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By Cynthia Leitich Smith
for Cynsations

Louise Rennison (1951-2016), author - obituary: 'Queen of Teen’ whose comic novels captured the horrors and occasional triumphs of adolescence from The Telegraph. Peek: "Louise Rennison, the author, who has died aged 64, was the creator of Georgia Nicolson, the 14-year-old protagonist of such young adult novels as Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging and Startled by his Furry Shorts; the series achieved sales of 2.6 million in Britain alone."

Goodbye, Louise Rennison – you captured the hilarious horror of girlhood by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett from The Telegraph. Peek: "Rennison understood the unique, farcical horror of being a teenage girl."

Five Things All Louise Rennison Fans Know to Be True by Jillian Capewell from The Huffington Post. Peek: "Thanks to Rennison, I added snogging (kissing), nunga-nungas (breasts), lurrrrrve (self-explanatory) and away laughing on a fast camel (still working that one out) to my repertoire."

"My Hero: Louise Rennison" by Philip Ardagh from The Guardian. Peek: "...there is comfort in the fact that her laughter lives on through the pages of her books. She was a class act and one funny lady." See also Literary Agents Pay Tribute to Rennison from The Bookseller.

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With Comic Con NYC later this week, publisher previews on the rise, and various work-related meetings, talks, and speeches I’m just the teeniest tiniest bit busy this week.  But no matter!  It is you, dear readers, that give me what for and how to.  For you I would forgo all the sleep in the world.  And as luck would have it, my 5-month-old baby is currently taking me up on that offer.

Onward!

• Sometimes when I am feeling pensive I attempt to figure out which authors and illustrators currently alive today will, in the distant future, be so doggone famous for their works that people make pilgrimages to the homes they once lived in.  I suspect that the entire Amherst/Northampton area will become just one great big tour site with people snapping shots of the homes of Norton Juster, Mo Willems, Jane Yolen, and so on and such.  Thoughts of this sort come to mind when reading posts like Phil Nel’s recent piece A Very Special House in which he visits the former home of Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson.  It is entirely enjoyable, particularly the part where the current owners reenact a photo taken on the porch with Ruth and Crockett 65 years later.

• So they announced the Kirkus Prize Finalists last week.  Those would be the folks in the running for a whopping $50,000 in prize money.  The books in the young reader category are split between two picture books, two middle grade titles, and two YA.  You can see all the books that were up for contention here and the final books that made the cut here.  Heck, you can even vote on the book you’d like to see win and potentially win an iPad for yourself.  I don’t think they needed the iPad as a lure, though.  I suspect many folks will be voting left and right just the for the fun of it.  Thanks to Monica Edinger for the links.

• In other news, we have word of a blog made good.  Which is to say, a blog that figured out how to make a living off of its good name.  When people ask for YA blog recommendations I am not always the best person to ask.  I don’t monitor them the way I monitor children’s book blogs.  Pretty much, I just rely on folks like bookshelves of doom and The Book Smugglers to tell me what’s up.  Now The Book Smugglers are becoming publishers in their own right!  eBook publishers no less.  Nice work if you can get it.

• Louise Rennison wrote a rather amusing little piece about how her British slang doesn’t translate all that well across the pond, as it were.  Fair enough, but don’t go be telling me we Yanks don’t know humor.  That’s why I was pleased to see that at the end of the article it says, “Louise Rennison will be discussing humour on both sides of the pond, and other interesting things, with her fellow countryman Jim Smith (author of Barry Loser and winner of the Roald Dahl Funny prize 2013) and American author Jon Scieszka (author of many hilarious books including Stinky Cheeseman and most lately Frank Einstein) – in a panel event chaired by Guardian children’s books editor Emily Drabble, run with IBBY at Waterstones Piccadilly, London, on 7 October 2014.”  Why that’s today! Give ‘em hell, Jon!  Show ‘em we know our funny from our droll.  Then find out why their Roald Dahl Funny Prize is taking a hiatus.  It’s not like they lack for humor themselves, after all.

