I love to write about.

So now I'm back here at my old Blogger kidlit blog, looking around, dusting the place off, thinking about what I can do with it. I have to admit, part of me is pleased to be back, even though I'm disappointed to lose the Scholastic gig. I feel a little more free to rant here in my own space. And it'll be nice to be able to link to other publishers' sites.

For now, though, since they've given me permission to repost my old posts, here's the one I wrote this morning. Sheesh. If I'd known it was gonna be my last one, I might've tried for something a little more substantial:

Canine Sibling Rivalry

One of my colleagues recently became a grandmother! I asked her yesterday how the new family was doing, and she said that the parents and baby are fine, happy, healthy...but the family dog is perturbed. I said, "There should be a new-baby-in-the-house book for dogs!" and we both laughed for a minute and then simultaneously remembered that there actually is such a book: Madeleine L'Engle's The Other Dog, in which Touche the Poodle catalogs the ways in which the new "dog" that her people have brought home is utterly inferior to her own charming self. Touche is particularly scornful of the diaper-changing that she witnesses, noting sniffily that "White cloths or no, I would never do it in the house," but eventually admits that "in spite of myself...I am getting very fond of our other dog."

L'Engle's book isn't the only one where a dog has to adjust to a tiny, screamy, attention-monopolizing intruder. As it turns out, there is a whole mini-genre on the topic. In McDuff and the Baby, by Rosemary Wells and Susan Jeffers, the scrappy little Westie, who first appeared as a stray rescued by Fred and Lucy in McDuff Moves In, faces disruption in his cozy retro household. With the arrival of the baby, Fred and Lucy no longer read the comics to McDuff, or take him for walks, and he can't hear the radio over the baby's crying. He retaliates, in charmingly understated fashion, by glowering at the baby (which no one notices), and then by refusing his food, which does get Fred and Lucy's attention. When they make an effort to include McDuff, he and the baby begin to enjoy each other's company, and the book ends with the two exchanging convivial "woof"s.

In Truelove, by Babbette Cole, the displaced hero is so demoralized by the change in the household that, after all his gifts and advances are ignored, and the love song he sings (or howls) for the baby gets him kicked out to the porch for being too loud, he runs away and joins a pack of homeless dogs and has to be rescued from the pound. The fact that this story is told mostly in the pictures, while the text is a series of cliched sayings about love ( like "Love gives you strength" and "Love makes your heart sing," ) makes it all the more poignant.

Any of these would be a great present for a family with a new baby and a beloved dog...or a beloved older sibling, who might be able to relate!

Where to Find Me

2008-11-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

Well, I should've done this months ago, but better late than never:

For now, this blog is on hiaitus, though that chould always change; I'm posting once a week on children's books and divers related topics at Scholastic's Librarian Mom blog, and apparently that is all the kidlit blogging I am capable of without exploding into a mass of pathetic goo. So, go on over there and say hi!

(Just watch-- now that I've gone and posted this, I'll suddenly get the urge to post about something kids'-book-related that doesn't fit into the Scholastic blog's parameters, and then this post will be moot. Happens every time. Until then, though, this post will be up top.)

Elijah Eureka

2008-01-26T22:48:00.000-08:00

I've been reading through the Newbery winners (and working a couple different jobs, and setting up in a whole new city and country, and wrestling my kid into her clothes in the morning, and etc. Not writing here, alas, but not because I wasn't thinking about it)--anyway, reading the Newbery books, and I've been thinking about Elijah of Buxton.

Now, I liked Elijah of Buxton. I liked the colorful characters, and the impish narrator, and the sly humor, and the thing with his mom and the snake and the cookie jar, and the classmate who wanders around with the doll to welcome new escaped slaves, and the fish he gives away all over town, and all of that.

I liked it. A lot. And it earned that Newbery Honor, and that Coretta Scott King award, and whatever further honors (or maybe honours) it's going to win in both the U.S. and Canada (where author Christopher Paul Curtis has lived for the last several years, and where I now live too).

But, somewhere around the point where the Reverend takes Elijah to see the carnival, I started to get a bit impatient with Elijah of Buxton. It seemed sort of episodic and rambling to no great purpose. I knew there was a plot coming (from the front-cover flap if nowhere else), and had some general idea of where it was going to be taking us, but when I was over halfway through the book I started having little internal monologues along the lines of: Come on, Mr. Curtis! Enough with the charming anecdotes, and bring it on already!

And then he did, of course, with a pow-pow-pow of plot that lays out--with no sugar-coating whatsoever and yet still miraculously in a way a kid could take in--the horror that was slavery in the United States, and left me gaping, like everyone else did, at how good it was.

But still, I've been thinking about why it took him so long: the book is 341 pages, and the real plot doesn't get rolling until page 181, and only kicks into high gear around 270. That's about 2/3 of the book spent on setup and back story and voice. Curtis's voice is compelling enough, and his characters are strong enough, that he can carry it off, but why does he?

Then I remembered I felt the same way about The Watsons Go to Birmingham, back when that was the new book everyone was raving about: there's this great family, and they're funny, and quirky, and they get in a car, and drive, and that's funny and interesting, and...and...and...well, I knew we were going to end up in Birmingham with a church being bombed, I mean it was 1964 and obviously that was where it was going, and the ride was swell, but I started to feel like one of those kids on a car trip: are we there yet? How about now? Now??

And I knew he didn't have to do it like that; I mean, Bud, Not Buddy isn't like that: Bud hits the road on something like page 7, and after that we're off to the races. And while I wasn't as crazy about Bucking the Sarge, there was no pacing problem there, either.

But tonight I finally figured it out, and I had to write it up here. Here's what I figured out: he did it on purpose. Elijah of Buxton and The Watsons Go to Birmingham are both about Big Tragic Events in African-American History, with capital letters and bold-face. So Big and Tragic and boldface, in fact, that it's easy to lose sight of the reality that these big events happened to regular people, not cardboard cutouts, and that regular people have a way of living their lives in small letters, with no boldface, but plenty of goofy jokes and small emnities and weird little personal habits, even when they're living in the midst of those Big Historical Events.

So he did it on purpose. He undercut the boldface, with embarrassing anecdotes about when the hero was a baby, and surly teenage brothers who are driving everybody nuts, and dads excited about the newest coolest car gadget, and slapstick practical jokes, and anecdotes up the wazoo until you start to wonder, what is the point??

But that is the point. He doesn't need to grab you right up with a plot first thing: the historical setup is carrying the tension right along with it, and even a 10-year-old knows it. If he brought in the big history-related plot right away, that would be what the book was about. And the book isn't about that: it's about the people who lived then, living their lives in spite of the racism lurking all around them. He needs to lope along with the funny anecdotes, because the loping and the funny are what's subversive. In Bud, Not Buddy, he can move along right away, because Bud, Not Buddy isn't about a Big Tragic Event in African-American History. It takes place in the Depression, sure, but since most of us have almost no ready-made sterotypical images of African-Americans in the Depression, he doesn't have to fight quite so hard to make Bud a real kid as opposed to a Tragic History Cutout.

It's not a new thing, to take a big historical event and make it human-sized. It's what every decent historical novel ever written has done. But I'm not sure how many people have done it by writing as little as possible about the elephant in the room until close to the last minute of the book.

It may be that everyone else has had this epiphany already, or that it was so self-evident that no one else has felt the need to point it out, but it was the first I've thought of it. And I know I've neglected this poor blog to the point where there may be no one even reading this. But if there's anywhere where someone else might have noticed this, and/or might think it was kind of a cool thing for Christopher Paul Curtis to have done, it's the kidlitosphere.

So, Kidlitosphere, here it is, should you happen to stumble across it.

Terrible Days and Pizzas: Books About Emotions

2007-12-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

[Cross-posted once again at Librarian Mom.]

My kid had a terrible tantrum last night: a real humdinger of a meltdown over a Chanukah present. She’s kind of old to have those on a regular basis, but we still get them every once in a while. She was furious, then upset, then penitent, then furious again about the consequences for her first tantrum.

After she’d calmed down some, she started recounting all the awful things that had happened to her that made this the WORST DAY OF HER LIFE.

“Wow,” I said. “It’s kind of like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” I didn’t want to push the comparison, but it seemed to take her out of herself just a little to remember that other people have felt the way she did—enough that Judith Viorst wrote a whole book about a kid whose day goes so badly that he declares repeatedly that he wants to move to Australia.

Here are a few other books about emotions that might help a kid who’s stuck in her (or his) own anger or misery:

When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry, by Molly Bang. Enraged over a sibling dispute, Molly runs and runs outside, then cries, then climbs a tree and lets “the wide world comfort her,” until her anger is dissipated and she returns to her house to play a game with her family. What I love about this book is the way the vibrant, bold, pulsating colors of Bang’s painted illustrations make it absolutely clear what Sophie is feeling. A rare nonjudgemental book about a child’s totally believable anger.

How Are You Peeling?, by Saxon Freyman and Joost Elders. This duo has created a whole series of books in which the characters are played by fruits and vegetables, cleverly carved to resemble animals and people. This one, which introduces a surprisingly broad range of emotions, is my favorite: who would have guessed that lemons and onions and even turnips could be so expressive? (I’m particularly fond of the sulky red pepper who illustrates the concept of pouting.) The illustrations, along with the jaunty rhyming text, also help keep the book from bogging down with seriousness or preachiness.

Pete’s a Pizza, by William Steig. [out of print, but available used and at many libraries.] It’s raining, so Pete can’t go outside to play with his friends. He’s miserable, but not for long: his parents start pretending he’s a pizza: they “knead” him on the kitchen table, sprinkle paper (for cheese) and checkers (for pepperoni) on him, and drop him on the couch to be “baked.” All the while his expression modifies from full-bore crabbiness to mildly-amused-in-spite -of-himself to total giggling enjoyment, until he leaps off the counter (where’s he’s about to be “sliced”) and runs away, only to be caught and tickled. My daughter hates to be cheered up or jollied out of what she’s feeling, but sometimes she likes reading about it, and your child might too.

Light up the Darkness with Hanukkah Books

2007-11-28T02:33:00.000-08:00

[cross-posted at Librarian Mom]

Like many Jewish kids, my daughter ends up getting read a lot of Chanukah books around this time of year. It’s one way for her to connect to her Jewish heritage and traditions at a time of year when sometimes it feels like the whole known world is one big Christmas celebration!

Over the years, we’ve progressed from the very simplest board books to some meatier titles. Here are some picks from our Chanukah bookshelf:

Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, by Eric Kimmel; illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

This original tale has everything you need in a kid’s book, really: a wily trickster figure (Hershel of Ostropol, based on a famous character of Jewish folklore) a seemingly impossible task (to defeat the goblins and bring back Chanukah by lighting all eight nights of candles in the old, haunted synagogue) and, best of all, a cast of truly monsterish goblins, by turns dopey and irritating and purely, spookily wicked, depicted with all their glorious warts and teeth by the late, great, illustrator Trina Schart Hyman.

The Flying Latke, by Arthur Yorinks; illustrated by William Steig, with photo illustrations by Arthur Yorinks and Paul Colin

Opinions vary on this farcical restaging of the Chanukah miracle, wherein one single latke feeds an entire extended family that’s holed up in their New Jersey home for eight days after a Hanukkah party gone wrong. Some people might find it too in-jokey, but my kid loves the Borscht-belt slapstick humor, and I get a big kick out of the illustrations: the author and illustrator rounded up a stellar cast of actors, authors, and children’s book luminaries and their kids (John Turturro and Maurice Sendak each make an appearance) to act out each scene, which were then photographed and superimposed on a painted background. The resulting tableaux emphasize the over-the-top schtick-y nature of the book, and make it a treat to pore over for details.

The Golden Dreydl, by Ellen Kushner; illustrated by Ilene Winn-Lederer

Sara has a dilemma common to Jewish kids: Christmas envy. When the mysterious Tante Miriam shows up at the family Chanukah party and gives each kid a gift, Sara’s annoyance deepens; her present is a weird, huge, golden dreydl. Except, well, it actually sends her spinning into another reality, one that includes King Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, a lost princess who needs rescuing, and the Demon King. Also, some highly satisfying riddles that my kid has been enjoying trying out on friends.
I can’t pretend to be unbiased about this new addition to the Chanukah canon: it’s by my cousin. But just as she’s more than accomplished enough not to need a plug from me, The Golden Dreydl had plenty going for it on its own to engage both reader and listener, even without the family connection, when I read it aloud to my daughter a few weeks ago. It was especially fun to find the “Nutcracker Suite” connections together (though I have to admit that the riddles were made even more enjoyable by my slowly dawning realization that most of them came from the stock of jokes my dad used to tell us).

These are just a few of my family’s favorite books about Chanukah (Or Hanukkah, or Hanukka…it’s always a challenge to figure out how it’s going to be spelled next). If you’re looking for more, there’s no shortage of resources: About.com, Kidsreads, Childrenslit.com, and the educational website Apples4theteacher.com all have extensive annotated lists of Chanukah titles for children. Scholastic’s own website has a nice list of Hanukkah picture books, as well as an article about December holidays which includes some excellent Hanukkah titles, as well as books about Christmas and Kwanzaa, and tips on discussing all three holidays with children.

Heralding Robert's Snow with Giles Laroche

2007-11-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

I’ve been pretty quiet on this blog about the amazing Blogging for a Cure effort (though I did write about it over at Librarian Mom a couple of weeks ago), so it’s a treat to have the chance to not only feature a snowflake illustrator in support of the Robert’s Snow: For Cancer’s Cure online auction, but to do so on the very last day before the first snowflake auction opens.

Giles Laroche has been drawing, according to this site,“as long as he can remember.” He illustrates using a technique he calls “paper relief,” a combination of drawing, painting, and paper cut that produces a three-dimensional effect.

I knew of Laroche through his illustrations for Sacred Places, by Philemon Sturges, but discovered through research for this post that his illustration credits include an impressive variety of other titles. On my desk right now are What Do Wheels Do All Day? written by April Jones Princes, and Bridges are to Cross and Down to the Sea in Ships, both written by Laroche’s frequent collaborator Philemon Sturges.

In each of these books Laroche takes on a specific and visually striking topic—respectively, wheels, bridges, and boats—and brings it alive in a way that’s meticulously detailed enough to satisfy the most mechanically-minded kid (I’m especially fond of the gears and pulleys in “What Do Wheels Do All Day?” and the individually cut and placed pieces spanning the Apurimac River Bridge in “Bridges Are To Cross”) and bright and accessible enough for even easily-distracted toddlers. Each page is a world in itself, and rewards multiple viewings.

Like his book illustration, Laroche’s snowflake, entitled “Compass and Cormorant,” is both stunning and simple. I love the juxtaposition of the medieval-esque angelic herald with that alert seabird on the other side, ready to take flight. Here; it's worth a closer look:

The Robert’s Snow: For Cancer’s Cure auction is ready to take flight too, as of tomorrow. Please take a look at all the snowflakes, and consider bidding on one (or more!). It’s a rare chance to support a truly worthy cause and to own an affordable piece of art by a children’s illustrator.

Books for Halloween: Scary, but not TOO Scary

2007-10-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

[Cross-posted on Librarian Mom]

[Note: I promised a post on Robert’s Snow this week, but am postponing it once more as Halloween waits for no blogger. If you just can't wait, take a look at this post--and many others around the kidlitosphere--for a quick overview.]

Spend any time around kids in first or second grade who are looking for books, and you’re sure to hear a request (or two, or seventy-five) for scary stories. Especially as the end of October draws nigh. Now, as children’s librarian Adrienne has rightly pointed out, not everyone likes to be scared. But more than once I’ve had some tiny, pudgy-cheeked child turn his or her adorable angel face away in utter scorn of whatever mildly frightening title I’ve proffered, demanding instead “Something REALLY scary.”

This presents the thoughtful librarian or relative with a book-recommending dilemma: if you’re too weenie about offering up scary stuff, the kid will decide you are just another clueless grownup and stomp off on his or her own to find the most irritating and/or product-placement-laden book possible, and then demand that someone read it to them over and over until all family members are driven insane. On the other hand, accede too readily to the “REALLY scary” imperative and as likely as not the child will end up having nightmares and/or hiding the book under a pile of junk in the basement so as to be spared the scary sight of it.

So, for those parents (and kids) who don’t have a taste for insipid junk, night terrors, or library replacement fees, here are a few picture books and early readers to take a look at. None of them are Halloween books per se, but they all aim for that sweet spot beloved of many kids at this time of year: scary enough…but not TOO scary.

King o’ the Cats, retold by Aaron Shepard. This retelling of an old English tale features, among other things, a spooky feline funeral in a church. The author even provides a readers’ theatre script of the story on his website.

Black Lagoon series, by Mike Thaler. Every book in this series follows the same pattern: a kid recounts the terrible, gruesome, scary things he’s heard about the (teacher, principal, librarian, custodian, bus driver…) only to be disabused by the actual niceness of the grownup in question. I used to read The Librarian from the Black Lagoon to 1^st graders at the beginning of every year, and they loved it even when they didn’t understand all the jokes. My favorite part is how if you talk too much…the librarian laminates you! Heh, heh, heh.

The Spider and the Fly, by Mary Howitt and Tony DiTerlizzi. A gloriously creepy illustrated version of the 19^th-century poem that speaks to the goth in us all. I know one very young kid who loved this book so much she simply took it home from the library and refused to return it.

For the rest of the year. Her mom wasn't thrilled, but I bet the illustrator would be if he knew.

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, by Adam Rex. In one gleefully silly (and perfectly illustrated) poem after another, monsters do things that you don’t usually see them doing: the Mummy demands a bedtime story before his eternal rest; the Phantom of the Opera (in a particularly crowd-pleasing running joke) gets a series of songs stuck in his head; and of course there is the titular sandwich. This is one of those books that is sophisticated enough for middle-schoolers to enjoy, but younger kids go crazy for it too even if some of it is over their heads.

Precious and the Boo Hag, by Patricia McKissack. Precious’s brother is just teasing her with his stories about the Boo Hag…or is he? I have to admit that this one is my favorite out of all of these. It is juuuust the right amount of scary, has a great refrain, a great story, and a spirited and smart heroine.

[Next week: for real, the big idea behind some little snowflakes.]

Environmental Books for Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T00:47:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted at Librarian Mom.)

In honor of Blog Action Day, all the books recommended today have something to do with the environment. "The Environment" is a pretty big, abstract concept, especially for kids. These books all do something to make that concept concrete. Mostly they're not treatises on global warming or any other specific environmental crisis; instead, they do what books do best: tell stories, bring characters to life, and help us understand that the big picture is made up of many small pieces.

Aani and the Tree Huggers, by Jeannine Watkins.
Aani, a young girl in rural India, marshalls the girls and women of her village to join forces and stop the nearby trees--a precious natural resource for the villagers--from being cut down. The story, which is based on true events, is told clearly and directly; when the women literally hug the trees to stop them from being felled, it's easy to see how much courage this simple action took. And the illustrations, by Venantius J. Pinto, are striking and rich.

Pearl Moscowitz's Last Stand, by Arthur A. Levine. [out of print, alas]
Another picture book about taking action to save trees, but with a very different setting. Mrs. Moscowitz has seen her neighborhood change: from Jewish, to African-American, to Latino, to Asian. But she's still there, and so is the gingko tree that her mother saw planted many decades ago. When a man from the city comes with official orders to have the tree cut down, Pearl and her neighbors try to distract him, first with plates of food, then with overloaded wallets of family photos. Finally, Mrs. Moscowitz chains herself to the tree, bringing on the TV cameras and saving the day.

