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Stephan Pastis has signed a deal with Candlewick Press for Timmy Failure: The Book You’re Not Supposed to Have. This book will be the fifth installment of Pastis’ popular middle grade series.

Daniel Lazar, a literary agent at Writers House, negotiated this deal on Pastis’ behalf. The publisher has scheduled the release date for September 27.

Here’s more from the press release: “The most important thing to know about Timmy’s fifth memoir to date is: this book was never meant to EXIST. No one needs to know the details. Just know this: There’s a Merry, a Larry, a missing tooth, and a teachers’ strike that is crippling Timmy Failure’s academic future. Worst of all, Timmy is banned from detective work. It’s a conspiracy of buffoons.”

Hot New Releases & Popular Kids Stories We think our list of the best new kids books for October is sensational! It highlights some amazing books from many different genres: non-fiction, reality fiction, and fantasy. Take a gander and let us know which titles and covers catch your eye ... Read the rest of this post

• So the big news this week was that a writer at Slate decided that now was an ideal time to take a potshot at adults reading young adult books.  And, as you might expect, everyone got quite hot under the collar about it.  To arms!  To arms!  Considering that this sort of thing happens pretty much every time a new YA book hits the mainstream I wasn’t quite as upset as some.  Honestly, I thought Roger Sutton’s piece Why Do We Even Call It YA Anymore? was much more along my own thinking.  I could not help but enjoy Marjorie Ingall’s response as well.

• It’s one of those stories that’s just so crazy you don’t quite believe it at first.  So about a year ago I attending a lovely dinner for Stephan Pastis, author of the book Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made (as well as the other Timmy books that would follow).  Stephan was one of those fellows just filled to the brim with stories.  And, as luck would have it, his stories were about syndicated cartoonists; one of my favorite things in the world to talk about!  I heard him wax eloquent on the subject of Gary Trudeau, Berkeley Breathed, you name it.  He even had ties to Charles Schulz (a fact that served me well when I interviewed Sparky’s wife Jean).  But when I dared to ask if he’d ever met the elusive Gary Larson or Bill Watterson (of Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes fame respectively) he confessed he had not, though Watterson had once sent him a nice note about one of his comics.  Well bust my buttons, but recently Pastis got a lot more out of Watterson than a mere note.  He got three illustrated comic strips!  Read this post to learn how he did it and why this is as extraordinary a fact as it is.  Wowza!

• I was very sad to hear about the recent death of legendary children’s book editor Frances Foster.  Read this remarkable interview with her from Horn Book, conducted by Leonard Marcus to get a sense of the woman we just lost.  PW provided a very nice obituary for her here.

• Essentially, this is kind of a real world case of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, but with a dark dark twist.

• The voting may be over, but I can’t help but love the collection of different Penguin Random House logos that dared to combine the publishing behemoth.  My personal favorite?  Right here:

• I’ve oohed and cooed to you about the fact that Shaun Tan’s rather brilliant picture book Rules of Summer has an accompanying app with music by the amazing and fantastic Sxip Shirey.  However, when I mentioned this fact before the app was not available for purchase.  Now it is.  Go get that thing then.  You can even hear a selection of Sxip’s music for it here.

• Speaking of Rules of Summer, did you see Travis Jonker’s predictions of what he thinks will win the New York Times Best Illustrated Awards?  Sort of a brilliant list to predict (and I think he’s completely and utterly dead on with his selection).

• Brain Pickings recently featured a selection of photographs of fictional meals from your favorite books.  The photos are from the book Fictitious Dishes: An Album of Literature’s Most Memorable Meals.  Though not strictly limited to children’s literature, it contains a handful of tasty treats worth noting.  Be sure to check out the meals of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Secret Garden, Heidi, and a Chicken Soup With Rice that will knock your socks off.

• Just a quick shout out to my fellow metropolitan librarian Rita Meade who just sold her first children’s book.  Go, Rita, go go go!

• Lindgren wins Lindgren! And around and around it goes.

• One minute he’s winning a Tony.  The next minute he’s turning The Dangerous Book for Boys into a television show.  Wait . . . say what now?

• Did you guys happen to see Grace Lin’s rather remarkably good Cheat Sheet for Selling Diversity?  Selling, heck.  This should be disseminated into all the MLIS programs in the States.  Future children’s librarians should be memorizing it by heart.  THIS is how you handsell to a kiddo or a parent, guys.  And Grace did all the work for you!

Daily Image:

Fairly brilliant!

Thanks to Marci for the link.

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
By Stephan Pastis
Candlewick Press
$14.99
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6050-5
Ages 9-12
On shelves February 26th

Call it the attack of the syndicated cartoonists. For whatever reason, in the year 2013 we are seeing droves of escapees from the comic strip pages leaping from the burning remains of the newspaper industry into the slightly less volatile world of books for kids. How different could it be, right? As a result you’ve The Odd Squad by Michael Fry (Over the Hedge) and Zits Chillax by Jerry Scott (Zits). Even editorial cartoonists are getting in on the act with Pulitzer prize winner Matt Davies and his picture book Ben Rides On. In the old days it was usually animators, greeting card designers, and Magic the Gathering illustrators who joined the children’s book fray. But now with graphic novels getting better than ever and libraries willing to buy the bloody things, the world has been made safe for cartoonists too. Into this state of affairs comes Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. It is, without a doubt, the best of the cartoonist fare (author Stephan Pastis is the man behind the strip Pearls Before Swine), completely and utterly understanding its genre, its pacing, and the importance of leveling humor with down-to-earth human problems. Funnier than it deserves to be, here’s the book to hand the kind who has been told to read something with an unreliable narrator. Trust me, you’ll be the kid’s best friend if you give them this.

