BEA is, as many know, the premier bookseller trade show, which has been held in NYC for the last few years. Years ago I made it to the floor and remember it as incredibly big and wild, getting coveted ARCs, crazy guys in costumes promoting books, tasty treats, swag, and being completely blown away by it all.

And so when Candlewick contacted me about doing a signing for my forthcoming book at this year’s show I was thrilled and nervous. Thrilled, as it is making the long road to publication real, and nervous, as I remembered that autographing hall full of long lines for the famous and the rest just…er…sitting there. Fortunately, I’m doing an in-booth signing rather than one in that intimidating autographing area and will be supported by all the great Candlewick books and folk. And so for anyone who might be there, I will be signing on Thursday at 3:30 stapled full-color F & Gs of the 64 page book.

Finally, I have to say that seeing my name on the BEA website is very, very cool!

I am a big fan of subversive books, say the ”recommended inappropriate books for kids” featured in Lane Smith’s Curious Pages.  That said, I also have observed that kids respond better to some of these more than others, an issue I explored years ago in a Horn Book article “Pets and Other Fishy Books.” And so, when I ran into Jon Scieszka a few months ago and he excitedly told me about the forthcoming Battle Bunny, I was intrigued but also wary — was this a book kids would get or would it be something more amusing for adults?  So when an advanced copy of the book showed up in the mail recently I took it to school to see what my students thought.

First of all, let me try to explain just what it is (and how tricky it was to read aloud). If you look at the cover above you can perhaps see that it appears to be a sweet book of the Golden Book sort, originally titled Birthday Bunny, that has been erased, scribbled on, and reworked by…someone. I began by showing the cover to the kids and we discussed what that original book was; some of them knew Golden Books, but all of them appreciated that it was meant to be one of those sweet little journey books they’d all read when very small.  Next we explored the scribbles — evidently someone named Alex had received the book from his grandmother for his birthday (there is an inscription on the inside front cover), wasn’t too happy, and decided to make it into a completely new story.  And so he thoroughly erased the original title and put his own in instead. As for the interior, he crossed-out text, added new words and art, and turns the story into something completely different.  

The first day I tried reading the book aloud on my own— alternating between the original text and Alex’s. The next day I invited one child to join me, reading Alex’s story and then had the kids take over completely — one reading Birthday Bunny and the other reading Battle Bunny.  They had a great time!  It may well be that the best way to take in the book is solo or with one other child, but I still think it was a blast to read this way. The group reacted, pointed out small things to one another, and just had a lot of fun.  Jon tells me they are planning on providing a copy of The Birthday Bunny online for kids to print out and rework just as Alex did.  Great idea!

So for those like me who go for this sort of thing (and not everyone does, I know),  The Battle Bunny is an excellent addition to the world of subversive books for children.

Betsy Bird has a charming contest inspired by Sophie Blackall’s remarkable mailing, of hers and Matthew Olshan’s book The Mighty Lalouche, to a bunch of folks in the old-fashioned way — wrapped in brown paper with string accompanied with a letter sealed with wax. Having received one of these lovely, lovely packages I’m not going to participate in Betsy’s contest, but urge others to do so. And even if you don’t wish to do so, I highly recommend reading the contributions there already. They are varied and all so moving!

My own memories of packages are many. First of all, as a child living in East Lansing, Michigan where my father was a young professor, I recall the periodic packages that would come from my grandfather in New York City, filled with food that my parents loved and could not find in the Midwest — largely German as that is what they were.  And then there were the packages my parents sent to me when I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in the 1970s. I think there was also food in those, but most of all I remember toothpaste, the brand I liked which was unavailable in Freetown.

I need to ask my 4th grade students about their experiences with packages. Maybe at camp?  Certainly, they aren’t receiving letters the way I did as a child.

The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, an organization committed to fighting censorship, will be holding its 19th annual Children’s Book Art Auction at BEA, an event that is always a highlight for attendees, on Wednesday, May 29th. In addition to their wonderful array of offerings, they are having a special Maurice Sendak Memorial with artists paying homage to the great American artist.