Henry Hikes to Fitchburg, by D. B. Johnson.
What's the faster way to get from Concord to Fitchburg: walking? Or taking the train? Henry, an amiable bear, poses this question to his friend, and they try it out: The friend works all day to earn the train fare, while Henry spends the same time walking to Fitchburg through fields, gathering flowers, and picking blackberries. This first volume in a series of four stories about Henry is based on a passage in Henry David Thoreau's journals, and is a great way to start kids thinking about the way people live (and don't live) our values through how we choose to spend our time and energy.

If the World Were a Village, by David Smith
The concepts in this book pack quite a wallop and could keep a family or a class busy thinking and discussing for days. The premise is simple: If the entire population of the world was represented by a village of only 100 people, how many would speak English? How about Chinese? How many would be children, and how many adults? How long would each person's life expectancy be? How many would have clean, safe water to drink? The answers are often surprising and sometimes sobering, and bring the issue of population growth and its effect on the earth into striking focus.

Material World, by Peter Menzel et. al.
Like If the World were a Village, this book takes a simple concept and uses it to completely crack your head open. It's brilliant: a team of photographers travelled around the world, finding one "average" family in each of over 30 countries and photographing that family surrounded by all their material possessions. The logistics involved must have been tremendous, and the contrasts are fascinating. Aside from the photo-essays on each family, there are pages devoted to individual items: televisions of the world, typical meals around the world, and (always a favorite among kids) toilets of the world. It's an eye-opener--literally--to see the evidence of how many millions of people get along the sheer amount of stuff that's amassed by many people in Western countries.
I have to admit that this is my favorite title of any on this list. Though it's not technically a children's book, I've used it many times with 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes, and the kids are always fascinated and fight to check it out.

If you want to find out more about Blog Action Day, check out their website! You might also be interested in some of the environmental charities affiliated with Blog Action Day.

In Which I Scuff My Toe And Look at the Ground

2007-09-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

So. I have an announcement.

Here's what happened:

Some months ago, I got a warm and informed e-mail from someone who asked if I wanted a paid weekly blogging gig.

What I felt like I honestly should say: "Um... are you sure you want me?? Because there are all these really fantastic kidlit bloggers out there [and you know I could link to way more, too] who are incredible writers and also post reliably, like, all the time. Here, let me give you some names..."

What I did say: "Sure!"

What happened after that: Nothing, for a while. And then, some more e-mails, culminating in the launch of a raft of new blogs at Scholastic.com's site for parents. Including one by me with the highly descriptive title Librarian Mom. My first post went live today.

I'm linking to it even though some of the layout is still a bit rough, because...well, because I'm happy about it and wanted to tell people.

I'll be cross-posting some posts from the new blog on this one, though the intended audience is somewhat different: the general book-friendly parenting public, as opposed to the kind of obsessive kidlit hounds (like me!) whose idea of fun is a rousing evening spent debating the relative merits of A Little Princess and The Secret Garden (ah! a post I haven't written yet!)*. I'm also going to focus over there on books for kids between the ages of 3 and 13, so ruminations on the far ends of the kid/teen lit spectrum will end up at this site.

Anyway. I would love to have visitors from those among you who are still reading this blog after what's been a rather fallow summer. Even if you just click over because you're curious to see a photo of me with what appears to be a halo emanating from the back of my head. (It was originally snapped against a background of kitchen cabinets, and transformed by the photoshop wizards at Scholastic.)

Now that I have a new library job, along with this new blogging one, my brain is buzzing with ideas for things to write about, and I'm looking forward to writing about them here and there and...well, not quite everywhere. Yet.

*Though actually, when you get talking kids' media with many parents who don't on the surface appear to be that involved with the genre, you find hidden pockets of obsession: I once heard a volunteer mom at my old job riff for a good twenty minutes on the themes and idiosyncrasies of the "Arthur" TV shows and how they compared with the books. So, you never know.

Cheese Balls and Tshuvah

2007-09-21T00:20:00.000-07:00

Tonight marks the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. This is the first year in almost a decade that I haven't had the Jewish holidays off work, and I'm thinking wistfully of the holiday book collection at my old job and wishing I could get my hands on some of them now, to share with my daughter and to think about myself.

The central concept of Yom Kippur is tshuvah. Though tshuvah is generally translated as "repentance," it literally means "turning": turning from sin--however you define that, whether it be hurtful behavior or not living up to one's own potential--to something better. Trying, and failing, and apologizing to whoever you hurt, and trying to make restitution if you can, and then getting back on that horse and trying again.

This is a concept that even--or maybe, especially--young kids can understand, and there are several decent children's books on the topic. One perennial favorite is Gershon's Monster, by that doyen of Jewish holiday books (and Anansi stories, while he's at it) Eric Kimmel. Instead of repenting or apologizing for any of his little thoughtless acts, Gershon sweeps them up and puts them in the cellar. On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, he tosses them all into the sea. Eventually all the un-dealt-with sins become a huge monster that threaten what is dearest and most precious to him. There are echoes of King Lear and other old, dark tales in this simple story, but it never seemed to bother the enraptured kids who sought the book out by name even in the off-season. I think they recognized the power and truth behind it. Or maybe they just liked the big scary monster, as illustrated by Caldecott Honor medalist Jon Muth.

Jacqueline Jules's The Hardest Word is more nakedly didactic, but still enjoyable. The Ziz (an imaginary huge bird creature that apparently has its origins in Jewish mythology), after destroying a vegetable garden, must do repentance by finding and saying the very hardest word of all. Any guesses what it is? (hint: it starts with an "S.") Kids enjoy this one, too, and can identify with the well-meaning but hapless Ziz.

For my money, though, the best book about tshuvah is a title doesn't even refer to Yom Kippur, or to Judaism at all. In Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, by Kevin Henkes, Lilly goes through all the important steps of true repentance after drawing a mean picture of her teacher, Mr. Slinger, in a burst of temper: She owns up to what she did, she feels true remorse, she makes restitution by drawing a nicer picture and writing a story and bringing in home-baked cheese balls, and she apologizes in person. She even does the hardest thing of all, which is to confront the evidence of her wrongdoing when Mr. Slinger gently brings out the dreaded picture and asks what she thinks he should do with it.

I'll be thinking of Lilly tomorrow night when the final shofar blast sounds and everyone cheers, and then the whole congregation--like Mr. Slinger's class--eats some tasty snacks. Tshuvah like hers deserves a celebration.

What to Do with the Babies-O at Story Time

2007-09-18T21:53:00.001-07:00

My new job, as new jobs tend to, involves doing some stuff I've never done before. Among other things, I'll be creating and performing a weekly story time for babies/toddlers (take your pick of terms) aged 12-24 months.

Now, I adore this age group. Back in my distant youth, I even taught toddlers full-time, at a childcare center. But I have to admit that after nine years of mostly dealing with elementary-aged kids, I'm daunted at the prospect of keeping the attention of preverbal crowd, even with parents in the mix.

I'm going to stick to mostly songs and finger plays, and just slip a couple of books in each week. I spent a fair bit of work time in the past week flipping through picture books, immediately discarding anything that had more than four or five words on a page.

One side-effect of all this planning is that is What'll I Do With the Baby-O? by Jane Cobb has become my new favorite book in the world. I've been shamelessly cribbing from Cobb's preschool story time resource book I'm a Little Teapot! for the last several years, and now she has once again saved my bacon. Or my little piggies. Or my thumbkins. Whatever. In any case, Baby-O is a treasure trove of songs, finger plays, bouncy rhymes, and simple circle games for the very youngest storytime-goers.

Cobb lays out step-by-step outlines of a few sample story times for babies and for toddlers, and even includes suggestions for low-key informational asides to make to parents in between songs: "When you bounce your baby to the beat of the rhyme, you're helping her absorb rhythms and language with her whole body"-- that kind of thing. The accompanying CD, which I've been listening to somewhat obsessively on my commute, provides sung/spoken versions of 35 of songs. It's a teaching CD, so the versions are pretty bare-bones, but some of them are very sticky and I was surprised at how many were new to me and how many were quite lovely. I've found myself singing her version of "Mr. Moon/T'was On a Summer's Evening" at odd moments, hoping to find someone to sing it with as a harmonized round as Cobb demonstrates on the CD.

(Does it count as bragging if I mention that Cobb is not only Canadian, but a librarian at the Vancouver Public Library?)

What'll I Do With the Baby-O? doesn't seem to be available yet through Amazon. But it can be purchased through its publisher, Black Sheep Press. Independent bookstores may also be able to order it. If you do any programming for this age group, it's more than worth the list price, even with international postage.

Moving: In Praise of Bibliotherapy

2007-09-10T22:24:00.001-07:00

I've been pretty cagey about it on this blog--at first because I hadn't given notice at work yet, and then because things were so frantic there was no chance to sit down and write a substantive and literary post about it--but we've spent the summer moving to Vancouver. That's Vancouver, Canada. We have a new home, with new jobs and new school, in a new city, in a new country.

It hasn't been a painless move for any of us. I'm probably the most jazzed about being in a new place (all those British editions!), and my just-turned-7-year-old daughter is easily the least enthusiastic. And why shouldn't she be? She had a nice life, good friends, great school, comfy (if somewhat snug) home. She didn't ask to move. But she had to, anyway, just because her parents got this crazy idea in their heads.

Just before the end of the school year, I snagged a copy of Alexander, Who's Not (Do you hear me? I mean it!) Going to Move, by Judith Viorst, at my school's used book sale. I thought the book might be too blatantly bibliotherapeutic for my kid--that she might feel emotionally manipulated, or put on the spot--but I gave it to her anyway in early July, and she's glommed onto it. Not every day, but once every week or two, all summer and now into the fall, she asks for it for her bedtime story.

Even though it's about a boy and she's a very girly girl, even though he has siblings and she doesn't, even though she's only moved a hundred-some miles from her old home, not a thousand miles as in the book, this story speaks to her. She likes the humor; she likes the eponymous refrain; she likes the litany of people and things that Alexander is going to miss; she loves the variety of places where the hero contemplates hiding (at the friendly neighbors'; behind the clothes racks at the cleaners'; inside the pickle barrel at the market). And I think she likes the hope held out in the end, that there can be new things to love in the new place where you live.

It calms her and makes her laugh, knowing that someone else, somewhere, has been through the same thing that she's going through, and felt the same things, and that there's a story about it. And it doesn't hurt that it's a decent, funny, well-written one, at that.

Here are a couple more good books about moving, that focus especially on friendship:

The Shelf-Paper Jungle, by Diana Engel. (o/p, alas.) When Frannie has to move away from her best friend, the two create a huge mural on a roll of shelf paper, dive into their creation and have one last adventure together, then cut it in half and each take a portion.

Ira Says Goodbye, by Bernard Waber. In this book, it's the hero's best friend, Reggie, who's moving away. Ira acts like he doesn't care, but at the last minute he's able to say goodbye to Reggie.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

Grace Paley, 1922-2007

2007-08-31T23:54:00.001-07:00

It's been a hectic few weeks in our household, and it was only today that I heard of writer Grace Paley's death last week. The New York Times printed a moving and literary obituary. If you've never read any of her writing, this is a great introduction, quoting some of the most delicious bits from her short stories and giving a great sense of Paley as an activist as well.

Paley never wrote for children (though her friend and sometime collaborator, Vera B. Williams, did and still does), but her stories have the honesty and immediacy that I associate with the best writing for kids, and there are kids all over them: dumping sand on each other in the park; riding daredevil between subway cars; carried on their fathers' shoulders, and always, always, worried over and talked about and arguing with the mothers who are the heroes of most of her writing.

It's killing me right now that I can't find in our box-stacked living room a copy of Paley's first book, The Little Disturbances of Man, which includes the first short story of hers that I ever read, "The Loudest Voice." It's the story of a little girl, Shirley Abromovitz, who gets a coveted part in the Christmas pageant at her (circa 1930's, somewhere in New York City) school. You see, she has the loudest voice: so strong and clear it can peel the paper off Campbell's soup cans, so she's a cinch for the narrator's role in the school's annual reenactment of the Nativity story.

Naturally, Shirley's mom and several of the other parents in her Jewish neighborhood are horrified at this "creeping pogrom" of a public-school activity. But theirs isn't the only opinion; Shirley herself is thrilled, and her dad is encouraging, and the conclusion is more nuanced than anything I've read before or since on the whole Jewish-kid-at-Christmas topic. The important and unquenchable thing is, indeed, Shirley's voice; at the end, after her triumph in the pageant, she hunkers down and prays for everyone: her family near and far, her teachers, and "all the lonesome Christians." She's sure her prayers will be heard: "my voice was certainly the loudest."

Paley herself has quite the voice, zippy and sneaky; she started off as a poet, and it shows. Her verbal path is loopy but at the same time direct--straight to the heart. She's a master of first lines. One story starts out: "There were two husbands disappointed by eggs. One was livid and one was pallid." The narrator refers to the two men as Livid and Pallid throughout the rest of the story. (Not surprisingly, neither of them comes off very well, either as a husband or as a dad.)

After reading and admiring her since high school, I got to see her in person, once. The Seattle Arts and Lectures series hosted an evening with Grace Paley and Anne Lamott, a possibly inspired combination that nonetheless was pretty much a disaster as far as literary events go (Anne Lamott wrote about it in Salon here, and also in one of her recent books). They tried for an unscripted discussion, which resulted in Anne Lamott, nervous and fast-wired, stepping into any pause before Grace Paley got a chance to say much. As the evening wore on and Lamott got more visibly anxious about how it was going, she only talked faster, until I thought the audience would start throwing things.

I only remember one thing Grace Paley said that evening, but it was worth the price of the ticket all by itself: one audience member asked what advice she would give to a new writer, and she said that she would give the same advice she gave her writing students: "Keep a low overhead, and don't live with anyone who doesn't respect your work." Nothing about "write what you know," or "kill your babies"--just smart common (or maybe not so common) sense on how to live and survive as a writer.

Grace Paley always struck me as one of a very few people (Jessica Mitford was another, and maybe Molly Ivins too) who managed pull off three tough feats simultaneously: she knew how to have great time in life; she stayed committed to serious political activism over several decades; and while she was at it, she wrote some kickass books. Not too shabby. But I wish she'd had just a little more time to do all those things.

Her voice will be remembered. It might not have been the loudest, but it was, and is, one of the strongest.

Els Kushner Does Love Moxy Maxwell

2007-08-15T20:30:00.000-07:00

I usually spend the last weeks of school brainstorming with classes to get their picks for great summer reads (so much more effective than suggestions from adults), and by mid-June, what with the kid recommendations and the review journals and the blogs and the catalogs, I've got a sizeable To Be Read list of my own. This year my self-assigned summer reading list looked like this:

Specials
Heat and/or Travel Team
So Totally Emily Ebers
Rickshaw Girl
Vive La Paris
Gilda Joyce
Peaches
Shackleton’s Stowaway
The Glass Castle
Key to the Golden Firebird
The Jew Store (adult)
Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
Twilight
Kiki Strike
Weedflower
Year of the Rat
The Green Glass Sea
Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
Julia’s Kitchen
Ruby Lu
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Between Mom and Jo
Dairy Queen
Plain JANEs
Total Constant Order
The Mislaid Magician
Emma jean lazarus fell out of a tree
Moxy Maxwell Does NOT Love Stuart Little

The five bolded books are ones I have read as of this moment. Please note that today's date is August 15, and thus summer is roughly 3/4 over. Also please note that 5/28 is nowhere near 3/4.

And so I feel for poor Moxy Maxwell, whose tale of woe and required summer reading I just finished half an hour ago (while I was supposed to be doing something else. But that's another story). Summer slips by so fast, with so many projects to accomplish, and in the blink of an eye it's the last day of vacation, and even though you've been carrying around Stuart Little all summer--and, as we all know, carrying a project around is practically the same thing as actually doing it--the actual reading-the-book part has not exactly happened.

I expected to love this book, having read so many enthusiastic reviews in the past few months. And so indeed it was. What I didn't expect was that it would be so suspenseful that, even though I had managed to restrain myself from skipping ahead throughout the 600+ pages [Canadian pagination] of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I cheated and jumped to the end of this 92-pager because I could not stand one more moment of not knowing whether Moxy's mother would really, truly keep her from performing in the Goodbye to Summer Splash daisy-petal water ballet, as was the threatened consequence if Moxy did not finish Stuart Little by 6:00.

The result left me feeling for Moxy's mother as much as for the title character herself, fellow book-lover and fellow procrastinator that she is. And it left me feeling lucky that my own reading list is made up of books that I chose myself. And that there are still a few weeks left for me to stay up late on hot summer nights getting lost in them.

Don't Toss That Coin inThe Well: Verdigris Deep

2007-08-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

Everyone--well, everyone who's ever heard or read any fantasy or folklore, or who has any common sense, for that matter--knows how dangerous it is to make a wish; how the wish, if granted by a god or elf or genie or pixie, is almost always distorted, twisted, turned against the wisher.

But what of the wish-granters?

That's the question Frances Hardinge asks in Verdigris Deep, and she goes deep with it. Hardinge's first novel, Fly By Night, gathered many genres--alternate history, adventure, coming of age, political intrigue--into its capacious (maybe too capacious) embrace, but managed to avoid the one she delves into here: creepy, creepy horror. Like Alan Garner's The Owl Service, with which it's sure to be compared many times, Verdigris Deep pits a trio of troubled adolescents against the raw, living forces of an ancient mythology, forcing them to confront the deepest and most secret recesses of the human heart.

How'd that be for jacket-flap copy? But it's all true. Horror is not so much my thing, and if Fly by Night hadn't been one of my very favorite books read last year (it wasn't everyone's, I know, but it was mine) I probably wouldn't have gone near this one. But there it was, sitting
on the bookstore table, and my hand just went for it. Almost without my control. Ooo, spooky, and so much like this book. I couldn't even bring myself to read it at night. When our hero, Ryan, got those weird itchy bumps on his hands and they turned into--oh, I can't tell you what they turned into but believe me it will give you the willies--and then the well witch started showing up on posters in tunnels, streaming water from her eyes, and then the creepy Miss Gossamer showed her true colors, well it's a good thing there was bright daylight outside or I would have lost even more sleep than I did last week.

For plot, I'll tell you what the back-cover copy told me: three kids steal some coins from a well for bus fare, and are then forced to serve the god ("well witch" is what the back cover says, but really she's a god, that's clear) responsible for granting the wishes each coin represents. It's pitched creepy, and it reads creepy. But there's more here. This book is more compact and less picaresque than Fly By Night; page by page I'm not sure that I enjoyed it more, because it's not my favorite genre, but I think it might be a stronger book. Hardinge doesn't mess around this time having fun with made-up worlds, just goes straight for the heart with a pick-axe. Man, she's good.

I can't decide yet if there's too much troubled-family problem-novel psychological stuff in the book or not. You get right away that Ryan's parents are part of his issue: his mom writes "unauthorized biographies" that get her stalked by her subjects, and does bad-fictional-parent stuff like making Ryan wear his contact lenses instead of the glasses he prefers when reporters come to the house to interview her; she and Ryan's dad alternate between bickering and icy silence, which drives Ryan batty. And Ryan's friends' parents wouldn't win any functional-family awards either: Josh is a charismatic budding juvenile delinquent whose folks punish him for his frequent misbehavior by banishing him from the house; and Chelle is all but ignored by her family, which might be one reason she keeps up a constant torrent of chat, in hopes of catching someone's attention even for a moment.

