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Robert Louis Stevenson is 159 years old. Or he would be, were he still with us.
Here he is, about 154 years ago:
And there is now a fabulous online archive of his work (ta to Maud for the link). You can read any number of things here including Child's Garden of Verse right here. You can actually flip the lovely, lovely pages one by one. There must be more beautiful editions of this book out there than practically any other.
My son used to go to sleep at night to this CD in which Ted Jacobs set some of the poems from Child's Garden of Verse to music. (In our house "The Lamplighter" always ran "O'Leary light the lamps again.") You can listen to the songs by scrolling down the Amazon page. I dare you to find a better bedtime album.
0 Comments on O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night! as of 11/15/2009 7:53:00 PM
I'd kind of forgotten that I'd made a facebook page for Henry awhile back. Just had a little look at it and see that he has friends that I don't even know. There's something rather touching about this.
Younger son and I had a long discussion the other day about whether he would ever sell the rights to Henry to the Disney Corp. (not that they've been banging the door down). We agreed that it really wouldn't be worth it ... particularly if they painted him orange and made him wear a shirt with his name on it.
The Roald Dahl Funny Prize has gone to Philip Ardagh for his book Grubtown Tales. That was for the category of books for children ages seven to fourteen, while in the category of books for children six and under went to Sam Lloyd for his Mr Pusskins Best in Show.
My older son reviewed one of Ardagh's books for the Vancouver Sun a few years back (or at least helped me to review it) and we were both chuffed to meet Ardagh at a reading at the fabulous Kidsbooks ... I think he's one of the funnier people I've ever met and it's nice to see that publicly recognised and rewarded.
0 Comments on Roald Dahl to Philip Ardagh as of 11/10/2009 10:33:00 PM
A very good piece about how scary children's books should be by Sam Leith in the Guardian:
Fear in children's books is more open, more ambient. Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is a good example. It's unsettling rather than scary: it exists in its own world. The sound of it is spooky – those pregnant breaks that give its opening sentence the strangeness and gravity of poetry: "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind . . . and another . . . " And that's even before Max sails off to where the wild things are, to join their savage carnival. "We'll eat you up, we love you so . . . "
Like Sendak's even stranger In the Night Kitchen, which has a naked toddler flying an aeroplane made of cake-mix through a kitchen filled with demented Oliver Hardy lookalikes, the story is unsettling – but it's better described by the German word unheimlich, meaning unhomely. That makes a sort of sense. These stories are a way of leaving the safety of home for a world created by someone else's imagination, where you are under their control. Suddenly, your bedroom is a forest. Suddenly, you are in a savage carnival. Of course it's scary.
And for those of you not sure of who John McCrae is, here's a gentle reminder:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Tuesday October 27th at 4 pm Babar en ville, 1235 Greene Avenue, 514-931-0606. This event is suitable for ages 8 and up.
Oh, for the love of Old Mother Goose, do we really need such happily-ever-after endings for everything that it becomes necessary to have Humpty Dumpty end with all the King's men making "Humpty happy again?" Apparently somebody at the BBC thought so.
Here's a completely unreconstructed Humpty, courtesy of illustrator Rene Milot.
And here's a short story called "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds," by Neil Gaiman in which Humpty Dumpty is portrayed as a murder victim in sort of noir nursery fable.
0 Comments on Scrambled Humpty Dumpty as of 10/19/2009 12:13:00 PM
Zombies are for boys and vampires are for girls. So says writer Charlie Higson in a recent Guardian piece. He writes:
Vampires are the undead of choice for girls, and zombies for boys. Vampires are cool, aloof, beautiful, brooding creatures of the night. Typical moody teenage boys, basically. Zombies are dumb, brutal, ugly and mindlessly violent. Which makes them also like typical teenage boys, I suppose.
Charlie Higson's new book The Enemy is out this month and has a very spiffy website where you can read an extract or even zombify yourself.
The book is just out and the press release makes me wish we were going to be in Toronto this coming weekend:
In Canada, Puffin Books will be celebrating the release of The Enemy at the Toronto Zombie Walk on October 24th in full zombie attire, with wound tattoo giveaways for the walkers. Be sure to visit us at 3:00 pm at Trinity Bellwoods Park bordered by Dundas St. and Gore Vale Ave.
Of course, here in Montreal we can see zombies walking the street any night of the week.
And in Victoria, my brother Graham McDonald is directing a zombie-ful version of Mary Shelley's novel: Frankenstein in Oblivion (adapted by Graham McDonald & Kirsti Mikoda) which opens next weekend. So we also wish we were going to be in Victoria.
