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Makoons
By Louise Erdrich
Harper Collins
$16.99
ISBN: 9780060577933
Ages 7-12
On shelves now

They say these days you can’t sell a novel for kids anymore without the book having some kind of “sequel potential”. That’s not really true, but there are a heck of a lot of series titles out there for the 7 to 12-year-old set, that’s for sure. New series books for children are by their very definition sort of odd for kids, though. If you’re an adult and you discover a new series, waiting a year or two for the next book to come out is a drop in the bucket. Years fly by for grown-ups. The wait may be mildly painful but it’s not going to crush you. But series for kids? That’s another matter entirely. Two years go by and the child has suddenly become an entirely different person. They may have switched their loyalties from realistic historical fiction to fantasy or science fiction or (heaven help us) romance even! It almost makes more sense just to hand them series that have already completed their runs, so that they can speed through them without breaking the spell. Almost makes more sense . . . but not quite. Not so long as there are series like “The Birchbark House Series” by Louise Erdrich. It is quite possibly the only historical fiction series currently underway for kids that has lasted as long as seventeen years and showing no sign of slowing down until it reaches its conclusion four books from now, Erdrich proves time and time again that she’s capable of ensnaring new readers and engaging older ones without relying on magic, mysteries, or post-apocalyptic mayhem. And if she manages to grind under her heel a couple stereotypes about what a book about American Indians in the past is “supposed” to be (boring/serious/depressing) so much the better.

Chickadee is back, and not a second too soon. Had he been returned to his twin brother from his kidnapping any later, it’s possible that Makoons would have died of the fever that has taken hold of his body. As it is, Chickadee nurses his brother back to health, but not before Makoons acquires terrifying visions of what is to come. Still, there’s no time to dwell on that. The buffalo are on the move and his family and tribe are dedicated to sustaining themselves for the winter ahead. There are surprises along the way as well. A boasting braggart by the name of Gichi Noodin has joined the hunt, and his posturing and preening are as amusing to watch as his mistakes are vast. The tough as nails Two Strike has acquired a baby lamb and for reasons of her own is intent on raising it. And the twin brothers adopt a baby buffalo of their own, though they must protect it against continual harm. All the while the world is changing for Makoons and his family. Soon the buffalo will leave, more settlers will displace them, and three members of the family will leave, never to return. Fortunately, family sustains, and while the future may be bleak, the present has a lot of laughter and satisfaction waiting at the end of the day.

While I have read every single book in this series since it began (and I don’t tend to follow any other series out there, except possibly Lockwood & Co.) I don’t reread previous books when a new one comes out. I don’t have to. Neither, I would argue, would your kids. Each entry in this series stands on its own two feet. Erdrich doesn’t spend inordinate amounts of time catching the reader up, but you still understand what’s going on. And you just love these characters. The books are about family, but with Makoons I really felt the storyline was more about making your own family than the family you’re born into. At the beginning of this book Makoons offers the dire prediction that he and his brother will be able to save their family members, but not all of them. Yet by the story’s end, no matter what’s happened, the family has technically only decreased by two people, because of the addition of another.

Erdrich has never been afraid of filling her books with a goodly smattering of death, dismemberment, and blood. I say that, but these do not feel like bloody books in the least. They have a gentleness about them that is remarkable. Because we are dealing with a tribe of American Indians (Ojibwe, specifically) in 1866, you expect this book to be like all the other ones out there. Is there a way to tell this story without lingering on the harm caused by the American government to Makoons, his brother, and his people? Makoons and his family always seem to be outrunning the worst of the American government’s forces, but they can’t run forever. Still, I think it’s important that the books concentrate far more on their daily lives and loves and sorrows, only mentioning the bloodthirsty white settlers on occasion and when appropriate. It’s almost as if the reader is being treated in the same way as Makoons and his brother. We’re getting some of the picture but we’re being spared its full bloody horror. That is not to say that this is a whitewashed narrative. It isn’t at all. But it’s nice that every book about American Indians of the past isn’t exactly the same. They’re allowed to be silly and to have jokes and fun moments too.

That humor begs a question of course. Question: When is it okay to laugh at a character in a middle grade novel these days? It’s not a simple question. With a high concentration on books that promote kindness rather than bullying, laughing at any character, even a bad guy, is a tricky proposition. And that goes double if the person you’re laughing at is technically on your side. Thank goodness for self-delusion. As long as a character refuses to be honest with him or herself, the reader is invited to ridicule them alongside the other characters. It may not be nice, but in the world of children’s literature it’s allowed. So meet Gichi Noodin, a pompous jackass of a man. This is the kind of guy who could give Narcissus lessons in self-esteem. He’s utterly in love with his own good looks, skills, you name it. For this reason he’s the Falstaff of the book (without the melancholy). He serves a very specific purpose in the book as the reader watches his rise, his fall, and his redemption. It’s not very often that the butt of a book’s jokes is given a chance to redeem himself, but Gichi Noodin does precisely that. That storyline is a small part of the book, smaller even than the tale of Two Strike’s lamb, but I loved the larger repercussions. Even the butt of the joke can save the day, given the chance.

As with all her other books Erdrich does a E.L. Konigsburg and illustrates her own books (and she can even do horses – HORSES!). Her style is, as ever, reminiscent of Garth Williams’ with soft graphite pencil renderings of characters and scenes. These are spotted throughout the chapters regularly, and combined with the simplicity of the writing they make the book completely appropriate bedtime reading for younger ages. The map at the beginning is particularly keen since it not only highlights the locations in each part of the story but also hints at future storylines to come. Of these pictures the sole flaw is the book jacket. You see the cover of this book is a touch on the misleading side since at no point in this story does Makoons ever attempt to feed any baby bears (a terrible idea, namesake or no). Best to warn literal minded kids from the start that that scene is not happening.  Then again, this appears to be a scene from the first book in the series, The Birchbark House, where Makoons’ mother Omakayas feeds baby bears as a girl.  Not sure why they chose to put it on the cover this book but it at least explains where it came from.

It is interesting that the name of this book is Makoons since Chickadee shares as much of the spotlight, if not a little more so, than his sickly brother. That said, it is Makoons who has the vision of the future, Makoons who offers the haunting prediction at the story’s start, and Makoons who stares darkly into an unknown void at the end, alone in the misery he knows is certain to come. Makoons is the Cassandra of this story, his predictions never believed until they are too late. And yet, this isn’t a sad or depressing book. The hope that emanates off the pages survives the buffalos’ sad departure, the sickness that takes two beloved characters, and the knowledge that the only thing this family can count on in the future is change. But they have each other and they are bound together tightly. Even Pinch, that trickster of previous books, is acquiring an odd wisdom and knowledge of his own that may serve the family well into the future. Folks often recommend these books as progressive alternatives to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, but that’s doing them a disservice. Each one of these titles stands entirely on its own, in a world of its own making. This isn’t some sad copy of Wilder’s style but a wholly original series of its own making. The kid who starts down the road with this family is going to want to go with them until the end. Even if it takes another seventeen years. Even if they end up reading the last few books to their own children. Whatever it takes, we’re all in this together, readers, characters, and author. Godspeed, Louise Erdrich.

For ages 7-12

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Professional Reviews:

• A star from SLJ
• A review from Kirkus
• A review from Booklist

Other Blog Reviews: BookPage

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One Day in the Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus Tree
By Daniel Bernstrom
Illustrated by Brendan Wenzel
Katherine Tegen Books (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-235485-3
Ages 3-6
On shelves May 3rd

Like any children’s librarian, I like to assess each picture book that crosses by my eyeballs for readaloud potential. While every picture book (even the wordless ones) can be read aloud to a large group of children, only a select few thrive in that environment. It takes a certain magical combination of art and text to render a story readaloud-perfect. Books you can sing have a leg up. Ditto books with flaps or pull-tabs. But the nice thing about Bernstrom’s book One Day in the Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus Tree is that it doesn’t need to rely on those extra features to enrapture an audience. The book’s lilting rhymes, when practiced beforehand, have the potential to render an audience entranced. Add in the art of Brendan Wenzel, and how well it reads across a room, and you’ve got yourself the makings of what might possibly be the best readaloud picture book of the year.

A boy and his whirly-twirly toy are just the first things to disappear down the gullet of a hungry yellow snake. But rather than bemoan his fate, the boy gets to work in his new role as the snake’s inner id. Commenting on the sheer amount of room and space in the belly, the boy cajoles the snake into eating more and more and more. From birds and worms, to mossy sloths, to a single apple bearing a tiny fly, the creatures slide down the snake’s rapidly expanding throat. A final meal proves too much for the voracious viper and next thing you know boy, toy, and a host of other animals are upchucked back into the world from whence they came. A sly illustration at the end suggests that history may repeat itself soon.

It’s not as if Mr. Bernstrom is the first person to find the word “eucalyptus” so exceedingly delicious to both tongue and ear, but he certainly seems to have been the most prominent in recent memory. As I read the book the language of the reading triggered something in my brain. Something long forgot. And though his name evokes strong feelings in every possible direction, it was Rudyard Kipling I thought of as I read this tale. Specifically the tale of “How the Elephant Got His Trunk”. Though that story does not realize how superb the word “eucalyptus” is when repeated, Kipling got a great deal of mileage out of illustrating thoughts with words. Terms like “great grey greasy Limpopo river”, “Kolokolo Bird”, and “the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake” make those of us reading the stories aloud sound good. Bernstrom is writing for a younger audience so he doesn’t flex his muscles quite as far as Kipling did, but at the same time you recognize that he has the potential to do so. One hopes his future publishing plans may include longer stories just meant for sharing aloud. Lord knows we need more authors like that these days.

The story itself sounds familiar when you read it, but that may have to do more with familiar tropes than a tale we’ve actually seen done. The book also taps into a very popular method of extracting eaten creatures from predators’ bellies: burping. Vomiting works too, though the word sounds more disgusting, so usually in cases like this book the critters are released in a big old burp. In this case, we’re basically seeing a nature-based version of that Monty Python skit where the diner is persuaded to eat one final item (“It’s wafer-thin”). It’s odd to enjoy so much a book where a kid tricks the animal it is within to throw up, but there you go. The storytelling itself is top notch too, though I had a moment of confusion when the snake ate the beehive. Seems to me that that moment is where the boy’s plan potentially takes a turn south. Being stuck in a snake’s belly is one thing. Being stuck in a snake’s belly with flying, stinging insects? Thanks but no.

Illustrator Brendan Wenzel burst onto the children’s picture book illustration scene in 2014 but his rise in prominence since that time has been slow. The artist first caught everyone’s eye when he illustrated Angela DiTerlizzi’s Some Bugs but it was the cover art of Ellen Jackson’s Beastly Babies the following year that was the most eye-catching. That cover sold that book. An ardent conservationist, it makes a lot of sense to turn to Wenzel when you’ve a story chock full of sloths, snakes, and bees. With Bernstrom’s tale, Wenzel must render this tale in the style of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Which is to say, he needs to balance horror with humor. Books where the protagonist gets eaten are common. Books where the protagonist gets eaten and then continues to comment on the action are rare. Wenzel’s snake falls into that category of villains that must be vicious enough to serve as a legitimate threat, but tame enough that a four-year-old won’t fear them on sight. To do this, Wenzel’s art takes on a distinctly jovial tone that treads towards the cartoonish without ever falling in completely. The colors are bright but not overwhelming, just as the action is consistent without horrifying the audience. Most of the creatures handle being eaten with gentle good grace (though the sloth looks more than a little put out about the whole thing).

The idea of being eaten whole is as old as “Little Red Riding Hood”. Heck, it’s even older than that. Look at the Greek myths of Cronus devouring his children whole. Look at any myth or legend that talks of children springing unharmed or fully formed from within nasty beasties. Together, Bernstrom and Wenzel take this ancient idea and turn it into a trickster tale. Usually it’s the eater doing the tricking, and not the eaten, but One Day in the Eucalyptus Eucalyptus Tree isn’t afraid to shake things up (or, for that matter, swallow them down). An oddly peppy little tale of surviving through another’s hubris, this is bound to become one of those readaloud picture books that teachers and librarians lean heavily on for decades to come. Look out, Bernstrom and Wenzel. You guys just went and created for yourselves a masterpiece.

On shelves May 3rd.