But the family psychology is part of Hardinge's point, not tacked on but integral. As our three protagonists blunder through the summer, desperately trying to grant wishes, they gradually realize what the Well Spirit cannot: not only can wishes turn against those who make them, but each wish has an unspoken component, born of the wisher's deepest unacknowledged yearnings, and granting these can be even more disastrous than making the intended wish come true.

Ryan lays out the heart of the novel when he tries to explain to Chelle that wishes are "sort of like conkers [chestnuts]...There's an outer bit which is what the wish seems to be, but there's another bit inside which is kind of the real wish...And I don't think when most people wish, they really know what they're wishing. It's like they only see the green spiky outer bit." The ancient Well Spirit, he goes on, "doesn't really get the green spiky bits of their wishes...But the shiny nut bit of wishes, she gets that, kind of. She can help with that. Because those are the great big, painful, simple wishes, you see. Life. Death. Love. Revenge. She gets that."

Hardinge, it's clear, gets that too. Not to give too much away, but some of these wishes--past and present--are the hard, real, unpretty deal, and I wouldn't recommend this book to readers much younger than ten, or maybe eleven, unless I knew them (and their parents) quite well. Or unless they'd already read The Owl Service or Margaret Mahy's The Changeover and come out the other side unscathed.

I can't wrap this up without mentioning Hardinge's way with language, which outshone all the plot baubles in Fly By Night and which illuminates the murky relationships here: When Ryan's mum prepares him for a visiting reporter, "Ryan could feel his mother's fingers pulling and poking at him as they had the orchid. He sometimes wondered whether she thought that if she tugged at him for long enough she would end up with something more interesting." Chelle offhandedly complains about what it's like "when somebody's watching you and you can feel it like dead leaves down the back of your jumper..."Of Magwhite, the town where the fateful well is located: "Nobody could quite remember which, but something had happened to give the name 'Magwhite' ugly edges. If Magwhite was mentioned, parents' faces stiffened as if they had picked up a bad smell."

There are also some nice funny bits, and several adults have their own surprises in store; it's always a relief to see kids' books where the grownups turn out to be flawed human beings rather than caricatures.

All in all: if you liked Fly By Night, try this one. If you didn't like Fly By Night, try this one too, as it is utterly different in its particulars. Either way, watch for more by Frances Hardinge; her first two books, put together, are a pretty powerhouse combination, and I wish (uh-oh) I could read whatever else she's got in store.

Harry Potter Ate My Week

2007-07-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

Technically, I finished late, late Sunday night, chased by a horde of spoiler threats. But it's taken me all week to catch up, on sleep and everything else.

I know lots of people who aren't done yet, and, like MotherReader, don't want any spoilers, not even "it was good" (or not). So I won't be spilling anything here.

But if you're also done, or if you don't care about spoilers, here are two links:

Emily Jiang of TLeaf Readings has painstakingly written a brisk chapter-by chapter summary of Deathly Hallows...in haiku form. (Link via Emily Reads.)

And over in the not-entirely-kidlit-focused blogging world, there is a smart and multi-faceted critique/appreciation/analysis of the book raging in the comments of Phantom Scribbler's HP7 Spoiler Thread. Phantom opened thread at 5:33 AM last Saturday (fast reader, that woman) and it's been going strong ever since.

Now, on to other things. I picked up a copy of a certain other much-anticipated British fantasy at Kidsbooks the other day, (we're still in Canada) and I feel it calling me from upstairs.

Dateline: Ministry of Magic

2007-07-21T01:16:00.001-07:00

a/k/a Van Dusen Garden, Vancouver, British Columbia.

The tickets came in the mail just a few days ago: three Ministry of Magic badges, along with one Key to unlock the gate to a copy of That Book.

Last time around, two years ago, we were also in Vancouver and hit the midnight party at Kidsbooks, but this time they went offsite and held the launch at Van Dusen Garden.

The doors opened at 11 PM, but we didn't show up until 11:30. We didn't remember exactly where the garden was, but we soon figured it out by the lack of parking. And--oh, right!--the line of people stretching up most of a very, very long block and around the corner.

We took up our spots at the end: two jaded, sleepy grownups and our very jazzed 6-year-old Hermione, the latter sporting the requisite Griffyndor cloak and tie, a sparkly wand, and a white shirt and plaid skirt found at a thrift store. We flashed our badges at the gate, past Kidsbooks employees urging us to "Hurry! Hurry! It's almost midnight!" and then we were in.

Inside the garden was all drizzly, convivial chaos, which is an apt description of most of Vancouver most of the time. A Celtic band played, and the expected crowds of revelers wore the expected costumes: there were Griffyndor badges a plenty, as well as numerous lightning bolts on faces, tiny children in witches' hats, teenage boys sporting big round black-framed glasses. A very polite dragon (Canadian, dont'cha know) wished us a good evening, and Kidsbook employees wearing Ministry of Magic T-shirts buzzed about.

But where were the books? Oh, at those tents! Scattered about the well-lit grounds, numbered 1 to 12, the vaguely medieval-looking tents were obviously where the books were to be found. Everyone pulled out their paper certificates and looked for the number. Rumor had it, you were to pick up your books at the tent whose number matched your key. Crowds pressed forward around each tent as midnight approached.

Our young scout, hoisted on shoulders, gave the play-by-play: "I don't see anything--now smoke is coming out of the tent--now, nothing--wait, Harry Potter just came out! Now he went back in!" The band stopped playing. We were urged to pick up our books and then leave as quietly as possible, so as to spare the neighbors, and have "a good read." (to which I murmured that this was my kind of party: make an appearance, wander around and mingle a little, and then go home and read.)

The countdown was counted. Wild cheering erupted, and the crowd surged forward.

After much confusion, it emerged that the tent numbers meant nothing after all, and certificate-holders could go to any tent to pick up their book. "Just get in line," we were told, which was easier said than done, as there seemed to be no lines whatsoever, just swirling masses.

It crossed our minds that there might be no books at all, after all, as no one seemed to have any. Then--oh, there was someone gleefully holding a book! And there-- a few more! We were finally in something resembling a line, which seemed to be moving forward. Then we were in the tent, handed over the certificate, and were unceremoniously handed a book and swept out the other side.

The crowds lingered, photographing each other with their books, with some of the most flamboyantly costumed guests (including Sirius Black's mother, wearing black and carrying an elaborate picture frame). I read aloud the first paragraphs to my companions. (Not to give too much away, but it opens in a dark night, in a city that knows how to keep its secrets.)

Then a staffer dressed as Professor McGonagle kindly but firmly shooed us out of the park, and we obediently left.

It was almost 1 AM. Almost certainly, there were kids in England who had finished the whole book by the time we left the party in Vancouver. We walked through the pleasant, tree-lined streets to our car. Most houses were dark. But one, a few blocks away, was brightly lit on the second floor. We could see posters and decorations and a white gauze canopy: a girl's bedroom. We stopped outside the house for a moment, picturing her in there, just home with her brand-new, long-awaited book, and up late reading, reading, reading.

Dads on the Page

2007-06-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

Children's books are filled with mothers: Moms putting kids to bed, moms taking kids to school, moms comforting kids after various physical and psychic injuries, invisible scolding moms (a la In The Night Kitchen). But where are the dads?

Well, they're out there, but you do have to look for them. Herewith, a small sample of my favorite fictional dads, and the books in which they appear:

Enemy Pie, by Derek Munson. The dad in this book is wise, understands how to turn an enemy into a friend, and makes great pie. What more could you ask for?

Something Good, by Robert Munsch. Featuring a dad who cares about good nutrition, but cares more about his kids. Even when one of them ends up stuck on the doll shelf at the supermarket with a sticker on her nose that says $29.99.

Ten Minutes Till Bedtime by Peggy Rathmann. Well, it's true that the dad in this book is pretty clueless: he doesn't even notice that dozens of hamsters are gallivanting through his home on the "Ten Minute Bedtime Tour." but his goodnight tuck-in once the hamsters are all dispatched reveals the depth of his feelings for his kid.

Daddy is a Doodlebug, by Bruce Degen. "Daddy is a doodlebug/and I'm a doodlebug too./We doodle things together/that doodlebugs like to do." The father and son in this book are truly doodlebugs--many-armed, tentacled creatures who also like to draw together. This warm ode to a parent and child who share a talent would make a great bedtime story.

Owl Moon, by Jane Yolen. I used to think this quiet picture book wasn't dramatic enough to hold a kindergarten story-time audience; I was so, so wrong. Kids are entranced by the father and daughter's nighttime owling adventure. John Schoenherr's luminous Caldecott-winning illustrations convey suspense and wonderment.

The Naked Mole-Rat Letters, by Mary Amato. This quietly smart novel didn't make nearly the splash it should have. It's about a girl whose widowed father has (gasp!) found a GIRLFRIEND. His daughter is not pleased, and starts e-mailing said girlfriend, who happens to work at the zoo, with a pile of (mostly-fabricated) reasons that her dad is really not such good boyfriend material. Both the girlfriend and the father respond admirably. The parallels drawn between human and naked-mole-rat territorial behaviors are kind of cool, too.

Lord of the Nutcracker Men, by Iain Lawrence. The father in this book is physically absent, fighting in World War I. But his son Johnny treasures his letters, and the toy soldiers he carves while sitting in the trenches. Johnny comes to believe that his games with the toy soldiers are affecting his father's fate, lending the book a haunting cast.

The Saturdays (et al), by Elizabeth Enright. I danced a little jig when this book came back into print. The Melendy kids' dad always seemed to have that perfect combination of concern and laid-back-ness: he let his kids run around New York City on their Saturday Adventure Club allowance-sponsored jaunts, but when it came to a crisis he could always be counted on.

The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish, by Neil Gaiman. Truth be told, the dad in this book is far from exemplary. In fact, all he does throughout the entire narrative is read his newspaper, completely oblivious to the fact that he's being trundled around, traded hither and yon, and judged bloody useless by one kid after another, until the narrator, who perpetrated the original and eponymous trade, reluctantly tracks him down and retrieves him. Still, this is a terrific book, deadpan and funny and slightly creepy. For the dad with a strong self-image and a good sense of humor.

Name-Dropping, Small World, Raspberries

2007-06-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I lived across the street from a really nice couple of the grandparent-ish variety. They were smart, and bookish, and kind, and when I ran over to their house in brand-new shoes one day and called out from the sidewalk that the shoes were making me dance until my feet were sore like the Red Shoes, they totally got the literary reference, which made me so happy.

They were not only grandparent-ish but were, in fact, actual grandparents, whose grandchildren were a few years younger than me and would come to visit sometimes from the City near our suburb. I think once or twice I even babysat for them. The older grandchild became friends with my younger brother, I think through summer camp, and they've remained in touch through adulthood. This same older grandchild, in one of those weird small-world occurrences, happened to meet and eventually marry a college friend of mine, so they're sort of like relatives on both sides.

And now this selfsame older grandchild of my old neighbors, Mark Dominus, friend of my brother, college-friend-in-law of mine, has gone and gotten himself cited in the kidlitosphere for his thoughtful and deadpan analysis of one of my favorite easy readers, A Bargain for Frances. My college friend Lorrie even makes an appearance, doing our alma mater proud with some hardcore lit-crit speculation regarding the inner life and motivations of Thelma, Frances's nefarious tea-set-swindler pal.

My favorite part, though, is Mark's own rueful evaluation of his attempts to explain the concept of "lying" to his 2-year-old daughter, Iris, using the hypothetical example of his telling her there were no raspberries in the refriegerator, even if there were, if he wanted to keep them all for himself: "I think Iris attached too much significance to the raspberries; for a while she seemed to think that lying had something to do with raspberries."

Well. I don't have any justification for feeling proud by association, but somehow I do. Maybe I can meet Iris in person someday, and we can discuss this crucial raspberry issue further.

Thanks to Fuse #8, now in her new home, for the link.

The Night of the Living Summer Reading List

2007-06-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

Every summer, the middle schoolers at my place of employ have required summer reading. Required, not assigned: they have some choice about which books they read, but they have to read something.

And every June, I put together recommended-books lists, racing the clock before the end of school.

For years, I painstakingly compiled three separate themed lists, one for each grade, keyed to the Humanities curriculum each grade would be studying that year. It was thorough, but exhausting, and frankly I'm not sure how useful it was.

Last year, with thousands of books to weed through and pack up for a summer remodel, I tried something new: an annotated list of a couple dozen "Els's Picks" list for the whole middle school, from entering-6th to entering-8th. They didn't have to choose a book from the list, but if they wanted some guidance, it was there. I tried to range it out with young-ish books, old-ish books, male and female protagonists, different genres, etc. Because it was the first time I'd done a list like that, I went a little wild with it: threw in all kinds of stuff that I just loved, cobbled together some summaries, and tossed it to the kids. This was the result.

Now I'm up against the Summer Reading Wall once again, and realizing I have a problem. Last year's list was the cream of the crop of a lifetime's reading, so how can I possibly top it this time around? I'm thinking that rather than create a whole new Picks list, I'll revise last year's, deleting a few titles that aren't so incredibly compelling in retrospect and adding some new ones.
On the other hand, I've been reading teen/YA fiction at a furious rate this year, and might just have enough to support a brand-new list, supplemented with a few titles that ended up on last year's cutting-room floor.

So far, here's what a list like that would look like, in no particular order:

American Born Chinese
Fly By Night
Hattie Big Sky
Rules
A Drowned Maiden's Hair
Uglies
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Yellow Star
Septimus Heap--Magyk
Changeling
Feed
Persepolis
Runaways
The Weight of the Sky
No More Dead Dogs
Jason's Gold
A Mango-Shaped Space
The Lightning Thief
The Wee Free Men
Rules for Survival
A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life
Monster
Sorcery and Cecelia

I'd like to add a few more, like Heat by Mike Lupica, and a Gilda Joyce book, and The Schwa Was Here, and Vive La Paris, and Twilight, but I haven't actually read those yet so even though I think I'll love them I can't include them in good conscience. Ah, well; maybe next summer.

Now that I look at it, though, it's not a bad list just as it is. (Astute readers might notice a definite Cybils influence--no big surprise.) I might just go with it, if I can slog through the summaries in the next few days.

Amateur Literary Theatricals

2007-06-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

I missed MotherReader's 48-hour Book Challenge on account of a long-planned multi-family beach weekend. Fortunately, we had a great time. Unfortunately (but not unexpectedly on the Pacific Northwest coast), it poured rain for most of Saturday. I spent a chunk of that afternoon in a 15-foot-diameter yurt in the company of seven charming 3-to-7-year-olds, whose good humor was considerable despite the inclement weather.

To pass the time, we acted out Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock, adapted from the version retold by Eric Kimmel. A velveteen pillow served as the eponymous rock, and the six-and-seven-year-olds took turns--mostly harmoniously--playing the plum roles of trickster Anansi and the quietly clever Little Bush Deer. After a couple of go-rounds, the older kids were even able to take my place as Narrator, moving the action along with explanatory phrases like "So Anansi and Lion went walking, walking, walking, in the cool forest, until Anansi led Lion to a certain place..." whereupon Anansi would point out the pillow and Lion would utter the fateful words "Oh, my, isn't that a strange moss-covered rock!" Followed quickly by everyone's favorite part: Lion (or whichever animal) falling down Klonk! on the futon, only to wake up to a spinning head and the unpleasant discovery that Anansi had stolen all the fruit from her house.

We stuck to the basic story line, but improvisation abounded. The kids picked what animals they wanted to play, and what (invisible) fruit Anansi would steal from their (invisible) houses. One four-year-old objected gently that Hippo should be walking through the water, not the woods, since hippos liked to stay in the water. Little Bush Deer occasionally acquired a Little Bush Deer Little Brother, who stayed under the bed and didn't take part in the tricking and counter-tricking. One particularly gifted comic actress taking her turn as Anansi ad-libbed an epilogue: after the denouement, in which she discovered that Little Bush Deer had organized the other animals to steal their fruit back, she shrugged, reached under a (real) grocery bag, declared "Oh, well, at least I still have this apple!" and mimed a big, juicy bite.

All in all, it was a highly satisfying afternoon. I recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in charge of a group of six or seven or ten kids with no props and no preparation.

A couple of other folktales that lend themselves to amateur theatricals:

It Could Always Be Worse! Retold by Margot Zemach. We did this one at last year's beach weekend; the three oldest kids gleefully took on the roles of a trio of rabbis proclaiming, from the top bunk, that the poor unfortunate man (played by me) should bring more and more animals (played by other game grownups) into his house. The story was definitely enhanced by the real-life crowded conditions of the yurt in which we were acting it. If you have kids play the animals and family members (which I've done a few times with classes) care needs to be taken when laying out the rules to ensure that no actual injurious mayhem ensues. "No touching anyone, no yelling, and stop when you see the signal" are useful guidelines.

Mabela the Clever, retold by Margaret Macdonald. This one has two major parts: Mabela and the cat. There's also Mabela's father, and a flexible number of mice, who need to march along, sing a refrain, and get fo-feng!ed by the cat until Mabela rescues everyone. (In the story, the cat plucks each mouse into a bag, which isn't really practical to reproduce exactly; the fo-fenging would probably best be dramatized by having the actors move to a couch or rug on the sidelines).

It's nice to have time to act these out several times, so that everyone who wants to has a turn at the best parts. It's also highly recommended that the drama session be followed by naptime, at least for the adults involved.

Poetry Friday: The Month of June

2007-06-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Still riding the year-end rapids, but I had to surface for this first Poetry Friday in the first month of summer.

June means graduation around here. The 8th graders at my school are graduating in a couple of weeks. They were kindergarteners when I first started at this job, so we've grown up together; now they're heading off into the wider world, and there are changes ahead for me, too.

This poem by Sharon Olds reminds me of them.

The Month of June: 13 1/2
by Sharon Olds

As our daughter approaches graduation and
puberty at the same time, at her
own, calm, deliberate, serious rate,
she begins to kick up her heels, jazz out her
hands, thrust out her hipbones, chant
I’m great! I’m great!

Read the rest of the poem here.

The Poetry Friday roundup, along with a lovely Elsa Beskow poem, is at Adventures in Daily Living this week.

bisy backson

2007-05-20T22:49:00.000-07:00

My day job and domestic tasks have sucked up almost all my time the last several days, leaving scant minutes for posting or commenting. I'm hoping the crunch will ease a bit by midweek; in the meantime, there's a wealth of good posts over at the 14th Carnival of Children's Literature, hosted this month by the indomitable Chicken Spaghetti. Click! Read! Enjoy!

Poetry Friday: Cross That Line

2007-05-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about seeing Naomi Shihab Nye at the Serendipity Conference in Vancouver. I'm still thinking about that talk. This poem probably comes as close as anything to catching the heart of what she spoke about:

CROSS THAT LINE

Paul Robeson stood
on the northern border of the USA
and sang into Canada...

Read the whole poem here.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is up at Big A little a.

Fox Cub Kidnapped by Evil Baby Orphanage?

2007-05-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

bookbk: Hey, Fox's mom is pregnant in this book! Look at this! First I thought she was just drawn with a big dress on, but no, she's really totally pregnant.

Spouse: Yep, I noticed that.

bookbk: But she's not pregnant in the later books. See? Look, here in Fox All Week. She's standing up, and you can see: not pregnant. And there's no baby in any of them. It's weird.