And this year, they’ve something new: an online auction for those who can’t come to the live one in person. It begins this coming Sunday, May 18th, and runs for a week. You can preview the art here.  I’ve always heard of booksellers’ excitement about purchasing original art at the auction and now the public can too!

Historical fiction has an interesting place in the world of children’s literature. Regularly celebrated by adults with awards like the Newbery, these books nonetheless raise the question of whether the intended audience feels the same enthusiasm. What I’ve observed as a classroom teacher is that while not in the multitudes that flock to the goofy fun of Wimpy Kid or the wild fantasies of Percy Jackson, there are still plenty of young readers who can’t get enough of the past.

Those among them who find the excitement and anguish of World War II especially fascinating, along with others who enjoy a gripping wartime tale whatever the time period, are going to relish Shirley Hughes’s realistic adventure, “Hero on a Bicycle.” A much-lauded British creator of picture books like the Alfie series, the octogenarian Hughes was inspired to write this historical novel for older children by a family she met during a postwar visit to Italy.

Read the whole review here.

Historical fiction has an interesting place in the world of children’s literature. Regularly celebrated by adults with awards like the Newbery, these books nonetheless raise the question of whether the intended audience feels the same enthusiasm. What I’ve observed as a classroom teacher is that while not in the multitudes that flock to the goofy fun of Wimpy Kid or the wild fantasies of Percy Jackson, there are still plenty of young readers who can’t get enough of the past.

Those among them who find the excitement and anguish of World War II especially fascinating, along with others who enjoy a gripping wartime tale whatever the time period, are going to relish Shirley Hughes’s realistic adventure, “Hero on a Bicycle.” A much-lauded British creator of picture books like the Alfie series, the octogenarian Hughes was inspired to write this historical novel for older children by a family she met during a postwar visit to Italy.

Read the whole review here.

I highly recommend “Books in the Home: The Penderwicks on Hayward Street,” Rachel Stein‘s essay on how Jeanne Birdsall’s Penderwick series comforted her daughter during a challenging time in her young life. I tend to be skittish about offering specific books as therapy as everyone processes tragedy so differently, but have often seen how individual children hone in on a particular title, as Rachel’s daughter did, and found it comforting. A lovely exploration of books as solace.

A huge fan of Rita Willliams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer, I was incredibly happy when it got a great deal of award-love and recognition. I mean, who could not be taken with those three sisters going off to spend the summer in California with the Black Panther mother they never knew? And who could not want to know what happened to them when they went home to Brooklyn?

Happily, we find out in the sequel,  P.S. Be Eleven. Taking off immediately after the girls return from California, their life in late 60s Brooklyn is all about changes. Delphine is starting sixth grade with a teacher she wasn’t expecting, Vonetta and Fern are becoming more independent, their beloved uncle Darnell is back from Vietnam and not doing well at all, Pa has a new girlfriend, and Big Ma is struggling with all of it.

And Delphine is struggling too– to make sense of her world, her family, her friends, and herself as she moves through this pivotal year. Her mother Cecile is on the other side of the continent, but her letters consistently and repeatedly remind Delphine to be eleven, to not grow up too soon, to be herself.

As in the first book, time and place are vividly evoked. I was particularly moved by the girls’ adoration of the Jackson Five, their efforts to make it to a concert…and what happened about that. And Williams-Garcia does the small epiphanies of youth with exquisite perfection. Say Delphine learning the hard truth about her beloved dictionary, the tiny rare moments alone with her father, her growing awareness of the painful aspects of the lives of the adults around her, aspects completely unrelated to her or her two sisters.

This won’t matter to young readers, but boy did reading this make me feel old! I was certain The Archie’s “Sugar Sugar” was older than the time of this book as I recalled having to listen to it ad nauseam during Driver’s Ed. But indeed I did that in 1969 and that was the year of that bubblegum hit. So I was older than Delphine in 1969.

But never mind about that — all that matters is that young readers today are going to delight when they re-encounter Delphine and cheer as she ponders difficult things around her, learns, enjoys, and is, as her mother urges, (even after she turns twelve): eleven.

