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Amusing. I wrote an article for SLJ about the Bologna Book Fair and why librarians should attend in droves.  I was unprepared for some of the formatting choices on the piece, though.  The title Betsy Goes to Bologna caught me off guard, though it’s certainly true.  But it was the art created for the piece showing a pregnant and hugely stylish librarian jet setting about the town that really caught my fancy.  First off, I’ll have to find out from artist Ali Douglass where I can go about getting some of the shoes my avatar is sporting in these pics.  Second, anyone who saw me in Bologna will be amused by the difference in relative ankle circumference.  Mine were, needless to say, more akin to sturdy oaks than the svelte saplings portrayed here.

• You have to wonder how bad a book can be when its celebrity author can’t make a sale.  In this case, Sarah Ferguson can’t sell a picture book about a little heroic pear tree on 9/11 to U.S. publishers.  To which we say, thanks guys.  I think I owe you one.  And if you’d like to abstain from printing any other celebrity picture books, please!  Don’t feel you have to ask permission.

• The other day I was kvetching my usual kvetch about how it is that anytime a children’s middle grade novel appears in the news, it’s instantly dubbed “YA”.  Seems that I’m not the first person to notice this oddity, though.  Monica Edinger pointed out to me that over at the fabulous Misrule blog, Judith Ridge wrote the piece Whither the Children’s Books?.  In it she discusses, amongst other things, the fact that she once saw a reviewer refer to a book as “young-young adult”.  It’s enough to make your teeth itch.

• I think it was Travis Jonker who pointed out the strange thing about this article.  Not that thousands of people were able to locate adequate Where’s Waldo outfits.  It’s the fact that there was already a world record for Most Waldos.  Of course, over in Britain he’s known as Wally (if anyone can give me an adequate reason for the American name change I’d love to hear it).  My favorite line from the piece?  “The Street Performance World Championships managed has organised similar events and last year broke the world record for the most people on space hoppers.”  Space hoppers?  Still, it looked mighty impressive:

Thanks to Travis Jonker for the link.

• ALA is over and done with once again.  So what did we learn?  New author Jonathan Auxier has some answers to that question in his Five Things I Learned at ALA.  My favorite without a doubt: 4) Don’t Tell Lauren Myracle Anything.

• All g
  10 Comments on Fusenews: Terms we can live without = Young-young Adult, last added: 7/8/2011
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  Zoe said, on 7/5/2011 11:14:00 PM
  

  Your round ups are always full of juicy loveliness! Had been looking for a pic of all the Wallys/Waldos, so thank you for that in particular

  Jonathan Auxier said, on 7/6/2011 6:01:00 AM
  

  “Mine were, needless to say, more akin to sturdy oaks than the svelte saplings portrayed here.” It’s lines like that that make me excited to read your upcoming books!

  It’s funny that you call out “young adult” as a term; I was just thinking the other day that when I was growing up, “young adult” meant people in their twenties, and the only time it was used on teenagers was when trying to flatter them by saying they seemed older … maybe wonder if sometimes the genre as a whole does the same?

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 7/6/2011 6:18:00 AM
  

  Maybe so. Certainly the term “Teen” (recognizable to patrons of all kinds) is more straightforward. Less ambiguous. Though I couldn’t blame the kid that rejects the term “Tween”. How great a term can it be if it has the word “Twee” right smack dab in the middle there?

  Brenda Ferber said, on 7/6/2011 8:30:00 AM
  

  Wow. The Hunger Games movie seems to be doing everything right so far. Impressive.

  James Kennedy said, on 7/6/2011 10:22:00 AM
  

  Re the term “tweens” — this apparently universally reviled, unattractive term seems to have been invented by none other than the magisterial J.R.R. Tolkien! I am re-reading “The Fellowship of the Ring” and I came upon this, smack on the first page of the first chapter:

  “At that time Frodo was still in his *tweens*, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.”

  No joke. Look it up yourself. Strange!

  And I want to live in the world of that picture of you in Bologna, Betsy!