*sigh* That Jarrett Krosoczka. He gets to have all the fun. One minute he’s hosting the Symphony Space Roald Dahl celebration and the next he’s hosting the upcoming Celebration of E.B. White.  I mean, just look at that line-up.  Jane Curtin.  David Hyde Pierce.  Liev Schreiber (didn’t see that one coming).  Oh, I will be there, don’t you doubt it.  You should come as well.  We’ll have a good time, even if we’re not hosting it ourselves.

• This may be my favorite conspiracy piece of 2014 (which is actually saying something).  Travis Jonker lays out 6 Theories on the End of Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen.  Needless to say, I’m firmly in the “dog as Jesus” camp.

• And speaking of conspiracy theories, were you aware of the multiple theories that abound and consist of folks trying to locate the precise geographical coordinates of Sesame Street?  There’s a big Sesame Street exhibit at our Library of the Performing Arts right now (by hook or by crook I am visiting it this Sunday) and that proved the impetus for this piece.  Lots of fun.

• Hey, how neat is this?

On Saturday November 8, 2014, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art (NMAA) in Washington, DC will host the 22nd annual Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA).  CABA was created by Africa Access and the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association* to honor authors and illustrators who have produced exceptional books on Africa for young people.

And who’s that I see on the list of nominees?  None other than Monica Edinger for Africa Is My Home!  Two Candlewick books are listed, actually.  Well played there, oh ye my fellow publisher.

• Daily Image:

I admit it. I’ve a weakness for paper jewelry.  Today’s example is no exception:

Wood pulp. A marvelous invention. Thanks to Jessica Pigza for the image.

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There was one of those flurries in the Children’s Book world recently – this time, over the award of the Carnegie, the UK’s most prestigious children’s book award, to the hard-hitting The Bunker Diary by Kevin Brooks. I’m not planning to write much about the controversy (I’ve included some links below) which I’d sum up by saying that some people feel that the Carnegie is forgetting its roots as a children’s book prize by so frequently rewarding the bleaker, and older, end of Young Adult fiction. But the debates that followed did make me think about what exactly we mean when we talk about realism in children’s books.

Because the number one point made by Brooks’ supporters, as it usually is when people complain about bleak children’s books, was the “real life is tough” argument.

“[Children] want to be immersed in all aspects of life, not just the easy stuff. They’re not babies, they don’t need to be told not to worry, that everything will be all right in the end, because they’re perfectly aware that in real life things aren’t always all right in the end.” Kevin Brooks

“the real world is so complex that unambiguously happy endings hardly exist” – author Robert Muchamore

“Children and teenagers live in the real world; a world where militia can kidnap an entire school full of girls, and where bullying has reached endemic proportions on social media” Carnegie Chair of Judges, Helen Thompson

We certainly do live in a grim world. Reading the newspaper can be more heart-breaking than any children’s book. But I’d question whether this explains the preponderance of bleak fiction (and am I being cynical to feel, that if teenagers were truly deeply interested in the worlds’ troubles, there might be more translated foreign fiction available for UK children, instead of, as is actually the case, virtually none?)

For most British children, for all the challenges they face, being imprisoned by a psychopath probably isn’t one of them. (Amazingly the 2014 short list featured two books on the “imprisoned by psychopath” theme – the other by Anne Fine.) Terrorist attack, extreme violence, heroin addiction...these are also very small (though terrifying) risks to most under eighteens, living in a Western world where (though it’s sometimes hard to remember) violence is actually in long-term decline.

Or take childhood cancer. John Green’s The Fault In My Stars is just one the latest of many books where children or teenagers die of terminal cancer. By contrast, I CAN’T THINK OF A SINGLE BOOK WHERE THE CHILD HAS CANCER AND GETS BETTER. And yet, the reality is that about 75% of children do get better. Wouldn't it be great – not least for those children with the disease – if some of the award-winning fiction out there also reflected that reality?

In short, you don’t need to think that children’s books should be all fluffy bunny rabbits and happy ever after to wonder if some so-called “realistic” children’s fiction is...well, actually not that realistic.

Myself, I’ve always thought of “realism” not in association with YA grit but with certain twentieth century American authors: from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, through Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, to Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing or Katherine Patterson’s Gilly Hopkins the Great.



