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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.

• Here in New York we’re getting very excited.  The 90-Second Film Festival is coming!!  And soon too!  Here’s a PW interview with James Kennedy about the festival and for those of you in the NYC area you can see it at NYPL on Saturday, March 7^th at 3:00 p.m. In fact, now that I think about it, you could begin your day at NYPL at 2:00 p.m. at my Children’s Literary Salon Blurred Lines?: Accuracy and Illustration in Nonfiction.  We’ll be hosting Mara Rockliff (author), Brian Floca (author/illustrator), Nicole Raymond (editor), and Sophie Blackall (illustrator/author) as they discuss the responsibility of an illustrator when working on a piece of historical nonfiction for kids and whether or not words garner closer scrutiny than pictures.  Should be a fabulous day.

• We all know on some level that when a book is adapted into a movie the likelihood of the strong female characters staying strong is negligible.  There are always exceptions to the rule, but by and large it’s depressing not to be more shocked by the recent Cracked piece 6 Insulting Movie Adaptations of Strong Female Characters.  I was very pleased to see the inclusion of Violet from A Series of Unfortunate Events too.  Folks tend to forget about her.

• At the beginning of February I had the infinite pleasure of hosting a Children’s Literary Salon at NYPL on Collaborating Couples.  I invited in Ted & Betsy Lewin, Andrea and Brian Pinkney, and Sean Qualls and Selina Alko.  You can read the PW round-up of the talk here, but before we hit the stage I had to ask Sean about this incident that occurred involving his book with Selina, The Case for Loving and W. Kamau Bell’s treatment at Berkeley’s Elmwood Café.  We didn’t touch on it during our talk since it wasn’t pertinent to this particular discussion, but if you haven’t read the article I suggest you give it a look.

• If I’m going to be honest about it, this perfectly encapsulates what I’ve always personally felt about the Elephant and Piggie books.  This is because growing up I was the child that wanted everyone and everything in the universe to pair up.  Sesame Street fed this desire to a certain degree but the only time Mr. Rogers got close was during the opera episodes.  And don’t even get me STARTED on Reading Rainbow (no sexual tension = no interest for 4-year-old Betsy).  Hence my perverse desire to see Gerald and Piggie become a couple.  I know, I know.  Clearly I need help.

• Moomins!  Ballet!  Moomins in ballet!  Sorry, do you need more than that?  Thanks to Marci for the link.

• It’s fun to read this look at the Mary Poppins Hidden Relationships Fan Theory, but I’ve a bone to pick with it.  Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the book of Mary Poppins make it very clear that yes indeed Mary Poppins WAS Bert’s nanny back in the day?  Or am I just making stuff up?  I thought this was cannon.  That other stuff about Bert’s relationships is particularly peculiar as well.

Perhaps you feel, as I do, that you’ve read every possible Harry Potter related list out there devised by the human brain.  Still and all, while I had seen a bunch of these, there are still some lovely surprises in the BuzzFeed list 21 Times “Harry Potter” Was the Cleverest Book Series Ever.

Speaking of Harry Potter and BuzzFeed, new term alert: Racebent.  Didn’t know it, but this piece has actually convinced me that it is entirely possible that Hermione Granger isn’t the white-skinned schoolgirl she’s often considered to be.  Recall if you will that it was only ever made explicit that Dean Thomas had dark skin when the Harry Potter books were brought over to America (a fact that is not usually mentioned in these stories).

• Oh, what the heck.  May as well get as Harry Potterish as possible today.  Look!  Cover animations!

• For years I’ve yearned to go to TLA (the meeting of the Texas Library Association).  State library meetings are always fun, but Texas takes their own to another level.  So far I haven’t had an excuse, but I was reminded of this desire recently when I read the rather delightful piece on how an abandoned Texan Walmart got turned into the ultimate public library.  McAllen?  You’re good people.

• Let It Be Known: That every author and illustrator out there that makes school visits on a regular basis should take a very close look at Nathan Hale’s School Visit Instructions and replicate PRECISELY what he has done on their own websites.  Obviously you cannot all draw so in terms of visuals he has you beat.  However, this information is perfect and you could certainly write it down in some form yourself.  Let it also be known that his upcoming book about Harriet Tubman, The Underground Abductor, is AMAZING.  Here’s the cover:

• David Wiesner created an app?  Yep, pretty much.  It’s called Spot and it is now on my To Buy list.