  Eric Carpenter said, on 7/6/2011 4:13:00 PM
  

  Great news on the music side of hunger games. I was talking with a camera crew member this past weekend and he was kind enough to show me a couple videos of the filming he captured with his phone including a video of the filming of the initial cornucopia scene with all the tributes running to the big pile of supplies. He also told me they blew the cornucopia up last week. Very cool.

  marchek said, on 7/6/2011 6:53:00 PM
  

  Did I ever tell you about the time James and I were walking in fron the the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a Saturday when we saw a young man dressed as Waldo walking through the crowd, complete with red balloon? We joked about how that guy might just like to dress up like that and see how many tourist photos he can manage to slip into.

  rams said, on 7/7/2011 2:28:00 PM
  

  Aha. Asked our English friends, and a space hopper is ” one of those bouncy balls with handles that you bounce on. ”

  Don’t mention it.

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 7/7/2011 7:00:00 PM
  

  Thank you!! And . . . wha??

  Sondy said, on 7/8/2011 1:41:00 PM
  

  When I heard about the Baby Lit books, I started a thread on Twitter #babylit, because surely lines in a board book are less than 140 characters!

  I just HATE it when parents try to “introduce” kids to the classics before they are at an appropriate age to enjoy the classics — as if there’s something magic about the story that knowing it means a person is more educated. Classics for toddlers is taking it to the extreme utter edge of ridiculousness! (I don’t even like abridged classics, but this is crazy!)

  It’s fun to make up lines for it, though:

  Mr. Darcy was mean to Lizzie. But Mr. Darcy has a nice house.

  Tybalt and Mercutio fight on the playground. Romeo tries to stop the fight. Oops! Mercutio is dead. Now Romeo kills Tybalt. Romeo is in trouble.

  Romeo is sad. He thinks Juliet is dead, but she is only pretending. Uh-oh! Romeo, don’t drink that poison! Oops! Too late!

  Can you say “inappropriate,” boys and girls?

  And the WSJ thought YA was getting too dark!

  Add a Comment

Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes
By Jonathan Auxier
Amulet Books (an imprint of Abrams)
$16.95
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0025-5
Ages 9-12
On shelves August 1st.

What is the most telling difference between those works of children’s literature written long ago and those written today? Pose this question to a room full of children’s librarians and I suspect that the answers would be myriad. Books today are less racist. They’re willing to push more boundaries. They’re smarter, hipper, less didactic, and so on and such. Pose the question to a room full of kids now. What do they answer? Would they even know where to begin? I wonder since the memorable children’s books of the past, the ones that we hold in our hearts and pass along from generation to generation have a quality that most children’s books today don’t bother to cultivate: timelessness. Of course there are as many bad books for kids that try to reach that golden goal as there are good ones. It is incredibly difficult to write a book for the youth of today that is interesting to them and yet manages to feel “timeless” without covering itself in must and dust. That Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes succeeds in this endeavor is a testament not only to its author but to a publishing world that’s willing to put out something that doesn’t slot into the usual five categories of books for youth.

Babies found floating in baskets usually turn out quite well. They get adopted by pharaohs’ daughters and the like, right? Well, that may be the case for some babies, but Peter Nimble isn’t exactly the lucky sort. Found floating in the sea, his eyes pecked out (presumably by the raven perched there), Peter is abandoned to the wilds of the world. On his own he manages to use his talents to become the world’s greatest thief. This talent is swiftly exploited by the nasty Mr. Seamus who makes Peter steal for him. All seems bleak until the day Peter stops to listen to a crazy haberdasher who has come to town. Next thing he knows, Peter has pilfered a box containing three pairs of magical eyes and in accepting them he allows himself to take part in a marvelous, epic adventure.

A difficulty with writing a story from the perspective of a blind protagonist is that you’re limited to that person’s senses. Or rather, you would be if the book was first person. Auxier sets his tale in the third, leaving the reader to decide whether or not the book should be this deftly described. We’re still with Peter every step of the way, after all. So is it fair that the text should show such a visual world when that is not Peter’s experience? I don’t find it much of a problem myself, though I can see how some folks would deem it strange. Yet the third person narration is the key here. It’s not even particularly intrusive.

The book is also dotted with small pen-and-ink illustrations throughout the text (created by the author himself, no less) that serve to show a bit of what is described to Peter. It is interesting to see what Auxier chooses to show and not to show. For example, the kitten/horse/knight that is his companion Sir Tode is never fully seen in any of the pictures in this book except for the odd rear view. So it is that Auxier uses his art to give readers just a hint of the story. He leaves most of the characters and situations up to child imaginations, though.

He also has his influences. Jonathan Auxier doesn’t love 0 Comments on Review of the Day: Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier as of 1/1/1900