This wonderful list of thirty titles is selected by a committee of NCTE’s Children’s Literature Assembly. Congratulations to all the honored book creators and to the members of this year’s committee for their fine work: Tracy Smiles, Chair; Donalyn Miller, Patricia Bandre, Yoo Kyung Sung, Barbara Ward, Shanetia Clark, and Jean Schroeder.

Some may recall my rant “Stop Calling Books for Kids ‘Young Adult‘” and the place I created to document the most egregious errors,”It’s a Children’s Book (Not Young Adult!”  Some time after that the New York Times recognized the difference by creating distinctive children’s middle grade and young adult best seller lists. And now we’ve got Penderwick author Jeanne Birdsall taking up the gauntlet in  ”Middle Grade Saved My Life” (with a quote from me, no less).  Perhaps we can start a mini-Occupy movement?  

Last night, the Mystery Writers of America announced this year’s Edgar Award winners.  Congratulations to all!

Best Juvenile Winner: The Quick Fix by Jack D. Ferraiolo (Abrams – Amulet Books)

Other Nominees:

Fake Mustache: Or, How Jodie O’Rodeo and Her Wonder Horse (and Some Nerdy Kid) Saved the U.S. Presidential Election from a Mad Genius Criminal Mastermind by Tom Angleberger (Abrams – Amulet Books)
13 Hangmen by Art Corriveau (Abrams – Amulet Books)
Spy School by Stuart Gibbs (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage (Penguin Young Readers Group – Dial Books for Young Readers)

Best Young Adult Winner: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Disney Publishing Worldwide – Hyperion)

Other Nominees:

Emily’s Dress and Other Missing Things by Kathryn Burak (Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group – Roaring Brook Press)
The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George (Penguin Young Readers Group – Viking)
Crusher by Niall Leonard (Random House Children’s Books – Delacorte BFYR)
Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield (Penguin Young Readers Group – Dutton Children’s Books)

After receiving an advanced reader’s copy of Neil Gaiman’s Fortunately, the Milk, I asked my class if they’d like me to read it aloud. Now keep in mind that while Neil Gaiman may have a huge adult fan base, he isn’t particularly well-known among young kids. Actually, I’d say he isn’t known at all. My 4th grade students were way too young when The Graveyard Book won the Newbery. As for Coraline which is even older, a couple said they’d found the movie scary and none knew the book. And so they were wary.  At their request I read aloud the flap copy which intrigued them and so they decided  I could proceed.  

The author rightly describes the story as “very silly.” That it is! The basic premise is that a father goes out to get some milk for his children’s cereal and has a spot of trouble ….well, quite a bit of trouble to be honest…before making it home.  There are dinosaurs (and I was very appreciative of those students who helped me to correctly pronounce their names), bodily fluids, a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier, alien green things, and a very intrepid dad.

The class really liked it. Many of them really, really liked it! Enough to beg me to read more and more of it over the next few days until I was done. (It was a quick read — I believe it took three or four sessions to finish it.) I had thought it might be a little young for them, but I was wrong. In fact, this shaggy dog of a tale ended up being perfectly calibrated to read aloud to nine and ten-year-olds.  Not that they would notice or care, but it felt a bit in the tradition, humor-wise, of Dr. Who, Douglas Adams, or Terry Pratchett while being very much its own thing.

I tweeted to Neil that I was reading it and he asked if they were laughing and I was able to assure him that they were. There was chortling, snorts, and bursts of glee. And so I can say for sure that it is loads of fun. (And this was without the art as the ARC has mostly sketches.) For some enthusiastic student responses please go here.

I was thrilled to see that two of my favorite books from 2012 have won the 2013 Jane Adams Children’s Book Awards: Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson with illustrations by E. B. Lewis and We’ve Got a Job by Cynthia Levinson.  Great honor books too. Congratulations to all!

