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FSG Notes Special Award Edition

Brock Cole FSG 2007 If this isn't a retelling of a classic fairy tale, it sure feels like one. It hits all the right notes and gets the feel of a Grimm story with a strident ease. A poor girl with no name is called many things by the people of her town -- Scraps-and-Smells, Skin -and-Bones, Sweets-and-Treats -- because she stands around the market stalls selling what food scraps and paper

by Laura Nyman Montenegro FSG 2007 When young Natalie releases her Chirpee bird from its cage it immediately flies to a nearby tree. A phone call brings a group of poets to help her lure her bird out of a tree. The poets in turn try different things to lure the bird down from the tree: They plant seeds and bushes, install a birdbath, tie bright string into the branches but nothing seems to

Farrar, Straus & Giroux Books for Young Readers: August 2007 Newsletter

It takes a village to make a book.

In addition to having brilliant editors and brilliant copyeditors, FSG has brilliant book designers.

I was thrilled with the design of How to Steal a Dog. Thank you, Barbara Grzeslo. (Love those little paw prints inside. And the cover? I mean, come on! You're da bomb, Barbara!)

I'm just as thrilled with the design of Greetings from Nowhere. I'll share the jacket art later. It's by John Hendrix, who just did the cover for Polly Horvath's newest novel.

But I thought I'd share the inside design, which I just love. It's by Irene Metaxatos. One important element of the story is a postcard from the Great Smoky Mountains, so Irene used that theme in her design. It's a multiple viewpoint story (four characters), so each character's chapter gets its own design.

Cool, huh? (The scans aren't too great, but....)

by Valerie Worth
pictures by Steve Jenkins
FSG 2007

Nearly two dozen poems about animals in this lovely collection that showcase the poet's sharp eye for the telling detail and the beauty of poetic brevity. It's so nice to pick up a book of poetry for young readers that doesn't condescend to the notion that young readers need poems that rhyme.

Snail

Only compare
Our kitchens
And bedrooms,
Our lamps and
Rugs and chairs,

To the bare
Stone spiral
Of his one
Unlighted
Stairwell

Sparse, evocative, and concrete enough for even younger readers to understand the power of good poetry. In these posthumously published poems Worth isn't afraid to make the experience personal, in this case concerning Cockroaches:

One that I can't
In the least abide
Is the cockroach: not
So much that it
Scuttles

And Bristles, and glues
Its slippery eggs in
The cracks of books, but
That it looks so clever:
As though it knows
My particular horror...

Jenkin's illustrations, in his usual torn and cut paper collages, seem almost sterile alongside the text. Not to take away from the artistry of what he does, but the mere portraits of the featured animals convey none of their spirit or expressive characteristics. It's a beautiful book, but sad when the words have to carry all the weight.