Spouse: Well, maybe that was Louise she was pregnant with.

bookbk: No, cause, see, look, Louise is here in this first book too! Fox's mom is bugging him to watch her. That's what the whole book is about: "Fox, look after little Louise," blah blah blah.

Spouse: Huh.

bookbk: I hope it wasn't stillborn. That would be so sad.

Spouse: I think you're reading too much into this.

bookbk: Maybe that's why Fox acts up so much. Maybe he's really upset about the stillbirth of his baby sibling, and no one else ever talks about it, so he's, like, carrying the whole emotional load for his family. That's how come he's always getting in trouble.

Spouse: You are looney tunes.

bookbk: Wow. These books seem so funny on the surface. But there's this whole tragic undercurrent when you get down to it.

Tag, I'm it!

2007-05-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Web at blog from the windowsill has tagged me with the "What are you Reading?" meme, which is my kind of meme: a really easy one.

So, what am I reading? Well, I'm in the middle of Hattie Big Sky, by Kirby Larson, and liking it just fine. It's exactly what I'm in the mood for: a straightforward, thumpy historical novel with a nice appealing narrator, some letters mixed in, and just enough political social consciousness (as the anti-German sentiment of 1917 brings up some parallels with the current political situation) to help me feel plugged into the present day.

I'm also in the middle of Pretties, having double-barrelled through Uglies as fast as I could, on paper at home and via audiobook on my commute. I got stalled on Pretties about two-thirds of the way through--the dystopia just got to me all of a sudden--and picked up Hattie instead. I figured I'll save Pretties for the car this week.

On my night-table: Castle Waiting, Forever in Blue, Kiki Strike, A Swift Pure Cry (someone recommended it-- can't remember who), Total Constant Order (an ARC) and the last few issues of the New Yorker.

On my reserve list at the public library: The Talented Clementine (my whole family can't wait to read it), Specials (in print and audiobook format), and a whole slew of audiobook versions of the 2008 Young Reader's Choice Award nominees.

Books read recently that I plan to write about but haven't yet: Tripping to Somewhere, The Bermudez Triangle, and more books than I want to admit that I need to review for the Puget Sound Council.

I'm tagging: Charlotte, Dawn, and anyone else who hasn't done this meme yet.

Guilty conclusion drawn from this meme: I really, really need to update my "recently read" list over there on the sidebar. Oops.

Single Moms on the Page

2007-05-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

Several years ago a single-parent friend of mine with a preschool daughter asked for a suggestions of picture books featuring single mothers, or characters who could be single mothers. Thanks in part to the dearth of dads in picture books (about which more next month), it was easier than you'd think to pull together a list.

That preschool daughter is now in middle school, but some of my favorites from back then are on today's list, along with a few newer gems:

Mama, I'll Give you the World, by Roni Schotter.
This is one of those books that makes adults go "Awwww..." and that kids love too. The story is pretty simple: for her mother's birthday, Luisa plans a surprise dance party, along with Mama's co-workers and customers at Walter's World of Beauty. But the depth of love subtly depicted between mother and daughter, and S. Saelig Gallagher's poignant, playful, gold-tinged illustrations (I was surprised they didn't at least get a Caldecott honor last year) make this one a classic.

A Chair for My Mother, by Vera B. Williams.
Rosa and her mother and grandmother have lost their home in a fire; they have a new place to live now, but nowhere comfortable to sit. They save their change until the big jar is full, and then buy.... a chair. A wonderful, beautiful, comfortable chair. Like Mama, I'll give You the World, this is a warm tale of family and community. If you haven't ever seen this book, give yourself a treat and buy or reserve it.

Jonathan and his Mommy, by Irene Smalls.
Jonathan and his mommy take a walk through the neighborhood, matching their steps to how they feel: zig-zag steps, big steps with big voices, and then finally Jonathan-and-Mommy steps home. Sometimes it's hard to find picture books for younger preschoolers depicting African-American kids; this simple, friendly story would be a nice read-aloud to a crowd or a good book for sharing with one child before (or after) your own neighborhood walk.

First Tomato, by Rosemary Wells.
I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for the Bunny Planet books, and this one is my favorite of the three. Claire's idealized "day that should have been" takes place in a garden, where her mother asks her to pick the first ripe tomato and bring it inside. Claire is tempted to eat the tomato and "never, ever tell," but her honesty is rewarded. Her mother's words, "I've made you First Tomato Soup, because I love you so," are often echoed in our house at mealtimes.

Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey.
Another food-gathering book featuring a mom-and-daughter duo. Little Sal goes to Blueberry Hill with her mother, to gather berries to save for winter. Only Little Sal--who really is quite little, maybe two at the oldest--is more interested in eating the berries than in putting them in her little tin bucket. When she wanders off and runs into Little Bear and his mother, also out eating berries...well, things turn out all right, this being a children's book, but adults who know the ways of bears may find it harrowing. Still, kids love the simple dark-blue ink illustrations, the gentle humor of the mix-up, and the repetition of that lovely "ker-plink, ker-plank, ker plunk!" as the berries fall into Sal's bucket.

Amazing Grace, by Mary Hoffman.
Grace's mother and Nana help her find the strength to stay true to her dreams when her classmates insist that she can't play Peter Pan in the class production because she's Black. My favorite aspect of this book is Grace's powerful love of story and of acting, and her absolute confidence in her own abilities. Would that we all had such faith in ourselves!

Fox All Week, by Edward Marshall. This dryly funny easy-reader series is easily my first-grade daughter's favorite. In this title, featuring one short mishap-laced story for each day of the week, Fox volunteers to take over for his beleaguered mom and cook Friday dinner for the family. Mom and little sister Louise are a bit concerned about all the crashing and banging coming from the kitchen, but when the three sit down to dinner...let's just say that there were no major disasters.

A Mother for Choco, by Keiko Kazsa.
In this nice companion to (and subtle commentary on) Are You My Mother? Choco, a puffy-cheeked yellow birdling, goes searching for a mother, only to be rejected by one creature after another because he doesn't look like them. When Mrs. Bear takes him in , she makes it clear that it's love, not appearances, that count.

Five Little Monkeys Bake a Birthday Cake (formerly known as Don't Wake Up Mama!) by Eileen Christelow
Oooh, those nutty monkeys! Christelow has written a whole bunch of books about their antics, but this is the one my family enjoys most. It's Mama's birthday, and her five little monkeys are determined to surprise her with a wonderful cake. Only they're not so good at cooking, it turns out...oh, well, never mind; Mama would certainly rather be greeted by a safe family and a platoon of firefighters than have her birthday forgotten.

And a Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers reading: single, partnered, adoptive, and everyone else. May it be replete with the dessert of your choice and some time to sit and read a good book.

Hooray for Hollywood

2007-05-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

I have one or two more left in the Serendipity Conference series, but for now a quickie post, as it's the time of year at work when all the end-of-year events and jobs seem to come cascading down like (to mix a metaphor/simile) some kind of crazy roller-coaster heading into summer.

It's a good time of year to do some low-key, easy lesson plans. One of my favorites for 4th and 5th grade is "Books into Movies."

First, I pull a whole bunch of books that have been made into movies and put them out on the tables (Wikipedia has a pretty good list). When the class comes in, they have to look at the books on the tables and guess what they have in common. Some years they guess and guess and never come up with the answer ("Animals!" "No, they're all fantasy!" "No, they're all classics!"), but this year someone guessed it almost right away in both 4th grade classes.

Then we talk for a while about the differences between books and movies: Have they ever had the experience of reading a book and then seeing the movie, and wondering how the two can even have the same title? What are some reasons that a movie might have to be different from a book? Why might the people making the movie decide to change things around?

This year I talked about my experience seeing the movie "Harriet the Spy" after loving the book as a kid, especially my disappointment that Harriet was so skinny and cute (I showed them the illustrations from the book as a comparison) and that the movie wasn't set in New York. I also gave them some of the scoop about the upcoming Inkheart movie.

They did some silent reading, choosing a book from one of the tables (I encouraged, but didn't require, that they pick a book they'd never read but whose movie adaptation they'd seen), and then after checkout we read Shrek, which is a great example of a book that's completely different from the movie. I thought they might think it was too young for them, but both classes were highly amused by Shrek's evil temper and by the poetry.

When asked about books and movies in class, kids will dutifully reply "The book is always better": they've learned that books are supposed to be Good for Them and movies are faintly unwholesome fun. Sometimes teachers even act like the existence of a movie taints the book, and won't let kids read books for reports if they've already seen the movie.

Kids believe this, too; I don't know how many times I've suggested a book to a kid, only to have them shrug it away with "Oh, I already saw the movie of that." This class shakes that up a little and asks them to think about the two mediums in a different way. Plus, it's just a blast to teach.

Serendipity, Part 2: Naomi Shihab Nye

2007-05-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

I've read some of Naomi Shihab Nye's poems and essays, her picture book Sitti's Secrets and her novel Habibi. My library owns some of the anthologies she's edited. I've always thought she was a good poet, a good writer, who seemed like a kind and open and smart person. She's Palestinian-American, and writes about that, which might make her books controversial at the Jewish day school where I work, but I've never had any complaints. Maybe because her work is so manifestly about the need to reach out, to cross borders, to connect. (Or maybe it's just that no one's really noticed them.)

Well. She is a fine poet. And a good writer. And a good anthologist. But she is a great speaker. And I mean "great" as in Great Books or Great Horned Owl. After a full day of presentations at the Serendipity conference, and a full dinner, and three introductory after-dinner speakers who got us all warmed up and excited about poetry, this small woman in a green jacket and a bushy sideways ponytail stood up and talked. She was quiet and kind and eloquent and radiant with love of words. And we sat entranced.

I was too entranced to even take many notes, so this will be from memory, and not necessarily in the order I heard it:

She unfolded an article she'd clipped from the newspaper, with the headline: "To be Young, Rich, and In Vancouver." Reading and writing for children keeps us young, she said; and we all know that books and words are the real riches; and here we are, in Vancouver! This sounds corny written down, but she pulled it off in a lovely understated, pleased way.

She read poems about her father's annoying and endearing singing, her childhood love of reading which was so great that she read the car manual from the dashboard, about Paul Robeson singing into Canada when he wasn't allowed to leave the United States, sending his voice across the border. She read about a girl pretending she wasn't herself, she just worked for herself: "she'll be so glad I got that homework done..."

She talked about herself, how nostalgic she was even as a child: she cried at her third birthday because she wasn't done with being two. About how she still feels time is going too fast: "Life is always rushing us along to the next moment." But words can be a way of slowing time down.

She read a poem by a 7-year-old boy from Winnipeg who sent her some of his work along with a letter about the doubts he sometimes has about his writing, and told about what happened when she wrote back to him, which was that some of his classmates also wrote to her with some of their poems, which were, they explained in a cover letter, much better. She told about their classroom, which, when she traveled from Texas to Winnipeg to visit it, was covered in poems everywhere: on the walls, on the ceiling, and about their teacher who had grown up in a small town and who had the world opened up to her through books, and was determined to open it up for her students through poetry.

She urged everyone to make poetry part of children's lives every day, despite the pressures of curriculum and standardized testing: read it aloud, just one poem a day. Make it part of your own life, she said. Sneak it into your day. Write three lines a day, in a notebook. Just that. Just that can make a difference in your life, day after day.

She talked about place, about connection to place even if it's not where you're from: "If you live in a place, you like its stories...you can belong to it."

She talked about her father, whose eightieth birthday was the next day. He is a Palestinian refugee, but as a kid she didn't know he was a refugee because he never spoke of himself that way; how he talked about the Palestine of his youth, which was a less contentious place than other accounts would have it; how he played with Arab Muslim kids and Arab Christian kids and Jewish kids and Greek kids and Armenian kids, all of them together on the same street, and how after dinner they would all come out of their houses and trade desserts.

She talked about her friend who works with kids in Palestinian refugee camps, how he makes "Passports" for the kids to write in, empty booklets for them to fill with the titles of books they read. Because even if you can't cross the checkpoint, you can go anywhere if you can read.

She talked about her hope in the face of war and fear and the loss of recess in the schools. And she read something she'd written recently, that she hadn't meant to be a poem, she said; just something she e-mailed to a few friends, but it seemed to have spread to more people and people were breaking the lines like a poem, so it was turning into one. Here it is: Gate 4-A.

**********
(I've just read over this entry and I'm not sure it captures the quality Nye has as a speaker that led me to lean over to my neighbor at the banquet table about half an hour into her talk and murmur "I think I'm in love with her."

So I found a link to an audio interview she gave several years ago; the subject matter is totally different from what she talked about this weekend, and I'm not crazy about the interviewer, but I hope it gives some sense of how unassuming and yet powerful she can be.

If you want to take the trouble to register, you can also hear this talk she gave last year on the New Letters public radio show, which was similar but not identical to the presentation I heard this weekend. But really the thing to do is to go see her and hear her in person if you ever get the chance.)

Serendipity, Part 1: The Bell and Funke Show

2007-05-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

It's a symptom of the deep and lamentable divide between the United States and Canada that I only found out about this incredible children's literature conference by merest chance, and that few or no other Seattle-area librarians appeared to be there even though Seattle and Vancouver are less than three hours apart by car. But I found out in time to go, anyway. And I took notes. (Well, some notes.) And so I bring you this report from the True North Strong and Free, specifically from the student union building at the University of British Columbia, where the semester is over and so there are almost no students trying to get onto the computers at ~~6:30~~ 8:00 on a Saturday night.

Well.

Actually, it's hard to know where to start. If you click the link above and check out the Serendipity lineup, you'll see why. (Also, my notes are incomplete and in many cases illegible, scribbled as they are on the backs of various programs and flyers. I have a renewed respect for Fuse #8's rampagingly detailed dispatches from all those soirees and previews. I'm afraid there will be no footwear in this report, and precious few desserts.)

Maybe best to start at the end, with what was obviously for many people the climax of the two-day program: a double presentation by Cornelia Funke and her English translator, Anthea Bell.

Anthea Bell spoke first. She is little and understated and elderly and wry and very British. She is also very brilliant, as demonstrated by her three-page list of translating credits in a dizzying array of languages, ranging from Sigmund Freud to all the Asterix books. She spoke about why she got into literary translation (it seemed like a "difficult challenge" and, she noted with some relish, she likes difficult challenges), her opinion of academic degree programs in literary translation (which runs along the lines of "I'm sure it's very fun to do, but it's not a degree that will make much difference to publishers; they just want to know if you can get the job done") and her academic background (in English Literature, not comparative lit, because at that time at Oxford you could only read one or the other and she wanted to take the philology course they had in Eng Lit).

Ms. Bell elaborated with passion about the importance of literature in translation, particularly for children, who are rarely bilingual, and who deserve the chance to read books from other cultures--books that are great, and books that are just fun and enjoyable. She quoted Samuel Johnson who, when asked what books a boy should be given to read, said basically that you should let a young boy [sic.--Samuel Johnson's sic., not Anthea Bell's] read whatever he enjoys so that he learns to like reading; he can pick up the "better" stuff (which at that time would have meant Greek and Latin works in the original) later.

Just before ceding the podium and picking her careful way back to her seat, she spoke a little about the Inkheart books ("tantalizing you," she said sweetly), the third of which Cornelia Funke has just emailed to her this week; it's sitting in her in-box, waiting for her to get back to England and get started reading it [gasps and murmurs from the crowd at this point]. "I've been asked to do a new translation of Kafka's The Castle," she said later in the presentation, "and I told them it will have to wait. [laughter and applause.] It's only fair; Kafka's been translated before."

Then Cornelia Funke got up. And she...she...well, she's about the most stunningly matter-of-factly self-confident human being I think I have sever seen in person, and that includes politicians and rock stars. She spoke without audio-visual aids and without notes. "I don't know how this will go," she smiled; "maybe you'll be really bored." But she didn't seem too worried.

Nor should she have been. She launched into the story of her literary journey (a theme all the presenters had been asked to address): growing up in a small town, books were her addiction, a "legal drug" that she couldn't get enough of. Her parents wanted her to pursue her talent for art, but she saw it as irrelevant and elitist and wanted to change the world. She became a social worker. But "you cannot live against your gifts...you will do what you were born to do, and your gifts will pull and push at you and pain you" until you use them. So she entered the illustrator's program at the university after all, graduated, and got a job illustrating books.

And soon found herself bored with the picture books she was given to illustrate: "Children in classrooms, children in their rooms...German children's literature at that time was very realistic." She wanted to draw fairies and ogres, so she whipped up a little picture book of her own, which was immediately published. Nope; never had a rejection slip [mutters and groans from the audience].

And the rest is more or less history. She wrote and wrote and wrote (which she professes to find painless and joyful--provoking more envious groans from the crowd). She wrote Inkheart as a love letter to books and to her fellow reading addicts, and has been surprised to find it read and loved by many kids who formerly never read books. She lives in Los Angeles now, loves it, and is currently working on a screenplay she was asked to do by one of the producers (I think) of the Harry Potter movies--not a book of her own, but a project based on (an unnamed, super-secret) someone else's book that "very much relates to the fairy tales of the Germans". It's her first time working directly in English, and she's enjoying it, but she thinks she's only a reasonably good writer in English; not as good as she is in German.

When she sold the film rights to Inkheart she asked to be made a producer, and so she's had a say on the director and the cast (Helen Mirren is going to play Elinor), gets to see the rushes, and all that fun stuff. She feels it has "the darkness I wanted" for a film version of the book, and seems genuinely pleased with it, and with everything else in her life.

Finally, the author and translator sat down together, conversed briefly on mike, and then took questions. This was when I got to appreciate the full resplendence of Cornelia Funke's dark brown velvet skirt, and also the genuinely warm working relationship between the two writers, strikingly different as they are (short, tall; English, German; diffident, flamboyant). They obviously admire each other's talents, and feel that each is a better writer because of the other. Cornelia Funke even completely rewrote one of her early novels to make it more worthy for Anthea Bell to translate into English. "I felt so blessed that she put this beautiful glove about the hand of my language," she said.

*************
Next up (but probably at much less length): Naomi Shihab Nye makes us all choke up, and Janet Stevens's technical difficulties.

Poetry Friday: The Librarian Proctors a Math Test

2007-05-03T16:52:00.000-07:00

Lines composed on a spare piece of scrap paper while proctoring the Iowa Test of Basic Skills this week. It seemed like it wanted to be a poem, though I'm kind of out of practice at this sort of thing.

Disaffected rebel in the back,
Finished early, reads The White Mountains.
The kid who bounced
Out of his seat back in kindergarten
Cracks open The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Lunch Money sprawls open, cover-up, laid on
The desk as if this timed test is a momentary interruption
From the real business of finishing the chapter.

Ugg-booted fashionista
(First glimpsed years ago
as a tagalong preschool sister
dragging her contraband puppy into the book fair on a straining leash)
Slouches in her seat, munching an apple,
Immersed in Overboard.

It's her assignment for Humanities:
a survival book.
They've done this project year after year
Reading survival, living it, surviving
These annual fill-in-the-bubble tests,
The crush from class to class
The bumpy road from littleness into
The first glimmers of their grownup selves,
those selves now bent over desks
scribbling equations on scrap paper.

Four minutes left. I write it on the board.
But they're almost all done now,
bubble-filled papers folded properly into each booklet.

Some sleep, some stare at nothing,
But most are turning pages:
Uglies. Heroes Don't Run. Make Lemonade.
The Adventures of Ulysses.
Double Identity.

Their double identities waver before me
Who knew them when, who could make
Them sit still for a story
With one practiced look.