Source: F&G sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly by Simms Taback
• Lion, Lion by Miriam Busch, ill. Larry Day
• Chukfi Rabbit’s Big Bad Bellyache by Greg Rodgers, ill. Lesley Stall Widener

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Publishers Weekly
• A star from Kirkus

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Mars Evacuees
By Sophia McDougall
Harper Collins
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-229399-2
Ages 9-12

I’ve a nasty habit of finishing every children’s book I start, no matter how dull or dire it might be. I am sort of alone in this habit, which you could rightly call unhealthy. After all, most librarians understand that their time on this globe is limited and that if they want to read the greatest number of excellent books in a given year, they need to hold off on spending too much time devouring schlock and just skip to the good stuff. So it is that with my weird predilection for completion I am enormously picky when it comes to what I read. If I’m going to spend time with a book, I want to feel like I’m accomplishing something, not slogging through it. My reasoning is that not all books are good from the get-go. Some take a little time to get going, you know? It might take 50 pages before you’re fully on board, so I always give the book the benefit of the doubt. Some books, however, have the quintessential strong first page. They are books that are so smart and good and worthy that you feel that you are maximizing your time on this globe by merely being in their presence. Such is the case with Mars Evacuees. A sci-fi middle grade novel that encompasses everything from gigantic talking floating goldfish to PG discussions of alien sex, this is one of those books you might easily miss out on. Stellar from the first sentence on.

At first it seemed like a good thing that the aliens had come. When you’ve got a planet nearly decimated by global warming, it doesn’t sound like such a bad deal when aliens start telling you they’ve got a way to cool down the planet. The trouble is, they didn’t STOP cooling it down. Turns out the Morrors are looking for a new home and if it doesn’t quite suit their needs they’ll adapt it until it does. Earth has fought back, of course, and so now we’re all trapped in a huge space battle of epic proportions. Alice Dare’s mother is the high flying hero Captain Dare, killer of aliens everywhere. But all Alice knows is that she’s being shipped off with a load of other kids to Mars. The idea is that they’ll be safe there and will be able to finish their education in space until they’re old enough to become soldiers. And everything seems to be going fine and dandy . . . until the adults all disappear. Now Alice and her friends are in the company of a cheery robot goldfish and must solve a couple mysteries along the way. Things like, where are the adults? What are those space locust-like creatures they’ve found on Mars? And most important of all, what happens when you encounter the enemy and it’s not at all like you thought it would be?

The first sentence of any book is a tricky proposition. You want to intrigue but not give too much away. Too brash and the book can’t live up to it. Too mild and people are snoring before you even get to the period. Here’s what McDougall writes: “When the polar ice advanced as far as Nottingham, my school was closed and I was evacuated to Mars.” I could not help but be reminded of the first line of M.T. Anderson’s Feed when I read that (“We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck”). But it’s not just her first sentence that’s admirable. In a scant nine pages the entire premise of the book is laid out for us. Aliens came. People are fighting them. And now the kids are being evacuated to Mars. Badda bing, badda boom. What I didn’t realize when I was first reading the book, though, was that this chapter is very much indicative of the entire novel. There is a kind of series bloat going on in children’s middle grade novels these days. Books with wild premises and high stakes are naturally assumed to be the first in a series. There’s a bit of a whiff of Ender’s Game and The White Mountains about this book when you look at the plot alone, and so you assume that like so many similar titles it’ll either end on a cliffhanger, or it’ll solve the immediate problem, but save the bigger issue for later on. It was only as I got closer and closer to the end that I realized that McDougall was doing something I almost never encounter in science fiction books these days: She was tying up loose ends. It got to the point where I reached the end of the book and found myself in the rare position of realizing that this was, of all things, a standalone science fiction novel. Do they even make those anymore? I’m not saying you couldn’t write a sequel to this book if you didn’t want to. When McDougall becomes a household name you can bet there will be a push for more adventures of Alice, Carl, Josephine and Thsaaa. But it works all by itself with a neat little beginning, middle, and an end. How novel!

For all that, McDougall cuts through the treacle with her storytelling, I was very admiring of the fact that she never sacrifices character in the process of doing so. Carl, for example, should by all rights be two-dimensional. He’s the wacky kid who doesn’t play by the rules! The trickster with a heart of gold. But in this book McDougall also makes him a big brother. He’s got his bones to pick, just as Josephine (filling in the brainy Hermione-type role with aplomb) has personal issues with the aliens that go beyond the usual you-froze-my-planet grudge. Even the Goldfish, perky robot that he is, seems to have limits on his patience. He’s also American for some reason, a fact I shall choose not to read too much into, except maybe to say that if I were casting this as a film (which considering the success of Home, the adaptation of Adam Rex’s The True Meaning of Smekday, isn’t as farfetched as you might think) I’d like to hear him voiced by Patton Oswalt. But I digress.

When tallying up the total number of books written for kids between the ages of 9-12 that discuss the intricacies of alien sex, I admit that I stop pretty much at one. This one. And normally that wouldn’t fly in a book for kids but McDougall is so enormously careful and funny that you really couldn’t care less. Her aliens are fantastic, in part because, like humans, there’s a lot of variety amongst them. This is an author who cares about world building but also doesn’t luxuriate in it for long periods of time. She’s not trying to be the Tolkien of space here. She’s trying to tell a good story cleanly and succinctly.

The fact that it’s funny to boot is the real reason it stands out, though. And I don’t mean it’s “funny” in that it’s mildly droll and knows how to make a pun. I mean there are moments when I actually laughed out loud on a New York subway train. How could I not? This is a book that can actually get away with lines like “If you didn’t want me to build flamethrowers you shouldn’t have taught me the basic principles when I was six.” Or “It was a good time in Earth’s history to be a polar bear. Unless the rumors were true about the Morrors eating them.” Or “Luckily I don’t throw up very easily, but it made me feel as if I was being hit lightly but persistently all over with tablespoons.” That’s the kind of writing I enjoy. Silly and with purpose.

So it’s one part Lord of the Flies in space (please explain to me right now why no one has ever written a book called “Space Lord of the Flies”), one part Smekday, and a lot like those 1940s novels where the kids get evacuated during WWII and find a kind of hope and freedom they never would have encountered at home. It’s also the most fun you’ll encounter in a long time. That isn’t to say there isn’t the occasional dark or dreary patch. But once this book starts rolling it’s impossible not to enjoy the ride. For fans of the funny, fans of science fiction, and fans of books that are just darn good to the last drop.

On shelves now.

Like This? Then Try:

• Randoms by David Liss
• The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
• Boom by Mark Haddon
• The White Mountains by John Christopher

Other Blog Reviews: The Book Smugglers

Misc: And since this book is British (did I fail to mention that part?) here’s the cover they came up with over there.

I think I may like ours more, though both passed up the fact to display the goldfish, which I think was a mistake.  Fortunately, the Brits at least have corrected the mistake (though I’m mildly disappointed to see that there is a sequel after all).

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Red: A Crayon’s Story
By Michael Hall
Greenwillow (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0062252074
Ages 3-6
On shelves now

Almost since their very conception children’s books were meant to teach and inform on the one hand, and to inform one’s moral fiber on the other. Why who can forget that catchy little 1730 ditty from The Childe’s Guide that read, “The idle Fool / Is whipt at School”? It’s got a beat and you can dance to it! And as the centuries have passed children’s books continue to teach and instruct. Peter Rabbit takes an illicit nosh and loses his fancy duds. Pinocchio stretches the truth a little and ends up with a prominent proboscis. Even parents who are sure to fill their shelves with the subversive naughtiness of Max, David, and Eloise are still inclined to indulge in a bit of subterfuge bibliotherapy when their little darling starts biting / hitting / swearing at the neighbors. Instruction, however, is a terribly difficult thing to do in a children’s book. It takes skill and a gentle hand. When Sophie Gets Angry . . . Really Really Angry works because the point of the book is couched in beautiful, lively, eye-popping art, and a story that shows rather than tells. But for every Sophie there are a hundred didactic tracts that some poor child somewhere is being forced to swallow dry. What a relief then to run across Red: A Crayon’s Story. It’s making a point, no doubt about it. But that point is made with a gentle hand and an interesting story, giving the reader the not unpleasant sensation that even if they didn’t get the point of the tale on a first reading, something about the book has seeped deep into their very core. Clever and wry, Hall dips a toe into moral waters and comes out swimming. Sublime.

“He was red. But he wasn’t very good at it.” When a blue crayon in a wrapper labeled “Red” finds himself failing over and over again, everyone around him has an opinion on the matter. Maybe he needs to mix with the other kids more (only, when he does his orange turns out to be green instead). Maybe he just needs more practice. Maybe his wrapper’s not tight enough. Maybe it’s TOO tight. Maybe he’s got to press harder or be sharper. It really isn’t until a new crayon asks him to paint a blue sea that he comes to the shocking realization. In spite of what his wrapper might say, he isn’t red at all. He’s blue! And once that’s clear, everything else falls into place.

A school librarian friend of mine discussed this book with some school age children not too long ago. According to her, their conversation got into some interesting territory. Amongst themselves they questioned why the crayon got the reaction that he did. One kid said it was the fault of the factory that had labeled him. Another kid countered that no, it was the fault of the other crayons for not accepting him from the start. And then one kid wondered why the crayon needed a label in the first place. Now I don’t want to go about pointing out the obvious here but basically these kids figured out the whole book and rendered this review, for all intents and purposes, moot. They got the book. They understand the book. They should be the ones presenting the book.

Because you see when I first encountered this story I applied my very very adult (and very very limited) interpretation to it. A first read and I was convinced that it was a transgender coming-of-age narrative except with, y’know, waxy drawing materials. And I’m not saying that isn’t a legitimate way to read the book, but it’s also a very limited reading. I mean, let’s face it. If Mr. Hall had meant to book to be JUST about transgender kids, wouldn’t it have been a blue crayon in a pink wrapper? No, Hall’s story is applicable to a wide range of people who find themselves incorrectly “labeled”. The ones who are told that they’re just not trying hard enough, even when it’s clear that the usual rules don’t apply. We’ve all known someone like that in our lives before. Sometimes they’re lucky in the way that Red here is lucky and they meet someone who helps to show them the way. Sometimes they help themselves. And sometimes there is no help and the story takes a much sadder turn. I think of those kids, and then I read the ending of “Red” again. It doesn’t help their situation much, but it makes me feel better.

This isn’t my first time at the Michael Hall rodeo, by the way. I liked My Heart Is Like a Zoo, enjoyed Perfect Square, took to Cat Tale, and noted It’s an Orange Aardvark It’s funny, but in a way, these all felt like a prelude to Red. As with those books, Hall pays his customary attention to color and shape. Like Perfect Square he even mucks with our understood definitions. But while those books were all pleasing to the eye, Red makes a sudden lunge for hearts and minds as well. That it succeeds is certainly worth noting.

Now when I was a kid, I ascribed to inanimate objects a peculiar level of anthropomorphizing. A solo game of war turned a deck of cards into a high stakes emotional journey worthy of a telenovela. And crayons? Crayons had their own lives as well. There were a lot of betrayals and broken hearts in my little yellow box. Hall eschews this level of crayon obsession, but in his art I noticed that he spends a great deal of time understanding what a crayon’s existence might entail if they were allowed families and full lives. I loved watching how the points on the crayons would dull or how some crayons were used entirely on a slant, due to the way they colored. I liked how the shorter you are, the older you are (a concept that basically turned my 3-year-old’s world upside down when she tried to comprehend it). I liked how everything that happens to Red stays with him throughout the book. If his wrapper is cut or he’s taped together, that snip and tape stay with him to the end. The result is that by the time he’s figured out his place in the world (and shouldn’t we all be so lucky) he bears the physical cuts and scars that show he’s had a long, hard journey getting to self-acceptance. No mean feat for a book that primarily utilizes just crayon drawings and cut paper, digitally combined.

Not everyone thinks, as I do, that Mr. Hall’s effort is successful. I’ve encountered at least one librarian who told me straight out that she found the book “preachy”. I can see why she’d say that. I mean, it does wear its message on its sleeve. Yet for all that it has a purpose I can’t call it purposeful. What Hall has done so well here is to take a universal story and tell it with objects that almost every reader approaching this book will already be familiar with. These crayons don’t have faces or arms or mouths. They look like the crayons you encounter all the time, yet they live lives that may be both familiar and unfamiliar to readers. And in telling a very simple fish-out-of-water story, it actually manages to make kids think about what the story is actually trying to say. It makes readers work for its point. This isn’t bibliotherapy. It’s bibliodecoding. And when they figure out what’s going on, they get just as much out of it as you might hope. A rare, wonderful title that truly has its child audience in mind. Respectful.

On shelves now.

