It’s always fun to see what other folks say about our specialty. I gave great cheers today when Matt informed me that Greg Hatcher had yet another post up about his trips through various thrift stores in search of treasure over at Comics Should Be Good. In this latest installment he finds a rare Meindert DeJong/Emily McCully title that has a misleading cover. It says “Journey From Peppermint Street by Meindert DeJong” and then in smaller letters “Winner of the Hans Christian Andersen and Newbery Awards”. Yeah. Mr. DeJong won those awards . . . but not for this book. Actually Peppermint Street did apparently garner a National Book Award, but I suspect that Greg isn’t the only person to think that the “winner” referred to was the book and not the writer. He also locates some failed Stratemeyer syndicate boy adventure novels (awesome) and a Tarzan for kids. Them’s good reading.
- Of course reading Greg just made me want to catch up on my Collecting Children’s Books. Peter’s latest post Brunch for a Snowy Sunday shows a celebrity picture book I’d long since forgotten, a comprehensive list of celebrities that hold children’s books in the READ posters, and it features what may be the worst re-illustrated book jacket in the history of mankind.
- Travis over at 100 Scope Notes covers a cover trend that doesn’t really have a name yet. Displaced Typography sounds good to me. Or maybe just Jumbled Typography.
- When I heard they were relaunching The Animorphs series, that made sense to me. What I find interesting, though, is that the Publishers Weekly article Scholastic to Give Animorphs New Life credits only Katherine Applegate as the author. True, the books were penned by K.A. Applegate, but I always heard that she co-wrote them with her husband Michael Grant (now best known as the author of the Gone series for teens, as well as The Mighty Twelve for kids). Any particular reason they don’t mention him, I wonder? Oh, and anyone else find the covers (which move, so maybe it’s not fair to judge them like this) kinda uber-creepy? This doesn’t help either.
- How many children’s books were published last year? That’s the kind of question you wouldn’t expect to receive an answer to. Yet American Libraries Magazine actually came up with a number, and it’s a doozy. Ch
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Hi, just found a copy of Journey from Peppermint Steet in the reserve stack at our library in Bath. A hardback bought in 1971. Will have to find time to read it now.
I just found a bunch of books the other day that had been erroneously catalogued into our “Newbery” section because they said “Winner of the Newbery Award” under the author’s name (even though some of them actually said “Winner of the Newbery FOR [Title of Book That Actually Won]“)!
Love the Seuss Tardis – thanks for the link!
Thanks for the hot tip on Animorphs! I’ve been surprised at how many kids still request those books, even though I weeded our ratty copies years ago. It’ll be nice to have fresh ones to offer.