I’m sort of fascinated by how and which films and filmmakers become underground hits. That is, not mainstream movies, but indies and such that become embraced and then recommended and screened in off-beat places, say dorms and such.  For example, decades back when I was at Columbia, there was an organization that showed weekly art movies (the organization had a name that had something to do with a zoopraxiscope, but I can’t remember exactly what it was).  I recall Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s bizzare Un Chien Andalou, Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, Tod Browing’s Freaks, and Philip de Broca’s King of Hearts.  There were other cultish movies out and about at the time that I avoided because I suspected I couldn’t take their creepiness, say David Lynch’s Eraserhead, John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, and Alejandro Jodorwsky’s El Topo.  It took me a while to finally attend a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Pictureshow, but I must say I had a great time when I did.

One of my personal favorites is Lindsay Anderson’s  If… (you can read a bit more about my feelings about it here) and I was thrilled to see that it seems to be a favorite of Neil Gaiman’s too as it is one of the films he has selected to screen in a brief series he and his wife Amanda Palmer are doing. And was further tickled to see that she had selected King of Hearts. I haven’t see it in years and wonder how I’d respond to it today.  I have seen If.. and still love it (partly…er…mainly…because of the young Malcolm McDowell), but do wonder how others will respond to it today what with the horror of school shootings.  Haven’t seen King of Hearts in decades and now am curious how it would hold up for me.

What  movies speak to you in somewhat cultish fashion?  I’m suspecting the films of John Hughes, perhaps?  Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings?  I’m curious.

Claudia, so completely prepared, and  Jamie, so careful with the budget.  They are still and will always be two shrewd suburban kids who run away to a timeless Metropolitan Museum of Art to bathe in its elegant pool and sleep in its famous historical bed while investigating the mystery of the angel in the remarkable children’s book  From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  This American classic was penned by the wonderful writer E. L. Konigsburg who passed away this past week.

While she is probably best known for that marvelous story of two resourceful siblings in a New York City museum, Konigsburg wrote many other books for children, often featuring art and history. She is the only person to have won a Newbery medal (for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) and Newbery honor (for her first book  Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth) in the same year, 1967.  She received another Newbery Medal in 1997 for The View from Saturday.

I was fortunate enough to meet Mrs. Konigsburg a few times. My favorite memory of these was at a late evening drinks reception where I sat with her and a handful of others on bar stools around a small high table, quite starry-eyed to be included.  She was definitely one of the classiest and smartest people I have ever read or met and I hope that her books will continue to provide the same intellectual and aesthetic pleasure for others that they have for me.

I wrote my first post about the Matilda musical back in 2010 right before the original RSC production opened — the various videos and the RSC trailer (on my post) had me smitten and so the first thing I did when finalizing a trip to London last August was to get a ticket to the London production.  Now  I’m planning another summer trip to London and. while it is still all very mysterious, I’m planning on getting tickets to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory musical, which begins previews next month.  Why?  First of all, Sam Mendes is directing and he did one of the most memorable shows I ever saw, a production of Cabaret with Alan Cummings as the MC and Natasha Richardson as Sally Bowles.  The rest of the creative team looks impressive too, say the choreographer Peter Darling who also did Matilda and Billy Eliot. The recently released teaser trailer below is just that, a tease, with no sense of anything at all.

A little more poking around and I found a British Vogue article with costume sketches by Mark Thompson.

He admits that creating the costumes for the oompa loompas was the biggest challenge.

“I can’t tell you why yet, but there is a lot of puppetry involved,” he said. “It’s about tricks of the eye. The whole thing has a feeling of yesterday, but there’s no specific time or period. I don’t know if I’ve captured the whimsical, magical nature of the plot yet – we’ll have to see how it’s received, but I have worked at capturing the wit of it all.”

That’s it so far!

At its core, writing is about cutting beneath every social expectation to get to the voice you have when no one is listening. It’s about finding something true, the voice that lies beneath all words. But the paradox of writing is that everyone at her desk finds that the stunning passage written in the morning seems flat three hours later, and by the time it’s rewritten, the original version will look dazzling again. Our moods, our beings are as changeable as the sky (long hours at any writing project teach us), so we can no longer trust any one voice as definitive or lasting.

From Pico Iyer’s thoughtful essay, “Voices Inside Their Heads.”

