A lot to say and so little time to say it. Let’s get started!
Today, if you are at all feeling blue, I suggest you read The Toast piece Jaya Catches Up: A Little Princess which is a killer breakdown of what is inarguably a problematic book. The Marie Antoinette portions are particularly choice.
Next, the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award Winners were announced. What does that mean for you? It means you should be boning up on your international children’s book knowledge, of course. Commit the names “Rotraut Susanne Berner of Germany” (who won for Illustration) and Cao Wenxuan of China (who won for Writing)” to memory. For more info on the books and the winners, go here.
If you were speaking to the man on the street (or woman, or child, or what have you) and they said, “Boy, those children’s books took the hardest left turn a series ever took”, what series would you assume the person was speaking about? Here is your answer and it’s a heckuva amusing post to boot.
Seven Impossible Things features Gareth Hinds. And all is right with the universe.
Oh. In a weird way this makes sense. They’re turning The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, the biography of Dare Wright, creator of the Lonely Doll book series, in to a film with Naomi Watts and Jessica Lange. You know what that means, don’t you? Lonely Doll fever is poised to sweep the nation. Be wary. Be warned. And buy stock in frilly underwear.
Remember when J.K Rowling said she had this “political fairytale” that was going to be her next non-Harry Potter children’s book? Looks like it’s kaputski. Which is to say, about 30 years after Ms. Rowling’s death someone will pull it out of that drawer and publish it anyway. So it goes.
This next one’s roundabout three years old but I only just found it. The mom from the Cat in the Hat finally speaks. Quite frankly, I always found that polka-dotted dress of hers rather fetching (to say nothing of her keen shoes) but that may just be me.
If you had the great good fortune to see the NYPL exhibit The ABC of It then you would have noticed one section was dedicated to a fascinating array of Soviet children’s art. I remember helping curator Leonard Marcus locate these books (of which NYPL owns a goodly number) and he picked and chose the best amongst them. But where did they originate? Having recently finished M.T. Anderson’s Symphony for the City of the Dead, I took the little bit of context I’d acquired and applied it to this fabulous piece on tygertale called Revolutionary Russian Children’s Books. Now I’m just beginning to understand. Thanks to Phil Nel (I’m pretty sure) for the link.
Growing up my mom had a machine in the attic that could type out braille. I don’t know why we owned it but I liked it a lot. Braille children’s books available in a mass market context have always been difficult to obtain, though. With this in mind, I’m very pleased to see DK is now releasing a braille board book series. Wow. Way to go, DK!
All right. My four-year-old is upstairs asleep and in her room are all my Harry Potter books. Otherwise I would check this myself. You see, they just released the first look of the new Jim Kay illustrated Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And I am staring and staring at this cover and I need your help. Look at the cover right here:
Am I crazy or is that car chock full of Weaselys? And doesn’t Harry drive to Hogwarts with just Ron? At least that’s what the old British cover told me:
So . . . huh? [Note: Interestingly the Buzzfeed article has plenty of comments but no one is pointing this out so I may just be completely and utterly wrong about everything]
In other news, the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy longlist was just released. Frances Hardinge made the cut!!! Wooty woot woot woot!!
Seriously Wicked, Tina Connolly (Tor Teen)
Court of Fives, Kate Elliott (Little, Brown)
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan UK 5/14; Amulet)
Archivist Wasp, Nicole Kornher-Stace (Big Mouth House)
Zeroboxer, Fonda Lee (Flux)
Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older (Levine)
Bone Gap, Laura Ruby (Balzer + Bray)
Nimona, Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen)
Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)
Oh, I absolutely love this. Children’s art. Not art for children, mind you, but art by children and its ramifications when studying history. Again, I think I have Phil Nel to thank for this one. He finds all the good stuff.
Daily Image:
The Make Way for Ducklings statues are nothing new (nor are they the only ducklings as my old post on all the public children’s literature statues in America attests). Nor is it new to put hats on them. That said, this recent yarnbombing goes above and beyond the call of duty. That’s some seriously good knitting!
Read more about them here.
I think the scene on the front of the Potter cover is after Fred, George and Ron rescue Harry from Privit Drive. And now I need the book.
Yep, that’s the Burrow down there. The bigger problem is that it’s a Ford Anglia and Harry’s in the driver’s seat.
Maybe he’s in the backseat?
Oh, you’re completely correct. That’s the Burrow and not Hogwarts. Looking even closer, I think Harry’s in the backseat (it’s an oddly placed shot). Can’t speak to the Ford Anglia though.
A MOVIE of THE LONELY DOLL??? Are they going to reenact the spanking scene? https://booksatmiddlemayfarm.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/020.jpg
Or how about the one where she’s tied to a tree? https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/bd/40/90/bd40903c7bb7dc8742df7e6925c1019a.jpg
Looking forward to any movie of The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll. I read the book, and what I remember most was that she would make all her dates “meet” the Lonely Doll before taking her out, and that if I remember she had an odd relationship with her brother as well as her mother. Beverly Cleary she was not!
Oh it’s a movie about the AUTHOR. Now I get it!
Yeah, but it’s not any less disturbing, I suspect.
When I worked at The Children’s Center at 42nd Street in the main branch of NYPL we had a killer set of old autograph books. Over the decades the children’s librarians would have authors and illustrators sign the books when they attended events at the library. I was paging through one of them one day, not paying much attention, when the tiny signature of “Dare Wright” struck me. To this day I still cannot figure out why she was at NYPL. I doubt very much the library carried her books when she was alive. Utterly baffling but it was like an electric shock to hold a book she’d once held and signed.
Those Lonely Doll books scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. Maybe I had watched the Talking Tina episode of Twilight Zone too many times… but maybe not.
Maybe you didn’t watch the Talking Tina episode enough times!
I wish Dare Wright was alive to reap the benefits of her works. She died alone and in poverty –something to think about when book artists are left to swing in the wind without a safety net or any union and our industry leaders tell us to spouse up with someone with insurance — wth?