• Oh!  I don’t know if any of you folks actually know about this.  Were you aware that there is a major children’s book award out there for math-related titles?  Yep, there is.  It’s called the Mathical Award and it’s a project that has come out of a collaboration between The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) and the Children’s Book Council (CBC).  Those of you producing such books should look into it.  Could be very very useful to you.

• Daily Image:

I’ve been meaning to get back to work on updating my post of the Complete Listing of All Children’s Literature Statues in the United States for a while here.  There are definitely some sections that need work.  However, one image I will not be adding is this statue of what might be the world’s creepiest Cat in the Hat.  Not because I don’t like him (oh, I do, I do) but because it’s on school rather than public property.  That doesn’t mean I can’t share him with you anyway, though.

Many thanks to Paula Wiley for bringing him to my attention.  Wowzah.

• As I write this there are countless souls right now in Las Vegas attending the American Library Association Annual Conference.  I watch your tweets with envy, my friends.  Would that I were there.  Some of the first timers have asked me what they shouldn’t miss, but since I haven’t seen the official schedule of events I cannot say.  Obviously you’d want to attend the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet on Sunday night.  That’s a given.  Other than that, I always love watching the Notable Children’s Books Committee debate up a storm.  This year I don’t envy them the discussion.  LOTS of good books are on the menu and it’s being chaired by my fellow Newbery committee member Edie Ching.  A little sad not to see Boys of Blur by N.D. Wilson, Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan, Grandfather Gandhi by Arun Gandhi and Bethany Hegedus, Curiosity by Gary Blackwood, Three Bears in a Boat by David Soman and other favorites on the list of books being discussed but they can’t cover ‘em all.  Don’t miss it!

• Anything I say on the subject of the recently deceased Nancy Garden will be inadequate.  However I would like to note that she provided invaluable help with the book I recently co-wrote with Jules Danielson.  Without her aid we would have been seriously up a tree.  I am very sorry she won’t be able to see the final copy herself.  She was a joy to work with.

• On the one hand I’m rather grateful that Christian Science Monitor thought to present a list of 25 of the Best New Middle Grade Novels of 2014.  With YA always hogging the media it’s very nice to see fare for the younger set getting attention from a publication that isn’t one of the usual suspects.  On the other hand, we run into the old problem with defining what middle grade actually is.  Threatened by Eliot Schrefer is great but he’d be the first to tell you that the book is straight up young adult.  Ditto The Art of Secrets by James Klise, The One Safe Place by Tania Unsworth, Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic by Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, The War Within These Walls by Aline Sax, A Creature of Moonlight by Katherine Hahn, and A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman.  Otherwise, it’s very cool how the list concentrated a fair amount on small presses and Native American authors and publishers.

• Credit Phil Nel with coming up with one of the most fascinating pieces on Dr. Seuss I’ve seen in a long time.  Think you know all that there is to know about his famous chapeau donning feline?  Then you haven’t seen Was the Cat in the Hat Black?

• There are few thrills quite as great as unexpectedly running into the author of a book you admire.  Special credit should go to those librarians that are able to spot the authors who aren’t yet household names but create truly remarkable fare.  Extra special credit and cupcakes to those librarians who then get the authors to sit down for interviews.  I am a BIG fan of Teri Kanefield’s The Girl From the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement.  So imagine my delight when I saw that one of my librarians recently interviewed her.  Well done, Jill!

• Speaking of librarians I admire, behold this woman:

I’m mildly peeved that I didn’t learn that the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity had been awarded until I stumbled across the fact on Twitter.  Reading this article I can see that the win of librarian Laurence Copel, the founder of the Lower Ninth Ward Street Library in New Orleans, is well and truly deserved.  In fact, I sort of pity the committee in choosing anyone else after this.  Copel kind of sweeps the floor with the competition.  How on earth do you compete with THAT?  Wowza.

• Do you remember the other day when I wondered whether or not a posthumous children’s book debut had ever been a roaring success?  Well thanks to the Bustle article 5 Favorite Children’s Books Turn 50 This Year, I now have my answer.  See if you can spot it.  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

• What do J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, G. K. Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome, and A. A. Milne all have in common? Apparently they were all on the world’s worst cricket team of all time.  I don’t even know how I went through life unaware of this until now.  Read the article.  The amusing “greatest hits” are gonna go right over a lot of American’s heads.  So if any of today’s authors are interested in creating, say, a dodgeball team, I’d say there’s a precedent.

