Librarian ofCongress James H. Billington willannounce the next National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature on January3, 2012. The post was created by the Center for the Book in the Library ofCongress, the Children’s Book Council (CBC) and Every Child a Reader to raisenational awareness of the importance of young people’s literature as it relatesto literacy, education, and the development and betterment of children’s lives.Appointed for a two-year term, the National Ambassador will choose a platformthat reflects his or her personal interests (also to be revealed on theannouncement date) and advocate this policy throughout his or her travels andtenure.
The NationalAmbassador for Young People’s Literature is named by the Librarian of Congressbased on recommendations from a selection committee representing many segmentsof the book community. The selection criteria include the candidate’scontribution to young people’s literature and ability to relate to children.The members of this year’s selection committee were:
The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, theChildren’s Book Council (CBC) and Every Child a Reader are the sponsors of the National Ambassadorfor Young People’s Literatureinitiative
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| From The Guardian: Illustrator, author and Oscar-winning film-maker Shaun Tan (left), with Neil Gaiman. Photograph: Colin McPherson |
If you are a fan of Shaun Tan and Neil Gaiman, then you must read a conversation between the two in
The Guardian.
The two met this year at the Edinburgh book festival where Shaun was teaching a masterclass. I particularly like the following exchange in which they are talking about writing as a way to find out what you think about something: NG: I'm going to learn something I didn't know when I began. I'm going to discover how I feel and what I think about it during the process. I will break off little bits of my head and they will become characters and things will happen and they will talk to each other.
ST: Exactly, creating a character is like impersonating another being, so that you can find out what you think about something. You really find out what your style is when you diversify – setting something in a fictional landscape, the far future or distant past. A lot of people think of style or personality in terms of things you do often, but it's not really. It's what you do under duress, or outside of yourself. I don't feel I know myself really well because – again it's that emotional thing – sometimes I feel a little embarrassed by the amount of emotion that comes out in a story. I don't realise that there's so much of it locked up or in denial and then it comes out in the process of doing this conscious dreaming exercise.
NG: I love your stuff because you're never told what the emotion is. You get to feel it on your own and you get to discover the emotions along the way.
Do read the entire conversation!
From NPR, November 24, 2011
StoryCorps started the National Day of Listening, a day when Americans are encouraged to record an interview with a loved one on the day after Thanksgiving.
This year, StoryCorps is asking people to take a few minutes to thank a favorite teacher — with a tweet, a Facebook post, a call, a card or a face-to-face interview.
Guest host John Donvan calls his ninth grade biology teacher to offer thanks, and talks with Dave Isay, the founder of StoryCorps and the National Day of Listening, about the project and the importance of appreciating teachers.
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| A Feathered Gathering: All the birds of the world gather to hear the hoopoe bird speak in author and illustrator Peter Sis' The Conference of the Birds. Sis painstakingly painted thousands of birds by hand in to bring his new book to life. |
From NPR, November 16, 2011 Twelfth century Persian poet Farid Ud-Din Attar's epic poem
The Conference of the Birds is now adapted in a gorgeously illustrated book by Peter Sis. A MacArthur fellow and Caldecott award winner, Sis is known for his many children's books, where a boy might be transformed into a firetruck or a New York City neighborhood becomes a fantastical playground.
The Conference of the Birds is Sis's first book for adults. It's the story of thousands of birds who fly off on a perilous journey over mountains and oceans and deserts in search of a king.
Read the rest of the story
here.
Kirkus' Best Children's Books of 2011Kirkus' "best of" list is much larger than others published so far, with 54 titles. In many ways, this is as it should be. Of the hundreds of children's titles published this year, there are more than a few outstanding books. With 54 books on the list, readers get a much better sense of the field. However, that doesn't really help those of us trying to whittle down our Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, etc., lists, now does it?!
Publishers Weekly has released its
Best Children's Books of the Year list.
I agree with many of the books on the list:
Monster Calls, Beauty Queens, Inside Out and Back Again, Dead End In Norvelt and Between Shades of Gray.