They sit still on their own now.
All I have to do
(at least this one quiet morning)
Is hand out pencils,
Watch the clock,
Go next door and ask for quiet,
Clear time and space for them
While they hitchhike
Through this place
Out
To find their own white mountains.

Male and Female Created (S)he Them

2007-05-02T21:41:00.000-07:00

Ten or fifteen years ago, when I worked at a progressive preschool, we used to cross out the sexist language in the older picture books (our own, naturally; not the library's) and rewrite it so that the kids we worked with would grow up knowing that girls can be police officers and firefighters and mail carriers, and fathers can take care of babies, and also that, incidentally, animals come in both the male and female variety.

That last point is surprisingly slow to catch on, even yea unto this day. In the last couple of weeks I've found myself reading two different otherwise-lovely picture books--both published within the past three years--that feature a variety of different animals, all of which (whom?) are inexplicably referred to as "he." After some pages of this my feminist training kicked in, and I started changing some of the "he"'s to "she," stopping momentarily to explain that this wasn't exactly how the author had written it, but I was reading it a little differently because some animals are girls, aren't they?

It might seem like a minor thing, but as a very girly girl growing up, I never felt for animal books, mainly because they all seemed somehow too boy-y. If a fictional animal was clearly a girl I was much more interested, but that was pretty unusual--in fact, except for the dragon in My Father's Dragon, and that whiny Little Red Hen--oh, and Kanga--I can't remember a single one.

How refreshing, then, to open up Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile, (reviewed more fully here by a wrung sponge) a charming trickster tale from Liberia in which both the trickster and the tricked are most definitely women. Of course, they'd have to be, as the plot revolves around the hatching of their eggs.

Even so, the kindergarteners and even the first graders were confused; they kept pointing to the Hungry Crocodile and saying things like "He wants to eat that chicken up!"

Well. Apparently the revolution has not yet arrived. Onward, ye writers of animal picture books!

p.s. Come to think of it, that most popular of contemporary animal characters, the Pigeon, is never referred to (at least not in the books themselves) as either "he" or "she." Though it seems to be generally assumed that the Pigeon is male. I tried thinking of the Pigeon as a girl pigeon, and felt my brain's eyes cross with the effort.

The blogging's been light, but the reading hasn't

2007-04-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

I'm about halfway through The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing v. 1, and I feel a bit about it the way I feel about the movie "Brazil": blown away by the brilliance, but not sure I can actually stand to get through the product.

There's something about a certain kind of misery that I can't handle in books. It has nothing to do with the degree of torment, or I wouldn't have been able to have read as many Holocaust novels as blithely as I have. And more recently, I found reading Sold a riveting but relatively un-dusturbing experience--I mean, yes, I am deeply disturbed by the concept of teenage girls being sold into prostitution, and the story was very sad, and very well written, and I was completely drawn in, but somehow it didn't sicken me so I had to force myself to keep reading, which is what's happening with Octavian.

The only other book I remember this happening with was The Amulet of Samarkand, which I abandoned partway through. Something about the utter bleakness and loneliness of that child wizard's life overrode the wonderful craftsmanship of the novel, and the funny footnotes, and all that, and rendered me unable to continue.

I can't put my finger on what exactly it is about those two books that makes them so hard for me to read. Is it, for some reason, that the suffering protagonists are boys? Well, but The King of Mulberry Street and Milkweed and The House of the Scorpion all put their boy heroes through some pretty horrific paces, and I gobbled them all up without much trouble.

On the other hand, everyone has their own triggers. Here are some books that never bothered me in the least, but which other people found upsetting:

A student I taught some years ago was so deeply disturbed by the Dursley's treatment of Harry at the beginning of Sorcerer's Stone that she just couldn't read any more of the book.
A woman I know-- who has written some pretty intense fiction herself--can't stand the hopelessness of the kids' situation and the cynicism of the author in A Series of Unfortunate Events.
My spouse, as I've mentioned before, is deeply shaken by any book in which something Really Really Bad happens to children or their parents, which narrows the reading field considerably.
And one of my best friends, as a teenager, just could not bring herself to read past the first chapter of The Catcher in the Rye, because she was so mortified on Holden Caulfield's behalf when he left the team's fencing equipment on the subway.

So, maybe it's nothing particular about those two books; could be that it's just me.

In any case, I'm considering putting Octavian aside in favor of the book I'm supposed to review for my librarians' group. It's a contemporary tale about a 12-year-old runaway, and sounds practially frivolous in comparison.

Artifacts from the Whirlwind

2007-04-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of controversy about the age at which children are ready to learn or read about the Holocaust; I've heard different educators say with equal conviction that 5th grade is too young and that you can discuss the topic with preschoolers if you do it sensitively. My own opinion leans toward the wishy-washy "it depends on the kid" side. Five Owls has a good article on the subject here. The author, Lisa Silverman, also published an excellent article on Holocaust picture books in a recent issue of School Library Journal.

Today our school observed Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Memorial Day. For the 4th grade class, I pulled out a bunch of those picture books and put them on the tables for silent reading. I read them Keeping the Promise: A Torah's Journey, which tells the story of the miniature Torah that Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon took into space with him on the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia mission in 2003. The Torah had been given to profesor Joachim Joseph as a Bar Mitzvah present when Joseph was a 13-year-old inmate at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The Rabbi who gave him the Torah asked him to promise to tell the story, and he passed it on to Ramon so that the entire world, watching broadcasts of the shuttle voyage, could hear that story.

When the book was finished, I asked the class if they thought Ramon shouldn't have taken the Torah into space with him, given that this precious artifact is now lost forever after the shuttle crash. Which is more important: the object, or the story? Both, they said. But it's better to have the story and no physical Torah than to have the object but not know the story that goes with it.

Then we read a book about an artifact whose story has been lost and can only be imagined: Who Was the Woman Who Wore the Hat? The author, Nancy Patz, saw a woman's hat in a glass case at a Holocaust museum in Amsterdam. The display had no label and no explanation. She found herself drawn to the image of the hat, and wondered about the woman who wore it: what was her life like? How did she like her coffee? What happened to her? She drew the hat on the heads of various imagined women, juxtaposed with images of people being rounded up, peering from trains. The result is a spare, haunting picture book. Because the book is physically small it would be hard to share with a large class. but this 4th grade happens to be small also, so they gathered in and listened thoughfully until the book was over.

Do you have to know someone's story to remember them? We wondered afterwards. Or can you remember by imagining? They had a lot to say on the subject.

Another Holocaust book based on an artifact is Hana's Suitcase, by Karen Levine. It's too long to read aloud in a single sitting, but makes a great longer-term read-aloud. I'm pretty jaded about Holocaust books, but this one knocked me back with its clear, sensitive writing, and with the true story it relates: about one girl caught up in the Holocaust; about a group of Japanese students devoted to learning and teaching about an event far from them in time and space; and about the teacher who's determined to solve the mystery of the suitcase. The author manages to write about a scary, painful subject without either sensationalizing or holding back, and makes historical research seem pretty exciting, in the bargain. A remarkable story.

In Which the Novels of John Green Engender a Moment of Family Togetherness

2007-04-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

A slightly reconstructed conversation.

Scene: Els, Spouse, and 6-year-old Child are getting into the car to drive to the airport.

Spouse notices the book-on-CD on the passenger seat.

Spouse (who has just read and enjoyed An Abundance of Katherines on Els's recommendation) *with a touch of envy in voice*: Oooh, I see you're listening to Looking for Alaska!

Els: Well, yes. It's good. But I'm not sure if you'd like it; I just started the fourth disk and I think Something Bad is about to happen.

Spouse: Oh. Okay. But if nothing bad happened, you wouldn't have any plot, would you?

Els: It's funny...now that I think of it, nothing really bad does happen in Katherines. Well, there are two bad things, but they both happen before the book starts. You just find out about them during the time of the book.

Child, *piping up from back seat* : I know one of them! He gets dumped by a bunch of girls named Katherine, right?

Els: Uh, right.

Child: What's the other one?

Els: If I tell you, it'll spoil it for you when you read it in ten years or so.

Child: Please, please tell me! Please! I promise I'll forget it!

Els: You can't promise to forget something!

Child: Pleeeeease, please tell me anyway! What's the other bad thing?

Els: Oh, okay. It's [spoiler revelation that the main characters discover near the end of the book].

Child, *baffled but resigned*: Oh.

Els: See, it's important because it [gives important information about a secondary but crucial character]. Because of [explanation delving into way more detail than necessary about bigger economic and moral issues].

Child: Oh.

Els: Do you really think you'll forget that?

Child: I forgot it already!

Els: What did you forget?

Child *with carefully vacant intonation belied by gleam in eye*: Um...I can't remember!

Global Kidlit in Vancouver

2007-04-11T08:18:00.000-07:00

Usually on a visit to Vancouver I try to make it to Vancouver Kidsbooks. I missed it this trip, and it's the one thing I wish I'd made time for. Vancouver bookstores and libraries have an amazingly wide-ranging selection of kids' and YA books. There seems to be a sense of obligation to keep up with literary trends in the entire English-speaking world--Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and even South Africa--as well as the United States and of course Canada itself.

Here are a few books I've found at Kidsbooks on past visits:

Camp X by Eric Walters.
A huge hit in Canada when it came out, this cracking yarn of a World-War II spy story set in a small Canadian town barely cracked the U.S. consciousness. In fact, I couldn't even find a copy in the states when it showed up on the Young Reader's Choice Award nominee list a few years ago. Fortunately (for me and for all the kids who've been snatching it off the shelves ever since) Kidsbooks had it.

The Exiles. by Hilary McKay
Hilary McKay's Casson family books are well-loved among American kidlit connoisseurs, but it's harder to find her earlier books within these borders. The Exiles, McKay's first novel, sends four cranky, argumentative sisters off to an unwilling beachside summer with "Big Grandma." It's not as tightly-constructed as the Casson books, but her trademark humor and strong, quirky characters are well in evidence.

A Monkey's Wedding, by Norman Silver
Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, it ain't. This tale of four teenage girls of different races and backgrounds in post-apartheid South Africa makes for grim reading at times; the friends' stories don't all end happily, to say the least. This book gave me a sense of kids' actual lives in the "new" South Africa that news stories never would have provided. For that reason alone, it's survived several personal-library weeding sessions.

Orphan at My Door: The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope, by Jean Little
The "Dear Canada" books are our neighbor to the North's answer to the "Dear America" phenomenon. This volume, by one of Canada's best-known historical novelists, takes as its topic the "Home Children", British orphans who were shipped overseas to be employed/adopted by Canadian families. Their story is similar in some ways to that of the Orphan Train children in the States--some found real homes, some were abused. "Orphan at My Door," set in Guelph, Ontario, in 1897, actually tells the story of a Canadian girl whose family is hosting a Home Child.

Four Pictures by Emily Carr, by Nicholas Debon
Emily Carr was an adventurous and driven painter with a deep passion for art and for nature. At a time when nice Victorian ladies (Victorian in both senses--Carr lived in the British outpost of Victoria) stayed home and received callers, Carr set out for a remote First Nations village to learn about the people and sketch their art. She was eventually "discovered" by the Canadian Group of Seven and achieved some recognition. This graphic biography sketches out the main events in Carr's life while giving a sense of her work. It's short--just 30 pages--but beautifully done.

The Thump Factor

2007-04-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

The inconvenience of being without Internet access in a foreign (well, Canadian--only three hours away but still officially foreign, last time I checked) city for nearly a week was almost made up for by the glory of having hours at a stretch to just sit and read. And read! And read! And so I finally had the chance to plunge into the 389-page treat that is A Drowned Maiden's Hair.

That was well worth it, all right. I'd give up more than Internet access to read that book again. Mmm.

As I'm apparently the last person in the kidlitosphere to read it, and it won the 2006 Cybil Award for middle-grade fiction and has been gathering hosannas of reviews all over the place, I won't go into detail about the plot. But I was thinking, later, about why that book was so especially satisfying: what was it?

Well, it was readable without being lightweight, meaningful without preachiness. God knows it has plot--that subtitle "A Melodrama" is well-earned--but it's not aboutthe plot, per se. What it's really about, in some ways, is grief. So much so that I advised my partner (who with me is parent to a strong-willed, physically daring, and perhaps slightly spoiled daughter, and who has a hard time reading books or seeing movies in which Bad Things happen to children) not to read it. But it's not a sad book.

The characters are (o, overused reviewer's phrase) well-drawn; I believed, wholly, in Maud Mary Flynn, and wanted to know what would happen to her; I believed in Hyacinth and wanted desperately for her to get her comeuppance. But I've read lots of books with great, believable characters that didn't get to me like this one. So what was it, exactly?

"Thump" is the word I came up with finally to describe that particularly delicious reading experience. A Drowned Maiden's Hair has Thump.

"The thump factor" is a phrase usually used to describe the physical heft of a book, but that's not what I'm after here. For lack of a better definition, Thump in this context refers to a perfect or near-perfect balance of emotional plot and action plot (As Brooklyn Arden explains in this post, the emotional plot of the first "Harry Potter" novel is "Harry finds friends and a home." The action plot is, oh, you know, "Harry goes to a cool wizard school and saves the Stone and finds out about Voldemort.") Books with Thump have both, plus something else: they reach beyond the specifics of plot and character to big, universal themes. But they don't get all caught up in the message; they keep you turning the pages, keep you needing to find out What Happens Next. Plus, to keep all that going, the prose itself has to be brilliant.

And all of it has to fit together: the meaning can't feel tacked-on, the plot can't falter, the characters have to pop off the page but still be believable, the emotions have to feed into the action and vice versa...

Oh, forget it. The more I try to describe Thump, the longer and more tangled this post gets. So I'm just going to provide a couple of lists: one of books with thump, one of books I love without. There are lots more in both categories than the ones below, plus a few I'm not sure about. But when I looked through my reading list from the last several years, it was surprisingly easy to pick out the few Thump books from the others: like they say about pronnography, I might not be able to describe it, but I know it when I see it*.

Books With Thump*

Holes, by Louis Sachar
Maybe the archetypical Thump book: a plot that won't quit, with layers of meaning that you can't stop thinking about. A third-grader can read it and love it; an adult could write a master's thesis on it. No wonder it won the 1999 Newbery as well as numerous Children's Choice awards (it beat out Harry Potter for the 2001 Young Reader's Choice Award, at my school and all over the region).

The Sea of Trolls, by Nancy Farmer
It's a chunky, compelling historical/fantasy adventure story about a boy who's kidnapped by Vikings and has to go to the Troll Lands to save his sister! No, it's a deep and thoughtful exploration of philosophies that value life vs. those that valorize death! It's a floor wax! It's a dessert topping! It was my favorite book of 2005, and a fair bet to win this year's YRCA Intermediate award if my students are anything to go by.

The Greengage Summer, by Rumer Godden
At first glance, this slim novel might seem a bit dreamy: a British family travels to the Champagne country of France for one enchanted summer; the two oldest daughters learn the ways of the world. But the coming-of-age emotional plot is wrapped around a taut mystery/thriller that doesn't let up until the very last page.

The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau
Lina and Doon are racing against time to save their city, sure. But there's more here, about the nature of society and individuals' obligations to the common good. That kind of theme-y stuff is understated, though, and never as lecture-y as I've put it here. And the prose is gorgeously transparent. It doesn't draw attention to itself, but there are passages--like the one where Lina and Doon see night outside the City for the first time--that just glow.

To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Okay, this is the other archetypical Thump book; there's a reason it's assigned reading at high schools by the hundreds. It's a courtroom drama, a meditation on the nature of justice and mercy and a great kid story all at once--Scout is right up there with Ramona and Clementine and Junie B. in the pantheon of tough, smart little girls.

Books I Love That Don't Quite Have Thump

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh
If you forced me to choose at gunpoint, I'd say (like many other women of my generation) that this is my favorite book of all time. But the truth is, what makes it compelling is Harriet herself, eccentric and brilliant and cranky as she is. The plot is secondary.

The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright
Oh, but this is a lovely book--you just want to climb in through the Melendys' window and hang out with them. Episodic, though. Like a lot of other non-Thump books I love, the characters and situation predominate.

Fly by Night, by Frances Hardinge
You can't accuse Fly by Night of lacking in plot; it's got twists and turns up the wazoo, plus boffo characters and linguistic pyrotechnics, and a powerhouse ending that will resound with anyone who loves Story. But the story gets a little boggy and hard to follow in the middle, and it could have been tightened by maybe 50 pages and a plot thread or two. I loved it enough to buy it (not many books get bought in our two-librarian household), but it's too tangled and unwieldy to nail down that elusive thumpy quality.

Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel
I wavered before putting this one on the list, because I hate to put it down in any way; it's such a compelling read, with such great characters, chock full of adventure, and with those amazing cloud creatures thrown in. But in the end, there's not enough else going on to put this in the Thump category: the story doesn't reach out of itself to connect with anything bigger, the way Holes or The Sea of Trolls do.

The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron
When kids' book people complain about the lack of kid-appeal in many Newbery Medal winners, it's partly the thump factor that they're talking about. I loved Lucky, loved the setting and the quirky characters and the language, and I cared about what happened to her. But when you get down to it, the plot was a bit thin.

*Obviously (I hope) this is all totally subjective; I'm not trying to come up with some authoritative Abundance-of-Katherines type theorem about the Thumpiness of books, just to define it for myself and whoever's still reading after my vacation-induced absence.

What do you think: are there books that have It for you? Or don't? And how do you define It?

Introducing Myrtle Jane

2007-03-31T07:42:00.000-07:00

Never having run an online chicken-naming contest before, I took my responsibilities in this regard quite seriously and made two lists of of entries to peruse: one with the names of the entrants and one without. I printed out the one without names to avoid being unduly swayed by the identities of the entrants, and looked at it and looked at it.

And to my surprise, the name that seems to match this chicken wasn't attached to a particular literary figure; it just felt right.

So, herewith, I introduce to you the official book, book, book mascot, hereafter to be known as... Myrtle Jane Chicken, Literary Maven.

"Myrtle" was Susan's suggestion, so she wins the prize! Susan, send me your street address and I'll pop Father's Arcane Daughter in the mail to you.

By rights, Liz deserves a prize too, for contributing the felicitous phrase "Book Maven" which I altered only slightly. I just have one copy of the book, but Liz, if you email me your address too I will gladly send an alternative.

"Jane" is my own addition, to weight down the name and in honor of Chicken Jane, a character in the PBS TV show "Between the Lions". But as no one from PBS actually entered this contest, they don't get any prize.

I have to admit that as a longtime Muppet Show fan I was sorely tempted by the name "Camilla," after Gonzo's longtime hennish love, when I read it in Little Willow's list of literary and pop culture poultry characters, but in the end Myrtle was a Myrtle and that was that. She is a kindly chicken but will brook no waffling.

