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So I’m reading through my weekly edition of AL Direct and I notice that no matter what worldwide occurrence takes place, librarians are always there. Whether it’s damage to two libraries in Egypt, stories from the librarians in Christchurch, New Zealand, or how the Wisconsin Library Association delayed Library Legislative Day due to the protests, the profession is there.  That last story was of particular interest to me, since I had wondered whether any school librarians were amongst the protesters in Wisconsin lately.  According to the article, they most certainly are.  You go, guys!!  Seriously, I want to hear more about it.  If any of you know any school librarians marching in WI, send them my way.  I’d love to do a full post on them.

• Speaking of folks in the news, I have to give full credit to author/illustrator Katie Davis for consistently locating the hotspots in children’s literature and convincing folks to talk to her about them on her fabulous podcast.  In the past she’s managed to finagle everyone from the editor who wanted to replace the n-word in Huckleberry Finn to James Kennedy on the 90-Second Newbery.  Now she’s managed to get Bruce Coville to talk about what went down when he and fellow children’s author Liz Levy got stuck in Egypt during the protest period.  That Katie.  She’s got a nose for news.

• I’m having a lot of fun reading How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely these days, and I can’t help but see echoes of the plot in this story about the man behind the Hardy Boys novels.  We hear about the various Carolyn Keenes all the time, but why not the Dixons?  After reading this old piece in the Washington Post from 1998 (The Hardy Boys The Final Chapter) I feel vindicated.  I reread some of my old Three Investigators novels not too long ago and they STILL held up!  I always knew they were better than The Hardy Boys.  Now I have proof.  I was going to save the link to this essay until the end of the Fusenews today, but it’s so amusing and so delightfully written that I just have to encourage you, first thing, to give it a look.  Thanks to The Infomancer for the link.

• Fun Fact About Newbery Winning Author Robin McKinley: She’s learning to knit.  Related Sidenote: She also has a blog.  Did you know this?  I did not know this.  And look at the meticulous use of footnotes.  McKinley should write the next Pale Fire.  I would
  10 Comments on Fusenews: “The Hardy boys were tense with a realization of their peril.”, last added: 2/25/2011
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  Jonathan Auxier said, on 2/23/2011 11:21:00 PM
  

  I’ve been meaning to pick up HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST ever since John August mentioned it on his blog. He tells the story of optioning the book in his usual charming fashion here: http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/how-i-became-a-famous-novelist. I’m gratified to hear someone dumping on the Hardy Boys. I hated those books as a kid … along with all the other series in which nothing actually happened to the characters. Why read a book that ends where it starts? (I will make an exception for Beckett.) That bias is probably the same reason I don’t watch procedural dramas today.

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 2/24/2011 6:04:00 AM
  

  I’m probably reading the book for the same reason you’ve been meaning to pick it up. Which is to say, I think Matt read the John August piece, got intrigued, read it, and passed it on to me. It feels so up-to-date and contemporary too. I have to wonder how well it will age, or if the books that are blockbusters now will continue to remain the same kind of blockbusters ten or twenty years down the road.

  Three Investigators 4-Evah.

  Julia Karr said, on 2/24/2011 10:58:00 AM
  

  Ah, I was always a Nancy Drew fan and only read Hardy Boys comics (put out by Walt Disney when they were airing The Hardy Boys on The Mickey Mouse Club.) However, my tender young writer’s heart was crushed when I found out that Carolyn Keene was a psuedonym for a stable of writers. *sigh*

  Jean said, on 2/24/2011 11:48:00 AM
  

  “You go, guys!!!” How about a little objectivity? How about a Wisconsin public school where the librarian’s job description, according to the principal, was “to provide release time for the teachers”, which they were entitled to in their union negotiated contract? Yes, I went – to a non-union charter school (at half the pay), not to protest in Madison.

  Dan McCoy said, on 2/24/2011 1:41:00 PM
  

  >bites his lip, Jupiter Jones-style and nods approvingly<

  Sondy said, on 2/24/2011 1:57:00 PM
  

  I am SO with you on the 3 Investigators! Jupiter Jones rocks!

