How to use this Page

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: April 25, 2012

Beautiful Dreamers

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’ve hand-picked ten many-splendored new books. Children are born loving poetry from the moment they form their first babbling words to when they begin to tackle more complex rhythms and tongue twisters. As they acquire language and enjoy how it rolls off their tongues, they also gain an appreciation for the beauty of creative expression. Nothing quite tops that moment when they learn to recite their first nursery rhyme. So leave a poem in your child’s pocket and help him discover the appeal of modern poetry.

Every Thing On It

By Shel Silverstein

If you’re like most of us, you may have grown up with Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, or The Giving Tree on your childhood bookshelf. Master wordsmith and doodler Shel Silverstein invented laugh-out-loud silly rhymes for us to endlessly ponder. Every Thing On It has been posthumously published as a new collection of his irreverent poems and characters drawn with his trademark squiggly offhand style. It’s a great joy to share his nonsense poems with a new generation to puzzle over and love for years to come.

Ages 8-11 | Publisher: HarperCollins | September 20, 2011

A Stick Is An Excellent Thing

By Marilyn Singer; Illustrated by LeUyen Pham

What a winning combination Pham’s playful illustrations and Singer’s amusing verse make in this lovely poetry collection. Bouncing rhyme and pictures of active children at play ensure even the most poetry-adverse child will warm to its magical delights. As Singer’s light-handed verse concludes, “A stick is an excellent thing if you find the perfect one.” We’ve certainly found the perfect book of poetry in this one. For more on LeUyen Pham, check out our interview with her.

Ages 5-8 | Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | February 28, 2012

Water Sings Blue

By Kate Coombs; Illustrated by Meilo So

In her first book of poetry, Kate Coombs takes us on a voyage under the sea.

Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems
By Gail Carson Levine
Illustrated by Matthew Cordell
Harper (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-178725-6
Ages 5-10
On shelves March 13th

I tend to run my bookgroup for kids between the ages of 9-12 like a gentle dictatorship. I choose the books, the kids vote on them, and so it goes. Now if the kids had their way we’d be reading fantasy novels day in and day out every single week. With that in mind, I like to try to make them read something a little different once in a while. For example, one week I might try to get them to read a Newbery winner. The next I would try to encourage them to dip into some nonfiction. One type of book I haven’t had the nerve to attempt for years, though, is poetry. Finding a really good, really interesting, really smart book of poetry for kids of that age is tricky stuff. Poetic tastes vary considerably, so it’s best to start with a book with a hook. And by hook or by crook, Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It is basically the answer to my prayers I’ve been seeking all these long and lonely years. It has everything. Humor, engaging illustrations, a clever premise, potential (and very fun) applications, and a passive aggressive streak that’s nearly a mile long.

Do you know that old William Carlos Williams poem about the plums in the icebox? The one that calls itself “This is Just to Say”? When you think about that poem, I mean really think about it, it’s just the most self-satisfied little number you ever did see. Williams is clearly not sorry, though he included the words “forgive me” in there. With that as her inspiration, Gail Carson Levine has penned forty-five or so false apology poems modeled on Williams’. The rules are simple. “The first stanza states the horrible offense. The second stanza describes the effect of the offense. The last stanza begins with ‘Forgive me’ and continues with the false apology, because the writer is not sorry at all.” Mixing together fairy tales and silly situations, Levine’s poems span the gamut, from the cow in Jack and the Beanstalk taking issue with her monetary worth to a girl’s pets asking pseudo-forgiveness for enjoying her diary’s contents. Saying sorry without meaning it has never been this charming.

On the book’s dedication page read the words “To Susan Campbell Bartoletti, who led me down the poetry path.” I am currently in the process of putting in an order with FTD in the hopes of sending Ms. Bartoletti some flowers of my own. Whether intentionally or not, she has been at least partly responsible for helping to bring to this world a poet of undeniable talent. We all know Ms. Gail Carson Levine for her fantasy novels. Her Newbery Honor winning Ella Enchanted is probably her best known work. But when I saw that she had gone into the poetry business I couldn’t suppress a groan. Great. An author who thinks they can write. Whooptie-doo. Can’t wait to see what recycled trope makes its 100th appearance on the printed page yet again. Imagine my surprise then when I saw not only the idea behind the book (snarky in its mere conception, which is no easy task when you work in the world of juvenile literature) but the poems themselves. Ladies and gentlemen if I blame Ms. Levine for anything it is for denying the world her drop dead gorgeously twisted poin