In one of my favourite family photos, our older son is dressed as a zombie (as he was every Hallowe'en over a span of years), and is standing next to his great-grandmother who has her arm around him and is beaming like she couldn't possibly have been prouder of this horrible-looking creature. Such is love.
0 Comments on Zombies 'r' Us as of 10/19/2009 12:13:00 PM
Looking forward to this the new Julian Fellowes film from Time to Time, which stars young Alex Etel, a remarkable young actor and was shockingly good in the Cranford adapation.
The film is based on the novel The Chimneys of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston and was filmed in Dorset in a house that was once used to film a Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who. (Lately, all roads seem to lead to Doctor Who around here. That's what happens when you live with a little Whoovian.)
I wrote about Green Knowehere some time ago but forgot all about it until now. Must go and find the books as I do love a good ghost story. I'm also particularly interested in the process of adaptation right now as it is something I'm working on with my screenwriting students, and also has to do with a particular project I have in mind. There is an interesting article about the recent spate of adaptations of children's books here (with thanks to the ever informative Betsy Bird for the link.)
0 Comments on Time to Time as of 10/9/2009 7:59:00 AM
I procrastinated about writing a book for about 35 years, always sure I’d never write one good enough. When I finally tried to write a novel, I was inspired by some really bad books I’d read, thinking, ‘at least I can do better than that’.
~From a piece on how children's writers got their start in the Times Online.
Can't wait to read the new book.
0 Comments on Meg Rosoff on Procrastination and Inspiration as of 1/1/1900
Missed this at the time, but the New Yorker has a short selection from the Dave Eggers novelisation of Where the Wild Things (written after his work on the screenplay). The story, "Max at Sea," is online here and you can also read an interview with Eggers here. Required reading for both my Children's Writing and my Screenwriting students.
Here's a sampling of what he has to say:
The weird thing is that working within an established story was actually kind of liberating. You know the beginning and middle and end, more or less, so there’s less pressure to figure all that out. So it was a matter of probing deeper into who Max is, what he wants, what his life is like at home and at school. And on the island, looking deeper into who the Wild Things are and what they want from Max, his life as their king, and why he leaves. From the beginning, though, Maurice was clear that he didn’t want the movie or the book to be timid adaptations. He wanted us to feel free to push and pull the original story in new directions.
And, oh my sweet heaven, take a look at this:
Eggers came up with the idea for this special edition, which unlike Margaret Wise Brown's original edition of The Fur Family uses artificial fur.
0 Comments on Max at Sea as of 10/5/2009 10:33:00 AM
The youngest and most productive member of our writing family has just started using a manual typewriter, purchased at a church sale for the sum of five dollars. It is small and green and has the charming moniker of Hermes baby. Browsing around online for info on securing a new ribbon, I have learned that the typewriter used by Douglas Adams was an Hermes 8.
We've just received a copy of the Eoin Colfer sequel to the Hitchhiker series: And Another Thing (Penguin Canada) which is amusingly subtitled Part Six of Three of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and are looking forward to reading it.
We are also not impervious to the Doctor Who connection, given that Adams wrote for the series and that young son has aspirations in that direction. So it seems to have been an auspicious purchase. It's also funny to hear the sound of keys clacking in the house.
Wearing one of my other hats, I was over chatting with Shelagh Rogers at CBC about biographies the other week. You can listen to the podcast version here.
0 Comments on The Next Chapter as of 10/4/2009 1:38:00 PM
This is just so lovely. Euan found it online this morning and showed it to me. He also pointed out that there is one Oliver Jeffers title which we don't have, and so obviously I have been delinquent in my duties as a parent.
2 Comments on Boy Meets Penguin, last added: 10/4/2009
Oh my! This book is such a treasure to our family and the animation looks perfect. Do you know anything more about the film? I've got to do some internetting it looks like.
Reporting back to say that it's a 30 minute film that aired in the UK last Christmas. It came out on DVD in April, but only available in region 2--not North America. I sent them an email asking when it will be released here, but I don't expect an answer. I just hope they do!
Find out more about Living Paintings and their FREE, postal library service bringing pictures to life for thousands of blind and partially sighted people of all ages here.
Will resume normal services once my fall courses are up and running, but in the meantime you should pop over to Simply Read Books (full disclosure: my publisher) and see the perfectly precious new trailer for Paulina P. Please.
You can learn more about Paulina P. and her creator, Lisa Cinar, over at Lisa's blog.
0 Comments on Summer's Over as of 9/6/2009 12:10:00 PM
Where You Came From has been selected as one of AIGA's 50 Books/50 Covers in the category of Book Design.