  Hey, I’m planning to do a little piece of Library Advocacy this weekend with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. I’ll post about it on my blog, and then will try to get a little attention… We’re supposed to be happy that they aren’t planning any further cuts this year, after they cut 30% the last two years. I am glad to have a job back, but it’s still rotten for the people of the county….

  Tracey said, on 2/24/2011 4:18:00 PM
  

  I LOVED the 3 Investigators!

  I was in first grade when the childrens librarian introduced me to the Hardy Boys. I didn’t like them that much, but I could read them very quickly, which mattered to me for some reason. And then, I found Nancy Drew and I never picked up another Hardy Boys again. To this day, I wonder why the librarian showed me the Hardy Boys but not Nancy Drew.

  Lisa Yee said, on 2/25/2011 8:30:00 AM
  

  L is for Lisa who loves your blog.

  I’m in Boston this weekend, signing at Peter Reynold’s Blue Bunny bookstore on Saturday. When I saw on your blog that there’s a Gorey exhibit in town I was soooooo excited. Can’t wait to see it!

  Sergio Ruzzier said, on 2/25/2011 8:36:00 AM
  

  Thank you Betsy! I should get images from the show in a week or so.

  Joanne Fritz said, on 2/25/2011 7:12:00 PM
  

  The entire first chapter of HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE on a bathroom wall? Some people have waaaaay too much time on their hands.

  Great post, Betsy!

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If you love Tove Jansson’s Moomins then there are some wonderful gifts out there for you…

Photo: Cooksparaphernalia

A Moomin Love bowl, plate and mug set from the UK store Cooks Paraphernalia, who stock a wide range of Moomin crockery.

Photo: Cloudberry Living

Moomin 4-Piece Cutlery Set available at a UK store which specialises in Scandinavian goods, Cloudberry Living.

Photo: Pussy Home Boutique

Moomin overnight bags from Pussy Home Boutique – they also have Moonin keyrings, jars, pencils and other goodies!

Photo: Artbox

Moomin duvet cover and pillow set from Artbox, who also sell many other Moomin gifts

Are you a Moomin fan?

On Saturday, August 7th at 2:00 p.m. I will be moderating a talk with Stephen Roxburgh of namelos and Jennifer Perry, the Assistant Vice President & Editorial Director of the Book Publishing Group at Sesame Workshop, about ebooks, digital literature, and the current children’s literary industry.  As preparation, this article from Publishers Weekly called The Digital Revolution in Children’s Publishing could not be better timed.  I was particularly taken with this quote from Kristen McLean (executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children) regarding interactive content: “Early reports indicate that this content is not replacing traditional books. It’s replacing games . . . Parents would rather see their kids engaged in book content than in game content.”  For my part, I hope that in the future more authors will be directly involved in the interactive aspects of some of these books.  Or that we get more designers that study exactly what works and doesn’t work with our kids from a storytelling standpoint.  Whatever the case, I’m inclined to suggest to attendees of my panel discussion that they read this article before attending.  It’s sure to answer a lot of questions, and raise even more.

• Whoopsiedoodle (yes, I just wrote that word and yes, I regret nothing).  Looks like I missed talking about ShelfTalker’s latest Stars Thus Far posting.  You’ll remember that Elizabeth Bluemle takes it upon herself to accomplish the Herculean task of collecting all the starred children’s book reviews for a given year on a regular basis.  In this latest one I see that I missed that Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce achieved the very rare SIX STAR level!  Even When You Reach Me never accomplished that.  Well done, Mr. Boyce!  Pity you’re ineligible for a Newbery, eh?  Now if I can only convince Harcourt to send me a copy of Ubiquitous . . .

• I was enjoying the Jacket Knack post The Unexpected Ordinary anyway.  Then I saw the picture of the new paperback jacket for How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier.  Oh man.  I am suddenly in love with some unknown Art Director. Of course, it immediately brings to mind Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairies, but that is not a bad thing.  That book particular book is due for a YA revival anyway.  Or maybe we’ll just wait for the current crop of Rainbow Fairy enthusiasts to hit their teen years.  Give it 5 years or so.

