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Previews, previews!  Lovely little previews!

And we find ourselves back at the Yale Club, across the street from Grand Central Station, and a whopping 10 minutes away, on foot, from my library.  There are advantages to living on a tiny island, I tell ya.

As per usual, Little Brown pulled out all the stops for the average children’s and YA librarian, in order to showcase their upcoming season.  There were white tablecloths and sandwiches consisting of brie and ham and apples.  The strange result of these previews is that I now seem to be under the mistaken understanding that Little Brown’s offices are located at the Yale Club.  They aren’t.  That would make no sense.  But that’s how my mind looks at things. When I am 95 and senile I will insist that this was the case.  Be warned.

A single day after my return from overseas I was able to feast my eyes on the feet of Victoria Stapleton (the Director of School and Library Marketing), bedecked in red sparkly shoes.  I would have taken a picture but my camera got busted in Bologna.  I was also slightly jet lagged, but was so grateful for the free water on the table (Europe, I love you, but you have to learn the wonders of ample FREE water) that it didn’t even matter.  Megan Tingley, fearless leader/publisher, began the festivities with a memory that involved a child’s story called “The Day I Wanted to Punch Daddy In the Face”.  Sounds like a companion piece to The Day Leo Said “I Hate You”, does it not?

But enough of that.  You didn’t come here for the name dropping.  You can for the books that are so ludicrously far away in terms of publication (some of these are January/February/March 2012 releases) that you just can’t resist giving them a peek.  To that end, the following:

Liza Baker

At these previews, each editor moves from table to table of librarians, hawking their wares.  In the case of the fabulous Ms. Baker (I tried to come up with a “Baker Street Irregulars” pun but it just wasn’t coming to me) the list could start with no one else but Nancy Tafuri.  Tafuri’s often a preschool storytime staple for me, all thanks to her Spots, Feathers and Curly Tails.  There’s a consistency to her work that a librarian can appreciate.  She’s also apparently the newest Little Brown “get”.  With a Caldecott Honor to her name (Have You Seen My Duckling?) the newest addition is All Kinds of Kisses.  It’s pretty cute.  Each animals gets kisses from parent to child with the animal sound accompanying.  You know what that means?  We’re in readaloud territory here, people.  There’s also a little bug or critter on each page that is identified on the copyright page for parents who have inquisitive children.

Next up, a treat for all you Grace Lin fans out there.  If you loved Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat then you’ll probably be pleased as punch to hear that there’s a third

Perspective. It’s easy to lose in the hassle of everythingness--particularly as a mother. But every once in awhile, something comes along to put things back into perspective. At a recent family gathering, Scarlett’s Auntie Liz, devoted first-time mom to our beloved cousin Baby Simon, remarked on how surprised she was at the morbid worry tendency of moms, while reeling off a litany of traumatic scenarios constantly looming in her imagination. And, instead of being able to allay her fears with the promise that it gets better as they get older, all the mothers in earshot had a moment of perspective. I realized, again, that, no matter how much time passes from when they show up earthside, each child in the world that belongs to you, by birth or by import, walks around their daily life with a fragile piece of your heart in their possession. And it gets worse as they get more autonomous, when you can’t hold them every minute and oversee everything--which is accelerated when you have an independent one. I knew from the time Keilana got here that I had better learn to let her go. She’s the only child I know who cried when she got picked up from preschool and declared her day at kindergarten “private.” In Nancy Tafuri’s Have You Seen My Duckling?, Mama Duck has seven stay-at-home babies and one wanderer--who sparks a book-wide search. My duckling is now a beautiful swan…but I still wish I could tuck her under my wing sometimes.

http://www.amazon.com/Have-You-Seen-My-Duckling/dp/0688148999

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/contributor.jsp?id=3676