Source: Final copy sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Ferdinand the Bull by Robert Lawson
• Gaston by Kelly DiPucchio
• The Crocodile Who Didn’t Like Water by Gemma Marino

Professional Reviews: Kirkus

Other Reviews: Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast st Kirkus

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Oh, it’s a big one.  A big honking preview, this is.  Yes indeed, folks, Harper Collins is in town and they’ve a mess of good looking books just aching to arrive on your shelves.  Now the last time I attending a preview for HC I was massively pregnant with back pain to match.  This time around, in comparison, I was positively lithe, leaping from table to table as the editors showed us their pretty baubles.  Here then is an encapsulation of some of the goodies that will be hitting shelves nationwide fairly soon.  To wit:

Table One

At these librarian previews we the MLIS degree holders move from table to table, where each imprint gets its own say.  With Table One we began with Greenwillow and a season that’s going to feel a little distant to us for a while:

Finding Spring by Carin Berger (97800622510193)

Cute, right?  In this story a bear is searching for spring.  So what does he find instead?  Snow.  Lots of it.  Done in Berger’s customary collage style, this is one artistic little book that rewards close reading.  Note, for example, that the snowflakes and flowers see in these pages are held in place by tiny pins.  Sort of gives the whole book a three-dimensional feel.  Gorgeous.

For a closer look at the interior art, stop on by Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast for a sneak peek.

Red by Michael Hall (9780062252074)

I actually already talked a bit about this one back during the last Harper Collins preview, but I like it so very much that I’ll mention it again.  To wit, snarky faceless crayons populate a book where a blue crayon is mislabeled as red.  A pencil tells the tale (as you might imagine).  I’m already imagining a LOT of applications for this as a gift book.  It sells itself.

Touch the Brightest Star by Christie Matheson (9780062274472)

 

Since the popularity of Press Here by Herve Tullet, a load of different interactive picture books have swamped the market.  The best of these do more than simply tout their interactive elements, though.  And those that have a purpose above and beyond the directives aimed at child readers tend to be worth seeking out.  In Matheson’s latest, kids are encouraged to embrace the dark rather than fear it. Touch the firefly and watch it glow on the next page.  That sort of thing.  It’s interactive bedtime fare and even includes some night sky info as well.  Matheson first started these series of sorts with Tap the Magic Tree.  The plans for the third book in the works?  Planting a seed.  Awwww, yeah.

Backyard Witch: Sadie’s Story by Christine Heppermann, ill. Deborah Marcero (9780062338389)

That’s clever.  They were pitching this early chapter title as something to hand to the Ivy & Bean lovers of the world.  Of course it has magic in it, but that’s okay.  If author Christine Heppermann’s name sounds familiar that may be because she was recently responsible for the very YA Poisoned Apples this year. Switching gears a tad, she is now coming out with a story of Sadie.  When her two best friends go on vacation without her, she’s none too pleased.  A trip to her play house leads to the discovery of a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle type witch.  She’s asked to help find the witch’s friends.  One is a bird (a yellow warbler) who was turned avian by mistake.  And since I’m always desperate for early readers, I’m excited to give this one a go.

Blackbird Fly by Erin Entrada Kelly (9780062238610)

Oo. This one sounds exciting.  Written by an author who was born in the Philippines and moved to Louisiana, the book features a Filipino girl dealing with growing up.  The girls at school are no longer nice and her mom runs her home as if she’s still in the Philippines.  She would prefer to learn the guitar and emulate her favorite artist – George Harrison.  Sounds good.

Anyone but Ivy Pocket by Caleb Krisp (9780062364340)

Note, if you will, the tiny skulls on the cover.  From what I could gather then it was a kind of Amelia Bedelia by way of Downton Abbey in a Tim Burton-like book with a Lemony Snicketesque plot.  Got that?  In this story the titular Ivy must deliver a diamond to a girl on her birthday.

Waiting by Kevin Henkes (9780062368430)

I have excellent news.  I’ve seen the Caldecott winner of 2016.  You see?  I just saved you an entire year’s work.  Slap your hands together, folks, because your work is done.  Yes, Kevin Henkes has a new picture book coming out and it is absolutely fascinating.  The toys on the cover are, you see, waiting.  Based on Kevin’s kids’ own toys, the story takes place at a single setting: the window.  And you would be amazed how much drama can be derived from such a location.  Beautiful beautiful beautiful  . . . and not out until September 2015.  Sorry, guys.

The Doldrums by Nicholas Gannon (9780062320940)

What you’re seeing here isn’t the cover so much as an example of some of the full-color art found in this title.  Three kids (Archer, Adelaide, and Oliver) are waiting for an adventure.  Their intent?  To find Archer’s grandparents, last seen on an iceberg.  Add in a pinch of a Hitchcockian flavor and maybe a little Wes Anderson and you’ve got yourself a fascinating little number.

Table Two

Ding!  Moving on.

Bunnies by Kevan Atteberry (9780062307835)

I’m always on the lookout for that rarest of rare beasts: The very young readaloud picture book.  And in this story you will find precisely that.  Not too dissimilar from Bob Shea’s 2014 title Don’t Play With Your Food, the story centers on a monster with a serious bunny obsession.  They appear.  They disappear.  They don’t seem to care that all he wants in the whole entire world is just to see them.  Awww.

Teddy Mars Book #1: Almost a World Record Breaker by Molly B. Burnham, ill. Trevor Spencer (9780062278104)

Teacher debut alert!  There are many things I could tell you about this book, but I think I’m just going to leave you will the first line (which may be slightly paraphrased, so forgive me if it’s not 100% accurate): “The day my brother crawled into the catbox I knew my life would never be the same.”

What This Story Needs Is a Pig in a Wig by Emma J. Virjan (9780062327246)

I’m also always on the lookout for picture books with very simple texts.  When the Geisel Award goes to picture books, I stand up and cheer.  Seems to me that this book, described as containing a text, “where every single word is important,” fits the bill. The plot is simple.  There is a pig.  Too many animals jump into her boat.  Hijinks ensue.

Stick Dog Dreams of Ice Cream by Tom Watson (9780062278074)

Were you aware that Stick Dog started as an app?  Not I, said the fly.  Now on his third book, the eternally hungry hero continues to lure in readers not yet ready for Wimpy Kid, looking for something with slightly more text than Bad Kitty.  And the good news?  Stick Cat is on the horizon.  Woohoo!

Little Miss, Big Sis by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, ill. Peter H. Reynolds (9780062302038)

Last seen in the book Plant a Kiss, two siblings return to the picture book stage.  Clever in its simplicity (and how has no one ever thought to write a title like this one before?) the book contains a young but very funny text.  And since funny is at a premium these days, this is a book I’ll be looking to read.

Lazy Dave by Peter Jarvis (9780062355980)

One namer children’s authors are not unheard of (Avi, anyone?).  And like all one namers, Jarvis actually has two.  His name is Peter Jarvis and in 2015 he’ll be debuting with a story of a girl an her dog.  The girl in question loves the dog but is perturbed by the fact that he’s so ding dang lazy.  Truth is, the dog gets up to a LOT of adventures.  He just happens to experience them through sleepwalking.  Certainly this will pair well with that recent TOON book Tippy and the Night Parade, that’s for sure.  Look for Jarvis to come out with Forgetful Fred at some point as well.

Table Three

Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai (9780062229182)

I covered this book briefly in my last Harper Collins preview, but it’s just so nice I’ll cover it twice.  Coming from the author of Inside Out and Back Again, this book is Thanhha Lai’s first title since she won her Newbery Honor.  No pressure or anything.  Fortunately it looks as though she’s not let the win go to her head.  Like her last book, this story also features a child of Vietnamese parents, but there the similarities pretty much stop.  Writing in prose, in this contemporary novel a girl lives in Orange County with her family and grandmother.  When her grandma discovers that there may be new information about her husband, who disappeared during the Vietnam War, our heroine finds herself forced to go along.  Inspired by family history it’s getting starred reviews left and right.  Better check it out then.

Ferals by Jacob Grey (9780062321039)

10 points to the author and publisher for not naming this book “Crow Boy”.  The temptation to do so must have been extreme.  I mean, c’mon.  “Raised by crows”?  Writes itself.  Described to us as “Batman meets The Graveyard Book” (surprised they didn’t reference the film The Crow as well) the story stars a boy named Caw.  He has the ability to speak to crows, which marks him as a “feral”.  Now the most evil feral, a fellow known as the Spinning Man, is returning.  Beware the spiders, folks.

The Last Dragon Charmer #1: Villain Keeper (9780062308436)

Here’s a term you may never hear again, but that just sounds interesting: Reverse portal fantasy. Know what it is?  Well, the plot of this book might give you a hint.  In this story a prince wants to slay a dragon.  Pretty standard stuff.  Or at least it would be if the prince wasn’t mysteriously sent to Asheville, NC.  Number of dragons in Asheville?  Zero.  Or so you might think . . . They said this would be a good complementary title to The Hero’s Guide for Saving Your Kingdom.  Absolutely.

Gone Crazy in Alabama by Rita Williams-Garcia (9780062215871)

It’s here!  It’s here!  It’s almost here!  In April or so we’ll be seeing the third and final volume in the Rita Williams-Garcia series that began with One Crazy Summer. I thoroughly approve of the clothes featured on the cover here (the bell bottoms on book #2 still rankle).  In this book the girls take a bus to visit Big Ma in the family home.  The time period is Summer 1969.  The place?  Alabama.  And the three find out pretty quickly that they are not exactly in the best possible time and place to be chanting Black Power slogans.  The editor, Rosemary Brosnan, said in all seriousness that it’s the best of the three.

Monstrous by MarcyKate Connolly, ill. Skottie Young (9780062272713)

They say it’s Frankenstein meets the Brothers Grimm but I suspect there might be a bit of Monster High stuck in there on the side.  Meet our heroine.  She has the eyes of a cat, the wings of a raven, and she has one purpose in life: To rescue girls under the spell of an evil wizard.  Simple, right?  But when you’re a monster you have to learn that sometimes there are things and people out there even more monstrous than you.

Endangered by Lamar Giles (9780062297563)

Yep.  This one’s a YA novel but I’m highlighting it because it’s one of the very rare titles with a contemporary African-American girl on the cover.  Little wonder.  It’s by #WeNeedDiverseBooks fellow Lamar Giles.  Well played.

Table 4

Meet the Dullards by Sara Pennypacker, ill. Daniel Salmieri (978006198563)

Now again, we talked about this book before, but there’s a lot to love here.  Salmieri, man.  That kid’s going places.  It hurts matters not a jot that his Dragons Love Tacos is on the New York Times bestseller list every week right now (sidenote: the best Dragons Love Tacos video of all time is here).  In this book long time pro Pennypacker pairs with Salmieri to present what may be the greatest childhood metaphor of all time.  Mom and Dad are dull.  Proudly so, and like all good parents they are attempting to inculcate their children in the wide and wonderful world of blahness.  Trouble is, the kids are dangerously attracted to activities more interesting than watching paint dry.  The description? “The Stupids with boring people”.  Nice.

Cat and Bunny by Mary Lundquist (9780062287809)

Doesn’t look like much from the cover, does it?  But doggone it if this isn’t one of the cleverer little books coming out right now.  A debut, the book features a large menagerie (for lack of a better word) of kids in animal costumes.  In this book, a topic horribly familiar to many a kiddo is tackled: Sharing your best friend.  Quail, you see, wants to play with Bunny but Cat is NOT down with that plan.  Understanding ensues.  Talk about a topic parents ask for that we hardly have any books to cover!!  Note: My table insisted that the endpapers be turned into a poster someday.

If You Plant a Seed by Kadir Nelson (9780062298898)

Kadir continues with the cute.  Picasso had his Blue Period.  Kadir has his Cute Period.  Described as “intense”, in this book a mouse and a rabbit plant a seed.  What ensues is a tale of selfishness, kindness, karma, and consequences.

First Snow by Peter McCarty (9780062189967)

Okay.  So we need diverse books, right?  Absolutely.  But don’t we also need diverse animal stories?  Is there any reason why animals can’t be diverse as well?  Peter McCarty has always been remarkably good in this arena.  Now he continues his series of books starring familiar characters.  He began with Henry In Love, continued with Chloe, and now we have First Snow.  Pedro is from South America and has come to spend time with his cousins in the north.  When they learn that he has no experience with snow they insist that he join in the fun.  He takes some convincing, of course.  Snow is, and it’s hard to argue with this, cold.  Fortunately a sledding mishap ends with the unintentional consequence of Pedro suddenly loving the white, fluffy, and (yes) cold stuff.  Great great great.

Every Little Bit of You is Yummy! by Tim Harrington (9780062328168)

Like a lot of librarians I’m always on the lookout for good picture book readalouds.  Did you see Jbrary’s 2014 Favourite Storytime Picture Books?  That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about.  So I was intrigued by what Harrington is doing here.  Like a kind of follow-up to Eric Carle’s From Head to Toe, the book is interactive with a song online to boot.