• Oo!  Speaking of both ShelfTalker AND book jackets, check out this post they made of The Season of Windblown Hair – Or, the Zeitgeist of Book Covers.  Personally, I prefer really weird cover trends.  This one’s my favorite
  8 Comments on Fusenews: Chubby little cubby all stuffed with RAGE!!!!, last added: 7/27/2010
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  Arthur Levine said, on 7/26/2010 5:34:00 AM
  

  Ok, Betsy you’ve stumped me! What DO the jackets for BOBBY THE BRAVE and THE KNEEBONE BOY have in common? A boy and a girl on the cover? The presence of a cat? Trees in the background?

  The palette, the overall feeling, the expressions, the typography are all quite different. And the things I mentioned as being in common are all…well, common place.

  What am I missing??? (Maybe it’s caffeine…it’s not even 9:00 am yet…)

  Kelly Fineman said, on 7/26/2010 6:35:00 AM
  

  Love the comic (and post title). And the casting for the HUGO CABRET movie sounds phenomenal! Christopher Lee? Ben Kingsley? Jude Law? I am so there. (Gosh, I hope the movie doesn’t turn out to suck!)

  Dan Santat said, on 7/26/2010 7:08:00 AM
  

  The cats in both books (Bobby and Kneebone) both have extra toes on their paws. Now, about my 20 points… Could I get them as two fives and the rest as singles?

  Christine Bird said, on 7/26/2010 8:04:00 AM
  

  A brother, a sister, and a possibly dangerous cat.

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 7/26/2010 8:47:00 AM
  

  And the winner is DAN! Which is not entirely fair since he drew cover #2, but we’ll give it to him anyway. Your points are in the mail, Mr. Santat.

  Lisa Yee said, on 7/26/2010 11:24:00 AM
  

  Hey . . . I was gonna say, “the cat.”

  I will say that the Pooh/Hulk was, er, um, interesting?

  dotdotdot said, on 7/26/2010 1:56:00 PM
  

  If you win the lottery, you too could be a Moominaire!

  Marianne Follis said, on 7/27/2010 1:35:00 PM
  

  Can you even see the toes on the cat in Dan’s book? Can I mention how disturbed I am by all the garden gnomes lately? (Ok…maybe there are just 3 covers I can think of, but that is still 3 too many!)

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Being a big fan of Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, I had no idea she had illustrated a version of The Hobbit as well as two books by Lewis Carroll, until I recently discovered this site. There isn’t much information and the scans are a bit small, still it’s amazing to see such rarely seen work (at least to me) by one of the world’s greatest children’s book illustrators.

Posted by Stephan Britt on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | No comments
Tags: Alice in Wonderland, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, Moomins, The Hobbit, Tove Jansson

Take a look at this evocative article written by Sally for Canada’s The Globe and Mail.

She brings alive the joy of summer-reading and discusses Moomin-creator Tove Jansson’s modern classic, The Summer Book.

Sally also poses the question, “What are you reading this summer?” - has this been a time for reducing those piles of must-read books in your household? And if, instead, you are emerging from winter-time, has there been some opportunity to escape into a good book?

In our family, Little Brother has been as voracious a reader as ever; and it has been a relief to find Older Brother with his nose in a book at every opportunity too. Discovering Anthony Horowitz’ Alex Rider series, as well as various graphic/cartoon books has definitely helped here…

Part II: Engage!

I didn't necessarily read all the escapist books first and all the inspiring/engaging books after that (and certainly most of the books I read over the 12 Days of Christmas had elements of both). But as I enjoyed the comforts of fantasy and adventure, I also found myself getting a bit fired up about interesting ideas. Since I had been a little worried that end-of-the-year letdown and disappointments would leave me lethargic and apathetic, I was willing enough to let these next books work their magic.