For your reading enjoyment, here is the complete list of entries, with participants' names and entries' literary antecedents:

*********************

*From Kathy:

Henrietta (SuperChicken)
Babs (Chicken Sisters)

*From Genevieve:

Minerva Louise (Stoeke stories)
Henrietta (Hoboken Chicken Emergency)
Pouletter (Hen Lake & Peeping Beauty)
Lottie (Mathers books)
Rosie (Rosie’s Walk)
Chicken Little
Philadelphia Chicken (Boynton)
Chicken to the Rescue!
Hen (Little Bear)

*From Anonymous:

Billina (Oz books)

*From Liz:

Henny Penny

*from Alkelda the Gleeful:

Maxine Synecdoche

*From Zeelibrarian:

Desdemona
Ophelia (Hamlet (I love that farmyard Shakespeare idea!)
Marjorie
Babs (Chicken Run)
Ginger (Chicken Run)

*From Liz again:

Hazel Hen, book maven
Ms. Hazel Hen, Research Librarian to the Stars

*From Susan (who claimed to have "nothing to add," which just goes to show you)

Marian
Myrtle

*From Tricia:

Poulet Bibliophile

*From Little Willow:

Bawk Bawk Book
Poultry in Motion
Book Chick

*Also from Little Willow, a long literary list from Wikipedia, including:

Camilla

*From cloudscome:

Ms. Pecknote

*From Vardibidian:

Darles Chickens
Hen Carey Thomas
Henny Dreadful
Information Hen (Between the Lions)
Helena Henway

*From Slim and Slam:

Helen
Helen the Chicken

*From web:

Queequeg

*From Barbara Bietz:

BibliOphelia

*From HipWriterMama:

Library Chick
Ms. Chickels Peckaway

*From anonymous:

Chicken Little(rary)

*************

Many squawks of thanks to everyone who entered! I'm honored to peck around in the yard with such a creative and well-read flock.

Passover with Pearl

2007-03-29T20:59:00.000-07:00

Chicken Spaghetti has kindly written a Passover Books post, for which I am exceedingly grateful, because I was feeling like I should but the effort of preparing for Passover and writing about Passover at the same time was threatening to make my head spin. And the Passover Book List [PDF] that she links to has more books than I ever would have thought of.

However, there is one Passover book that demands to be written about in detail, both because it's so excellent and because there is one very, very strange thing about it. And that is Pearl's Passover, by Jane Breskin Zalben.

Jane Breskin Zalben has written and illustrated a whole slew of adorable picture books, many of them about Jewish holidays and rites of passage. Several feature a little bear named Beni and his family, who, in various books, celebrate Chanukah and Purim and Rosh Hashanah and go to a wedding and that kind of thing. The stories and illustrations are sweet without being cloying, understated without being boring, give enough information about the holidays to satisfy the curiosity of non-Jewish kids while giving Jewish kids enough plot to hang their interest on. And many of them are small, just the right size for small kids to browse through themselves. All in all, a totally charming series.

Pearl's Passover is a nice mix of plot, crafts, recipes, and Passover information. In short, read-aloud-able chapters, Pearl and her family celebrate Passover with their relatives, including cousins Harry and Sophie, the "two terrors from Teaneck." In between each chapter, Zalben gives instructions for making crafts like place cards, reclining pillows, Miriam's Timbrels, and a seder plate.

Last year at about this time, my daughter and I were cozily reading away on the couch when we got to the seder plate part and were brought up short. See, one of the objects on the seder plate is a lamb shank bone, to symbolize the lamb's blood that the Israelite slaves used to mark their doors right before escaping from Egypt, so the Angel of Death would pass them over. Kind of a gory little detail, but my child is a veteran of religious school and a big fan of the Kids' Cartoon Bible (a terrific Bible-story version that's not as well-known as it should be), and she wasn't shocked by that. No, what stunned us both was that, see, well, it suddenly dawned on us that Pearl and her family were all sheep. Literally. Some of Zalben's books are about a bear family, but there's a whole other series, including this one, that are about a sheep family.

So this sheep family in this book celebrating a holiday where the liberation of the Jews hangs in part on the slaughter of...sheep.

"That's a little weird," my child offered. I agreed.

We paged forward to the part where Pearl's grandpa (also a sheep!) is retelling the story of the ten plagues. It's the tenth plague, Death of the Firstborn, that prompts the sheep's blood thing, which supposedly alerted the Angel of Death not to kill the firstborn in the marked houses. But Grandpa, understandably, glosses over this part, explaining only that Moses told his people to "mark [their] doorposts."

After that, we had to put the book down and do something else for a while. We just couldn't look at any more pictures of sweet little Pearl and her family. It was like reading a retelling of Lord of the Flies starring pigs.

Aside from this one disturbing aspect, Pearl's Passover is pretty close to the perfect Passover book for kids. You can skip the crafts and read the story; you can skip the story and do the crafts. You can use it as a pre-Seder primer: it's got a map of the exodus from Egypt, and a list of the fifteen steps of the Seder, and important Passover songs like the Four Questions and Dayenu and Chad Gadya all transliterated with musical notation, and it has a glossary at the end. It's fun and cute and great to read aloud.

Just don't be surprised if after reading it your child does a double-take when she sees that shank bone on the Seder plate.

Bookbk’s First Meme

2007-03-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

The vicissitudes of life, tax season, and the preparations for two successive family visits have slowed down both the blogging and the Chicken Naming Contest results. I don't want to do something so serious and permanent as naming a chicken while my head is spinning with car rentals and seder food orders, but fortunately I have been tagged with a meme by the impressive Kelly Herold of Big A little a, who challenges her tag-ees to list five non-kidlit blogs they read. That, I think I can handle.

I read a fair number of personal blogs; here are some of my favorites:

The Wait and the Wonder, a ClubMom blog by Moreena, whose 6-year-old daughter, Annika, is currently waiting for her third liver transplant. This blog is thoughtful and occasionally heartbreaking and also not incidentally falling-on-the-floor FUNNY. I mean, funny like the funny that you laugh when you're up till 3 in the morning because you're all so worried and fried and scared and don't know what else to do. But also funny like the parent of two kids who seem to have their respective careers of Goth Fashion Designer and Potty Training Counsultant all picked out.

Kate Rothwell. The subtitle of Kate's blog is "Mostly about writing romance and selling it," and I don't even read romance (barring the odd Meg Cabot book), let alone write it or try to sell it. Doesn't matter. I like Kate. I like her witty and occasionally obnoxious sons, I like her take on various prejudices, I like her contests. Basically (hmm, I'm sensing a theme here) she cracks me up.

Milkbreath and Me. By Rachel Hartman, creator of The Nameless (but not for long) Chicken, and fearless wrangler of a preschooler, a YA-novel-in-progress, a number of other projects cartoonish and not, and the cathartic Moron Mondays. Also, funny.

Woulda Coulda Shoulda. One of the great things about personal blogs is the way they can open this little screen-sized window into someone's life on a day-to-day basis. And when you read them over the years, people's lives change. When I started reading Woulda Coulda Shoulda almost three years ago, Mir was a recently-divorced single mom of two young kids, struggling to find a job in a field she didn't particularly love. Oh, and she was obviously an incredibly sharp and talented writer. Now she's the about-to-be-remarried mom of two bigger kids, getting ready to move halfway across the country...and she's working as a full-time freelance writer. It's hard not to love her story, or her blog.

Peter's Cross Station. Another blog where I came for the writing and stayed for the story and because I'd come to care for the blogger. Shannon started writing "Waiting for Nat" when she and her partner were waiting to adopt a baby. Now Nat is a toddler and they're on the list for a second baby. This is probably the most political blog I read regularly; I'm hooked on the personal anecdotes, but Shannon's posts about adoption politics, racism, and other big-world topics are always thoughtful and often articulate things that had never occurred to me.

Whew! That was harder than I thought. In fact, it took so long that most anyone who wants to be tagged is probably tagged by now. If you're not, and you're reading this, I tag you!

Last Chance to Enter

2007-03-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

I personally can't imagine any more chicken names. But all week I've been thinking, after each comment, "Well, surely this is the ultimate contribution to the effort of chicken naming; there can't be any more after this," and then there would be, gloriously, more.

So if you happen to have a chicken name floating around in the back of your head, or if you thought of what seemed like the perfect one but were too shy to enter, please write it down in comments below today, as today--Saturday, that is--is the last day to enter the Name That Chicken contest.

The Nameless One to the right thanks you!

Click!

2007-03-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

I tried not to blog about The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I did. I figured enough folks were trashing it, and my reasons for hating it were about the same as many other peoples', and I didn't have much to add, so why waste everyone's bandwidth?

Then the darned thing won the Irish Children's Book of the Year award, and Fuse #8 wrote about it, and I followed her link to Bookshelves of Doom's post on the matter, and...well...I guess I just don't have that much will power, because suddenly there I was, commenting away, refuting points and hitting the caps lock key and generally frothing at the mouth.

The point has been made several times that calling something a "fable" isn't enough to excuse inaccuracies and mawkish writing, but the truth is that as I was reading Pajamas all that didn't bother me so much. It was only after I finished it that something started to nag at me. The book reminded me of something; what was it? Then it hit me: it reminded me of many of the books reviewed in A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children.

I've been wanting to write about this astonishing resource for a while, but haven't known where to start. At its heart, it's a collection of reviews of hundreds of books with Native American content. There are chapters covering books about Raven, books about Thanksgiving, books about the Indian Residential Schools... on and on and on. And, no big surprise, most of these books--including many written by really big names in children's literature, writers whose work I know and love--are dreadful from a Native American perspective.

It's a little overwhelming to read, especially for someone used to thinking of most of these books as basically unobjectionable. I have to admit that more than once I felt a defensive, argumentative reflex while reading the reviews."Aw, c'mon," I wanted to say, "maybe the author got a couple of details wrong, but basically it's all about our common humanity, right? How bad can it be to take a few liberties with the facts, if you get the feeling right?"

Then I read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and I heard a little click in my head. Oh...right. People aren't metaphors. Historical events aren't playthings for writers who want to make a point. Details matter, especially to the relatives and descendants of those to whom those details happened. Native Americans aren't handy symbols for the Vanished West, or Our Lost Connection to Nature; they're people with an actual specfic history. And the Holocaust isn't a symbol for universal evil; it was a horrific historical event. And in either case, it doesn't really help to stick on a preface (or afterward) discussing the deep feeling you have about whatever the book is distorting.

It's hard to tell the difference if you don't know the facts. Lots of people know the facts about the Holocaust, so The Boy in Striped Pajamas is getting rightly slammed from many quarters (though you'd never know it to read the majority of Amazon.com reviews). Fewer people know that, say, there were no Indian schools in Michigan as depicted in Gloria Whelan's Indian School, or that The popular version of The Rough-Face Girl, used in Cinderella units in many schools (including mine) smooths out and romanticizes the original Mi'Maq (not "Algonquin") tale (which, if I read the review correctly, was itself a conscious retelling of the Cinderella story and not an independently occurring folktale) to the point of changing its meaning.

I deliberately cited in the above paragraph two books I personally like and that were generally well-reviewed. I'm not trying to slam them, or the reviewers who lauded them. But what I know about Native American culture would fit in the tiniest of cheesy tourist dreamcatchers. I know I wouldn't have enough background to assess the accuracy or offensiveness of any such book if I reviewed it; how many reviewers would?

Anyway, that's the story of how I came to hate The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and simultaneously to cast a slightly squinty eye at a big chunk of the contents of my library. (You should see A Broken Flute's review of Walk Two Moons. And though I can't unlove the book, I do see the reviewer's point.)

For more along these lines, check out A Broken Flute contributor Debbie Reese's blog American Indians in Children's Literature.

Kids' Choice Awards, Part 2: Big Kids

2007-03-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

Here's part 2 of the Children's Choice Award overview for my state. Part 1 is here.

Genevieve asked in the comments of the last post why all this year's Picture Book nominees had copyright dates of 2004 or 2005. The simple answer is that the nominees for each year's award are required to have copyright dates of two or three years earlier. There are similar rules for the chapter book awards below.

Basically, this is because books are nominated by teachers and librarians and kids, and they need to have had time to find an audience. Older books aren't eligible because theoretically they had their chance earlier, and (I think) to keep the award feeling fresh (I've often thought of conducting a school-wide "favorite dusty old book" award some year, for which only books published at least 10 years earlier would be eligible, but have never managed to put it together). Also, with the chapter book awards, it helps if at least some of the nominees are available in paperback, as many libraries (including mine) buy multiple copies of each.

All the awards below are given to chapter books or novels, with the occasional nonfiction title thrown in. Unlike the Picture Book award, these are designed for kids who can read the books themselves (though teachers are encouraged to read nominees aloud, too); anyone in the age range who reads two nominees can vote.

Sasquatch Awards, officially for any grade but most of the kids who participate are in grades 2-6. They read at least 2 of the chapter books on the list and vote for their favorite. Votes due in by April 1; haven't heard about next years' list yet. This award tends to skew younger than the better known Young Readers Choice Award, so I'm more comfortable promoting it to 2nd and 3rd graders who are strong readers. I like that this award includes shorter chapter books for kids who aren't necessarily strong readers but are sophisticated enough to enjoy a novel.

Evergreen Young Adult Book Award, for grades 7-12. These are mostly hard-core YA: lots of Serious Issues and swearing and suchlike. This year, the nominees included Runaways, a graphic novel about teens who discover that their parents are supervillains, and Chanda's Secrets, in which a teenage girl in Africa discovers that the AIDS crisis has hit her family, as well as more innocuous titles like Airborn. I loved all three of these and would have had a hard time choosing among them were I a teen in grades 7-12. Though I think I might've gone with Airborn.

The Evergreen people like to make life complicated by setting the deadline for getting ballots in at March 15th, so our school's 7th and 8th graders voted last week. Based on their ballots, I'm predicting The Supernaturalist (which I never did get around to reading) will win.

And last, but far from least, there's the venerable Young Reader's Choice Award, the oldest children's choice book award in the country.

Unlike the other awards, the YRCA is conducted all over the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon, Montana, British Columbia, Alberta, Idaho, and Alaska. This makes it the only international readers' choice award that I know of, and explains the frequent and welcome presence of Canadian nominees on the lists. (The wartime spy story Camp X, for one, has had a continuing fan base in my library ever since it was up for the YRCA a few years ago.)

The YRCA comes in three flavors: Junior (grades 4-6), Intermediate (7th-9th grade) and Senior (grades 10-12). The Intermediate nominees tend to come in a bit younger than the Evergreen Award books, and the Senior a bit older, though there's lots of overlap. Younger kids who read books in the older categories can vote for those awards (at my school it's not unusual for 6th graders to have read more of the Intermediate nominees than the Junior ones), but older kids can't vote younger.

And if that isn't confusing enough, because all these awards are organized by different organizations, it's not uncommon for the same book to be nominated on a couple of different lists (Airborn and The Supernaturalist, for example, are up for YRCA as well as Evergreen this year). The resulting overlaps are sometimes baffling (like last year when The City of Ember was nominated for Sasquatch (grades 2ish-6ish) and also for the Intermediate YRCA (grades 7-9, supposedly), though it's nice for librarians with a limited budget who want to conduct lots of awards.

Is your head spinning yet? Mine is. Now I remember why I'm totally beat every year by Spring Break.

But there's no time to relax; the YRCA has just announced their 2008 nominees. Most of them are new to me, and I have to start reading.

Kids' Choice Awards: Part 1

2007-03-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

The end of March is approaching, and that means one thing: librarians all over the Pacific Northwest are gathering student ballots for various readers' choice awards and sending them in to the bewildering array of awarding organizations, while anxiously refreshing those groups' websites to see if next year's nominees are announced yet.

As a librarian at a Pre-K through 8th grade school, I'm a bit award-happy and promote a bunch of them. Students like having a say about which book wins, and some get very focused about reading as many of the nominees as possible. For myself, the need to promote the books spurs me to read titles I might otherwise pass up--Saffy's Angel (it had a boring cover) and Runt (I'm not big on animal stories) are two that I'm sure I never would've picked up if I hadn't needed to booktalk them for the Young Readers Choice Award. I loved both books, and now recommend them all the time.

One award I've promoted for the last several years is the Washington Children's Choice Picture Book Award for grades K-3. Twenty picture books vie for one award. I've been reading this years' nominees [link is a PDF file] to all the K-2 classes off and on since the beginning of the year--3rd graders at my school get to hear some of them, and read as many others as they can at checkout time and if they finish projects early. Voting will be coming up right after the book fair loads out.

I started out with mixed feelings about this award--so many books to get through! Wouldn't it just take over my curriculum? And what if I didn't like them?--but have grown fond of it over the years. One effect of promoting it is that it creates a sort of canon of picture books that all kids within a few years of each other know about. In many years there are cults that develop around particular books, and every once in a while I'll hear older kids reminiscing about a Children's Choice nominee of their distant youth.

The kids take their votes very seriously. And the winner almost always surprises me; last year it was Arrowhawk, the true story of a wild hawk who survived for several weeks with a poacher's arrow stuck in his leg before being rescued by raptor specialists. I would've thought the book was too intense and even gory to appeal to many younger kids, but they were fascinated and voted it in at my school and all over Washington State.

I have my suspicions about this year's winner, but as always, it's hard to tell. I won't handicap it until the votes are in, for fear of jinxing it. And I can't wait to see what next years' nominees will be.

*Coming up tomorrow: Readers' Choice awards for older kids

Nonfiction Read-Alouds

2007-03-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

Charlotte of Charlotte's Library complained the other day about the chore of reading nonfiction aloud to her children: the genre tends to be divided, she observed, into two groups: the "banal learning to read books" and the "lavishly illustrated, lots of information in clumps all over the page, style", which can be a huge pain to read aloud.

As a hardcore fiction girl myself, I empathize. (come to think of it, I may have managed to get through six years of parenthood without ever cracking the spine of a "Magic School Bus" book.) But there are some nonfiction titles that are a pleasure to read out loud. Here are a few I've found:

Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinoasaurs! by Kathleen V. Kudlinski
I brought this home one evening for my daughter to look through, and we were both fascinated. Who knew so many scientists could be so...wrong? Or that reading about it could be so entertaining? I ended up reading it aloud through one whole bathtime.

Chameleons are Cool and The Emperor's Egg, both by Martin Jenkins
Both these books were Washington Children's Choice Picture Book Award nominees in different years (boy, they've really got to come up with a less unwieldy name for that award) so I've had the chance to read each of them many, many times, and they stand up really well even in a group setting. The illustrations are bright and lively and colorful, and the text includes little sidebar-like nuggets of information every page or two without being overwhelming in that DK way.

A Drop of Water, by Walter Wick
Well, the truth is, I haven't read this aloud in some time, or maybe ever. But it remains one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time. Wick is best known for his "I Spy" series, and the photos here--of an egg splashing into a glass of water, or droplets condensed on the head of a pin, a close-up of a snowflake--are astonishing. And the text is brief and straightforward.

Chickens Aren't the Only Ones; Color, Color, Color, and others by Ruth Heller
I don't know how Ruth Heller does it, but she manages to write about topics as diverse as color physics, egg-laying creatures, and a bunch of other scientific topics, all in bouncy, engaging rhyme.

If the World were a Village, by David Smith
This book is almost too easy to read aloud; the concepts pack quite a wallop and could keep a family or a class busy thinking and discussing for days. The premise is simple: If the entire population of the world was represented by a village of only 100 people, how many would speak English? How about Chinese? How many would be children, and how many adults? How long would each person's life expectancy be? How many would have clean, safe water to drink? The answers are often surprising and sometimes sobering.

These are just a few that come to mind off the top of my head. What nonfiction have you liked reading aloud?

Amazon Links Revisited

2007-03-17T08:22:00.003-07:00

I loved reading the comments on my Amazon links dilemma post and found them tremendously helpful. If only I could set up similar discussion forums for all the areas of my life where indecisiveness reigns! Especial thanks to Phantom Scribbler and Andy Laties for so clearly defining the terms of the conflict.