Perhaps the supreme example would be Beverley Cleary’s Ramona books. Following the adventures of Ramona Quimby and her family and friends over a number of years, and set in Portland Oregon, these books are breathtaking in their ability to distil the ordinary and humdrum into entertaining fiction.
Beverley Cleary never relies on dramatic events. (She even avoids dramatic titles, with such understated gems as “Ramona and her Mother” and “Ramona Quimby , age 8”.) There are problems for sure – Ramona’s dad loses his job, for example – but as we see things always through Ramona’s eyes, this is on a par with such problems as her class teacher not liking her very much. There is humour (the teacher told me to sit there “for the present” – but I didn’t get any present, Ramona complains). But it’s a gentle, observational humour. There is death (Picky Picky the cat) but no truck with sentimentality (Ramona and Beezus set to work to bury Picky Picky before their parents find out). There are fears to be overcome – confronting a mean dog – and temptations – how can Ramona resist pulling the blonde curls of Susan who sits in front of her in class, however many times she is told off by her teacher? But it is all grounded in a child’s everyday experience.

Beverley Cleary recalled in her memoir,“I longed for funny stories about the sort of children who lived in my neighbourhood.” And she could see that the children she met while working as a librarian felt the same.

Then, as now, this kind of “realism” was often ignored by critics and award-givers. Cleary has been showered with honours and prizes – but that was after her books had proved themselves enduringly popular with young readers. And they still are. I know British children today who ADORE them – because that small town, domestic American life, however distant it is in time and place, still feels absolutely real.

It’s easy to overlook the skill and imagination involved in creating something small scale. As the great mistress of domestic realism, Jane Austen, long ago said of her work, it is “ the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour". It look easy – but
it isn’t.

Take out the big emotional tear-jerking scenes, the drama of life and death, good vs evil, and what do you have left? The common-place. The everyday. The mundane. And creating something entertaining and captivating out of the mundane is challenging – maybe more challenging than “the big stuff”.

Yet it’s always been an important aim of fiction. Cleary said that she always remembered her college lecturer's advice that a novel should seek to explore universal themes through the minutiae of everyday life. I also like this quote from another writer, Susan Patron, about Cleary. “She showed me that the inner life of any child, the dynamics of family and pets, can be captured as rich, comic, fascinating, poignant, and meaningful."



I’m not sure this type of “realism” has ever been as celebrated in British children’s books, although it is an important part of the appeal of writers such as Jacqueline Wilson and Anne Fine (although their prize-winning books are more “issues” led) or Hilary McKay. With the humour ratcheted up, it’s also the bedrock of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole or Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson (I confess the near-death of Georgia’s cat Angus moved me more than any gritty YA novel) and much other comic fiction. It’s even been recognised by the Carnegie in the past, in such books as the groundbreaking The Family From One End Street (one of the first children’s books to feature the everyday life of a working-class family) and The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler.

There are lots of joys to be had from fiction, and realism is only one of them. I love fantasy and adventure as much as I love the fiction of the everyday.  But I’ve also found that it is often the  grounded, “real life” books that are the ones that, as child and adult, I have returned to again and again. There is a particular and lasting joy in reading something “real” and recognising the settings and characters.

Let's celebrate it!

CJ Busby's ABBA post on Carnegie criteria
Bunker Diaries storm in Guardian
Bunker Diaries storm in Telegraph
Bunker Diaries storm: Amanda Craig vs Robert Muchamore


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Emma's new series for 8+ Wild Thing about the naughtiest little sister ever (and her bottom-biting ways) is out now from Scholastic. 
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.   Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. 
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps


Emma's Website
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The Taming of the Tights Louise Rennison

Tallulah is back at school, ready to put Cain and the kissing behind her. Even if Charlie has a girlfriend. She also has bigger issues--Dother Hall is still very financially unstable and while it’s not in danger of closing, it is very much in danger of falling down. And while Sidonie recognizes Tallulah’s talent, not everyone else does and the more she tries to prove herself, the more hilariously she fails in the eyes of her teachers (but never to us, dear reader.) And there is still the Cain thing. Tallulah may be willing to ignore the kissing, but Cain has no problem telling others about it.