Masterminds by Gordon Korman (9780062299963)

The heart wants what it wants.  And what my heart wants right now is for 2015 to arrive so that I can finally pick this book up and read it.  For whatever reason, Gordon Korman has managed to pen a book that pushes all my buttons.  As a kid I would have been all over this thing.  You see, in this book a group of kiddos live in a kind of Pleasantville-ish town.  They’re good kids too.  Then one day a kid bicycles to the town limits and pretty quickly they discover that nothing they know is the truth.  They’re a sociological experiment in the making and their purpose has yet to reveal itself.

The Girl in the Torch by Rob Sharenow (9780062227959)

Here in New York we children’s librarians keep one eye peeled at all times for NYC-related children’s book fare.  Happily there’s a bloody ton of it out there.  Case in point, a book they’re calling “Hugo Cabret meets True Grit“.  While on Ellis Island a girl’s mother dies in quarantine.  So what’s a daughter to do?  With the prospect of deportation looming, our heroine does what any forward thinking young woman would.  She decides to live in the torch of The Statue of Liberty.  Tackling big themes like what it means to be “American”, this just sounds fun.

Joey and Johnny, the Ninjas: Get Mooned by Kevin Serwacki, ill. Chris Pallace (9780062299338)

Speaking of fun: Ninjas!  Ninjas make everything better.  The first in a four book series, imagine if Roald Dahl wrote a story about a ninja school and it was then animated by the creators of Adventure Time.  That’s what you’ll get in this book of two competing ninja schools.  Apparently the book tackles the tricky issue of taking the easy way out of things.  With ninjas.  Did I mention that part before?

Moonpenny Island by Tricia Springstubb (9780062112934)

Gilbert Ford.  I hope he’s very rich by now.  Periodically middle grade book covers go through phases.  There was the Brett Hardinger phase for a while, and before that the C.F. Payne phase.  Now it’s all Gilbert Ford all the way.  He started out luring in the kiddos with the Pseudonymous Bosch “Secret” series, and cemented his reign with the Newbery Honor book Three Times Lucky.  There’s just something appealing about his style.  Now he’s done the cover for the latest Tricia Springstubb novel.  This book is about seeing things for the first time.  It’s also about a mom who leaves to take care of grandma, themes of evolution, and a load of trilobites (note the cover).

The Dungeoneers by John David Anderson (9780062338143)

Hard to tell.  Is this a Dan Santat cover?  Sure looks like one.  In any case, the author of the delightful Sidekicked is back, but not with any superhero tales this time.  Nope, this is a story of Colm.  He’s a peasant who, quite frankly is fed up with being a peasant.  After picking the wrong pocket (to put it mildly) Colm’s given a choice.  He could be done away with in a suitably medieval manner or he can become a member of low born adventurers.  He chooses the latter and is enthralled, until he realizes that there are problem with this particular group.

Omega City by Diana Peterfreund (9780062310859)

Strap in, folks.  We’re clearly in adventure mode now.  I don’t know about you but I’ve noticed a significant uptick in the number of books described using Goonies as a reference.  They called the Little, Brown & Co. book If You Find This by Matthew Baker as “Goonies meets Holes“.  Now Harper Collins is calling Omega City “Goonies meets City of Ember“.  After a girl’s father loses his job she follows clues left by a diary and finds an underground bunker.  It’s first in a three book series and promises action.  Just so long as it doesn’t reference Omega Man in any way (it’s the title that made me think of it) we’re cool.

The Arctic Code by Matthew J. Kirby (978006224873)

That Matthew Kirby.  He just can’t keep away from ice.  First it was the remarkable Icefall.  Now he has a new three book series set in the near future.  Earth has succumbed to a new Ice Age.  Meanwhile our hero’s mother is in the Arctic doing some kind of work there.  When she disappears after sending a cryptic message, her daughter Eleanor goes to find her.  Apparently the book asks the rather difficult question, if we can’t save everyone on earth, who do we save and why?  Sounds like it would pair well with the Rebecca Stead debut novel First Light.

A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ill. Gris Grimly (9780062293756)

Cool . . . and YA.  Doggone it.  Yes, the wonderful Gris Grimly is back and this time he’s chosen to illustrate the debut of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous hero.  In color no less!  Now when I saw what book it was I admit I was a bit incredulous.  Anyone who has read this knows that there is a LONG section dedicated to a subplot involving Mormons in America.  I asked and yes indeed.  The Mormons made it into this book intact.  Fascinating.

Table 5

Picture Perfect #1: Bending Over Backwards by Cari Simmons (9780062310224)

Someday an enterprising librarian in a small system will create stickers that say “snark free” or “mean girl free” and put them on certain titles in their collection.  I know that when I was a kid I would have vastly preferred those kinds of books.  Those stickers would actually apply pretty well to this new series by Cari Simmons.  Each story is a standalone but they all have one thing in common: What happens when you realize that you and your longtime best friend are two VERY different people?  They said it was for the Mix / Candy Apple readers.  I say it’s also for the fans of The Kind of Friends We Used to Be and the upcoming Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson.

Archie Greene and the Magician’s Secret by D.D. Everest (9780062312112)

Kids, here’s some safe advice.  Should you receive an ancient book for your birthday, just put that sucker down.  You don’t want to know what it’s going to get you into.  In the case of Archie Greene, such a book helps him to discover that he’s a Flame Keeper, charged to find and preserve magical books.  Mind you, occasionally there are books where characters pop out of their pages.  Just consider that one of the hazards of the job.

The Fog Diver by Joel Ross (9780062352934)

Adventure! Pirates! Airships! Slum kids who’s made themselves a kind of patched together family.  In the future we live in the sky.  Why?  Because a deadly fog is on the ground, of course.  The worse news?  It’s rising.  For that reason we’re all living on the mountaintops these days.  The wealthy are the uppermost while fog divers scavenge below.  Our heroes must save their guardian and to do so they must go on a journey.  Amongst them is a boy who can survive the fog so, naturally, the bad guy wants him.  This will be the first of two books in the series.

The Keepers: The Box and the Dragonfly (9780062275820)

And this one will be the first of four books.  I’ve written about this before, actually.  In this book a boy meets a group called “The Keepers” and is given a box that shows the future.  Only thing is, this isn’t a fantasy.  Nope.  It’s a highly developed science fiction title where all the “magical” elements are based on theoretical physics.

Mars Evacuees by Sophia McDougall (9780062293992)

My resident science fiction expert librarian (see: Views from the Tesseract) assures me that this book is excellent.  In it, Earth is at war with aliens so the kids are evacuating to Mars.  Our heroine arrives there and next thing you know all the adults have disappeared.  So the kids, the robots, and an alien (!) team up.  They described this one as Pixar-esque with plenty of humor.  And the name of the sequel?  Space Hostages.  Awesome.

And that’s that!  All that remains is to look at the . . .

Best Meets

You know, sometimes in my quieter moments I look back and think about my favorite bizarre “meets” overheard at a preview.  It didn’t even use the word “meets”, but the implication was clear.  The name of the book has long since faded from my mind but the description . . . ah, the description is forever.  “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . . . on MARS!”  Still the best.  In the meantime, these are pretty good too:

“The Monkey’s Paw meets E. Lockhardt meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” – The Cost of All Things by Maggie Lehrman

“X-Men meets Game of Thrones” – The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

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Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann. HarperCollins. 2014. Reviewed from electronic galley.

The Plot: Fairy tale retellings, in poetry and photographs.

The Good: Seriously, I just adore retellings. Whether it's looking into the historical origins of fairy tales, modernizing them, twisting them -- I just love what people can do with the familiar and the unknown, making them new and fresh.

Poisoned Apples approaches fairy tales with a particular question: what do they say about what it means to be a woman? What does it mean in today's world?

"The action's always there
Where are the fairy tales about gym class
or the doctor's office of the back of the bus
where bad things can also happen?"

Where bad things happen. There, right there, it shows that the darkness of the fairy tales is what will be examined.

So many good, tight poems, and each is independent, so it's hard to write about because how to select just one or two.

Some are cynical -- the "Prince Charming" who is charming to parents but says to the girlfriend
"Girl,
you look amazing. That sweater
makes your boobs look
way bigger."

Others are not. "
Retelling" says, "What the miller's daughter should have said
from the start
or at any point down the line is,
no."

And then offers a better solution:
"Once upon a time
there was a miller's daughter
who got a studio apartment
took classes during the day."

"Retelling" may be my favorite because it says, you can say no. You can put yourself first. And that means a happier ending for everyone.

Poisoned Apples is a short book but not a quick read. There is a lot here to discuss; a lot to think about it; a lot to question. And the questions are not just about fairy tales and the poems. It's about what it is to be a woman, what that means, what society and family and friends say it means.

I reviewed this from an electronic galley; and let me say, I want to get my hands on the final print version because I think it's going to be an even more intimate reading.

Other reviews: Sense and Sensibilities and Stories; Kirkus Reviews.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click from here to Amazon and buy something, I receive a percentage of the purchase price.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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Feral by Holly Schindler. Harper Collins. 2014. Review copy from publisher.

The Plot: Two girls: one dead, one left for dead.

Serena is the dead girl, but it's her story that starts the book.

Claire is alive, having survived a brutal attack months before. She's the new girl in town, arriving at the same time Serena's body is found.

Claire finds herself drawn into the mystery of Serena's death: was it an accident? Or was it murder?

The Good:  The cats. Oh dear lord, the feral cats.

I thought I was going to say that the scariest scene was Claire's attack. A confident teen, walking home alone in the dark, chased and surrounded and beaten and left for dead.

But then I think of the feral cats, the ones that went after Serena's dead body and that scene, and the later scenes were the cats seem to come after Claire, and I think, no, that's the scariest scene.

This is a mystery, yes, about what happened to Serena. The reader, from the start, knows what has happened: "The body belonged -- or really, the body had once belonged -- to Serena Sims, a B average junior who loved her best friend, the sound of the rain, writing for the school paper, and her mother's chocolate mayonnaise cake with homemade icing, a family specialty. . . . Seventeen and dead: it was the worst kind of vulnerable." Serena is dead, but she is somehow still present, still feeling everything. And sharing all that, every bump and thump as her killer drags her body and dumps it. And then the cats come.

But there is only so much that Serena shares with the reader.

Then there is Claire: still recovering, physically and psychologically, from her attack months before. She is drawn to Serena's death for many reasons, one of which is that everyone else seems to believe that Serena's death is accidental. It turns out that Claire's new house was one that Serena lived in years ago; the first teens she meets are friends of Serena's; the local feral cat is the cat Serena fed.

As the story progresses, as Claire chases down the truth, Serena's ghost -- if that's what she is -- grows unhappier and unhappier with her own death, and more dangerous.

One more thing: the setting is fabulous. The town, Peculiar, Missouri,

How all this comes together was something I didn't expect, and made me go back and reread the first few chapters to see what clues were there. Part of me doesn't want to give away what that is, but part of me wants to give it away so you can understand when I say: Brilliant. You had me, you convinced me, and when I realized the truth of what was happening -- yes. That's true and real. Well, maybe not real, because at the end? I'm not sure what was real or not, what was Claire's fears, what was a haunting. But I do know this:

Damn, those feral cats are scary.


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© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

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Giant Dance Party
By Betsy Bird
Illustrated By Brandon Dorman
Greenwillow (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0061960833
Ages 3-7
On shelves now.

Gotcha!

I’m just messing with you.  No, I’m not going to actually review my book here.  I’m not going to wax rhapsodic over the hidden meanings lurking behind the mysterious cupcake on the cover.  I’ll refrain from delving deep into how Lexy’s emotional journey with the giants is just a thinly disguised metaphor for U.S. / Russia relations between the years of 1995-2004 (it isn’t, for the record).  I won’t even talk about the twist ending since spoilers make for interesting, if sometimes heartbreaking, reviews.

No, I’ll just talk instead about how happy I am that publication day is here at all.  And how pleasant it is to share that day with my buddy / pal / illustrious illustrator Brandon Dorman.  I’ve had a couple chances to present the book so far (including one disaster that I’ll get to in a moment) and here is what I have learned.

1.  It is possible to read this book to 3-year-olds thanks in large part to the pictures.

This is true.  The text is bouncy, which doesn’t hurt matters any, but when one is dealing with very small fry it is also mighty helpful when you have eye-popping visuals on your side.  And let me tell you, kids like the art of Brandon Dorman.  More than that, they love it.

2.  It is possible to read this book to 4-year-olds thanks in large part to the mentions of dances.

I have discovered by reading this at a couple daycares that if you teach kids jazz hands, interpretive dance, the twist, and the chicken dance in the course of reading this book, they don’t get bored.  As a children’s librarian I was always the storytime reader whose peripheral visual would zero in on the single kid out of thirty that looked bored.  This flaw in the programming has carried over to reading my own book.  If one kid is bored I suddenly get this manic tinge to my voice and everything becomes a little more frantic.  Be warned, easily bored children.  I’m gunning for you.