So upon careful reflection, it seems to me that there are two reasons to add a link to a book title in a blog post: either you want to give readers more information about the book, or you want them to be able to get their hands on the book easily, or both. I haven't found a more complete or accessible all-on-one-page source of book information than Amazon (though admittedly I haven't looked very hard, and I like Varbidian's suggestion of linking to the publisher's page), so from that standpoint Amazon seems like the way to go, all politics aside.

As to buying the book--well, mostly I get my own reading material from one library or another, and I suspect most of this blog's readers are similarly inclined. But much as I'd like to link to item records on everyone's individual library system so you can all whip out your cards (or just type in your memorized card numbers) and reserve the book, I don't think that would work very well unless you all agree to move to one metropolitan area for my convenience. (Though wouldn't it be great if there were a Booksense equivalent website for libaries? I could link to a composite item record for all libraries in the world, and you could type in your zip code and then just reserve from there...ah, well. Another project for some technological genius somewhere?)

I like Madame Esme's compromise of linking to Amazon for information, and providing a disclaimer and a link to booksense at the bottom of each post. But I suspect I'm too lazy and forgetful to include something like that every time I post about a book.

So here's my own carefully-thought-through, total-copout compromise: I'm going to link wherever I feel like. If I'm just mentioning a book and want to provide a quick link for those who want to know more about it, I'll link to Amazon or maybe the publisher if I have time. If I'm reviewing the book and want to send all dozen or two of you off to read it as fast as possible, I'll probably link to Powell's (which seems to have added a lot of features since last time I checked--they have reviews now. And a Wish List option. So maybe I'll just link to them all the time. But I'm not promising.).

And I'll add a support-independent-bookstores disclaimer and link in the sidebar, where it can compete with the chickens and booklists and archives for rare and precious eyeball attention.

There! Inconsistent, wishy-washy, and unclear! I feel better already.

Name that Chicken!

2007-03-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

When I started this blog a month or so ago, it felt a little bare around the top. As I can't draw animate objects for beans, I begged my friend Rachel (and I feel sort of name-droppy saying "my friend Rachel" as she is in real life a brilliant cartoonist and the creator of the lovely Amy Unbounded comic-book series. But also she's my friend!) anyway, I begged Rachel to draw a chicken reading a book. And she very kindly came up with the literary fowl that you see up top to the right there, just above the "About" sidebar .

Immediately I felt more settled into my new blog home, with the companionship of this contented bookish coffee- (or maybe tea-) drinking chicken. (Rachel and I had a brief discussion about whether it was okay for the chicken to drink coffee in the library, and eventually agreed that she has checked out the book and taken it home to enjoy. In case you were wondering about that.)

She needs only one thing: a name. A literary one would be nice, but my mind is a blank; I can't think of a single literary chicken. But really, any name that just seems right will do.

So I am throwing this burning question open to the public, and officially announcing the book, book, book Name That Chicken Contest, to run from now through, oh, let's say March 24.

To enter, suggest a name for the chicken in comments below. If I choose the name you suggest, you win...a book! A completely non-chicken-related book called Father's Arcane Daughter, which is one of E. L. Konigsburg's lesser-known works and one of my favorites. It is sadly out of print, so I've been stockpiling copies and have an extra.

How often do you get the chance to name a chicken and win a copy of this family mystery about a funny, obnoxious, angry, sad boy and his two sisters, neither of whom may be as they appear?

P.S. Thanks to everyone for your thoughts below on the Amazon linking dilemma. You might have noticed that I'm still begging the question. Will write a real follow-up soon.

Updated to clarify: It doesn't have to be a literary chicken's name, though those are welcome. Just gaze at the chicken...look deeply into the chicken's eyes...and toss a suggestion in the comments.

Scholastic Book Fair: 1. bookbk: 0.

2007-03-14T18:51:00.000-07:00

Personal anecdotes are not the focus of this blog, but it does seem relevant to note in this space that the Scholastic Book Fair literally attacked my brain today.

I was roving around the library, checking the good-stuff-to-licensed-crap ratio in the big prestocked bookcases, when a dictionary leaped from its spot on display atop one of the cases and fell on my head, hard pointy corners first.

It didn't quite knock me unconscious, but it sent me reeling and hurt a lot more than you'd think. I've been dizzy all day. I think I have a concussion.

It's hard to avoid suspecting that the Spirit of Scholastic Books, Inc. was exacting vengeance on me for hiding the Bratz books and moving the Barbie Activity Set to an inconspicuous spot. So the question is: what would be a suitable act of reprisal?

Two Good Things

2007-03-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

I was all set to write a wussy apologetic post about how the Scholastic Book Fair has eaten my brain and sapped every bit of my writing energy, but then the Three Silly Chicks completely made my day by declaring me a winner! Such excellent timing. If there's one day a year when I could do with winning something, it's book fair setup day. Many thanks, chicks!

Plus, the book fair seems to have sent us much less utter crapola than in previous years. And I hid the Bratz books (cleverly positioned on the bottom rack of the pre-stocked cases Scholastic sends, for maximum kid-accessibility) under some Dora and Diego ones.

There's some excellent stuff in those cases, too. Even in the frantic haze that setup induces in me, I spotted The Invention of Hugo Cabret, among several others that I plan on snagging with my book fair credit.

So, not that bad a day, in retrospect.

New England Labor History Cage Match!

2007-03-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

For a confusing experience, try reading Elizabeth Winthrop's Counting on Grace and Katherine Paterson's Bread and Roses, Too in the same week. Both about 12-year-old girls caught up in labor unrest in New England in the early 1900’s. Both by established children’s authors. Both with so many similar motifs that I had to make a chart to keep them straight. Here it is [Warning: spoilers!]:

The Great New England Labor-Themed Historical Novel Comparison Chart
Similar Thing	Counting on Grace	Bread & Roses, Too
Heroine	Grace: restless, fiery, second-best reader in class	Rosa: responsible, anxious, best student in class
Significant Boy	Arthur: best reader in class and closet labor agitator	Jake: mill worker, street kid, and inadvertent strike evacuee
Colorful Immigrant Ethnicity	French-Canadian-American	Italian-American
Shoes	Doesn’t have her own pair, so she goes to work as a doffer	Falling apart, so she tries to hide them in a garbage heap
Mother	Fastest spinner in the mill; hates labor activists; something of a terror	Big-hearted striker; hates the bosses; something of a stereotype
Father	Kind of a nonentity compared to Mamere, but comes through in the end	Dead
Big Sister	Delia: Never liked school; works at Mamere’s side at the mill	Anna: Never cared for school; Works at Mama’s side at the mill and on strike
Ruthless Capitalist	Unidentified cotton mill owners	Billy Wood, big boss of the American Woolen Company
Capitalist Stooge	French Johnny, overseer	Miss Finch, schoolteacher
Vermont Connection	Everyone lives there	Kids of strikers sent there from Lawrence, MA for the duration
Actual historical event	Lewis Hine’s subversive documentary photographs	The “Bread and Roses” strike of 1912
Related historical artifact that gives me goosebumps	Wrenching and beautiful cover photo of child mill worker who for some reason reminds me of my kid	“Bread and Roses” song that was for some reason the unofficial anthem of my undergraduate alma mater
Real-life labor hero	Lewis Hine	Joseph Ettor, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood
Teacher	Heartbroken that kids have to leave school for the dangerous mills; sticks her neck out for the workers	Heartbroken that kids are misled by dangerous and wicked labor agitators; pawn of the patriarchy
Death	Grace's kindly grandfather	Jake’s abusive dad
Change of Heart	Mamere allows that reading might be valuable	Miss Finch allows that kids might be hungry

They’re both well-written, solid books, though I ended up liking Counting on Grace better: the characters felt more fleshed-out, and the plot was less sprawly. Bread and Roses, Too is written on a grander scale and spreads out its focus somewhat.

Plus I just loved that Grace. She jumped right off the page.

Amazon Links: The Devil's Handiwork or A Boon to Readers? Discuss.

2007-03-10T07:19:00.000-08:00

Once again a post at Fuse #8 has springboarded me to a post of my own. Actually it's the comments that have me in a tizzy.

As a lone librarian at an independent school, in charge of 12+ classes a week, reference, school-wide events, collection development, the works, I frankly rely on Amazon.com for quick reviews. Gone are the days of paging leisurely through SLJ: if I hear about a book, I look it up on Amazon and see what the consensus is. Some years ago I bit the bullet and started an Amazon Wish List for the school library, so parents can donate books in honor of kids' birthdays and the like.

But when I order a book for myself or for a gift, I go independent. I've worked at two different independent bookstores (one sadly defunct, one still cheerfully hand-selling away right in my neighborhood) and can't stomach handing my own money over to the behemoth that helped kill the Red and Black Books Collective. I've occasionally stepped into a Bunns & Noodle to spend a gift certificate (all hail Alison Bechdel for inventing that nickname) but always feel guilty and furtive when I do.

A couple months ago, Jody at Raising Weg wrote a cogent, convincing post about the value of the big chains, especially in areas that hadn't had any bookstores before. It almost convinced me that objection to chains was an elitist stance. Then I read posts like this, and I rebel: no one person should have that much power over what gets published (Clamouring Hour, anyone?*). I realize that brick-and-mortar chains and Amazon aren't really the same thing, but from my independent-bookstore-loyalist perspective they're two of a kind.

As this is a book blog, I expect to be discussing many (wait for it) books. And I expect that the odd reader or two might want to buy a title they see here. A link to Amazon will hook up those readers with a passel of editorial and reader reviews, plus referrals to other similar titles. If I link to Powell's, they get none of that, but they might buy from an independent. Lots of people I admire in the kidlitosphere link to Amazon and even have Amazon stores on their pages, so I guess I could, too. But I haven't been able to bring myself to.

Truth is, I feel a little silly twisting myself up over this moral dilemma when the readership of this blog numbers in the low two digits, and when I use Amazon all the time as a book-information source. But if you think this is tortuous, you should've been there for some of those bookstore collective meetings.

In any case, advice and opinions are welcome. So far I've been begging the question by not linking anywhere, but that seems like cheating, no?

*Gratuitous Fly By Night reference

Poetry Friday: Judith Viorst

2007-03-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

Judith Viorst is usually thought of as a comic light-verse poet, but I found a lovely reflection on friendship today tucked in among the knock-knock jokes and kiddish complaints in her Sad Underwear and Other Complications: More Poems for Children and their Parents.

I'm lucky enough to have a few friendships like those portrayed in her poem Phyllis [poem removed due to copyright restrictions].

Happy Teens, Happy Tech, Happy Week

2007-03-07T22:11:00.000-08:00

The Brookeshelf reports that it is Teen Tech Week, and what do you know-- I inadvertently celebrated by downloading a teen audio book from my local public library this weekend for the first time ever. I feel very hip. And topical.

The book I'm listening to oh-so-topically on my computer is A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, by Dana Reinhardt. So far, so good; I like it (though I'm wondering what the adoption community thinks of it). But I'm only about one-third of the way through it because, although I am hip enough to download an ebook, I am not quite hip enough to have an Ipod. So my laptop gets dragged around the kitchen with me on a stool as I listen and do dishes and make lunches and occasionally trip on the headphone cord. Not earbuds, mind you: big puffy headphones. Because I am just cool like that.

Towards a Definition of Teen Bookiness

2007-03-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

What's the difference between a teen book and a middle grade book? (Besides the little publisher's note on the spine, that is.)

"Sex, drugs, violence" is the quick and easy answer, but as Dawn notes in a comment on her recent post, sometimes the distinction has more to do with emotional complexity and sophistication.

You can argue (and I have) that age distinctions for books are pretty arbitrary and marketing-driven to begin with. But as I get older and stodgier I'm more willing to concede that some titles are considered by consensus to be more appropriate for distinct age groups. Though I've sometimes been surprised at how many middle school students are happy and willing to read "down"--in subject matter, not reading level. Often they'll pick up and enjoy books that I would've guessed they would reject as too kiddish.

This could be a much longer post, but instead I'll just throw it out here: what makes you think "Now, this is a teen book"? Not a book for kids--or for adults, for that matter--that happens to have an adolescent protagonist?

(Though obviously real live teens read all of the above: kids' books, adult books, and books marketed especially to them.)

For Kids Who Don't Fit on the Story Rug

2007-03-05T18:00:00.000-08:00

The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Madison has a terrific list of Picture Books to Share With Older Children and Teens. (Thanks to Fuse #8 for the link)

Truth is, you can read almost any well-written picture book to older kids and even teenagers if the context is right and if they trust you and know that you know that they're smart. I've seen cooler-than-cool 5th graders beg to read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, shouting "No!" at the pigeon with as much verve as kindergarteners. (Well, they're in 5th grade, after all, so some of them shout "Yes! Go on! Drive the bus!" But they have a good time while they're doing it.)

But there are some picture books that will engage their sophistication and intellectual background right off, and that even a complete stranger (like a visiting librarian or substitute teacher) can get away with. Here are some that didn't make it onto the CCBC list that I'd recommend for kids in 4th grade up through middle school:

Bunting, Eve. Smoky Night. Prejudice and rioting in a multi-ethnic neighborhood. Incredibly gorgeous collage illustrations.

Fleischman, Paul. Weslandia. The 6th grade teacher at my school uses this to introduce her Ancient Civilizations unit.

Giovanni, Niki. Rosa. Finally, a Rosa Parks biography that features the nitty-gritty work of the Civil Rights Movement--meetings and mimeographs along with the civil disobedience and rallies--and makes it clear that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King didn't exist in a vacuum. Beautifully told and stunningly illustrated, too.

Innocenti, Roberto. Rose Blanche. A wordless Holocaust parable with a devastating ending. Actually, there are several amazing Holocaust-themed picture books out there that I wouldn't read to most groups under fourth or fifth grade.

Laden, Nina. Roberto, the Insect Architect. A termite with a dream comes to the big city. Many sly references to famous architects and media figures.

Polacco, Patricia. Pink and Say. A family story from the Civil War. Most of Polacco's other books have more than enough depth to intrigue an older audience; this one is one of the few that is just too wrenching to read to most younger groups.

Seuss, Dr. The Lorax. Our 7th graders put The Onceler on trial every year, with this book as Exhibit A.

Shannon, George. The Secret Chicken Club. The animals of Wise Acres Farm aren't quite as smart as they think they are.

Sherman, Allan. Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. A classic, finally illustrated. Best shared along with a recording of the song, though I once just sat and turned the pages as a class of gleeful 5th graders sang this book to me, complete with Yiddish-inflected word endings.

Smothers, Ethel Footman. The Hard-Times Jar. The oldest daughter in a family of Black migrant workers longs to have a book of her own.

Stewart, Sarah. The Gardener. Younger kids enjoy this book too, but older ones will appreciate the depth of Lydia Grace's courage and resilience in what's really a pretty grim situation.

Wisninewski, David. The Secret Knowledge of Grownups. If you have time and inclination, kids can write their own "Secret Knowledge" explanations.

Wisninewski, David. The Golem. Another cut-paper masterpiece by Wisinewski, retelling a dark tale of medieval anti-Semitism. Mary Shelley was inspired by this legend when she wrote Frankenstein.

Yorinks, Arthur. The Flying Latke. Funniest. Chanukah. Book. Ever. For those who appreciate Borscht Belt farce. Film afficionados will recognize a few familiar faces, too.

Zelinsky, Paul. Rapunzel. Closer to the Grimm's original than most retold versions, this one includes Rapunzel's pregnancy with twins.

So Meta it Will Make Your Head Explode

2007-03-04T13:40:00.000-08:00

Not related to children's books at all, and only tangentially to libraries, but this brief piece in the New Yorker completely made my day yesterday [ellipses and emphases are mine]:

EDITORS’ NOTE:

The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, “Know It All,” by Stacy Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator and contributor called Essjay, who...was described in the piece as “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law.”

...Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”

(Okay, maybe this wouldn't have everyone on the floor gasping with laughter. Maybe to think it's as funny as I do you have to have spent huge chunks of time, breath, and keystrokes in attempts to convince students and teachers alike that Wikipedia is not a citable source for academic projects? Could be.)

I have a particular fondness for that kind of deadpan tone that the New Yorker does so well. Especially when imparting news of a spectacularly embarrassing nature.

For the complete text of the retraction, see the note at the end of this article, or page 10 of the March 5, 2007 issue of the New Yorker.

Sound the Graggers! Eat the Hamentaschen! Read...um...what?

2007-03-03T14:01:00.000-08:00

Costumes, raucous silliness, noisemakers, candy, treats, even special cookies--sounds like a great time, yes? Well, it is. Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, and not only does it feature all the above elements, but it sports one doozy of an origin story (also found in the Book of Esther in any handy Bible).

So you'd think the shelves of libraries and bookstores would be groaning under the weight of all the terrific kids' books about Purim. And you would be so wrong. I work at a Jewish day school, and while we have more great Chanukah stories than anyone could read during the entire month of December (including several by the King of Chanukah Books, Mr. Eric Kimmel), and even a respectable selection of appealing Passover tales, I can barely count the attractive, kid-friendly, read-aloud-able Purim books on my fingers.

And most of those merely retell the story of brave Esther, wicked Haman (boo! booooo, Haman!), good Mordechai, and dopey King Ahashuerus. Granted, it is a fantastic story--Queen Esther the Morning Star, by Mordecai Gerstein, is one of the best versions--but it's as if the only Christmas books you could find to read to kids were retellings of the Nativity: no Grinch, no Santa, no Nutcracker, no nothin' but little baby Jesus in the manger over and over again.

Then there are the books that pretty much just recount how the holiday is celebrated. You'll find these for a lot of Jewish holidays. They tend to go something like this: "I love to celebrate Purim! My friends and I get dressed in costumes. We wave our graggers when we hear Haman's name! We eat special cookies for Purim; they're called Hamentaschen..." While these can be helpful for introducing a non-Jewish audience to Purim, or for preparing very young children as the holiday approaches, they're a yawnfest for most Jewish kids over the age of four. One that the preschoolers at my school enjoy is Sammy Spider's First Purim, by Sylvia Rouss and Katherine Kahn. Sammy Spider introduces several Jewish holidays in his series of books, and while they don't get much beyond the superficial symbols, they're a fun read.

For a long time, the only Purim book I could find that actually tells a good, original story and has decent illustrations was Cakes and Miracles, by Barbara Diamond Goldin, about a blind boy who is inspired by a dream to make and sell special Purim cookies to help his widowed mother. Another strong story is Raisel's Riddle, by Erica Silverman, a Cinderella variation set around a Purim ball. They're both a bit wordy for younger grades to sit through, though.

Then, last year, the Purim book of my dreams appeared: The Mystery Bear, by Leone Adelson. It's short, it's simple, it has big, bright illustrations (by Naomi Howland), it's about Purim, it's not set in ancient Persia, and it's got a real, Honest-to-G-d plot, which I can recount in one sentence: Hungry bear cub wakes up early from hibernation, wanders into Purim celebration, and is mistaken for a costumed reveler in a bear suit; hilarity ensues.

It's perfect. Hebrew school teachers can read it to their classes; public librarians and public school teachers can throw it into the program for a multiculti twist on hibernation and springtime; I can give it to the first grade teachers; and everyone can be happy.

Now, if only I could find a halfway decent book about Lag B'Omer...