• Reading to kids = good.  Nuff said.

• Psst!  Care to see some KILLER comics coming out this fall that you may have missed?  Check these puppies out.  I guarantee you’ve seen nothing like them before.

• Daily Image:

And for today’s Daily Image, I bring you the coolest idea of all time.  When Angie Manfredi tweeted that her library was doing a spy party for the kids called Spy Night, I was impressed.  She asked for spy picture books, but all I could come up with was Andy Rash’s Agent A to Agent Z.  At any rate, this is the laser maze set-up they created in one of the stacks.

So brilliant I could cry.  Thanks to Angie Manfredi for the image!

Chandler Arnold, First Book’s executive vice-president, with a student from Belmont Runyon Elementary school in Newark, NJ, at a ‘Read Across America’ event last year.

Read Across America Day is fast approaching; on March 1, children across the country will celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday by reading ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and other childhood favorites.

But, as much as we love Dr. Seuss, the READING part is the important bit. At First Book, we will always line up for cake and ice cream, but books and reading come first. Because kids who read at home become stronger, more capable readers, and that’s the critical ingredient in become successful — in school and in life.

‘Read Across America’ is an annual event sponsored by our friends at the National Education Association (NEA). First Book is proud to do our part for such a critical issue.

Here’s what you can do:

• If you work with kids from low-income families, sign your program or classroom up with First Book. We can help you get new, high-quality books, including (naturally) ‘The Cat in the Hat’ and other Dr. Seuss favorites.
• If your program is already signed up with First Book, visit the First Book Marketplace to get some great Dr. Seuss titles for your kids.
• Take the NEA’s ‘Read Across America’ pledge.

And most importantly of all, take the time to read to a child in your life. You’ll both be glad you did.

#36 The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss (1957)
50 points

Adore the story and it brought reading to an access level for beginning readers. - Mary Friedrichs

The poor cat didn’t make it onto the list last time because I wasn’t including easy readers.  Now he bursts onto the scene, hat askew, intentions questionable, lovable to his core.  Recently he’s been turned into an animated serious on television.  He’s appearing in countless easy nonfiction books.  He’s even slated for a new movie (see: the end of this post).

The plot as described by Anita Silvey’s 100 Best Books for Children reads, “The cat arrives one day to entertain two young children.  As the rhyme spins out of control, so do the antics of the mayhem-making cat, and chaos ensues.  But before Mother returns, the cat cleans up everything, leaving the children to ponder whether or not to tell her what happened.”

In terms of its creation, one of the best explanations I’ve found actually came from Cracked.com in an article discussing how Dr. Seuss had a tendency to write books as responses to dares.  As they so eloquently put it, “It started with a 1955 article by William Spaulding of Houghton Mifflin, called ‘Why Johnny Can’t Read’. Instead of taking the easy route (‘Because Johnny is stupid.’) Spaulding analyzed the state of reading material for young children and found it insufferably boring. Not only did nobody care about Dick and Jane throwing a ball, least of all small children with short attention spans, but the choice of words was haphazard – throwing in anything with one or two syllables instead of deliberately coming up with the most useful words to help kids learn. Spaulding hooked up with Seuss and challenged him with the novel idea of writing a book with an actual story kids would want to read. If that wasn’t crazy enough, he asked him to use a list of 300 words that they had come up with, targeted toward helping kids practice phonics. Seuss thought this was insane and was attempting to politely back out of it when he glanced at the list one more time and decided he’d make a title out of the first two rhyming words he saw. They were “cat” and “hat”. Nine months of frustrating work later, he had a book that was 1702 words long with only 220 unique words, telling an interesting story, introducing an unforgettable character, and completely written in anapestic dimeter.”

According to Silvey it wasn’t until the bookstore edition was published that the title made any waves at all.  Once it was discovered it managed to sell a MILLION copies in three years.

As I may have mentioned before, I’m a sucker for a good statue.  This pairing from the Dr. Seuss National Memorial at The Quadrangle in Springfield, Massachusetts fulfills my every need. So cool.

In 1971 they turned it into an animated film.  It’s a bit long but this doggone song, THIS DOGGONE SONG, will simply not leave my brain.  The ultimate earworm.  Watch it at your own risk.

I will spare you the horrendous produce-placement-strewn Mike Myers fiasco.  Are you happy or sad to hear 4 Comments on Top 100 Picture Books #36: The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, last added: 6/2/2012