I love Tallulah and her craziness. I like that only some of her drama is self-invented. I love the insanity that is Dother Hall and the Dobbinses and the Tree Sisters and her fun size pal and the crazy dog Ruby. Overall, very hilariously funny. I don’t think it gets near as much love as Georgia, which is too bad.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

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A Midsummer Tights Dream Louise Rennison

After the summer holidays, Tallulah is back at Dother Hall in the Yorkshire Wilds, hoping to become good enough to earn the golden slippers of applause. Of course, Dr. Lightowler still hates her. And Charlie still has a girlfriend. And Alex is off at uni. And Cain licked a snowflake off her nose. But Ruby has the owlets and the mad twins are as mad as ever. Tallulah's friends continue to be a laugh riot, as do her teachers.

Big problems-- Dother Hall has a tax issue and might shut down (and, of course, continues to fall down around everyone's ears.) Also, the local girls are NOT HAPPY with the Dother Hall girls stealing their men.

I still cannot get over the fact that Rennison named her broody, dark Yorkshire men Cain, Ruben, and Seth. And then when Beverly's mum starts hunting Cain across the moors? DYING OF LAUGHTER.

I love Tallulah's outlook on life. I love down-to-earth Ruby and Mr. Barraclough's pie tribute band. I love all the broad Yorkshire dialect that's a bit more fun that what you read in The Secret Garden.

But seriously, I just live for the drama of the town, especially between the Eccles lasses and the Hinchcliff lads. Oh yes.

Book Provided by... my local library

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

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A regular on the top banned and challenged books list, ANGUS, THONGS, AND FULL-FRONTAL SNOGGING by the fabulous Louise Rennison has a cult following (um, include me in that cult!).  The book has been challenged for a multitude of reasons: age inappropriateness, profanity, and sexual content.  It has also made the Top 100 list, which we can’t help but consider a distinction!

Today’s booktalk is by the uber-fabbity-fab Sarah Bean Thompson, librarian and blogger (GreenBeanTeenQueen).  She’s also on the 2013 Printz committee!  She’s a fan of Louise Rennison’s Georgia Nicolson stories and contributed a booktalk that you can use all year long in your programming:

Join Georgia Nicolson and The Ace Gang for a fabbity fab adventure through the craziness of high school.  Georgia is madly in love with the sex god, Robbie.  Too bad Robbie has a girlfriend who happens to be the annoying wet Lindsey.  Georgia knows that she could get Robbie to fall in love with her if only she had the chance.  And if high school and love triangles weren’t bad enough, Georgia has to deal with her fat cat Angus who is always causing problems and her embarrassing three-year-old sister who is not as cute as everyone thinks.  Georgia’s adventures are always full of laughs as her entries into her diary recount her attempts to survive school, boys, and big noses.  Growing up is never easy, but at least Georgia Nicolson manages to make it fun.

Thanks, Sarah, for joining us!  For additional info to support your programming and curriculum, check out the Georgia Nicolson reading guide.  I’m also a bit of an evangelist for the Georgia Nicolson website so check that out for a glossary, the complete snogging scale, and quizzes.

Last but not least, I’ll leave you with the trailer for the the ANGUS, THONGS, AND FULL-FRONTAL SNOGGING trailer:

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Lest you think from our Back to School post that we’re completely over summer, we thought we’d highlight a few books that will get you through the rest of the dog days.  There are still several more weeks left until it cools down, and these great reads will help you hang on to the summer days:

I’M A SHARK by Bob Shea
Even sharks can be afraid… (watch the adorable video)

DUDE: FUN WITH DUDE AND BETTY by Lisa Pliscou, illustrated by Tom Dunne
Dick and Jane…surfer style!

JUNONIA by Kevin Henkes
10-year-old Alice Rice grows up during her family’s annual summer vacation in Florida.

JEREMY BENDER VS. THE CUPCAKE CADETS by Eric Luper
Check out this hilarious video of Eric Luper interviewing Eric Luper.

WITHERING TIGHTS by Louise Rennison
A summer performing arts camp?  Boys, snogging, and bad acting guaranteed!  Recommend to your fans of “Glee” or Georgia Nicholson.

FINS ARE FOREVER by Tera Lynn Childs
Mermaids are the next vampires…or werewolves…or angels…!  This sequel to

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