For those in the New York City area, the French Consulate has a wonderful festival underway celebrating creators of book art.  Upcoming events include:

Alex Alice & Ron Wimberly

Dates: April 15, 2013 | 6 pm

Place: Columbia University Butler Library (Room 523)

Alex Alice and Ron Wimberly are graphic novelists who retell classic stories in contemporary comic book style. Join these two pop culture savvy storytellers for a conversation at Columbia University’s Butler Library.

Boulet & Gabrielle Bell

Dates: April 25, 2013 | 6:30pm
Place: Society of Illustrators

With a good mix of humor and pathos, Boulet and Gabrielle Bell both write webcomics inspired by anecdotes from their own daily lives. These short stories take on society and contemporary life, travels, travails, and preoccupations.  Sit down with these witty and incisive authors at the Society of Illustrators for a conversation moderated by Karen Green, graphic novel librarian at Butler Library – Columbia University.

Olivier Tallec & Oliver Jeffers

Dates: May 1, 2013 | 6pm
Place: NYPL, Berger Forum

Olivier Tallec and Oliver Jeffers are both avid world travelers and authors whose bold and colorful children’s books are bestsellers in the US. Join them for an animated conversation at the New York Public Library, moderated by Pamela Paul, Children’s Book Editor of the New York Times Book Review.

Blutch & David Mazzucchelli

Dates: May 7, 2013
Place: McNally Jackson Books

Blutch and David Mazzuchelli are creative chameleons whose books weave together story, formal play and lush colors. So it’s no wonder Mazzuchelli was chosen to design the cover for the American edition of Blutch’s So Long Silver Screen (PictureBox, May 2013). These masters of contemporary cartooning will meet face to face for a conversation at McNally Jackson.

Antoine Guilloppé & Istvan Banyai

Dates: May 13, 2013
Place: School of Visual Arts Theatre

Antoine Guilloppé and Istvan Banyai transform each page of their books into a fully realized scene by playing with light and shadow. Their work carefully considers the medium of the page and pushes its boundaries. Step outside the book with these two authors for a lively conversation at the School of Visual Arts Theatre with children’s book historian Leonard S. Marcus.

First of all, thanks to Chronicle publicist Lara Star, I’m finally going to be one with the rest of the world with their Fifty Shades of Grey because, at a recent preview, she gave me this neat Pantone: Fifty Shades of Gray Journal.  Pretty darn clever, I say.

But more exciting is the following press release.  Congrats to everyone at Chronicle!

Remember a few years back when we heard that The Graveyard Book might be stripped of its Medal?

Or that worrisome item about Beverly Cleary efforts to “modernize her series with Ramona the Ant?

Or the grim day when we learned that Charlie Sheen had landed a book deal?

All done by the best April Fooler there ever was, Peter D. Sieruta.   Missing you today, Peter.

The title of Simon Horobin’s book poses what, at first blush, seems a banal question. I imagine most readers would answer “Yes, spelling matters”, perhaps adding “though not as much as some believe”. Yet if the question of how words should be written is not uppermost in many people’s minds, its nagging everyday presence is nonetheless evident in the existence of spell-checkers and school spelling tests, as well as in mnemonics designed to help us with spellings, such as the venerable “i before e except after c”.

So begins Henry Hitchings’ very interesting Guardian review of Simon Horobin’s book Does Spelling Matter?  As one of those highly challenged when it comes to spelling, this is always of great interest to me.  In fact, I feel one of the many ways computers turned me into a writer were their non-judgmental spell checkers — I could get a ton of errors and no one besides me and my little computer would ever know.

Next week I will be doing one of my favorite lessons with my fourth grade class — having them “translate” a few pages of Mourt’s Relation, the 1620 publication of the Pilgrims, in its original form which means unconventional spelling. Understandably, fourth graders love it!

As a teacher I think spelling matters because we all want to be able to read what the other writes and some sort of standard spelling makes that possible.  I tell my students that they should want their readers to notice what they have to say and not be distracted by spelling errors.  Being a poor speller myself and a professional writer I’m able to help them understand the importance of being able to independently correct spelling without feeling a shame about it.