Meet Detective Failure. No, not really. Instead, meet Timmy Failure, just a normal kid with dreams so big they make Walter Mitty’s fantasies look like idle fancies. Living with just his single mom and his sidekick Total (a 1,500 pound polar bear but that’s neither here nor there), Timmy spends his days solving crimes for the other kids in his class. He may not be very good at it but it’s a living. Timmy’s sure his talents will launch him into a future of fame an fortune. That is, if he can defeat his nemesis Corrina Corrina, get his mom to stop grounding him, deal with the loser she’s dating, and figure out how to keep Total out of a zoo. It’s a big job. Fortunately, Timmy has a more than hefty ego to handle it.

I am a grown woman with a child of my own. I am an adult. I pay bills and watch Masterpiece Theater. In other words, my grown-up cred is in place. That said, I can’t tell you how many debates I’ve already had with folks over whether or not Timmy’s darn polar bear is real or not. My husband claims that the bear is a manifestation of Timmy’s break with reality in the same way that Hobbes seemed to walk around in the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. I like to point out that Hobbes had an actual physical form as a stuffed tiger and where precisely is the stuffed polar bear in all this? Maybe I have a hard time acknowledging the fact that Total isn’t real because if that’s true then Timmy’s life is even sadder than I initially thought.

Because, you see, that’s the real joy of Timmy Failure; the misery. On the one hand we are meant to yell and scream at our oblivious hero and to mock him for his inability to face reality. On the other hand, when you see how sad his life is, you cannot help but feel for him. That poignancy almost makes it funny again. His mom, for example, is single and holding down a low-income job as best she can. It’s not her fault her kiddo is as detached from the world around him as he is. And Timmy, truth be told, pretends to be a detective mostly because he wants to give his mom a better life. His bravado is hiding some pretty desperate hopes and dreams. You get glimpses past that bravado from time to time, and those are the moments that lift the book up and out of the world of pseudo-Diary of a Wimpy Kid notebook novel knock-offs that clog library and bookseller shelves. For example, there’s one moment when Timmy’s mom cuddles him then blows into his ear because he finds it funny. He objects in his usual staunch way then . . . “Do it again”. The book also dares to take potshots at folks who might actually deserve it. Timmy’s teacher has checked out of teaching long since. He’s the kind of guy who hasn’t cared about what he’s doing in years. Should’ve retired a decade or more ago. When you see that, can you help but love the hell Timmy drags him through?

I wonder to myself how far kids will go to believe Timmy. The book sets you up pretty early to understand how unreliable he is but there may be times when gullible readers believe what he says. They might actually think that Flo the librarian (a guy who looks like he’d be more comfortable pounding rocks on a chain gang than running a library) really does read books about crushing things with your fists. All the more reason Timmy is confused when he catches the man reading Emily Dickinson. “And if she can crush things with her fist, her photo is somewhat misleading.”

In the course of any of this have I actually mentioned that the book is guffaw-worthy? Laugh-out-loud funny? Look, any book where the main character reasons that since the name “Chang” is the most common in the world he should automatically fill it in on all his test papers because the odds would be with him has my interest. Add in the fact that you’ve titles of chapters with names like, “You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile” (well played, Pastis) and visual moments where Timmy is holding a box of rice krispie treats above his head ala Say Anything. Clearly this is adult humor, but when he hits it on the kid level (which is all the time) the readers will be rolling.

The art is, of course, sublime. Look at Timmy himself if you don’t believe me. On the cover of the book he looks pretty okay but turn the pages and there’s definitely something a little bit off about him. Did you figure out what it was? Look at his eyes. With the greatest of care Pastis has places one pupil dead in the center of Timmy’s eye and the in the other eye the pupil is juuuuuuuuust barely off-center. It’s not the kind of thing you’d necessarily notice consciously. You’d just be left with the clear sense that there’s something off about this kid. Then there’s the fact that all the characters are often staring right at you. Right in the eye. It reminded me of Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back. Same school play feel. Same wary characters.

It should be of little surprise that the guy behind the Pearls Before Swine comic strip should also produce some fan-tastic animals. My favorite is Senor Burrito, a cat who dunks her paw into Timmy’s tea whenever he turns his head. The image of her sitting there, one paw well past her elbow in a teacup, is so good I’d rip it out of the book and frame it if I could justify the act of defacement.

When Seinfeld first came out the unofficial slogan was “No hugging. No learning.” If there’s a motto to be ascribed to Timmy Failure I may have to be “No learning. No growing. Hugs allowed.” Basically this is Calvin and Hobbes if Calvin’s fantasies were based entirely on how great he is. A step above the usual notebook novel fare, it dares to have a little bit of heart embedded amidst the madcap craziness. Timmy won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but for a certain segment of the population his adventures will prove to be precisely the kind of balm they need. Top notch stuff. A cut above the cartoons.

On shelves February 26th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

First Line: “It’s harder to drive a polar bear into somebody’s living room than you’d think.”

Like This? Then Try:

• Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze by Alan Silberberg

• The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

• Griff Carver: Hallway Patrol by Jim Krieg

• I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to be Your Class President by Josh Lieb

Professional Reviews: Kirkus

Other Reviews: Shelf Awareness

Misc:

• There are games n’ such galore in connection with the book.

• I’ve been enjoying the blog for the book.  Particularly the posts by Flo the Librarian.  Such a sweet feller.  The next guybrarian who dresses up as Flo for Halloween has my undying love.

• Some info on the marketing behind the book.

• Read a sample chapter here.

Videos:

Here’s a sneaky peek.

Here’s the full-length trailer:

And here’s the author himself on the polar bear.  Actually, this clears quite a lot of stuff up.

Okay, I know technically this isn't a children's book but it is a comic...and hilarious.

(click to enlarge)