Here's the info from the site:
After careful and considered review of more than 900 entries, the 2008 jury of the “AIGA 50 books/50 Covers” competition selected a group of 91 examples of outstanding book and book cover design produced in 2008.
The jury’s selections will be mounted as a public exhibition during the “Make/Think: AIGA Design Conference” in October 2009 and at the AIGA National Design Center in New York in December 2009, and will travel across the country to AIGA chapters and student groups during 2010. In addition, selections become part of the AIGA Design Archives, are documented in 365: AIGA Year In Design, and the physical artifacts join the AIGA Design Archives at the Denver Art Museum and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University.
Way cool. Only downside that I can see is that this design award fails to credit the designer by name. So - three times for luck - Robin Mitchell, Robin Mitchell, Robin Mitchell. And you can click through here to see comments from when When You Were Small was honoured by AIGA.
And kudos, as always, to Simply Read for being simply the best.
3 Comments on AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers, last added: 7/12/2009
Here's the list of books I plan to talk about in the CBC spot today. I tried to make up a list for all ages. Will pop back in and annotate/hyperlink later today if I get a chance.
A LENTICULAR BOOK Watch Me Hop by Rebecca Young - A lenticular book (Scholastic)
A PICTURE BOOK Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld (Chronicle Books/Raincoast)
A GRAPHIC NOVEL Jellaby: Monster in the City by Kean Soo (Hyperion)
AN ADDICTIVE NEW SERIES The Magician/ The Alchemyst/ The Sorceress Three volumes in the series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott (Random House)
AN HISTORICAL NOVEL Gwen by Carolyn Pogue (Sumach Press)
A YOUNG ADULT/PRACTICALLY ADULT NOVEL The Uninvited by Tim Wynne-Jones (Candlewick Press)
0 Comments on Summer Reading List as of 6/8/2009 10:27:00 AM
Will be on CBC Radio One here in Montreal tomorrow talking about children's books with the regular Radio Noon children's book panel. The program runs from 1 to 2 pm local time and you can listen in here
Had a great time at book Expo yesterday, signed over a hundred books and met a lot of lovely people, including Neil Gaiman who signed a book for me. I really should have taken my camera.
Simply Read Books have created a fantastic booth with lots of beautiful wares on show. Kudos to Dimiter and the lovely Gillian. I really do consider myself tremendously lucky in my choice of publisher. It was nice to see all the great work done by Simply Read over the last few years and the attention it was garnering. Particularly crowd-stopping was a poster for the forthcoming Alice Through the Looking Glass to be illustrated by Iassen Ghiuselev. If you don't already own the Simply Read edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland then you are missing out.
In the Simply Read booth today will be signings by Doug Keith, illustrator of the The Bored Book and Stephen Parlato who will be signing posters for his forthcoming release Dragon Love. Parlato's previous book with Simply Read, The World That Loved Books is an absolute stunner, so trust me this is not to be missed.
Today's signings are at booth 3366 (on the third floor) at 1 PM for Keith and 2 PM for Parlato. Wish I could be there (and would love to score one of those posters!) but I'll be seeing Stephen Merritt's Coralinethis afternoon. Oh poor me.
Oh, and if I haven't already said this, you should take a look at The Picnic Basket, a blog about children's books run by Deborah Sloan who I finally got to meet in person yesterday. She's a sweetheart. And she gives away free books on her blog - go and see!
I felt like I was at BEA for about a minute -- so much to do, so many people to meet, in such a short time. But, ah - ha, I got to meet Sara O'Leary! Here's to working together with Simply Read on your books (you're a great cheerleader for them)... can't wait to read your next one. (and thanks for the plug for www.thepicnic-basket.com -- hoping to include your next book when it's ready).
Dave Eggers has been honoured for his work with 826 - which is exactly as it should be. Story here.
Just this weekend, I read the David Sedaris edited collection of short fiction, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules which you should buy if you care anything about short fiction. (Note: despite the mention of children in the title this is not a children's book). Some of the most heart-rendering (as Anne Shirley would have it) stories in the universe are in this anthology, including Lorrie Moore's "People Like That Are the Only People Here" and Amy Hempel's "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" - two stories that I would steal and call my own if I could possibly get away with it. And, if you need are still in need of convincing, by buying this book you will be supporting 826 and that is a very good thing. And as long as you're doing good, go ahead and order a copy of Noisy Outlaws as well. You won't regret it. And it is a children's book - which brings things neatly around to the avowed subject matter of this blog.
0 Comments on Eggers, Hercules, Outlaws as of 5/24/2009 7:41:00 PM
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That is a true dimand.