There are a few I haven't read (for example,
Legend doesn't release for two more weeks) and a few others that I didn't think were that strong.
But, there was one obvious omission from the list:
Okay for Now. Hmmm......
What did you think? What other titles do you think should or should not have been on the list?
WINNER: Thanhha Lai,
Inside Out & Back Again(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers) -
FINALISTS:
Franny Billingsley,
Chime (Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, Inc. ) - Interview coming soon.
Debby Dahl Edwardson,
My Name Is Not Easy (Marshall Cavendish)
Albert Marrin,
Flesh & Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and Its Legacy (Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books) -
Gary D. Schmidt,
Okay for Now (Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) -
Young People’s Literature Judges: Marc Aronson (Panel Chair),
Ann Brashares, Matt de la Peña, Nikki Grimes, Will Weaver
Tis the season for the "best of..." lists, least of which is the
New York Times Best Illustrated Books of 2011.
The Book Review annually asks a panel of judges to choose 10 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books from among the thousands of children’s books published during the calendar year. Here are the favorites this time around, ranked in alphabetical order. They put together a fantastic slide show of the titles.
That Saturday Children's Book section of the NYT also had a great
collection of articles on children's and young adult books. Here are just a few:
Holiday SongsChildren’s books about holiday songs
Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African AmericansWritten and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, reviewed by Walter Dean Myers
Picture Books About Unusual AnimalsTwo picture books concern adventures with unusual animals. Reviewed by Lisa Brown.
Picture Books About the AlphabetThe alphabet leaps to life in these new picture books. Reviewed by Ben Zimmer.
NPR has a new book club -- for kids!
The Back-Seat Book Club is for kid who likes to read. Every month, NPR picks a Back-Seat Book Club selection. After reading the selection, then readers can
send in questions. At month's end, some of your questions to the book's author during our afternoon radio program,
All Things Considered.The first selection for the new book club started last month, was Neil Gaiman's
The Graveyard Book. This month the selection is the classic,
Phantom Tollboth by Norton Juster. See
photos sent in by book club members reading
Phantom Tollboth.
So many of my friend listen to NPR during their daily commute to work. What a good idea to get them involved in children's reading by setting up a Back-Seat Book Club. Way to go, NPR!
Have you seen the new trailer for
The Hunger Games, premiering today? If not, go
check it out right now and let me know what you think!
In theaters March 23, 2012.
From the
Scholastic OOM blog:
While not every kid “gets” history right away, it’s one of the most important subjects they need to take while in school. It’s hard sometimes to see how things that happened 10, 20, 100, or 1,000 years ago have anything to do with today’s world. That’s why the upcoming webcasts –
Dear America: History Speaks and
The First Thanksgiving are so important, because they teach kids the importance of history in captivating, engrossing ways. “You’ll never know where you’re going, unless you know where you’ve been,” said Jennifer L. aka my mom.
The first webcast,
Dear America: History Speaks, takes place on Wednesday, October 26th at 1 p.m. and will feature
Dear America® series authors Lois Lowry, Kirby Larson, and Andrea Davis Pinkney. The award-winning authors will virtually talk to students about the art of writing historical fiction including how to craft compelling stories, conduct research and develop characters. Teachers will have access to tons of useful tools like free classroom discussion guides, whiteboard-ready slides and activities and more. Visit
www.scholastic.com/teachdearamerica to register your class today.
The First Thanksgiving, the second classroom event, broadcasts on November 16th at 1 p.m. The virtual field trip will take students to the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass. where they will meet Colonial and Wampanoag interpreters and learn what life was like during the first Thanksgiving. Teachers can visit
www.scholastic.com/thanksgiving to access the webcast and get free classroom discussion guides, activities and book lists.
Many schools are not able to afford as many field trips as they could in the past, but Scholastic has made it so that students will get the experience for FREE!
There are two author events happening in Richmond, VA that might be of interest to local children's literature lovers.
