By: Beth Kephart ,
on 5/6/2016
By: Maryann Yin,
on 8/18/2015
By: Maryann Yin,
on 6/3/2015
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time play received six honors at the 2015 Drama Desk Awards. This project, based on Mark Haddon’s mystery novel, premiered with a production at the London West End before moving to Broadway.
Variety.com reports that this stage adaptation won in the following categories: Outstanding Play, Outstanding Actor in a Play, Outstanding Director of a Play, Outstanding Lighting Design, Outstanding Projection Design, and Outstanding Sound Design in a Play. Click here to watch an official trailer.
This book-inspired play has captured six Tony Award nominations. The winners will be revealed during a ceremony set to take place at Radio City Musical Hall on June 7th. (via The New York Times)
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By: Miriam Halahmy,
on 7/15/2014
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| Authors holding up the books they would send to prisoners - demonstrating opposite Downing Street, 27.6.14. |
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| Mark Haddon and Ruth Padel |
By: Dianna Dilworth,
on 5/9/2014
A Tennessee school district has banned British author Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for its use of profanity. The Wilson County School Board in Tennesee pulled the mystery novel, which is about an autistic teenager investigating the death of his neighbor's dog, from a 9th grade reading list this week. The Tennesseean reports: "The board voted 3-1 to remove the book from the list of approved reading in the school district. One board member was absent. 'The F-bomb is pretty common in that book, and that’s what I have a problem with,' said board member Wayne McNeese, who received complaints about the book from some of his constituents. 'I’m not dumb enough to think students don’t hear that language, but it doesn’t mean we should promote it.'"
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By: Dianna Dilworth,
on 3/24/2014
British authors Phillip Pullman and Mark Haddon are among many that have spoken out to stop new rules that restrict access to books among prisoners in the UK.
“Any government worth having would countermand this loathsome and revolting decision at once, sack the man responsible, and withdraw the whip from him,” Pullman told The Guardian.
Mary Sweeney launched a Change.org petition today urging Rt. Hon. Chris Grayling MP to “review and amend” the new rules. The petition has already generated more than 5,000 signatures. Here is an excerpt from the petition: “Access to books can be crucial for education and rehabilitation. Access to family items are important for continued family connection, and should not additionally punish children of prisoners who need contact.” (Via The Guardian).
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By: Jason Boog,
on 4/10/2012
Granta magazine worked with fashion designer Paul Smith to create the cover for its upcoming issue, Granta 119.
Dedicated to the theme of “Britain,” the issue will be released in the U.K. on May 10th and in the U.S. on May 17th. Contributing writers include Adam Foulds, Mark Haddon, Robert Macfarlane and Rachel Seiffert.
In the release, Granta artistic director Michael Salu explained the cover: “Britain’s oldest literary magazine creating an issue on ‘home’ needed a package of distinction. Why not ask a revered British designer to collaborate on creating the cover for ‘Britain?’ We worked with Sir Paul Smith and his team to create an image that we feel is beautiful yet disquieting and saturated with generations of British identity and understanding.”
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Granta magazine worked with fashion designer Paul Smith to create the cover for its upcoming issue, Granta 119.
Dedicated to the theme of “Britain,” the issue will be released in the U.K. on May 10th and in the U.S. on May 17th. Contributing writers include Adam Foulds, Mark Haddon, Robert Macfarlane and Rachel Seiffert.
In the release, Granta artistic director Michael Salu explained the cover: “Britain’s oldest literary magazine creating an issue on ‘home’ needed a package of distinction. Why not ask a revered British designer to collaborate on creating the cover for ‘Britain?’ We worked with Sir Paul Smith and his team to create an image that we feel is beautiful yet disquieting and saturated with generations of British identity and understanding.”
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By: David Elzey,
on 8/4/2010
(or 70,000 light years) by Mark Haddon David Fickling / Random House 2009 A middle grade my-teacher-is-an-alien story from the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Entertaining, if strangely familiar. While secretly eavesdropping on their teachers, Jimbo and his friend Charlie discover that two of their teachers are, in fact, aliens from another world on the far
Hockey fans of a certain age may think this post is about an erstwhile Detroit team nicknamed the "Dead Things" that, once upon a time, couldn't buy a win. Then local fans started throwing dead octopi on the ice and later the team created an octopus mascot and things started looking up.
But it's not. This post, I mean. It's not about hockey at all but about dead things. Dead things on young adult book jackets. And a challenge about dead things on YA book jackets.
[Spoiler alert: If Carrie Mac's The Gryphon Project (Puffin Canada, 2009) is on your to-be-read list, click away now. Actually, you probably should not have clicked on this post at all because talking about dead bodies gives away some of the plot. But only up to about p. 129, so you're cool.]
The cover of The Gryphon Project, designed by Sam Weber, is quite attractive. Handsome, athletic and possibly naked young man with longish, flowing hair. What's not to like?