We still use an old-fashioned spelling workbook in my classroom with a weekly spelling test.  I feel it isn’t so much about learning spelling rules as much as it is study skills — becoming adept at figuring out written directions in the book as they will have to do in standardized tests, having to memorize a bunch of words as they will when they begin foreign language in 5th grade, and so forth. (Of course, we also do a lot of work separately with their writing and proofreading.) I’m curious — do other classroom teachers out there still use such programs? If not, how do you teach spelling?

Goodreads.com lists over 6,000 prizes on its Web site. The oldest, the Nobel Prize in Literature, was founded in 1901; the youngest was established yesterday. Ten more will certainly be announced tomorrow. Literary prizes have become so numerous and pervasive that just like the invention of the computer, it makes you wonder how writers ever survived without them.

From Amanda Foreman’s NYT essay, “Prize-Writing.“

Last week I applied to have my German citizenship restored.  This is because I would be German if not for the Holocaust. That is, everyone in the generations before me on both my mother and father’s sides were German and Jewish. Some of them stayed and survived for various reasons (say because their ancestors had converted a few generations earlier and according to the various rules of the Nazis they were no longer Jewish), some (my grandfather for one) were killed, and some left in time for Brazil, Israel, England, and the United States.

So I’ve provided the necessary documentation and expect to get my German citizenship before long.  Why?  It may surprise some, but I feel very German. I was raised with German food, German activities, and so forth.  My father was a specialist in German politics and I spent a lot of time in Germany (years, in fact) as a child. I speak German fluently. My family was assimilated and so I have German relatives who are Christian because their ancestors converted and in 2005 I met many of them for the first time when the University of Frankfurt celebrated my great-grandfather who was a famous brain specialist and started the Edinger Institut there. As for my mother’s family, they were from Berlin and managed to get out so late because of our cousin Lotte Passer who was already in London. Lotte died last month at the age of 99.  You can see a moving interview with her here.  I’ve always been fascinated that my parents were interned as enemy aliens on the Isle of Man because England was at war with German and they were, after all, German. Lotte died last month at the age of 99.  You can see a moving interview with her here.  Another cousin Werner Isler, came to the States. An avid music lover, he passed away last month as well; you can hear his lovely piano playing here.

Over the years I’ve done many posts related to the Holocaust. Here are a few of them:

• Many Anne Franks
• German Youth Today and the Holocaust
• The Holocaust for Young Children

I was delighted to see yesterday’s announcement that Pamela Paul was assuming the editorship of the New York Times Book Review.  Two years ago she became the children’s books editor and,  knowing many would be curious about her as she was coming from outside the children’s literature world,  I interviewed her for a blog profile, beginning:

Recently, Pamela Paul, the new children’s book editor at The New York Times Book Review chatted with me about her background, books, and some of her plans. In the course of our communications, Pamela asked me how I found the time to blog as a full-time teacher and I responded that I wondered the same about her. The author of three well-received books, and articles for a variety of publications including The Economist, Time Magazine as well as the New York Times, Pamela is also the mother of three very young children. Count me as impressed.

Count me as even more impressed two years later. Pamela has done so much for the world of children’s books — introducing weekly online picture book reviews, expanding the scoop of books reviewed, adding in special sections such as one on Back to School books, upping the number of the Times’  yearly notable children’s books, and more.  In the midst of this exciting work, she expanded to features editor and continued to write articles on a variety of topics for the Times and elsewhere. Pamela is smart, thoughtful, a terrific editor from the point of view of a reviewer, and I can’t wait to see what she does in this new role.

The Hallmark Channel this week began production of a civil rights era film “The Watsons Go to Birmingham” in Atlanta for a 19-day shoot.

The film, based on a 1995 historical fiction novel of the same name by Christopher Paul Curtis, was created byNikki Silver and Tonya Lewis Lee, Spike Lee’s wife. Lee also wrote the script and spent nine years trying to get it to air.

Atlanta’s acclaimed Kenny Leon will direct, as he did last year’s “Steel Magnolias” remake for Lifetime. Walmart and P&G are co-sponsoring the film.

More in this accessatlanta article (via @randomhouse)