On Thursday, September 27th, National Book Award winner Katherine Erskine will be speaking for the
Children's Book Bank of Virginia. She will be at The Library of Virginia from 11:30-4:00 and the Children's Museum of Richmond from 4:30-8:00.
Registration is here.
Newbery Award Honor winner Kathi Appelt will be presenting at the
James River Writers Conference, October 6-8, at the Library of Virginia.
Registration is here.
Of course, don't forget about
The Joy of Children's Literature Conference at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA on October 15!
-- Shel Silverstein
NPR has a great article on the posthumous publication of Shel Silverstein's book,
Every Thing On It, titled:
Shel Silverstein's Poems Live On In "Every Thing."From the article: Every Thing On It includes 145 poems in all. Silverstein eliminated many of them from his earlier books, not because he didn't like them, but because they just didn't happen to fit in the perfect order he was looking for in a given collection. Toni Markiet, editor of the new collection, worked on other projects alongside Silverstein. Markiet says the poet paid close attention to every last detail.
"He would move a piece of art over an 18th of an inch ... and look at how it looked on a page," she tells NPR's David Greene. " ... It's a slight adjustment, but to him, it mattered. I think one of the reasons his books are still so immensely popular after almost 50 years is that every tiny detail was considered."
I just finished listening to
Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. The audio book was performed by the incomparable
Jim Dale, which was treat in and of itself!
NPR did a nice story on
Night Circus and author Erin Morgenstern that you might be interested in titled
"Night Circus" Comes to Town with Magic, Mystery.
Summary from Amazon (best book of September):
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| Jim Dale |
Erin Morgenstern’s dark, enchanting debut takes us to the black and white tents of
Le Cirque des Reves, a circus that arrives without warning, simply appearing when yesterday it was not there. Young Celia and Marco have been cast into a rivalry at
The Night Circus, one arranged long ago by powers they do not fully understand. Over time, their lives become more intricately enmeshed in a dance of love, joy, deceit, heartbreak, and magic. Author Morgenstern knows her world inside and out, and she guides the reader with a confident hand. The setting and tone are never less than mesmerizing. The characters are well-realized and memorable. But it is the Night Circus itself that might be the most memorable of all.
The first
Joy of Children's Literature Conference is only a month away - October 15th!!
Register now to reserve your space for what is sure to be an amazing day with this line up of
authors:
- Pamela Duncan Edwards
- Candice Ransom
- Sara Lewis Holmes
- Laurie Krebs
- Tommy Greenwald
- Ellen Potter (via Skype)
Another wonderful reason to attend is that the conference will be held in the brand new
School of Education at
The College of William & Mary. This state-of-the-art building is just a pleasure to be in and the new
Professional Development Center where the conference will be held was built as part of the building.
Additionally, the city of Williamsburg where The College of William & Mary is located, is just beautiful in the fall. Consider visiting
Colonial Williamsburg, only a few short blocks away from the School of Education, after the conference.
Any way you look at it,
The Joy of Children's Literature Conference on October 15th is the place to be! Enjoy a day full of joyful learning, connecting, and collaborating around children's literature and then an afternoon and evening of fall fun in Colonial Williamsburg.
Next weekend is the
11th Annual National Book Festival and this year, for the first time, it will be held for two days! If you have never been, do yourself a favor and go. Your favorite authors talking about your favorite books in the nation's capitol -- what more could you possible want?
An unprecedented 112 authors, poets and illustrators will speak and meet with their readers at the
2011 National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress. The event, to be held Saturday, Sept. 24 and Sunday, Sept. 25 on the National Mall – rain or shine – also will offer more authors and activities for young readers than ever before.
The event is free and open to the public. Saturday hours will be from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Sunday hours will be from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Authors’ speaking and book-signing schedules are available on the festival website, www.loc.gov/bookfest.
President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, the first lady, are the honorary chairs of the event. The distinguished benefactor of the event is David M. Rubenstein, who co-chairs the National Book Festival Board with Dr. James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress.