Nice, right? Then you find out on or around page 129 is that this image depicts the lifeless body of a major character. Yeah, he's dead. Technically, he is being kept in a state of stasis while the powers that be decide whether to bring him back to life or not. Dead bodies on the cover? It's a little creepy. I can find only two other YA novels with dead things on the cover: The Curious Incident of the Dog in Night Time by Mark Haddon:
The adult UK editions are more graphic. And funny.
. . . and Gordon Korman's No More Dead Dogs:
No sign of another book for teens with a dead human body on the cover. Now the challenge. Can our readers find any more? Double points if you know of one for middle graders, and I'll send you my copy of The Gryphon Project if you know of a picture book.
Unlike throwing octopi on the Red Wings' ice, I don't think this will become a trend. If it caught on, we might be seeing gruesome cover art for titles like these:
By: Amanda,
on 3/30/2009
I've been continuously finding some great books about space travel lately and had three sitting on my TBR shelf this week, making the perfect Non-Fiction Monday post. The first two are non-fiction, the third is a picture book about the Apollo 11 flight. All of these are highly recommended!
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream is written by Tanya Lee Stone, with a foreword by Margaret A. Weitekamp, the curator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Already sounding pretty fancy eh?
In the book, the reader gets to learn about 13 women that truly wanted to achieve the goal of becoming an astronaut. The media mocked them constantly, male astronauts wanted nothing to do with their presence in space programs, and NASA denied them access. Occurring about 20 years before women were finally allowed into the NASA space program, these 13 women fought for the right to attend and the right to go into space.
The text is accompanied by amazing photographs from the time period, as well as extensive coverage on women's rights in general and the fight for them that took place in the 50's and 60's.
Almost Astronauts is a great addition to a school unit on space exploration, as well as a nice title for women's history reports or library displays on the solar system.
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream
Tanya Lee Stone
144 pages
Non-fiction
Candlewick
9780763636111
February 2009
Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 was wonderfully written by Brian Floca. Told in a story format, readers are able to learn about the famous flight to the moon and its effect on the world. A note at the end of the story explains more about the mission, in greater detail and with more scientific information. Definitely geared towards a younger set than Almost Astronauts, but still with great, usable information.
Very nicely illustrated, simple and clean, just like the text. I really enjoyed this one! Another excellent library title.
Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11
Brian Floca
48 pages
Non-Fiction
Atheneum
9781416950462
April 2009
Finally, my picture book addition to this non-fiction post, Footprints on the Moon, is written by Mark Haddon (wonderful author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and illustrated beautifully by Christian Birmingham.
A simple tale about a boy that dreams about traveling to the moon and having astronauts finally be able to land on the surface, reading books from the library on the subject, creating a scrapbook about it, spending hours looking at the sky with his dad's binoculars. His dreams are realized when he watches Apollo 11 land on the moon and the astronauts walk to the surface.
A very simple and sweet book, this would be a nice introduction to space travel for little ones. The illustrations are beautiful and soft and the text flows nicely. I really enjoyed this one as well.
Footprints on the Moon
Mark Haddon
32 pages
Picture book
Candlewick
9780763644406
March 2009
To learn more about any of these books or to purchase, click on the book covers above to link to Amazon.
Generation Dead and its sequel Generation Dead: Kiss of Life almost count--they've got dead-looking humans, although I think they're actually undead.
If manga counts as "books for teens", some of the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service books have fairly macabre covers.
If nonfiction counts, there's Corpses, Coffins and Crypts: a History of Burial, for grade 6 and up.
But I think the best candidate is The Afterlife, with the bleeding corpse of its protagonist on the cover.
Oh, hey, a picture book! George, the Goldfish
And more non-fiction, with what looks to be a photo of a dead hummingbird: I Found a Dead Bird: The Kids' Guide to the Cycle of Life and Death
Dead birds must be the limit of what most picture book writers think most picture book readers (and their parents) can handle - there's also SHE'S WEARING A DEAD BIRD ON HER HEAD by Kathryn Lasky, and THE DEAD BIRD by Margaret Wise Brown. Dead birds everywhere. My favorite "dead things" cover, though (no birds, sorry) is for Babette Cole's DROP DEAD.
Wow. Creepy. I didn't know about Margaret Wise Brown's book--or any of the others for that matter. Poor George the Goldfish! Hey, elsewhere.org, let me know where to send your copy of THE GRYPHON PROJECT. carol (at) carolbrendler (dot) com
The up-coming Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan, the second in her zombie series, has a creepy dead woman on the cover. While I appreciate the dead body on the cover, as it's pretty accurate of the book, I really liked the cover of the first book, The Forest of Hands and Teeth, which was more haunting with no dead bodies.
I added the link to Dead-Tossed Waves at the end of the post. That image is both disturbing and beautiful.
http://www.carrieryan.com/dead-tossed-waves.php