Add this book to your collection: A Tale of Two Castles

Have you read this book? Rate it:
Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

©2011 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 13, 2011

If the phrase, “The better to eat you with!” struck terror in your childhood heart, fear not, these inventive retellings of the classic Little Red Riding Hood story will delight your little ones. The Brothers Grimm were especially gifted at creating dark and often haunting fairy tales, but these books below have a bit more gentle appeal. They also may serve as a great conversation starter with your children about the inherent danger of talking to strangers. As the moral of the folktale advises, children should beware of the charming and kind wolf perhaps most of all.

The Story of Little Red Riding Hood by those daring Grimm brothers (beautifully illustrated by Christopher Bing whose youngest daughter modeled for little Red) comes in an old-fashioned album meant to capture the timeless quality of the story. A cautionary tale, including the original black and white illustrated version from 1857, is inserted as a fold-out in the back of the book complete with the underlying moral.

In Betsy Red Hoodie by Gail Carson Levine, the talented author of Ella Enchanted, brings a new spin on the story. Accompanied by her wise-cracking sheep to Grandma’s house, Betsy encounters many obstacles and diversions on her path. Grandma has an unexpected surprise in store for Betsy when she finally arrives at her home. This is the second installment of Betsy’s plucky adventures (preceded by Betsy Who Cried Wolf!) with comic illustrations by Scott Nash.

Bernadette Watts paints a colorful, wondrous forest filled with wildflowers that tempt Little Red Riding Hood to pick a lovely bouquet for her grandmother. The wolf meets a gruesome end when the huntsman cuts him open to rescue them and they fill his belly full of stones. It almost makes one feel sorry for the wolf… so fiendish wolves better watch out for hunters with an ax to grind.

In his bold inventive book, acclaimed artist Daniel Egneus recreates a gothic wonderland for

Since I don’t do much with YA on a regular basis I don’t read the blog of The Book Smugglers as often as I would like, even though they’re some of the best in the biz.  Love their reviews.  Really top notch stuff.

Anyway, they recently reviewed a book called The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson and they got to talking about plus sized folks on covers.  The initial galley for Carson’s book featured a waiflike slip of a white girl when the character is supposed to be plus sized and dark-skinned.  Necessary changes were made to the final cover, but you still wouldn’t be able to tell the girth of the heroine from either of them.  The Book Smugglers end their review with, “Something we haven’t talked much about, however, is this concept of slenderizing a plus-sized character for a cover. We’ve seen it before in books like Everything Beautiful. Have you noticed any of this in your reading?”  Elizabeth Fama recommended a great Stacked piece on the subject from 2009 which I remember seeing some years ago that discussed this very thing.

I’ve been wondering about portrayals of overweight children in books for kids myself.  With obesity rates the highest they have ever been amongst our nation’s youth, ours is a country that doesn’t know how to deal with its large children.  Their portrayal in literature, therefore, is something to think about.  Usually, if you’re a kid and fat in a book then you’re a villain of sorts.  A Dudley Dursley or Augustus Gloop.  If, by some miracle, you’re the hero of the book that’s fine, but you’d better be prepared to disappear from your own cover.

So I tried to find representation of fat children on middle grade book covers.  Alas, these are the only books I was able to come up with, and as you can see they’re hardly ideal.  Let’s look at what book jackets tend to do to large kids.  As far as I can tell, these fall into three distinct categories: Inanimate Objects, Taking Advantage of Momentary Slimming, or Part of the Body.

Inanimate Objects

By far the most popular solution.  On the YA end of things it’s almost de rigueur.  On the children’s side it’s less common but not entirely unheard of.

Larger Than Life Lara by Dandi Daley Mackall

Here we had a book about a confident, well-adjusted girl who was also fat.  And here we have a book cover of a dress, with no girl in sight.  Yes, it refers to the plot, but still . . .

Slob by Ellen Potter

Owen, the hero of this book, is a big guy but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the cover of the book.

Gail Carson Levine author of Ella Enchanted, which was a Newbery Honor Book in 1998 wrote an interesting article on her blog about accepting criticism.  Here is an excerpt of wrote she wrote: 

Although it’s hard and sometimes torture, criticism is essential. Few writers (but definitely some) can revise entirely on their own and turn in prose that needs only a light editorial dusting.