3.  Etsy is the creator of and solution to all of life’s woes.

I learned this truth when I constructed a necklace out of Caldecott cover Shrinky Dinks.  To make the necklace I wanted something that featured fuses (as a nod to the name of this blog).  So what do you do when you get such an urge?  You go to Etsy and search for such a thing.  In the case of my book presentations I decided I wanted blue furry boots.  So I type “blue furry boots” into Etsy and what do I get?  Something even better.  Blue furry rave legwarmers.  Oh, they’re the pip.  Here’s what I look like talking to the kids in ‘em.

Dance for me, little children.  Dance, I say!

They are also very easy to snuggle, if snuggling is what you want to do.

Special thanks to Melanie Hope Greenberg for the pics.

4. When you decide to go to a bookstore you’ve never visited before, give ‘em your phone number.  Beforehand.

Fun Fact: Did you know that there are TWO bookstores in Brooklyn called Powerhouse?  As of Saturday, I did not.  And thus begins my tale of woe.

I think there’s a general understanding out there that authors have at least one bad author experience tale they can tell.  But that experience, as important as it may be, is not usually their VERY FIRST BOOKSTORE APPEARANCE.  Because, you see, on Sunday I knew I was speaking at Powerhouse.  So I Googled it, got the address in Dumbo, and merrily traipsed over there.  The poor staff was cleaning up from an event the previous night and had no clue what I was talking about.  Still, they were very nice and helpful and though they didn’t have any copies of my book I just figured folks might order it.  Mind you, “folks” was a pretty optimistic term to be using in my head since nobody was there.  I mean nobody.  Little tumbleweeds would have been my audience had I spoke.

After giving it some time I packed up, the clerks apologized, and I went home.  Mildly mortifying that no one in Brooklyn came to see me, but it was 11:30 on a Sunday morning.  Not ideal.

And I would have proceeded in my merry little bubble for whole weeks at a time had I not gotten an email the next afternoon that made it very clear that I had gone to the wrong Powerhouse.  That there are, in fact, TWO stores out there with the same name.  Two.  Not one.  Two.  And my lovely publicist at Harper Collins had even gone so far as to send me a link to the event with the address front and center.  An address that was not in DUMBO at all but Park Slope.

So apparently (and this is where I sink into a puddle of 100% sheer uncut mortification) folks DID come to my event.  Folks I like.  Folks I would want to see.  Folks who would want to see me and who failed to do so because this doofus author merrily went to the wrong friggin’ store.

What have we learned here today, children?  Even if a publicist sets everything up for you, give the store your cell phone.  All this would have been solved if the store had had my info and had given me a ring.  There are other lessons of course (actually READ what your publicist sends you might be right up there) but you can bet I’ll be contacting all my future store appearances with my cell # right now.  Yup yup yup.

Onward and upward my patient fellows.

On shelves April 23rd (happy birthday to me!)

Source: Wrote the darn book.

Like This?  Then Try:

• Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle

• The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot by Scott Magoon

• Abiyoyo by Pete Seeger

Blog Reviews:

• Bookie Wookie Kids
• A Book and a Hug

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus
• Publishers Weekly
• School Library Journal

Misc:

• For the Harper Collins site I came up with a little explanation of How to Throw a Giant Dance Party.  Electric blue Kool-Aid may or may not play a hand in it all.

Videos:

I would be amiss in not including them.

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Stardines Swim High Across the Sky and Other Poems
By Jack Prelutsky
Illustrated by Carin Berger
Greenwillow Books (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-201464-1
Ages 4-8
On shelves February 26th.

To non-children’s librarians the statistics are baffling. Your average poetry book isn’t exactly a circ buster. It sits on the shelf for months at a time, gathering dust, biding its time. When kids come to the reference desk to ask for titles, they don’t tend to ask for poetry unless they’ve some sort of assignment they need to fulfill. Yet for all that poetry books for kids are shelf sitters, it’s hard to find a single one that hasn’t gone out in the last two or three months. How to account for it? Well, there’s Poetry Month (April) to begin with. That always leads to a run on the 811 portion of the library shelves. But beyond that kids read poetry in dribs and drabs over the course of the year. Maybe as Summer Reading books. Maybe as class assignments. Whatever the reason, poetry has a longevity, if not a popularity, that’s enviable. Now Jack Prelutsky, our first Children’s Poet Laureate and creator of Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant is following up his work with yet another delve into (in the words of Kirkus) “iambic ‘pun’tameter”. And while Prelutsky gives us a second round, illustrator Carin Berger steps up her game to give these hybrid birds and beasts a kick in the old artistic derriere.

Forget everything you ever knew about animals. Not since On Beyond Zebra has the world seen a menagerie quite as wild as the one on display here. Step right up, folks, and take a gander at the rare and remarkable Fountain Lion. “The only lions no one dreads, / They all have fountains on their heads.” Delicious crustaceans more your speed? Then come and observe the rare Slobsters. “Their sense of decorum / Is woefully small. / Slobsters don’t have / Many manners at all.” Or for the kiddies, how about an adorable Planda? “They plan to learn to roller-skate, / To juggle, and to fence. / They plan to go to clown school / And cavort in circus tents.” With his customary clever verse, Jack Prelutsky invents sixteen imaginary animals of varying degrees of odd. Accompanying his rhymes is his old partner-in-crime Carin Berger, who has moved beyond mere collage and has gone so far to construct elaborate shadow boxes of each and every poem. The end result is impressive, hilarious, and one of the most original little poetry collections you’ll see in many a year.

The shadow box, that staple of undergraduate art projects everywhere, is a relative newcomer to the world of children’s literature. A shadow box, once you’ve designed it and filled it with cool images, needs to be photographed perfectly if it’s going to work on a flat page. That means you need an illustrator confident in their abilities to produce art that will look as good in two dimensions as three. Berger is clearly up to the challenge. A master of collage, in this book she bends over backwards to make her images the best they can be. She’s very good at conveying distance. She also conveys perspective quite well. A cut image of a bicycle makes it appear to be three-dimensional because it is photographed from above. I know the image itself is just a flat piece of paper, but the illusion is complete. Everything, in fact, appears to have been planned with a meticulous eye.

Even within the boxes themselves Berger’s job is not easy. Consider an early poem called “Bluffaloes” which combines the word “Buffaloes” with the word “Bluff”. It’s about buffalo types who are scaredy cats should you call their bluff. Fair enough. Now how the heck do you illustrate that? In Berger’s case it looks like she may have considered an alternative definition of the word “bluff” as in “a cliff, headland, or hill with a broad, steep face” since her bluffaloes look like nothing so much as little pieces of a cliff running hither and thither on newly sprouted legs. Artistic creativity is much called for when wordplay is open ended.

Of course, as an adult I’m going to be naturally inclined towards artsy fartsy styles. But this all begs the obvious question: Will kids dig it? Well, let’s stop and consider for a moment. What precisely has Berger done? She has made little boxes and put action-packed scenes within them. Who else does that kind of thing? If you said, “Kids who make dioramas for school” you have earned yourself a cookie. Yes, it appears to me that Berger has taken one of the oldest homework assignments of our age and has turned it into a book. An enterprising teacher would find a goldmine of assignment material here. What if they had their kids write their own poems in Prelutsky’s style? What if they made pairs of kids come up with the idea for the poem and then one kid could write it while the other made a diorama to go with it? Can you now say, “instantaneous original poetry project for Poetry Month”? I knew you could.

Then there’s Prelutsky. He always scans. He always rhymes. And he throws in big words that will give some children a good dictionary workout. For example, in the Sobcat poem he writes, “The SOBCAT is sad / As a feline can be / And spends its time crying / Continuously. / It has no real reason / To be so morose. / It’s simply its nature / To act lachrymose.” Nice. Of course the unspoken secret to many of these poems isn’t that they simply make clever pairings of words and phrases with animals but that they say something about certain types of people. The Planda makes eternal plans and never carries them out. The Sobcat “delights / In its own misery”. You can find many a friend and a relation found in the animals of these pages.

The pairings of the poems is sometimes key. It works particularly well when you place the “Jollyfish” poem next to the “Sobcat”, for example. There are other moments when you suspect that the layout and order of the poems was a carefully thought out process. The book begins, for example, with the titular poem “Stardines” which comments that “In silence, these nocturnal fish / Are set to grant the slightest wish.” That’s a good note to begin on. The book then alternates between animals with physical attributes that are their primary lure and animals with one-of-a-kind personality quirks. It’s interesting to see how all this ends with, of all the animals, the Bardvark. “BARDVARKS think they’re poets / And persist in writing rhyme. / Their words are uninspired / And a total waste of time.” So it is that book of poetry for kids ends by highlighting an animal that’s an atrocious poet. The final lines, “Undeterred, they keep on writing / And reciting every day. / That’s why BARDVARKS are a problem – / You can’t make them go away.” One can’t help but think Prelutsky is taking a little jab at himself here. Not a significant jab, but small enough to allow him to laugh at himself a little. Not a bad way to finish, really.

Perhaps a key at the back of the book explaining which animals and concepts were combined would not have been out of place. I found myself baffled by the “swapitis” (pronounced swap-uh-teez) and found myself wishing I knew what animal it hailed from. It looks somewhat deer-like. After a bit of internet searching I discovered an animal called a wapitis, which is a kind of North American deer. Good to know, though I suspect it won’t immediately pop to many folks’ minds unless prompted and prodded a bit. Of course having kids find the animals referenced could be a fun homework assignment in and of itself. There are possibilities there. Just no answers.

Jack Prelutsky is a staple. Folks my age still associate him with The New Kid On the Block. Kids these days have a lot more Prelutskyian choices to pick from. Berger, in contrast, is new and fresh and bright and shiny. Combine the old school rhymes and chimes of a Prelutsky with the crackling energy and visual wit of Berger and you’ve got yourself a heckuva team. Stardines may tread familiar ground once trod before, but its method of presentation is anything but overdone. Hand this one to the kid who moans to you that they “have” to read a book of poetry for school. Who knows? It may hook ‘em before they realize what’s what. One of a kind.

On shelves February 26th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Carin Berger

• But Who Will Bell the Cats? by Cynthia von Buhler

• Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein, illustrated by Ed Young

• Steady Hands: Poems About Work by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer

Other Blog Reviews: Book Aunt

Professional Reviews:

• A star from PW
• Kirkus

Misc:

• Read this great little short interview with Ms. Berger at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast as she discusses how, “This seemed a perfect opportunity to reference my passion for wunderkammers and early science — and crusty old museums.”

• And here’s one shadow box that didn’t make the cut.

• It’s Poetry Friday!  Head on over to Teaching Authors to see the round-up of other great poetry books of the day!

Video:

Take a studio tour into the world of Carin Berger to see some of the fantastic art from this book.

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The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom
By Christopher Healy
Walden Pond Press (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-211743-4
Ages 9-12
On shelves now.

Since when did fairytales become the realm of the girly? I blame Disney. Back in the days of Grimm your average everyday fairytale might contain princesses and pretty gowns and all that jazz, but it was also just as likely to offer its own fair share of dragons and murderers and goblins as well. Once the Disney company realized that princesses were magnificent moneymakers, gone was the gore and the elements that might make those stories appealing to the boy set. If you actually sat down and watched the films you’d see plenty of princes fighting beasts (or fighting beast princes) but the very idea of “Sleeping Beauty” or “Snow White” or any of those films has taken on a semi-sweet and sickly vibe. By the same token, it’s hard to find fractured fairytale children’s novels that can be loved just as much by boys as by girls. The great equalizer of all things is, to my mind, humor. Make something funny and gender is rendered irrelevant. There are certainly a fair number of funny fairytale-type stories out there, but to my mind none are quite so delightful and hilarious as Christopher Healy’s newest series. Starting with The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (and followed by The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle), Healy takes that most maligned of all fairytale characters and finally gives “him” a voice. You heard right. Prince Charming is finally getting his due.

Meet Princes Liam, Frederic, Duncan, and Gustav. If their names don’t ring a bell with you, don’t be too surprised. Known better by their pseudonym “Prince Charming” the princes are a bit peeved at the lousy P.R. their adventures have garnered. The bards have found that their stories tell better when the girls get all the credit (and actual names) and it isn’t just the princes that are peeved. A local witch is more than a little upset, and that anger may have something to do with the slow disappearance of the bards themselves. Now it’s up to our four heroes, brought together through the strangest of circumstances, to band together to defeat an evil witch, strike down a giant or two, outwit bandits, and generally find a way to make their faults into strengths.