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Berlin, City of Stones
and


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Berlin: City of Smoke
by Jason Lutes

Jason Lutes' Berlin series is one of those graphic novels that the ALP has been telling me I should read for ages, while I was more interested in the flashy superhero stuff (Green Arrow, for example). During the cold, quiet days of the year's end, I finally felt inclined to pick up the first volume, and within pages was immersed in a vision of 1929 Berlin, rich with early 20th century details but eerily recognizable: the economy is very bad, violent political factions each proclaim themselves the true voice of the people, the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is impossibly wide, and nightlife, the arts, journalism, and relationships can seem to offer either perspective or an escape. Lutes' story is complexly structured and peopled with dozens of well-drawn (literally and metaphorically) characters; I felt I wanted to read everything slowly and repeatedly to grasp the shape and the details of the world he created, but at the same time I had to read quickly to know what happened next -- the pleasant agony of the best books.

But perhaps the most lasting effect the books have had is an ongoing conversation, first with the ALP and spreading to others, about the responsibilities of artists to engage with politics. One of the main characters is an artist, concerned mainly with art for art's sake and drawn into the decadent nightlife of Weimer urbanity; another, a journalist, is frustrated by the artist's naivete as he struggles to articulate what is happening in his country, yet his rejection of jazz seems of a piece with his detached observer's stance. Is an intense engagement with culture a sufficient stance in itself? Is a refusal to take sides an act of cowardice, or the only honest reaction to a situation of great complexity? The issues are starker because we know that these characters are on the precipice of the Third Reich, but they illuminate (or complicate) contemporary issues as well. Lutes itself, it seems, has found a way to engage deeply while remaining true to his art; his work elevates the comics form to the most cogent cultural history, and the best fiction, which makes demands on the real world.



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Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
by Rebecca Solnit

This essay collection is yet another work I'd been meaning to read, but picked up with a bit of reluctant crankiness: am I really in the mood to read something this serious? But Solnit, whose writing I loved in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, is on fire here, and set me burning as well, with the gorgeous and horrifying intersections of place and politics that she illuminates. Partly it was because this is the kind of writing I have done and want to do: narrative nonfiction that makes little distinction between the familiar and the formal, that incorporates place and memory and philosophy and ethics and other parts of the human experience into pieces as structured and artful as poetry and as stirring as a great speech. Partly it because she is talking about hugely important issues that I suspect but don't know much about: the poisonous fallout of large-scale corporate mining, especially for gold; the need for (and difficulty of) architecture and urban design that creates human-scale communities; the out-of-fashion but still present problems of land grabs from Native Americans and nuclear testing and waste disposal in the Nevada desert. Here is an artist engaged.

I don't always agree with her assertions -- sometimes I'm arguing with her throughout an essay, sometimes I swallow it whole and only in talking about it afterward discover that I question some of her conclusions or assumptions. (One essay about Silicon Valley, for example, written in the early '90s, is full of interesting metaphorical connections but a little embarrassing in its judgements on the internet.) Most left me with more questions than answers. Why haven't I heard about this before? Who is responsible for this? If this isn't the right way to do things, then how? But each also left me with the satisfaction of a complete work of art: the kind I'd like to make. I'm still reading this one, still wrestling with Solnit as an activist and admiring her as a writer. It's good to get set on fire again.



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Moomin, Book 3
by Tove Jansson