Library Web Design Geek Moment

2007-03-01T19:20:00.000-08:00

I don't spend much time browsing around in bookstores or libraries any more, and only partly because I work at one. Mostly, I find books I like online, and then reserve them online, for work and pleasure. This afternoon I spent an hour or so with three windows open on my work computer: one for surfing around the kidlitosphere for reviews and recommendations and awards, one set to my local public library so I could put reserves on for books I want to read, and one on amazon.com so I could update my school's wish list, enabling parents who want to donate books in honor of their kids' birthdays to browse and buy and send the books right to my hot little hands, where they'll (the books, not my hands) be cataloged and stamped and covered and adorned with a nice bookplate noting the kid's name. (And at a different time in my ordering cycle I would've had a fourth window open, so I could add books to my order list with the vendor I usually use. But we're about to have a book fair, so I'll wait.)

When I stop and think about it, it's weird to do all this reserving and buying and donating without ever touching an actual book until it gets bought or comes in on reserve. It means that library web sites (and bookstore sites, too, but I'm a librarian so I'll stick with libraries) are the front door, the welcome sign, the New Books display and the reference area for most patrons. For me, all I need to know about the actual library is where to pick up the reserves and where to do self-checkout; the website is where I do my browsing and database searching and actually use the library.

Even though I work at a school library, the same holds for a lot of my patrons-- especially the middle school kids, who (like many adults who use libraries) have Web access and busy lives. So I try to make as much as possible available via the library website: our catalog, links to public library catalogs and online reference sources, some information about the library, and some booklists. This is pretty bare bones for a library site, and I know I could do a lot more.

Not surprisingly, I am far from the first person to think about this. The Library Success Best Practices Wiki has a ton of resources on library website design. I guess it's a measure of my library geekitude that I just spent a while on the browser emulator, checking to see what bookbk looks like on, say, NCSA Mosaic, or Netscape Navigator circa 1995.

More practically, the "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design" should make just about every librarian cringe--especially Mistake #1, which is perpetuated by most library catalogs. By this measure, the old card catalogs were actually easier to use. Progress really means that we all have to know how to spell everything, apparently.

This concludes our Library Web Design Geek moment. We'll be back to books tomorrow. Though of course they'll probably be books that I found through some website or other.

Colour me Chuffed

2007-02-28T20:59:00.000-08:00

As an Anglophile from way back, who cut my literary teeth on E. Nesbit's books about the Bastable Children, intrigued by their fascinating and mysterious world (Why did they have a pudding every day? And what was a pantomime? And who on earth was this mysterious "general" who seemed to be a housekeeper?) I was disgusted to discover, as an adult, that the U.S. editions of Helen Oxenbury's charming board books had obviously been bowdlerized and that the line that had surely been "Wave to Mum" in the original (because it rhymed with last word of the previous page--"thumb," or "plum," or something) had been stupidly changed to "Wave to Mom." I just used to read it "Mum" anyway. Same with U.S. versions of Shirley Hughes's "Alfie" books (also almost all out of print! Phooey Phooey Rats!).

Much has been written about the Americanization the Harry Potter books' U.S. editions (see this line-by-line analysis of the first book for details) but one of the happy side-effects of the Potter phenomenon is that publishers seem to be finally realizing that American kids are not stupid and can deal just fine with some exotic and unfamiliar words, and in the last several years there's been a flood of British kid- and YA-lit imports, generally quite lightly edited.

Some of my favorites (or favourites, I guess I should say) of these are Hillary McKay's books about the artistic and eccentric and troubled and hysterically funny Casson family. When the third title, Permanent Rose, came out a couple of years ago I couldn't wait for the US. publication and bought the British (well, Canadian) edition on a trip to Vancouver. Truth is, I bought the British edition because I just like British editions of British books better: you can be sure that you're reading the real deal, with all the hair elastics and lorries and car boots and single quote marks left intact.

The U.S. version I ordered for the library hadn't come in yet by September, so I loaned my copy to a kid who had loved the first two books, Saffy's Angel and Indigo's Star, and couldn't wait to read the new one.

She brought it back a couple weeks later. "It was good," she said, "but kind of confusing. Like, what's a biro?"

I thought back to the opening scene, in which Rose, the youngest and fiercest of the Casson siblings, opens the door to a friend of her brother's, who is nonplussed to see that she's been writing all over herself with the aforementioned article. "It's a ballpoint pen."

"Ohhhhhh." She nodded, satisfied at last. "Okay, that makes sense."

So, it's true, you can't necessarily catch everything from context. And I did notice that in the American edition that arrived a few weeks later the word had indeed been translated to "ballpoint pen."

This is all by way of a lengthy and meandering introduction to a link that might be of interest to other Anglophiles, literary or otherwise: Separated by a Common Language is all about the differences between British and American English. I found myself unable to stop reading the post and comments linming the differences between a "hair slide," "hairband" and "barrette." Check out the highly illuminating post on Types of Schools and School Years, too.

Found via Books, Words, and Writing.

Arnold Hanger Lives!

2007-02-27T17:23:00.000-08:00

One of my very favorite moments ever in children's literature has got to be the author visit in Jane Gardam's A Long Way from Verona, in which young Jessica Vye is transformed by (fictional) writer Arnold Hanger's lecture at her prim, proper, pre-World-War-II British girls' school. After Hanger has spoken and read aloud from all kinds of books, one after another, "poetry and all sorts," he seems to be done, and the Head is just about to sweep him off for tea when he suddenly turns and bellows at the startled girls: "To Hell with school!" he hollers. "To Hell with school! English is what matters! ENGLISH IS LIFE!"

Jessica, of course, is never the same. It would ruin it for you if I gave too much away. (I know, the book is long out of print in this country, and hard to find, but damned if I'm going to spoil it. Go on! Protest! Storm the publishers in your quest to find out what happens! Buy it from amazon.uk! This one should be out there!) Suffice it to say that Jessica emerges from the incident and its aftermath convinced that she is "a writer beyond all possible doubt," and that this certainty drives the novel and Jessica's life thereafter.

While George Shannon didn't do anything that transgressive during his visit today (and I suppose that if he had I would have been in the unenviable position of the scandalized Head at Jessica's school), he did manage to fire up the kids about writing and literature in general. Jaded 6th and 7th graders who wouldn't be caught dead reading a picture book asked him serious questions about plot, pacing, and the writing process. Kindergarteners jumped into the "Maybe Maybe" game, suggesting possible adventures for a monkey who finds himself in a peanut shell. I sat at my desk taking notes and getting quietly inspired myself.

When I was a kid in the '70's, I don't remember any authors visiting my school, a mere bus ride away from the heart of publishing and writing in this country. Nowadays it's pretty standard to have author visits; I try to book one every year. I can't help but think that it's good for everyone: for the kids, for the teachers, for the authors (who get book sales as well as a source of income from the presentations), and for all of us readers who might in 20 years ago get to read some terrific books inspired by kids who got to see that the people who create books do exist in real life, and that they themselves can become writers beyond all possible doubt.

All of them. Even "The Story of Mankind."

2007-02-26T21:17:00.000-08:00

Genevieve asked below if I can post about the Newbery unit when I teach it, and I will for sure, if we even get to it-- I'm trying something new with this class, an individual author study project cribbed and modified from Planet Esme, and what with interruptions for assemblies and topical one-shot lessons and vacations and snow days, it is taking a long, long time. A weekly 45-minute library class seems like plenty until you're actually trying to get something done, and then it is as a blink of the eye.

I hope against hope that by the time they do their presentations they're not all heartily sick of their chosen authors.

In the meantime, check out The Newbery Project, a group blog whose members are reading all the Newbery Medal winners and posting about it. I like the Newbery trivia and the tangential questions like "are there any children's books with adult [human] protagonists?" Fun.

The Bookloft Strikes Again

2007-02-25T07:51:00.000-08:00

Who are these people at the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Library? And who are the incredibly game teens appearing in this best YouTube Summer Reading Program Video ever?

Think about it: When you were in high school (or middle school, by the looks of some of these kids) would you have let anyone film you--for the viewing pleasure of your classmates and zillions of anonymous strangers on the Internet--singing show tunes and getting whomped on the head by flying books? All while flogging the summer reading program at the local library??

I don't think I'll see anything nearly this amazing on the Oscars tonight.

Two last words on hot-button words

2007-02-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

Before the Great Scrotum Kerfuffle (and if that's not a word-lover's word, what is? Kerfuffle! Scrotum! It's been a great week for great words, all right) fades into history, here are two late links that highlight the best in the world of adults who write for kids, and who write about kids' books (thanks to Big A, little a for the links):

Cynthia Lord and her fellow Newbery Honor winners have spoken out in support of Susan Patron and "The Higher Power of Lucky," on LiveJournal, The Random House website, and other fora. Lord's Newbery Honor book, Rules, is about a girl who learns that rigid rules are less important than standing up for her family and friends; its author obviously walks that walk, too.

If there were an ALA or kidlitosphere award for thoughtful analysis of a big media mess, pixie stix kids pix should totally win it for this post. I'm especially fond of her "anatomy of a kerfuffle" chart graphing hyperbole against time.

"I meet Jesus!!!! and he reads!!!"

2007-02-24T12:51:00.000-08:00

The good people of The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County must be doing something right to get a comment like that on their library's MySpace page for teens. In fact, their whole LibraryLoft teen website is something of a knockout, in terms of both design and content. Check out their resource page on "Life Info: When Life's Not Always Easy or Fair." Well-organized, easy to navigate, and just plain gorgeous. I wouldn't be surprised if it's saved a couple of lives somewhere.

PLCMC might be exceptionally groovy , but they're not the only ones trying to get down with the kids through MySpace. There's a whole list of teen library MySpace pages at the Library Success Wiki. The YAAB (Young Adult Advisory Board) at the Fort Vancouver (WA) Regional Library District gets points for friending YA authors like Meg Cabot and Brent Hartlinger, but points off for the annoying song and a background pattern that makes the text almost impossible to read. Pawtucket Library's page isn't flashy, but has lots of useful info presented in an accessible way.

Even ALA is onto the MySpace trend; last year in New Orleans they passed this very formal-sounding "Resolution in Favor of Online Social Networks." Very nice, even if it doesn't answer that eternal question: if Jesus had a MySpace page, who would He friend????

They're Baaaack!

2007-02-23T20:03:00.000-08:00

Loganberry Books has a great long list of beloved old books that are back in print after a hiaitus. I was tickled to see that those deliciously creepy Edward Gorey books are available again.

And Enchantress from the Stars! One of my favorites! And a real genre-straddler of a novel: science fiction, myth, fairy tale, thought-provoking take on anthropology, and coming-of-age story, with a dash of romance thrown in. What's not to like?

April's Kittens made such a strong impression on me that almost 40 years later I still have vivid memories of the illustrations, and of the situation: April's family lives in such a small apartment that she still has to sleep in a crib, even though she is a big girl. So how can the family accommodate a litter of kittens?

There's more, more, much more. But could the "George and Martha" series ever have gone out of print? Really?!? Things are more dire than I'd even thought.

Can you ever forget your first?

2007-02-22T19:44:00.000-08:00

Truth be told, I'm a little fuzzy on mine, though I distinctly remember being very proud to sound out the first pages of Green Eggs and Ham: "I AM SAM. SAM I AM." So quite possibly the first book I read on my own was that classic of the genre.

Not everyone is so predictable, though. Phantom's son LG, for example, has shown a nonfictional and artistic bent in his first solo reading choice, and it looks like his little sister is right behind him.

As for my own daughter, despite being surrounded by the cream of the crop of picture books and early readers thanks to her two librarian parents, the very first book she finished on her own, on a memorable snow day early in the winter, was this deathless title. Just goes to show you that you never know what's going to be the book that hooks a kid, and that adults' literary judgments aren't the only measuring stick.

Out of Print, Not Out of Mind

2007-02-22T16:16:00.000-08:00

Fuse #8's "Out-of-Print Crimes Against Humanity" list (on her right-hand sidebar, scroll down a bit) spurred me to thinking about all the books I love, or just want for my library, that are also out of print. Of course, many of them are quite old. But even newer titles don't stay in print long; it's just not the publishing trend.

Yesterday, a teacher came by to return the copy of Welcome to the Ark that I'd recommended to her-- it's a dark, intense, thought-provoking YA novel featuring four telepathic gifted kids in a dystopic terror-ridden future, and I figured if she read it she'd know just the Middle School students who can handle it.

She loved the book, and had already looked up Stephanie Tolan's website and discovered that it was the first in a trilogy. "Do you have the next volume?" she asked, quite reasonably.

We didn't. A minute's poking around on Amazon and we found out that the sequel, Flight of the Raven, is out of print. It was only published a few years ago, but the reviews were mixed, and the publishers just let it go.

Another anecdote: George Shannon is coming to visit our school next week. I called the bookstore today and asked if they could send over a copy of his book This is the Bird with the other titles we'll be selling during his visit; I've read the public library copy to a few classes, but our library doesn't own it and I wanted to buy one.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," the bookseller sighed. "It's out of print."

"Really? Oh, it's a lovely book! The kids really liked it, and the pictures are great, and it ties right into the curriculum-- they read The Keeping Quilt in 3rd grade every year-- and--"

"I know," she said. "It happens faster and faster. Really, it's a shame."

Now, neither of these books are incredibly popular, and neither got stellar reviews. But they're both perfectly solid titles by well-known authors, published within the last ten years. It just feels intuitively wrong that they should be out of print so quickly.

I know that more and more children's and teen books are published every year, and it stands to reason that publishers don't keep up the backlist for as long as they might. And of course there's always abebooks.com, the great used-bookseller clearinghouse, if you really really want to find that favorite childhood title.

I just hate the feeling that books are becoming like magazines, and that if I don't buy the latest ones now, in a short time it'll be cleared off the shelves to make room for the next issue.

How it works in real life

2007-02-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

I've got a group of really smart, spirited 5th graders. Today several of them sauntered into the library at lunch recess with their usual demand for "good books." I skipped my usual answer to the kids I think can take it ("Sorry, we only have BAD books here. BAD, BORING books.") and they turned their attention to the big sign near the checkout desk, the one that says "WARNING: This library may contain unusual, hilarious, fascinating, sinister, and even frightening things. Read at your own risk."

I asked, "Do you want to see the book that won this year's Newbery award, that there's a big controversy about?"

"Oh!" a couple of them said. "I heard about that! It was in the New York Times!" (Like I said-- smart kids.) They gathered around our brand-new, still-uncataloged copy of The Higher Power of Lucky and scrutinized the fateful first page.

What followed was every librarian's dream (well, every librarian I know; maybe not the ones quoted in the Times article): a whirlwind discussion of the First Amendment, the mechanics of challenging or banning books in this country as opposed to places where the government restricts freedom of the press (one kid cited Nazi Germany as an example), their opinion of the ridiculousness of sheltering kids from knowledge of names of body parts that half the population possesses (with some rowdy joking about people who don't know their own anatomy), the concept of twelve-step groups and addiction, the need for a waiting list for this particular book since at least one kid desperately wanted to read it and it's not cataloged yet, and how cataloging a book for the library works.

We ended up with a quick tour of the books in our library that have been banned or challenged, like the "Scary Stories" series, Robie Harris's It's So Amazing, and To Kill a Mockingbird ("But isn't that taught in a lot of schools?" "Yep. And it's also been challenged in a lot of schools.") , finishing with a visit to the ALA Most Banned Books list, where the kids were shocked and scornful to see Harry Potter ("Harry Potter?!?") right up there at Number 7.

I herded them out the door for lunch amid a babble of demands (like I said--spirited kids): "Can we have a list of those books?" "Can I check that book out?" "You need to teach a class on this. THIS WEEK!"

Now, I work at a small private school and might have more than ordinary freedom to wing it, and this is an unusually sophisticated bunch of kids; I probably wouldn't have been quite so forthcoming with a group of 3rd graders. And who knows; I might get some feedback, positive or negative, from a parent tomorrow. But I'd hate to think of working in a library where I couldn't be open to that kind of spontaneous conversation. And as a parent, I'd hate for my daughter to miss out on a learning opportunity like that because her teacher or librarian was too scared of a parent's potential complaint.

And boy, do I have a great hook now for the Newbery unit when we get to that in 5th grade later this year.

The Higher Power of Libraries

2007-02-19T11:51:00.000-08:00

Two separate relatives have already emailed me the NY Times article about the controversy over the word "scrotum" in Susan Patron's 2007 Newbery award winner, The Higher Power of Lucky," and it's all over the Interwebs, too. So how can I resist? I just tried to leave a comment on Jessamyn's site. It got eaten by the spam detector, but that's okay; halfway through writing it I realized that it should probably be its own post anyway.

Here's the thing: Parents and community members challenge books all the time based on a single word, or phrase, or image, in the book. At my own library, I've had parents informally express concern about books containing one disturbing illustration, or one paragraph they think is inappropriate. The Catcher in the Rye regularly tops most-banned-books lists in large part because of four (count 'em, four) repetitions of the F-bomb. And I don't know how many times--but it's a lot-- Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen has been banned, challenged, or simply not purchased on account of one image of a naked little boy crowing on top of a milk bottle.

I'd be lying if I said I'd never passed up on purchasing a book because I anticipated complaints from parents, not just because of overall themes or subject matter, but due to one or two words or phrases that might trigger some parent's anxiety or fear or anger. I have to admit that when I opened up my library's brand-new copy of The Higher Power of Lucky the other day and read about the dog's scrotum right on the first page, my first thought was "Oy. Okay, maybe not pushing this to the 2nd-grade crowd."

But if I allowed those first admittedly cowardly reactions to dominate my purchasing decisions, where would it end? With pulling Number the Stars because it contains the word "damn?" Or what about the word "anus" (also in regard to a dog, interestingly) in Gail Carson' Levine's wonderful The Wish--what if someone was offended by that? Lots of parents complain about the improper English that Junie B. Jones uses in the series by that name--maybe it doesn't have a place in our library either? I mean, hey, we have a small collection! We're in loco parentis! Where's my responsibility to those easily-influenced children and their concerned parents?

On my better days, I know exactly where my responsibility lies: it lies with the kid who's looking for the book that will open up their world. Even if that book might irk some other kid's parents.

I'm no First Amendment martyr. I hate trouble as much as the next person, and I like my job. When I decide to buy a book that I know might be controversial, it helps that I know my community, know the kids I work with, and have been at my job for eight years now. It also helps that I have a solid Board-approved collection policy behind me.

But it burns me up that so many librarians appear to have absolutely no compunction about dismissing this year's Newbery Award winner out of hand, without even waiting for a parent or community member to complain, based on one little word.

My favorite commentary on this whole kerfluffle comes from an anonymous commenter on the As If! site:

" Maybe only males have a scrotum, but anyone who censors a book out of fear has no balls."

First Squawk

2007-02-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Book Book Book!

At college they taught me to cite my sources, so if I don't start with a link to the original joke from which this blog gets its name, I'm sure to be haunted by the ghost of M. Carey Thomas. I heard it on the Prairie Home Companion joke show about ten years ago; then a professor in a library class told it; then it was everywhere.

Several years ago the joke was expanded into a picture book by Deborah Bruss. I read it to kindergarteners at the beginning of the year. They liked it pretty well, though it hasn't been received with the avid hysteria of my other September library class kick-off title this year, Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude (which has nothing to do with chickens, but what the hey; if you ever have to read a book about writing or fairy tales or sex roles or collaboration to a group of elementary-school-age kids, and have them rolling in the aisles as a bonus, this is the one. I swear I've never in nine years had so many kids begging me to read a book again.)

Speaking of chickens and kids' books, old M. Carey will also come after me if I don't acknowledge another kidlit blog with a chicken-related title: the fabulous Chicken Spaghetti. I don't know the author and have only lurked on the site, but it's as comprehensive a children's lit review as you could hope to see. And I totally covet the chicken picture on the masthead.