It is WAY too late in the day for me to be only starting a Fusenews post now. All right, guys. Looks like we’re gonna have to do today double quick time. Sorry, but I’ve a ticking time bomb in the other room (sometimes also known as “my daughter”) and I gotsta gets to bed before midnight. Here we go!
- February means only one thing. The Brown Bookshelf has resumed their 28 Days Later campaign. So stop complaining about the fact that black writers and illustrators aren’t better acknowledged and actually read all about them! This is your required reading of the month. And no, I’m not joking.
- Some sad Obit news. Diane Wolkstein, storyteller and picture book/folktale author passed away after heart surgery in Taiwan.
- Happier news. My mom, the published poet, gets interviewed by Foreword Magazine. Note the copious Little Women references.
- The happiest news of all. This will, if you are anything like me, make your day. Delightful doesn’t even begin to describe it. Thanks to Robin Springberg Parry for the link.
- Were you aware that there was an offensive Flat Stanley book out there? Nor I. And yet . . .
- Hat tip to the ShelfTalker folks for actually putting together the top starred books of 2012. Mind you, only YA titles can get seven stars because (I think) they include VOYA. Ah well.
- My new favorite thing? Jon Klassen fan art. Like this one from Nancy Vo. Cute.
- Meet Eerdmans, my new best friend. Look what they put on their books for the last ALA Midwinter.
Thanks to Travis Jonker for the heads up!
- Hey! Public school librarians and public library librarians! Want money? The Ezra Jack Keats Foundation is giving away grants. Free money! Take it, people, take it!
- The Battle of the (Kids’) Book Contenders are announced and nigh. I’m a little bit late with that info. Ah well.
- One of my children’s librarians has been getting twenty different kinds of attention because she circulated an American Girl doll. Now try and picture how many donations she now has to deal with. Yup.
- An interesting use of the term “whittle”. As in, “I think I’m going to whittle off all the toes on my feet”. Except more drastic, less cosmetic.
- Travis Jonker and the very fun idea to create a Children’s Literature casting call. I’d counter that Josh Radnor is more Jarrett Krosoczka (though I may be just a bit confused since Jarrett was actually in the background of an episode of How I Met Your Mother in the past), Lisa Loeb is more Erin E. Stead, Neal Patrick Harris as either Mac Barnett or Adam Gidwitz, Stanley Tucci as Arthur A. Levine, and maybe Jeffrey Wright as Kadir Nelson, except that Kadir is better looking. Hm. This will bear additional thought.
Fair play to The College of Creative Design. I do like this new ad campaign of theirs.
Thanks to The Infomancer for the link.
#10 The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone, illustrated by Mike Smollin (1971)
For the pure joy of watching your audience’s faces as you read this aloud. – DaNae Leu
I had to look up the author – don’t think I ever read his name! I just thought of it as by Sesame Workshop. – Robin Parry
“Don’t turn the page”. I’ll never forget the first time I read this to my daughter. She really didn’t want me to turn the page. And then she laughed at the end. – Joanne Rousseau
I remember this book from my childhood more than any other. - Pam Coughlan
In this poll we’ve seen a lot of votes sink sink sink from their previous places. Now, at last, here’s a book that’s gone up up up in the world. Previously holding down a spot at #22, Stone’s title is remarkable partly because it not only introduced so many of us to the
You will not find The Monster at the End of This Book in The Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature. It does not appear in 100 Best Books for Children, or within the pages of Nancy Pearl’s Book Crush. It has never won a Caldecott. You cannot find it on most Top 100 Picture Book lists, nor in New York Public Library’s collection.
And yet . . . .
And yet here we find at #22, almost making it into the Top 20, the one and only truly successful Sesame Street book ever to touch the hearts and minds of readers everywhere. Sesame Street has a history of frustrating libraries and educators with its sometimes tepid literary production, but there was at least one notable exception to this. And it involved a furry blue monster.
The description of the plot from the publisher reads, “Generations of kids have interacted with lovable, furry old Grover as he begs the reader not to turn the page . . . for a monster is at the end of the book! ‘Oh, I am so embarrassed,’ he says on the last page, for of course the monster is Grover himself!”
