By Lauren Appelwick & Michelle Rafferty
Hey everyone! We’re excited to announce that it has finally launched – we now have a podcast! It’s called The Oxford Comment (get it?) and each episode we’ll talk to people smarter than us in hopes that it rubs off.
Our loyal subscribers got a sneak peek a few days ago, but now The Oxford Comment is available to all. (Although, if you’re not using our RSS feeds…what’s wrong with you?) There are several ways to get this podcast. You can:
- listen here on the blog
- sign up for the RSS feed
- subscribe on iTunes
In this first episode, we talk to Benjamin Carp about the drinking habits of the Founding Fathers and visit brewmaster Garrett Oliver at the Brooklyn Brewery. Let us know what you think! This has been a collaborative effort with many, many people, and we welcome your feedback with the most open of arms. Write to us in the comments section below or at [email protected], give us a shout on Twitter, or review us on iTunes.
Special thanks to Paul Harrington, Max Sinsheimer, Grace Labatt, Pat Mack, Bill Murphy, Charles Hodgson, “Jon,” and the Super-Secret-Listening-Focus-Group-Club.
And an extra-special thanks to the Ben Daniels Band for making great music…and letting us use it. We encourage you all to check them out on Facebook. Here’s one of our favorite BDB songs, “Drippin’ Indigo” from their album Can’t You See –>
For those of you who are friends and/or fans of Wendy Old & Mary Bowman-Kruhm, they both have blogs (and have for some time) over on Blogger.
I set up a feed for each of their blogs so we can read them over here on LJ.
Mary Bowman-Kruhm is ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif)
marybk_feed and Wendy Old is wendieold_feed
Mary's blog, of late, is all about following the process researching and writing the story of Jackson Minteeng Liaram -- A Maasai Warrior: Living his Dream, Protecting the Land.
Wendy wears many hats - mom, children's librarian AND author, and you will always find something interesting about children's literature in her blog.
Evil Genius
by Catherine Jinks
Harcourt Children's Books
Reviewed by Brett Levy
Evil Genius is a better-than-usual attempt at capitalizing on the Harry Potter phenomenon. In this version, Cadel Piggott, who is being raised by nasty, uncaring parents, is directed toward the Axis Institute, a school for criminals seeking world domination.
Cadel hopes to find acceptance at his new school, but intrigues – such as the rapidly declining student body – test the boy’s super talents. Along the way, Cadel learns about his father’s evil plans, a little humility and more importantly, about his true nature.
While the discovery process is fun, creative characters and complex subplots blow by without much clarity; it’s a wonder an adult, much less young adult, can follow without a scorecard. Worse, it’s hard to really like and identify with any characters in this 496-page book. Still, I can’t help suspect that Evil Genius will be enjoyed by bored, smart teenagers who dream of running the world.
Rating: *\*\
Evil Genius
by Catherine Jinks
Harcourt Children's Books
Reviewed by Brett Levy
Evil Genius is a better-than-usual attempt at capitalizing on the Harry Potter phenomenon. In this version, Cadel Piggott, who is being raised by nasty, uncaring parents, is directed toward the Axis Institute, a school for criminals seeking world domination.
Cadel hopes to find acceptance at his new school, but intrigues ??? such as the rapidly declining student body ??? test the boy???s super talents. Along the way, Cadel learns about his father???s evil plans, a little humility and more importantly, about his true nature.
While the discovery process is fun, creative characters and complex subplots blow by without much clarity; it???s a wonder an adult, much less young adult, can follow without a scorecard. Worse, it???s hard to really like and identify with any characters in this 496-page book. Still, I can???t help suspect that Evil Genius will be enjoyed by bored, smart teenagers who dream of running the world.
Rating: *\*\
Chess Rumble
by G. Neri; illustrated by Jesse Joshua Watson
Lee & Low Books
Is this a poem or a story or a dramatic monologue? I love genre benders, and this gripping, dark look at an urban African-American kid's anger and confusion defies pigeonholing. It's nominated under Middle Grade novels for a Cybils award, where I'm hoping it doesn't get buried by more traditional fare.
The 11-year-old narrator, who goes by Hulk or Fattie, depending on whether you're friend or foe, wields free verse like a blunt stick, now tapping out a rhythm, now beating us freely with rapid images, impressions and raw action from his damaged life. This is one kid on the edge, and the abyss is a single misstep away.
I wanna say
I'm not a angry guy,
that I'm not the one
she gotta worry 'bout.
But I can see
in the way she look at me
that she don't believe
I will turn it around.
When an exasperated teacher sends him to the library, he encounters the mysterious CM, a tattooed warrior who wields a mean chess board. Average game: three moves. When he challenges Hulk to beat him, we sense a temblor building beneath the boy's fragile fault lines.
Where it leads and how we get there is for you to discover. It reads quickly, but this is one story that lingers long after the covers are closed.
Rating: *\*\*\*\
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!
Voices from a Medieval Village
by Laura Amy Schlitz; illustrated by Robert Byrd
Candlewick Press
Why I didn't order this at first: wrong age group. Too mature for my wee 'uns. Then came a flurry of emails from my colleagues at the Cybils contest: was this non-fiction or fiction? Was it poetry? Middle-grade or young adult?
Nobody knew quite where to put these 19 lyrical monologues of children's voices from the thirteenth century. Schlitz -- last year's Cybils winner in the Middle-Grade fiction genre -- had stumped some of the smartest bloggers in kidlit land.
I developed a serious jones for this genre bender and Candlewick obliged. From the cover illustration on, the tweens and teens who inhabit this fictional village have taken up residence in my imagination, where they continue to flirt and jostle, scrounge out a living, sin and repent and hunger and triumph. I imagine at their beatings, their wasted frames and matted hair and share their hard-scrabble existence through 81 brief pages, with smatterings of discreetly placed background notes.
Schlitz wrote this for students at a private school in Baltimore, where she's a librarian and historian. When she offered to write a play that truly depicted life in the Middle Ages, nobody wanted a minor part. She created 21 scenes, all but two of them for a single actor, and most of them in verse. As the characters speak, they offer an unflinching view of their poverty, their superstitions and prejudices and the limited scope of their ambitions.
We meet the Lord of the Manor's nephew, who risks his life in a boar hunt; a glassblower's apprentice determined to get it right; a shepherdess struggling to save her "sister" sheep, and many other charming, disarming and (mostly) guileless kids struggling to figure out their place in the local pecking order and how to bridge those awkward years until adulthood.
Even with so many disparate voices, there are no discordant notes. Village life emerges with its rhythms, its simplicity, and narrative threads that weave all the characters into a cohesive whole. Byrd helpfully illustrates with scenes that could've come from a Book of Hours; his approximation of Medieval illuminations are so close that I forgot I'd already seen his name on the cover and searched the extensive bibliography for the pictures' source.
Although the scenes are meant to be performed or at least read aloud by 10-15 year olds, this can also be read silently by one very absorbed kid -- or, ahem, grown-up.
Rating: *\*\*\*\
Hey everyone! We’re excited to announce that it has finally launched – we now have a podcast! It’s called The Oxford Comment (get it?) and each episode we’ll talk to people smarter than us in hopes that it rubs off.