Moomin is a comic strip with talking animals (or creatures of some kind -- the Moomins are more like Jeff Smith's Bone creatures than like the hippos they are occasionally, scandalously mistaken for). It is also not exactly for kids. Jansson's humor is sometimes wicked, her scenes often melancholy, and her worldview rather subversively anarchic. I've been reading this series as its been re-released by Drawn & Quarterly, and feel rather proprietarily fond of the fussy Mrs. Fillyjonk, the always lovesick Mymble, the practical but mean Little My, the outlaw Stinky, and of course Moominpappa (top-hat wearing, high-mindedly silly), Moominmamma (supremely competent but not at all fussy), Moomin himself (a wistful everyman) and Snorkmaiden (his on-and-off girlfriend, moody but loveable). In this volume they encounter an encroaching jungle (the animals are quite nice given a chance), move to a lighthouse (and back) for the sake of Pappa's great novel of the sea (which becomes a great novel of the veranda), deal with the vagaries of love (a leading lady seduces Moomin) and loyalty (Moominmamma finds herself a member of both a law-upholding and a law-breaking club). It seems silly, but this book was the one that made me happy to relax and engage in the comfort and chaos of family life. The ALP and me are a bit like the Moomins, I like to think: a little silly, a little chaotic, prone to wacky ideas that don't always pan out, not quite respectable, but awfully loving, and awfully happy. As a character says in the last panel of the book:

"Indeed you are the most idiotic family I ever saw -- but you are at least living every minute of the day!!"

AT THE NEW VICTORY THEATER

(Quick Time Video)

Tove's Jansson's A Winter Book is the perfect accompaniment to the earlier The Summer Book (Review). There are 20 stories in this collection, which is aimed squarely at adults, but would probably be enjoyed by older children. The book also comes with an introduction by Ali Smith, and Afterwords by Philip Pullman, Esther Freud and Frank Cottrell Boyce. The collection is divided into three parts: Snow; Flotsam and Jetsam; and Travelling Light - throughout each section Tove ages, so that the first story, "The Stone", features a young Tove, and in the last story, "Taking Leave", the by now elderly Tove is having to move to live on the mainland now she can no longer manage life on the bleak Finnish island she purchased after her Moominvalley books because a big success. Jansson trained as an artist and worked as a cartoonist, before writing the Moomin books in her 30s and 40s. She started writing for adults when she was in her 50s. In one of these stories, "Messages", she simply transcribes some of the bewildering messages that she receives from greedy companies and crazy, each one of whom wants to grab some part of her creation for themselves; one fan writes "Can't you draw me a Snufkin that I can have tattooed on my arm as a symbol of freedom?" whilst a company requests: "We look forward to your valued reply soonest concerning Moomin motifs on toilet paper in pastel shades" (Toilet paper?!)

"Taking Leave", is a short, melancholy, yet beautiful picture of old age. Jansson was 86 when she died in 2001, and I found it easy to imagine her striding energetically across her island until her old bones refused to take another step. In the story, two old women reach the irritating realisation that they have grown too infirm to continue spending their summers on their isolated island. Even worse, though, is the knowledge that "something unforgivable happened: I became afraid of the sea". The initial fury is followed by a calm acceptance and they decide to give away the house, packing up, leaving notes for the next occupant(s) which explain where to find things and how things work, whilst making sure not to explain everything too clearly: "one should not underestimate their natural curiosity." Another writer might have finished the story with a description of leaving the island, or of looking back from the boat for the last time as it heads to the mainland, but Jansson doesn't bother. Instead, she describes an old kite that they find on their last day whilst clearing out the cellar and which carry out into the open air. The wind snatches the kite and takes it away, up into the sky, across the sea, and out of sight, and they're gone.

This is a gorgeous book - the cover is very eye-catching and this is from someone who doesn't tend to take a huge amount of notice of bookcovers ! - and the whole book is packaged beautifully with a number of black and white photos inside.

Tove Jansson's The Summer Book is not really a children's book, nor really a novel, it is a biographical novelisation of the summer months that Tove Jansson's mother spent on an island in the Gulf of Finland with Tove's niece Sophia. This is a story about a young girl and an old woman and how they learn to live with each other, and the isolation of a tiny island home. It's also a moving exploration of how to deal with the approach of death. Grandmother and granddaughter discuss whether there are ants in Heaven, bravery and the joys of sleeping out in a tent; they draw awful pictures, build a miniature Venice in the marsh, creature animal sculptures, deal with a tremendous storm (which Sophia believes she caused by praying for something exciting to happen), and explore a newly built house that blocks their horizon. This is a gentle, charming and beguiling book that is beautifully written and translated.