I take a gander at debut author Christopher Healy’s credentials and I am oddly pleased. A reviewer of children’s books and media he has written for Cookie, iVillage, Parenting, Time Out New York Kids, and Real Simple Family. In short, he’s from the parenting sphere. Clearly he’s taken what he’s learned and applied it here because it’s his wordplay that stands out. For example, he might list the jobs Cinderella has to perform as using “every waking hour performing onerous tasks, like scrubbing grout or chipping congealed mayonnaise from between fork tines.” By the same token, the sneaky sidenote is a delicate beast. It requires of the author a bit of finesse. Go too far as a writer for children and you end up amusing only the adults who happen to pick up your book. With this in mind, Healy is a sneaky sidenote master. He’ll give away a detail about the future and then say, “Oops, sorry about that. I probably should have said, `Spoiler alert’.” That’s 21st century foreshadowing for you. Or he might sneak in a Groucho Marx reference like “Captain Spaulding” once in a while, but it works within the context of the story (and amuses reviewers like myself in the meantime). Or he’ll mention that part of the witch’s plan is shooting bears at people out of cannons. It’s hard not appreciate a mind that comes up with that kind of thing.

In his New York Times review of the book Adam Gopnik took issue with the sheer enjoyment one can have with the book, going so far as to say, “Each page offers something to laugh at, but it can be an effort to turn each page.” His objections were steeped in the world building happening here, unfavorably comparing it to The Princess Bride (an unfair comparison if ever there was one) and even shooting quite low when he dared to invoke the name of the Shrek films. Oog. The fact of the matter is that if you’re looking for deep insightful probes into the human psyche, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a perfectly fun story that meanders a bit but always stays on its feet, here’s your book. The princes are broad portraits, stereotypes that break out of their chosen roles, if reluctantly. They are also fellows you would follow from book to book to book. They have on-page chemistry (my wordier version of on-screen chemistry). You believe in these guys and you want them to succeed and not get beaten up too badly. It’s a fun and funny book and though it won’t win huge children’s literature awards it will be adored by its readership and discussed at length on the playgrounds of this good great nation. And that is just fine and dandy with me.

Considering how many contemporary updates to fairytales there are in pop culture right now (Once Upon a Time, Grimm, Snow White & The Huntsman, etc.) it’s strange to me that I can’t think of a book to quite compare with this one. A book that takes standard fairytales and familiar characters, renders them unfamiliar but human, and then loads the storyline up with bucketfuls of humor. I mean, books like A Tale Dark and Grimm and In a Glass Grimmly are newfound looks at old standards but they haven’t the light bouncy breezy quality of Healy’s work. These are fairytales for folks who love Disney, hate Disney, love fractured fairytales, love the original fairytales, and/or just like a good story in general. It’s perfect bedtime fare and ideal for those kids who want something amusing to read on their own. You know when a kid walks up to you and says they want a “funny” book? This is for them as well. Basically it’s for everyone, fantasy fans and fantasy haters alike. If ever you feel sick of the sheer seriousness of some fantasies (*cough* Eragon *cough*), this is a book for you too. Put it on your To Read list and pronto.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley

• Fairest of All by Sarah Mlynowski

• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

• Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst

• Of Giants and Ice by Shelby Bach

First Sentence: “Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies. Didn’t know that, did you?”

Book Jacket Nattering: Love it. It’s nice when a cover artist makes it clear that they actually read the book. And Todd Harris must have read this puppy several times because not only are his cover illustrations dead on, the interior ones are great as well. Mind you, I have had a lot of kids complain to me about the fact that though the four princes do appear on both the front and back covers of this book, if you look just at the front cover only two of them made the cut with Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella thrown on there as well. This problem has been fortunately remedied with the sequel where you will find all four of our heroes front and center. Here’s the full front and back of the first book’s cover:

Oh.  And love that British cover, I do.  Just not as much.

Other Blog Reviews:

• The Book Smugglers
• Scattered Pages
• Katie’s Book Blog

Professional Reviews:

• The New York Times
• The Los Angeles Times
• A star from Publishers Weekly
• The Wall Street Journal
• A star from Kirkus

Misc:

• The movie rights have indeed already been picked up.

• The official website is here.

Video:

• A book trailer!  Huzzah!

• And here’s an interview with the author, who is rather charming himself.  Clearly he writes what he knows.

• And a Vlog Review.  Awwwww.

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Oh the previews are here, they’re here, they’re here,
The wonderful previews are here
Time to go out, go out, go out,
Go out and order a . . . . beer?  No, no . . .

From that catchy little tune (working on it) I hope you realize that preview season is upon us yet again.  Time to sit down and hear what is in store for the future.  Will 2013 completely and utterly stop any and all supernatural romances dead in their tracks (which is to say, are vampires finally over?)?  What picture book idea will spontaneously manifest itself at two entirely different publishers without rhyme or reason?  And what, the heckedy heck, is up with fuzzy blue giants?  Why are they so awesome?

Yes.  It’s finally happened.  The pandering.  The blatant self-promotion.  The self-satisfied mugging.  You thought I was insufferable when I wrote my ALA Editions textbooky thing a couple of years ago?  Brother, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen my fiction side in action.

So it is that we begin today’s Harper Collins Preview at the Greenwillow table.  As you may recall, Harper Collins is one of those publishers that allow you to sit at their tables, eat their bagels and muffins, and hear their editors tell you face-to-face about their upcoming season.  Sure, they could do a boring PowerPoint to a big room, thereby saving themselves some sanity, but the fact that they take the time to talk to us in this intimate fashion makes them one of the better previews in town.  It’s the personal touch that counts, y’know?  Plus I’m far more likely to remember a book when the editor has taken my questions about it firsthand than if I’m dozing in a big audience with a bunch of other folks, later desperately trying to remember why one teen novel with a flowy gown on the cover is different from another teen novel with a flowy gown on the cover when it’s time to do my ordering.

In any case, the clock is ticking, there are books to be discussed, so we begin with Greenwillow.

Actually we begin with me.  They didn’t.  I’m just mucking with the order of presentations here because I’m so pleased to announce my pretty little Giant Dance Party picture book.  It comes out on my birthday (April 23rd), and isn’t THAT a lovely present to receive?  Brandon Dorman is the illustrator behind it, and a nicer fella you couldn’t hope to find.  You may know his book covers on everything from Savvy to the more recent Goosebumps novels.  As you can see, the title is self-explanatory.  The tale follows young Lexy, a girl who can cut a rug better than most her age.  That is, if she’s dancing for her parents or herself.  Put her onto a stage and you might as well be staring at a frozen ice pop in the shape of a young girl.  When Lexy decides the answer to her problem is to teach rather than perform, she finds that no one wants to have a kid as her teacher.  No one, that is, except a herd (is that the best term for it?) of benign furry blue giants.  All seems to go well until the day of their recital when Lexy discovers that maybe she’s not the only one with stage fright problems out there.

Don’t let the cute nature of the cover fool you.  Is it cute?  Yeah.  Guilty as charged.  But there are some slammin’ moves to be found inside and, as I may have mentioned in a previous post, this is the first picture book I have encountered that includes krumping.  I kid you not.  Expect me to come up with some kind of video to accompany this soonish.  Suggestions are welcome.  I’m slightly stumped since Dan Santat created the world’s greatest dance-related picture book trailer three years ago for Tammi Sauer’s Chicken Dance.  More to come about this in time.

And there are apparently other books coming out in 2013 as well!  Did you know that?  I was stunned!  For example, they have decided to republish the original picture book edition of Amelia Bedelia for one and all to see.  Not an easy book, mind you, but a full picture book sized title with all the art reproduced full and some in-depth backmatter at the end.  And you know I love me some backmatter.  I guess the success of the young Amelia Bedelia picture book series gave the idea the extra push it needed.  In any case, look for this soon.

Speaking of the younger version of AB (Amelia Bedelia), the new title coming out in the spring with be Amelia Bedelia’s First Library Card.  Otherwise known as the picture book hundreds of children’s librarians will be using for first-time library users visiting their branches.  In a new twist, they’ve also noticed that those early chapter book Fancy Nancy books have been doing rather nicely.  As a result, you can expect some early chapter books of young AB as well.  It makes me think that if these also sell a whole world of possibilities opens up.  What if they did longer Nate the Great or Cam Jansen books?  What if they made an Amelia Bedelia middle grade novel?  Or teen!  Lord knows I’d pay good money for an Amelia Bedelia supernatural romance novel.  A penny to anyone who gives me a serviceable plot to go with it.

Shadow boxes.  There is nothing cooler on this globe than shadow boxes.  I’m sure there are art students in colleges across the country that would agree.  Yet for the most part you don’t see them used in children’s books all that often.  Sometimes here and there, but it’s not consistent.  In Stardines Swim High Across the Sky we definitely see some in action.  A kind of follow up to Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Carin Berger, this is yet another wordplay rich book of poems by Mr. P.  The particular draw, however, is how Ms. Berger chose to do the art.  But why describe the style when I can simply show you?

Caldecotty!  Best of all, you’ll get to see a display of this art at ALA in Chicago this coming June.

This next book is a bit of a riddle: How do you resist a tiptoeing bear?  Answer: Why bother?  Anything big that tries to be small and quiet is instant picture book gold.  In Tiptoe Joe by Ginger Foglesong Gibson (illustrated by Laura Rankin) a bear in sneakers highs himself hence on sneaky sneakered feet.  The book’s  a simple cumulative tale with readaloud potential.  Put it on your preschool readaloud radar then.

Harper Collins is the publisher that seeks out self-published authors of picture books more often than other publishers I’ve seen.  And since old Pete the Cat has paid off very very well for them indeed (catchy songs are ALWAYS a plus) it seems natural that they’d take everything a step further and look into self-published apps/ebooks that convert to the picture book format.  That apparently is the case with Axel the Truck: Beach Race by J.D. Riley, and illustrated by MY illustrator Brandon Dorman.  What’s interesting about this book is the fact that it’s more of an easy book than anything else.  Perhaps the first self-published app turned easy book out there.  Interesting.

All I will do for Penny and Her Marble by Kevin Henkes is write down some of the descriptive direct quotes the editors tossed about when describing the easy book.  Ahem.

“The great American novel in I Can Read form.”

“Gut-wrenching.”

There you have it, folks.  Need more be said?

Now it’s cover art comparison time!!!

Of the two I think I prefer Jeff Baron’s upcoming I Represent Sean Rosen.  And not just because of the Christoph Neimann art either.  The kid just seems more appealing.  Basically, this is just your average story about a kid hitting it big.  Like The Toothpaste Millionaire but without the business angle.  You see, Sean Rosen is a kid with a great idea, but he’s not gonna tell you what it is because clearly you’d steal it.  Whatever it is, it’ll change the entertainment industry.  Sean decides to sell the idea to Hollywood instead but runs into the problem of not having an agent.  The solution?  Meet fake agent Dan Welsh (one trip to the fridge will tell you where Sean got that name).  Author Baron’s a playwright himself, so he’s been working up some “podcasts” of Sean’s.  Podcasts/YouTube videos.  Here’s the first.

Anna Was Here by Jane Kurtz is a PK middle grade novel.  Those of you in the know will be aware that PK = Preacher’s Kid.  And frankly, I don’t see a lot of those.  We see a lot more army brats in a given year than preacher kids.  Wonder why that is?  In this case, the story is about Anna’s move from Colorado to Kansas (I was this close to writing Cansas).  Even more interesting is the fact that the book discusses without fanfare a family where the Bible is just a regular part of the day to day.  Apparently not in a strident way or anything either.  Just a way of life.  We’ll check it out.

New series, new series!  Now this preview happened pre-Sandy, but you just know that had it happened afterwards this next book would have had an evident tie-in.  The Lightning Catcher by Anne Cameron (all similarities to The Lightning Thief title-wise or the lightning bolt letters on all the American Harry Potter book jackets are strictly coincidental, you betcha, uh-huh, uh-huh) is the first in a four book series.  In this debut young Angus is whisked to The Exploritorium for Violent Storms.  Turns out his parents are two of the world’s greatest living lightning catchers, keeping the world safe from wild weather.  When the parents are kidnapped, that’s when the rubber meets the road.  It follows in a definite trend of weather-related middle grade novels like Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner and The Storm Makers by Jennifer E. Smith, but to name but a few.

I’ll be eschewing most of the YA stuff today, as per usual, but I will say that I’m thrilled to see the eleventh book in The Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney is due to come out.  Slither is the first book in the series to be told from the p.o.v. of one of the creatures.  Fans will be happy to hear that Rimalkin is in it but sad to hear that Tom is not.  FYI: The movie is definitely slated to come out in October of 2013!  It’s called Seventh Son and will star folks like Julianne Moore (Mother Malkin!), Jeff Bridges (when he isn’t working on The Giver, apparently), and Ben Barnes a.k.a. Hot Prince Caspian as Tom Ward.