Robin mentioned not knowing who the author of this book was, and I’m sure she’s not alone. For those of us who count ourselves as Sesame Street groupies, though, Mr. Stone was one of the big time heavyweights behind the show itself. He wrote and produced the television program after doing some work on Captain Kangaroo. Joan Ganz Cooney called him “probably the most brilliant writer of children’s television material in America.” For a lot more information on Stone you can refer to Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis which covers a lot of this ground.
Really, it’s illustrator Mike Smollin who piques my interest. I mean, talk about a forgotten fellow. Looking at his roster on Amazon you can see that he did a fair number of Sesame Street titles (The Great Cookie Thief, anyone?) as well as other series like Strawberry Shortcake, LEGO, books by Seaworld about Shamu, etc. Fortunately the man has a website and there we learn that he was an advertiser turned illustrator. “Over the years, Michael’s imaginative endeavors have been recognized with awards from the Emmys, The Society of Illustrators, The Detroit Bravo Awards and The Hollywood Reporter.” He passed away in 2010 and looking at his career there is little doubt that this book remains
Keep reading if you’re looking for a real nail-biting kind of page-turner… Read more after the jump.
Based on the television series Sesame Street, The Monster at the End of This Book: Starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover is written by Jon Stone and illustrated by Michael Smollin. Grover is horrified to learn that there is a [...]
Unbelievably, it took a trip (of ill-advised and predictably expensive variety...) to the bookstore and scoping out their (surprisingly awesome) Hallowe'en display to jog my memory about this true classic for monster-loving kids.
The Monster at the End of This Book
Written by John Stone
Illustrated by Michael Smollin
Golden Books, 1971
ISBN: 978-0-307-01085-8
I can't possibly be the only person of my generation to grow up with this book (although Colum, shockingly, doesn't remember it from his childhood...weirdo!). Think back...you remember it, don't you? Turning page after page as your furry pal Grover begs you not to because he's scared to see the monster at the end of the book?
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Taye Diggs isn’t quite good looking enough, either, but he’s another possibliity.
Betsy,
I am very sad that Dr. Zetta Elliott feels the need to move away from the world of children’s literature but understand her reasons all too well. Perhaps what we need more than a “read these books” campaign is a “buy these books” push. I want to adapt the Room of One’s Own bookstore (Madison, WI) campaign to challenge readers of your blog and elsewhere to pledge to buy two more books this year that are written by people of color than were purchased last year.
On a completely different note, I hear that there may be a mother daughter signing in Kalamazoo in April! Don’t completely fill up your schedule until we have a chance to chat! Cheers!
You should do more posts late in the day and in a hurry as this one is pretty darned good. Lots of good links and the “If someone offers you art school, just say ‘No’ ” ads are hillarious.
Me, too, Ed. Maybe we can add a twist to the challenge of buying two more books by people of color… what if we also asked for our money back on one with racist images?
Flat Stanley at Mount Rushmore (Betsy linked to my critique) is one option. So are the LITTLE HOUSE books. Yesterday, Ebony Thomas pointing me to an illustration of Pa in blackface in LITTLE TOWN ON THE PRAIRIE. I added that illustration to my post about Pa remembering how, as a kid, he’d imagine himself hunting Indians (http://goo.gl/oXb3f). Every time I think about that idea being in a children’s book, I’m blown away.
Some years ago, I asked people on child_lit and elsewhere to tell me of another children’s book in which a character expressed that idea (hunting Indians or any people) and the only title anyone could remember was a short story sometimes read in high school English classes.
So—what if we bought two books and returned two others at the same time? Or bought two books and deselected two and wrote to the publisher letting them know we were deselecting the two books and why… Or bought two books and blogged about two we were pledging not to use anymore with children (saving them, perhaps, for use in a high school Social Justice class or the like)…
One thing I learned in my Collection Development class is that by deselecting (weeding) books from a library shelf, there is room for new books. We need room for new books—not just on the shelf—but in our hearts and minds, too. We’ll need to be willing to admit that some books gotta go!
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