Constructive criticism is criticism you can use. I’ve mentioned on the blog that editors have responded to my manuscripts in the past with criticism that my heroines aren’t likeable. These editors have meant well, but that statement isn’t helpful all by itself. I haven’t intentionally made my heroines unsympathetic. What I need are specifics. What did my character do or say or think or fail to do or say or think at which moment in the manuscript to convey that she isn’t likeable? Show me the places: which action, which line of dialogue, which paragraph of thought. Then I can fix.

You don’t have to process criticism right on the spot, and you probably can’t. It may be impossible. A great line when you’re getting criticism is, “Thank you. I’ll think about that.”

Later, in the privacy of your room or office, you can go through the five stages of grief (classically applied to the response to a diagnosis of terminal illness, but no hyperbole is too extreme when applied to writing criticism!):

∙ Denial — The manuscript is fine exactly as it is!

∙ Anger — My writing pal is just jealous!

∙ Bargaining — I can change this paragraph on page 75 and the second sentence on page 112, even though I spent seven hours on each one, but if I revise them, I won’t have to rewrite the entire middle section.

∙ Depression — My story never was any good, never will be, and I might as well trash it. (Some of you, I suspect, skip the first three stages and go right here. If you must, you must, but try not to inhabit this step for long.)

∙ Acceptance — Hmm, hmm, hmm. If I make my villain more likeable, as my writing buddy suggests, then the conflict with the hero will have more tension. Oh, this is cool! I see how I can make everything better.

The best strategy for getting comfortable with a dose of criticism is to sit with it for a while. Let your readers’ suggestions percolate in your brain without making judgments.  Click here to read the full article.

Gail’s other books include Ever, Fairest, Dave at Night, an ALA Notable Book and Best Book for Young Adults; The Wish, The Fairy’s Return, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, and the six Princess Tales books. She is also the author of the nonfiction book Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly and the picture books Betsy Who Cried Wolf and Betsy Red Hoodie, both illustrated by Scott Nash.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy

"There's something so magical about Gail Carson Levine's stories. Her first, Ella Enchanted, reimagined Cinderella; in it, Ella is cursed to be obedient--an absolutely genius touch. That book won a Newbery Honor Book in 1998, and eventually became a movie starring Anne Hathaway.

You could call Gail Carson Levine the queen of fairy and princess stories. Later works include Fairest, a beautiful twist on Snow White, as well as several works in the Disney Fairies series...:"

Gail Carson Levine has written 17 books for children. Her first book was "Ella Enchanted," which won a Newbery honor and was made into a movie. She blogs about writing here and wrote the nonfiction book, "Writing Magic" - with dozens of writing exercises for kids and the rest of us. She has a picture book and a mystery coming out, and she's sharing with us responses to questions she's had from writers and others...

WRITING FROM A MALE POV (If You're a Woman)
Try thinking of somebody in particular.

When she wrote a character who was trying to keep it's gender a secret, she had the character bow to a Count and then curtsy.

A bow and curtsy are shortcuts, and we need shortcuts because we don't have an eternity to establish a character - but shortcuts can tend towards stereotypes, so use them with care.

Establish your character's gender early - because it's jolting to be reading it wrong.

And she advises to get a guy to read it to make sure the character didn't act in a way that isn't credible.

NAMING CHARACTERS
Find a name that fits but isn't too obvious.

Think of what your character is like, and go to the thesaurus - look at the synonyms. If your character is Moody - Melancholy. Melody? Petulant. Petchula? What about nicknames? The name could be Michael, but his friends could call him "Mope." (He might not like that, and it would just make him mopier!)

SETTING
Be aware of the dangers of information dumps in the first chapter. (Though it worked in "Tuck Everlasting," she says in general to avoid it.)

Setting can be a tool for character development.

In an action scene, you don't necessarily want to stop to describe what the character is wearing. But if you drop in early that the hero dresses in his usual baggy pants, and then wham! It's a problem when he's riding his bike in that chase scene.

If a fishtank is going to explode and you need to set up it's there first for the reader when the character enters the living room, think about the character NOT saying "Julia, I see your Dad still has his fishtank."

Consider the character saying "I always think those fish are staring at me."

Or the character thinking, "The room always felt heavy to him, two sofas, fish tank, leaden curtains..." - You drop it in there and when the fish tank explodes, the reader will be surprised but will also accept it.