DING!

That’s enough from Table Four.  Onward to Table Five with big time folks like Barbara Lalicki, Rosemary Brosnan, Tara Weikum, and Erica Sussman.  I see that at this point in my notes I’ve turn philosophical, writing stuff like “In many ways previews break down to a variety of people telling you all kinds of stories.”  Oh aye?

First up, the book Adam Rex was tweeting about long ago when it was first arranged.  His first collaboration with Neil Gaiman.  Chu’s Day follows a sneezy little panda and the havoc he creates thanks to an itchy nose and distracted parental units.  Apparently it was inspired by a trip to China, and indeed if you see an F&G or final copy of this book you will encounter a jacket photo of Gaiman with a panda on his lap.  Rex, insofar as I can tell, has never done pandas much before.  But back in early 2011 he did a series of posts where he drew different types of pandas (seen here and here and here and here).  Now you know why.

You can read the real reason Gaiman wrote the book here (long story short, he’s trying to get printed in mainland China for once). And there is, naturally, a book trailer.  As Rex says of it, “Fun fact–Gaiman wasn’t available to make this video, so I played him wearing a Neilsuit a la the British ‘pantomime’ tradition.”

I’m sure the process was very much like the old Black Books skit.  Dylan Moran even looks like Gaiman (though Rex, happily, has few similarities to Manny).

You know, go to enough of these previews and you begin to get a sense of which editors you really trust.  The ones that crank out books you can’t get enough of.  Rosemary Brosnan fits that category.  Often I’ll compliment someone at HC for a book and then find it’s one of hers.  You may know her best from editing Rita Williams-Garcia’s marvelous, miraculous One Crazy Summer.  Well, hold onto your hats, ladies and gentlemen.  The sequel, P.S. Be Eleven, is due out this May.  As Rosemary said, she can’t stop smiling about it.  And, she pointed out, she signed Rita up for it long before the first book won those four shiny shiny medals that now grace its cover.  Kudos to Ms. Rita, it’s more than a little daunting to follow-up any book that got as much attention as her first did with a sequel of any type.  In this book anyway Delphine is tall, dad is betrothed, there are crushes, Panthers, and a 6th Grade dance.  The jacket, as you can see, matches the art of the paperback edition of the first book.  And yes, folks.  Number three is in the works.

You’ve gotta kind of respect a middle grade novel that begins with the heroines convinced that they’ve just watched their guidance counselor killing someone only to find that she was merely making pickled beets.  Sophie and Grace have their own spy club in The Wig in the Window by Kristen Kittshcer but beets or no beets there is indeed something sinister going on.  The sequel is already slated with the title Tiara on the Terrace.

Here’s some more exciting reissue news, particular for those of you looking to get some summer reading paperbacks on your shelves.  All the Ramona Quimby books are about to be repackaged with interior and exterior art by one Jacqueline Rogers.  Eight titles in all, they’re coming out simultaneously in hardcover and paperback just in time for Ms. Cleary’s 97th birthday.  And if these catch on they may do the same with other Cleary titles too.  An excellent idea.  High time we had some new art.

I was surprisingly taken with Ms. Tui T. Sutherland’s novel this year.  I don’t know if you read Ms. Sutherland’s Wings of Fire which Scholastic put out, but for a talking dragon novel it wasn’t too shabby.  Now she’s got a book out with HC called The Menagerie which she wrote with one Kari Sutherland.  In it a boy moves a small Iowa town and, once there, finds a griffin cub under his bed.  Turns out there’s a magical menagerie in the town, and the boy must find the other griffins and uncover a big time mystery.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai will indeed be out in paperback this January (I’ve already ordered my copies) and as we speak she is working on a second book.  Meanwhile Molly Moon and the Monster Music, the sixth and final Moon title, by Georgia Byng is out this March, and should be well-timed with that MM movie in the works.

DING!

Now a flip around and a walk to Table 1.  Here we have the good mistress Alessandra Balzer and sweet mistress Donna Bray.  And Jordan Brown, of course.  He’s not mistress of anything.

Mo Willems is back, baby!  Not that he really went away but while his Elephant & Piggie books have been consistently primo, his picture books have merely been amusing.  All that may change with the publication of That is NOT a Good Idea! In it, Willems stretches himself a little further.  Becomes a bit more subversive and strange, but in a thoroughly good way.  Channeling himself some Hilaire Belloc we have a silent film inspired presentation.  Fox (or is it a wolf?) meets chicken.  Chicken meets fox/wolf.  Romance and possibly dinner (eek!) ensue.  And all the while you’ve this steadily increasing Greek Chorus of chicks pooh-poohing the characters’ decisions.  I’m thinking big time readaloud potential on this one.  Can’t wait to see the final product.

Bob Shea returns as well with Cheetah Can’t Lose.  In it an overly self-confident, not to mention obnoxious, cheetah finds himself at odds when he crosses two adorable little kittens.  Hilarity, not to mention Shea’s copyright customary sympathy for bullied bullies, ensues.

Just the other day I went and reviewed one Michelle Markel’s remarkable picture book bio called The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau.  Well the woman is keeping busy, now coming out with Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909.  Aside from the cool nonfiction picture book subject matter (Yiddish Clara went on to lead the longest walkout of women workers in American history) the illustrations are by none other than Melissa Sweet.  And Ms. Sweet, aside from winning a Caldecott Honor for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, won a Sibert last year for the fantastic Balloons Over Broadway.  In this book she’s worked in time cards and sewing into her art.  I can’t help but wonder if with the rise in interest in strikes (the folks in Wisconsin and Chicago come to mind) we’ll be seeing more of these union-centric titles in the coming years.  It just makes sense.

“This is our Core toe book, I like to say.”  As a mom of a toddler I admit that I now view with great interest any and all picture books that adapt nursery rhymes and simple songs into a written and illustrated format.  And quite frankly This Little Piggy by Tim Harrington fits the bill.  It starts with the usual five and their mildly disturbing desire for things like road beef and then goes onto the second foot as well.  Why on earth have I never heard of anyone doing that before?  The other foot!  It’s obvious when you say it.  By the way, as more toes get involved they seem to have a lot more occupations to work with.  In some cases they’re selling hotdogs (what IS it with the meat and these hungry piggies?).  And in the vein of the aforementioned Pete the Cat there will be an accompanying song with this online.  Clever piggies.  Of course, I should probably mention that Tim Harrington is the lead singer of Les Savy Fav and you can see what he looks like here.  Sort of a pseudo-celebrity.  I tell ya, man.  Eventually everyone comes to my world.  Eventually.

“Little Women with wings featuring Tinkerbell’s little sister.”  I keep beginning these write-ups with quotes but c’mon.  Can you blame me?  And I admit that though I love Julia Denos (the illustrator on these books) I wasn’t really sold until I saw the author.  The new Fairy Bell Sisters series may be more of the fairy same, but the author is Margaret McNamara a.k.a. former Harper Collins editor Brenda Bowen.  Donna Bray then whipped out her history chops by quoting the great long dead editor Ursula Nordstrom.  “If I can resist a book, I resist it.”  Ooo.  Well played, madam.  Ratchet it all up another notch and we were told that these books echo classics and act as gateway drugs to books like The Secret Garden and Little Woman AND they’re great readalouds to boot.  Geez o’ petes.  If you’re gonna sell librarians on a new fairy series, you may as well pull out all the stops, eh?

Jarrett Krosoczka is convinced that this little blog o’ mine (I’m gonna let it shine) was the first place to debut the cover of his upcoming Platypus Police Squad series opener The Frog Who Croaked.  I told him I just lifted it wholesale from Barnes & Nobles.  Okay, so there are a lot of reasons to love what’s going on here.  I think it’s fair to say that you guys are just as sick of the nursery rhymes-meet-noir detective novel style books as I am.  Sometimes I feel like we see one a year.  There’s just too much faux noir out there.  I’m sick of it.  But buddy cop children’s books?  Dude . . . I can’t think of any.  So it is that we get “Frog and Tad meets Law & Order” (I usually leave all the “meets” until the end of this post, but this one I could resist including here).  In his first full-length novel Krosoczka presents a heavily illustrated tale of a hotshot rookie and a grizzled old timer as they fight crime.  Said his editors, “It marries his love of buddy cop films with his love of platypuses”.  Sold.  There will be four books in the series altogether and please note that the hotshot rookie on the cover is pulling a boomerang out of his black leather jacket.  Suh-weet.

My notes at this point read “Jenny Lee – writes for Shake It Up”.  But I don’t know what that means so I Google it.  Ah ha.  Shake It Up.  A television series that has so far run from 2010 to 2012 on the Disney Channel and is about the following: “Two Chicago teens attempt to realize their dream of becoming professional dancers by landing spots on a popular local show.”  Gotcha.  Well, in any case we see a couple television writers crossing over to make children’s books but they tend to write for adult fare like The Daily Show.  Elvis and the Underdogs was sold as marrying literary quality with fun.  Fair enough.  Benji, our hero, is a sickly kid whose best friend is a male nurse.  Naturally, he’s bullied quite a bit and in the course of things gets himself a therapy dog.  A 200-pound Newfoundland of a therapy dog named Elvis with the personality of Fraiser Crane (he was supposed to go to the President of the United States, thank you very much).  So there’s that and a mystery as well.  Oh, and the dog talks.  I think you had me at Fraiser Crane, anyway, though.

As titles go, my favorite this season (from Harper Collins anyway since I still think Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is mildly brilliant) has gotta be The Girl from Felony Bay.  Now THAT gets a person’s attention!  Written by J.E. Thompson and set in rural South Carolina (so hand it to fans of Three Times Lucky) the book was described as “Carl Hiaasen rummaging through Margaret Mitchell’s closet”.  In this book a dad is framed so our heroine and her buddy have to go through some serious Southern heritage to clear his name.

Editor Jordan Brown could sell you flaming cheese in Hell.  The man is just that good.  So good, in fact, that I have to put my guard up when he starts talking because otherwise this preview will turn from a sane and sober What’s Coming Out Next Year into a wild free-for-all encapsulation of Jordan Brown’s Greatest Hits.  In this particular case we hit upon Kevin Emerson (The Lost Code)’s The Fellowship for Alien Detection.  As Brown tells it, this middle grade novel is sci-fi for non-sci-fi readers.  In this book two kids travel about with some folks who investigate possible alien sightings.  Brown called it a Men in Black type book that will please many a Joss Whedon fan.

With The Laura Line I am very pleased to see the return of Crystal Allen.  Her debut with How Lamar’s Bad Prank Won a Bubba Sized Trophy was an excellent middle grade a year or two ago (I recall reading it on a plane and having a flight attendant grill me about what it was about).  Allen is one of the very few authors out there writing about contemporary middle grade African-American kids.  In this particular book our overweight protagonist is convinced that she is about to be humiliated.  Her teacher has just organized a field trip to the slave shack that sits on her property.  I don’t know much more about it, but you can bet that this will be one of the first books I read for next year when I get my hands on it.

Sidekicked by John David Anderson was described as “A mash-up of what you’d get if you asked Louis Sachar to write an Avengers novel.”  Which, naturally I now want to do.  In lieu of that plan, this book is about a kid who develops super powers but ends up being super sensitive as a result.  It’s a clever idea.  We’ll see how the final product tackles this not-often-seen metaphor.

There would be lots of ways to sell Director Chris Columbus as a co-author on a book like House of Secrets.  The smartest way for this particular book?  Goonies.  Yeah, break out the Goonies connection (he wrote the screenplay) because secretly that’s what every children’s librarian secretly wishes they could find in a book.  Alongside co-writer Ned Vizzini (no stranger to the movie world himself what with his It’s Kind of a Funny Story hitting the big screen a year or so ago) House of Secrets is the first of a three book series that promises a new installment every spring.  It follows the Walker family and its three kids consisting of an eldest boy and two younger girls.  Sorta like The Emerald Atlas, I guess.  When their surgeon dad moves them into a creepy house in San Francisco, they discover that they are part of a secret legacy.  Add in some giants, witches and skeleton pirates and you have, what they were calling, “An American Cornelia Funke”.

Finally, one of the cleverest sequel titles I’ve seen.  Did you like The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom?  Me too.  I just keep meaning to review that puppy.  Well, hopefully I’ll be able to do so before I read The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle, due out in April.  Can I just praise that title a little more?  I mean, how smart is it to reference The Princess Bride like that?  Very smart.  The book series would certainly be enjoyed by Princess Bride fans, that’s for certain, so by invoking the name you do yourself many favors.  Plus, from what I can tell the cover sports all four princes.  I remember the kids really were upset that only two princes made the front cover of the first book with the other two princes on the back.  This time, all four.  Awesome.

