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.
Back in November I speculated as to whether or not a book containing photography, and just photography, could ever win a Caldecott Award. Today my thoughts turn elsewhere.
Just yesterday I sat in on the Penguin Young Readers Group librarian preview for the May-August 2011 season (round-up to come). The folks there had to go over a wide variety of books and in the course of the discussion we came upon an adorable picture book by the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Yup. John Berendt himself. Normally I don’t truck with adult authors who try to weasel their way into the lucrative children’s market, but that’s usually because all their books sound the same. Either they’re doing a younger version of what they usually write or they place a slight twist on Alice in Wonderland/The Wizard of Oz. Nine times out of ten this is the case. Berendt . . . he’s different. First off, it’s hard to accuse him of the flaws of his fellows when the title of his book is something as innocuous as My Baby Blue Jays.
(By the way, during the last Simon & Schuster preview I took one look at Liz Scanlon’s Noodle & Lou and proclaimed that, “It is my personal opinion, as it has been for years, that blue jays are a seriously unappreciated species of bird. Seriously, name me all the famous blue jay picture book characters you can.” The universe, which has a twisted sense of humor, has now handed me a whole new blue jay product just to watch me squirm under my own words.)
What does any of this have to do with today’s topic of Photography & Fiction? Well, outside Mr. Berendt’s window sat a nest of blue jays, so he figured he’d photograph them and add in his own, as the catalog calls it, “narrative skill”. Skill aside, this book is considered nonfiction. Staring at the book in the catalog got me to thinking. Nonfiction. Most photography in children’s books could be classified as nonfiction in a way. We see a lot of them appear each season. They do not lack. But what about picture books that use photography and are fictional? How common are they? How often does one run across them? Children love photos, after all. So why are they so often relegated to the informative Tana Hoban / baby board book areas of the library?
This question doesn’t come entirely out of the blue. Recently I met for lunch with an author/illustrator who told me that he was seeking out fictional picture books of this sort. They are rare. Sometimes it seems as though Nina Crews is the only person who’ll touch the genre with so much as a ten foot p
I hear marijuana is a “gateway” drug.
After a few “harmless” puffs, you soon experiment with prescription uppers. Then, you move one to harder street drugs. Before you know it, it’s nine a.m. on a Tuesday and you’re smoking crack in the alley behind Whataburger.
Suddenly, you’re a meth tweaking, rufie gobbling maniac who hallucinates about killer unicorns.
All because of a little “harmless” fun.
I kinda think books are the same way. You read a few books as a child, and suddenly…you’re a book freak on a leash.
So what if those childhood reads are a little kooky, a little subversive?
For example, one of the first “Gateway” books I remember reading is The Lonely Doll. I scored this checkered beauty by conning my parents into buying it from Weekly Reader.
I should have known the book would ensnare me. Anything written by a siren named “Dare Wright” is bound to be narcotic. (Say that name in your best throaty movie trailer voice. Dare. Wright. See what I mean?)
Then I opened the book. Such adventures. Such intrigue.
The Lonely Doll, Edith, pines away in a big empty house. She prays with all her heart to meet a special someone.
Two forbidden strangers appear on her doorstep. Mr. Bear and his sidekick, Little Bear.
Does Edith say, “Who are you? Get off my porch, you fuzzy freaks!”
No. Edith claps her hands with Joy. “You must have found me because I wished so hard,” she cries.
Mr. Bear swoops in and takes control. He watches over her, coerces her to do her lessons, scolds her for getting dirty or venturing too far from home.
Mr. Bear stalks Edith.
And when he leaves for the afternoon, Edith sneaks into the Big Girl’s boudoir and plays dress up. She puts on makeup, slips on high heels and scrawls lipstick on the mirror.
Mr. Bear comes home. He takes Edith over his knee and spanks her. See how little bear covers his eyes? He can’t bear to watch…
So, then Edith tells Mr. Bear to get out of her house, right?
No. Of course not. “Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr. Bear!” cried Edith, hugging Mr. Bear. “I do just love you…please, will you promise to stay forever?”
A little subtext goes a long way, dear ones. Curse you, Dare Wright.
At age four, The Lonely Doll became my “Gateway” book.
At fourteen, I read Wuthering Heights. Heathcliffe makes a nasty Mr. Bear.
At twenty four, I read Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Darcy makes an irresistible Mr. Bear.
At thirty four, I read Twilight. Edward Cullen makes such a sparkly Mr. Bear.
It took Breaking Dawn to push me over the edge. I hit bottom with that one. After a quick stint at Literature Rehab, vapid, controlling stalker types no longer haunted my bookshelves.
So, dear ones, what about you? What were your “Gateway” books? I&rsq
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?