"Following on the great success of the 2010 National Book Festival, our 10th anniversary, the National Book Festival Board decided last January to make this a two-day event," Billington said. "We expect book-lovers to be delighted with the number of poets, authors and illustrators we’ve assembled this year, including several winners of major literary awards.
"The authors’ talks will be a bit longer, and we believe festival-goers’ access to authors in the book-signing area will be made a bit easier."
Festival fans will find the usual array of author pavilions this year – History & Biography, Fiction & Mystery, Poetry & Prose and Contemporary Life, along with a pavilion aimed at Teens and another for Children.
Target -- the distinguished corporate benefactor of the National Book Festival -- will sponsor the "Family Storytelling Stage," a pavilion offering briefer presentations by more than 20 authors and musicians whose books and performances are devoted to very young readers. The sponsorship is part of Target’s commitment to helping more children read proficiently by the end of grade 3.
"We are delighted that Target has helped us take our already very family-friendly event to a whole new, very young audience of book-lovers," said Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress and executive director of the National Book Festival. "The Family Storytelling Stage will carry the banner for this year’s National Book Festival theme, ‘Celebrate the Joy of Reading Aloud.’"
On Sunday, the National Book Festival will convert its spacious "Pavilion of the States" into three new genre pavilions: State Poets Laureate, "The Cutting Edge," and Graphic Novels.
Author lineups in all pavilions include:
- Children: Mary Brigid Barrett, Harry Bliss, Calef Brown, Susan Cooper, Carmen Agra Deedy and John McCutcheon, Tomie dePaola, Jack Gantos, Joe Hayes, William Joyce, John Bemelmans Marciano, Patricia McKissack, Dorie McCullough Lawson, Sam McBratney, Julianne Moore, Jon J Muth and Chris Van Dusen
- Family Storytelling Stage: Wally Amos, Tom Angleberger, Mac Barnett, Michael Buckley, Angela Farris, Daniel Kirk, Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Josh Lewis, Tom Lichtenheld, Loren Long, Cedelia Marley, Julianne Moore, Lauren Myracle, Jane
To the left is a picture of Roald Dahl's writing hut. Apparently, this is were he wrote most of his beloved stories over his long career. I love to see where authors write, don't you? And I think kids are also interested and even fascinated by the idea that real authors write real books in real places and are sometimes "quirky."
Dahl's long time illustrator, Quentin Blake, wrote an article for
The Guardian in which some of Dahl's quirkiness is revealed. Your students might think some of these insights are quite fabulous!
From
The Guardian article,
I didn't go into the shed very often, because the whole point of it as far as Roald was concerned was that it wasprivate, a sanctuary where he could work where no one interrupted him. The whole of the inside was organised as a place for writing: so the old wing-back chair had part of the back burrowed out to make it more comfortable; he had a sleeping bag that he put his legs in when it was cold and a footstool to rest them on; he had a very characteristic Roald arrangement for a writing table with a bar across the arms of the chair and a cardboard tube that altered the angle of the board on which he wrote. As he didn't want to move from his chair everything was within reach. He wrote on yellow legal paper with his favourite kind of pencils; he started off with a handful of them ready sharpened. He used to smoke and there is an ashtray with cigarette butts preserved to this day.
The table near to his right hand had all kinds of strange memorabilia on it, one of which was part of his own hip bone that had been removed; another was a ball of silver paper that he'd collected from bars of chocolate since he was a young man and it had gradually increased in size. There were various other things that had been sent to him by fans or schoolchildren.
On the wall were letters from schools, and photographs of his family. The three or four strips of paper behind his head were bookmarks, which I had drawn. He kept the curtains closed so that nothing from outside came in to interfere with the story that he was imagining. He went into the shed in the morning and wrote until lunchtime. He didn't write in the afternoon, but went back later to edit what he'd done after it had been typed out by his secretary.
He wrote in the shed as long as I knew him - we worked together for 15 years from 1975 to 1990 and I illustrated a dozen of his books. I would take my drawings down to Gipsy House for him to look at while sitting on the sofa in the dining room. I don't think he let anybody in the shed.
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Great post, Denise.
Happy New Year!