DING!

Next table, Table #2.  With the honorable Katherine Tegen, Maria Modugno and Molly O’Neill presiding.

First up.

Yep.  All I really need to say about that.  It’s Nelson Mandela by Kadir Nelson and editor Katherine Tegen had the idea for the book four years ago when it was Mandela’s 90th birthday.  Now it’ll be out in time for his 95th.  Considering that he and the aforementioned Beverly Cleary are both celebrating their 90-something birthdays with HC books, those crazy kids should have a joint birthday party.  (Now imagining what the guest list for a Beverly Cleary/Nelson Mandela birthday party might consist of.)

Katheryn Fitzmaurice returns with the middle grade novel Destiny, Rewritten.  In it, a girl named after Emily Dickinson hides a secret desire.  Though her mom would love her to be a poet, what she REALLY wants to do is become a romance novelist.  Um . . . that is awesome.  She then goes in pursuit of a lost book and finds ways to stand up for herself.  The book is set during Poetry Month, which is clever, and includes a series of one-sided letters written by Emily to Danielle Steele.  The good Harper Collins folks did send a copy to Ms. Steele to let her know about this book but as of this preview had not heard back.  Pity.  It’d be a helluva blurb.

Big news here!  At long last the Septimus Heap saga is reaching its end in a grand finale with Fyre!  Every single character of significance will make an appearance in this last book, clocking in at 544 pages if Amazon is to be believed, 750 pages if the preview is.  Can’t say which one is true, but it’ll be complete, you can bet on that!

New illustrator alert!  When shopping for a new artist of picture books, it can be a good idea to hand them a classic text and see what they do with it.  So when newbie Mike Austin was given The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown, the results were a fresh new approach.  Now he does a helluva monster.  Now you probably already know Mike from over at Blue Apple Books where he’s done work on A Present for Milo and other stuff.  Monsters Love Colors is his first Harper Collins title.  One has to wonder if there will be an app for it as well someday.  Who knows?

If you think 123 Versus ABC looks very Adam Rex you’re not alone.  As far as I can tell, that’s a good thing.  We need more Rexian art out there.  Plus, let’s face it, this is a remarkably good idea for a children’s book.  Written and illustrated by Mike Boldt, this eyebrow-rific title shows what happens when numbers go to war with letters.  “They’re refrigerator magnets come to life.”  Note to self: Buy refrigerator magnets for child.  Those things are awesome.

See, the thing about Fancy Nancy is that she’s ain’t half bad.  As a librarian you always have this instinctual gut-reaction when you see one of her books.  Your innards want to say they’re just cheap pinkness meant to lure in unsuspecting little girls.  But the doggone things have substance, and that kills me.  They are written well and the art is lovely each and every time (at least, if it’s Robin Preiss Glasser actually doing it).  The newest FN title is Fancy Nancy: Fanciest Doll in the Universe.  When Nancy’s younger sister puts a permanent ink tattoo on her fancy doll’s previously fancy tummy it is not a happy household.  Yet when the time comes for Nancy to pick her doll out of an identical line-up, guess who doesn’t have any difficulty?  Sounds like it would make a perfect companion to Barbara McClintock’s Dahlia.  Love that book.  There is also a new addition to the Fancy Nancy early chapter book series, Nancy Clancy, Secret Admirer.

DING!

One final table to go and it sports Anne Hoppe and Phoebe Yeh.

Now first and foremost, here’s a book that I could have easily have passed over had I but thought it was that most unfortunate of literary genres, the eco-thriller.  Something about the very term screams “didacticism” to me.  Fortunately, Jinx by Sage Blackwood has been read by a couple folks I trust and though you could conceivably slap that moniker on it, it’s so much more.  The first in a trilogy, the book is recommended to fans of Angie Sage, though Anne said the writing adhered more to Diana Wynne Jones.  She also said it had “The best first chapter of anything I’ve published.”  All I care is that it sounds like a good companion to The Mostly True Story of Jack, has a villain called The Bonemaster, and contains were-chipmunks.  Honest-to-god were-chipmunks.  Love.

From the author who brought you The Princess Curse a year or two ago comes Merrie Haskell’s next standalone middle grade title Handbook for Dragon Slayers.  According to her editors, Haskell’s strength lies in her ability to conjure up complex girls coming of age and determining what their role in society will be.  Noted.

At this point Phoebe Yeh mentioned that 2012 was a hard year for great authors.  We lost two, Maurice Sendak and Jean Craighead George, almost simultaneously.  As such, we’re seeing some of their books coming back into print where once they were gone from our shelves.  In terms of Maurice two books of his are due this spring.  One is a reprint and one a new title never seen before.  The older book is the Caldecott Honor winner The Moon Jumpers.  Apparently the art for this was still available so they re-separated it and reshot it to get the full effects.  Sendak even signed off on the proofs before his death.

The other title is Sendak’s last book (or perhaps penultimate if that nose book ever comes out from Scholastic) and one of his most personal.  Called My Brother’s Book, it focuses on Sendak’s older and much beloved brother.  Tapping into the man’s deep and abiding love of Blake, this is being marketed as an adult title but is recommended to those high school teachers who do work with Shakespeare as well.  There are, I should note, more than a few Shakespearean references inside.

The Jean Craighead George book is a new picture book by the name of A Special Gift for Grammy.  George was apparently in the middle of two picture books when she died.

Next up, one of the best pushed and marketed books I’ve seen in a while.  When KidLitCon was held at NYPL this year there was a moment when I saw a young man really talking up and pushing copies of this next title at my attendees.  I’m not certain if that young man was a Harper employee or author Eric Kahn Gale himself but whoever it was it got my attention.  Right off the bat we were told that this is a controversial little sucker because it’s a book that in the course of its story outlines how one goes about becoming the perfect bully.  In this tale a kid who is bullied decides to handle the situation on his own.  Told through both journal entries and the aforementioned bullying rules, the book taps into some serious black humor.  They mentioned Jack Gantos as a possible comparison.  Apparently Gale wrote the book after meeting with some of the bullies of his own youth only to find they’d grown up to become nice and decent people.  I like to call that The Facebook Effect.  It’s the moment when a person who made your life a misery in school Facebook friends you.  We talked about this a bit in a recent Children’s Literary Salon at NYPL.  Good stuff.  In any case they’re going all out for this book, giving it a 3/4 jacket (something they haven’t done for a title since Walter Dean Myers and Monster).

Next up, a guy who was in the same screenwriting program at Columbia as my husband.  I don’t know Mr. Soman Chainani myself but Matt tells me that he was a very nice guy and did often speak about this book of his being published with Harper.  The School for Good and Evil sounds like nothing so much as Wicked with a twist (and less Oz).  Two best friends are kidnapped and sent to different schools.  One is a school for evil and the other for good.  Thing is, they sort of get the wrong schools.  At least that’s what I gathered from the cover.  Still a little unclear but it looks fun.

Next up, a book that will make for an excellent nonfiction companion to Simon & Schuster’s Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle.  Alex Ko: From Iowa to Broadway, My Billy Elliot Story is one of those stand up and cheer books, but good for kids with Broadway dreams.  Raised in Iowa with a dad that didn’t want him to have a life on the stage (then died of cancer), Alex had his chance to live his dream thanks to older siblings who were willing to do extra jobs to help him out.  And as luck would have it he really did have a chance to become Billy Elliot on Broadway.  Then, on the first night of his performance, he hurt himself and needed therapy to recover.  Happily he returned and all was well and these days he performs with the New York City Ballet.

Here’s a tip to publishers: Want me to want a book instantly?  Do as How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids by Thomas C. Foster did.  All you need to do really is get Kate Beaton, the woman behind the wonderful Hark, A Vagrant webcomic, to do the jacket.  I will buy anything she touches.  Seriously.  Love love love love this.

I eventually got almost all the references, even the Lord of the Flies one, but the lion still stumps me a little. Suggestions on that one are welcome.  Best I could come up with was Pyramus and Thisbe.

Not entirely certain how a Zits illustrated novel by syndicated cartoonist Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman could be YA (they’re suggesting ages 13 and up?!?).  Pity since if it were middle grade (like the actual comic strip) you could add it to the trend of syndicated cartoonists writing books for kids in 2012 (The Odd Squad and Timmy Failure respectively).  Maybe there’s some sex and stuff in it?  The mind boggles.

That, as they say, is it.  Except . . . .

On with the Meets!!!

Best Meets

“The Natural History Museum meets Tim Burton” – Not sure if someone said this or I made it up myself (I suspect the former) but that’s a description of Carin Berger’s work on Stardines Swim High Across the Sky by Jack Prelutsky

“Storm Chasers meets The Mysterious Benedict Society” – The Lightning Catcher by Anne Cameron

“The Artist meets Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” – That Is NOT a Good Idea! by Mo Willems

“Life is Beautiful meets The Walking Dead” – That’s actually my description of it, but I don’t think I’m too far off.  That’s for The End Games by T. Michael Martin

“13 Reasons Why meets Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” – Wild Awake by Hilary Smith

“Ender’s Game meets Hogwarts in space” – Vortex by S.J. Kincaid

“Roald Dahl meets Lemony Snicket meets Gregory Maguire” – The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

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I am happy to announce that Katia Raina sold her Historical Young Adult novel titled, Castle of Concrete to namelos - pub. date TBA.  This was the first book she wrote and is her debut novel. I remember reading this manuscript at one of our New Jersey Writing Retreats.  It is set in the collapsing Soviet Union and is about a shy Jewish teen who falls for a boy whose political convictions make her question her own identity.  I am sure you will all join me with congratulating Katia.  Just goes to show if you don’t give up and you work hard, it will happen!  Wishing Katia more published books to come.

Harper Announces Paperback Mystery Line, Bourbon Street

Harper Collins will launch Bourbon Street Books to publish “all types of mysteries,” featuring paperback originals, reprints, backlist titles, and reissued classics. The line starts with fall with two paperback originals: British author Oliver Harris’s debut THE HOLLOW MAN and Lynda La Plante’s seventh book in the Anna Travis series, BLOOD LINE, both publishing on October 23. Also in October they will bring back into print Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey with Harriet Vane series and in winter they will reissue four Mary Kay Andrews novels — Happy Never After, Homemade Sin, To Live and Die in Dixie, Every Crooked Nanny ― all originally written and published under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck.

As part of the Harper Paperbacks imprint (it has a logo and a list, but it’s not an imprint–just a “line”), Bourbon Street will draw resources from the Perennial staff and any Harper Collins editor will be able to acquire for the line. It falls under the direction of Jonathan Burnham and Cal Morgan.

Former Harper UK executive John Bond and former Harper Press senior editor Annabel Wright have formed Whitefox Publishing Services. They “deliver bespoke, cost-effective and flexible creative excellence to help publishers, agents and writers to solve every publishing challenge.”

Eric Winbolt has been promoted to the newly created role of digital creative director at Harper UK, reporting to group publisher Belinda Budge.

Alice Rahaeuser has joined Random House Children’s as production associate, reporting to Timothy Terhune. Most recently she worked at Neuwirth and Associates, managing book production for customers including Tor, The Experiment and Pegasus Books.

At Harlequin, Emily Rodmell has been promoted to editor at the Love Inspired imprint.

Annie Stone has joined Harlequin Teen as associate editor. Previously she was an assistant editor at Harper.

Laura Hopper has joined Hyperion as editorial director of franchise publishing, based on the West Coast, focusing on identifying, developing, and editing new print and digital projects within the Disney/ABC Television Group for Hyperion. Hopper was vp of the motion picture department for Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, and most recently she represented writer and director clients on various film and television projects.

Victoria Comella has joined HarperCollins 360 as publicity manager. Previously she was a publicist at Putnam.

Jeanette Shaw has been promoted to editor at Perigee Books/Prentice Hall Press.

Cengage’s Gale has sold Sleeping Bear Press to Minnesota-based Cherry Lake Publishing. Sleeping Bear and their staff of 10 will remain in their Ann Arbor, MI offices.

Graphic Arts Books has acquired the trade titles and publishing rights of Pruett Publishing Company in order to build and expand its imprint, WestWinds Press. Pruett, based in Boulder, CO, was founded in 1954 and , specializes in western regional publishing.

Filed under: publishers, Publishing Industry, success Tagged: Harlequin Teen, Harper Collins, Hyperion, Katia Raina, Namelos, Random House, Sleeping Bear Press

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Cat Tale
By Michael Hall
Greenwillow (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-191516-1
Ages 6-10
On shelves August 28th

When we are old and gray and the stars gleam a little less brightly in the wide firmament above our heads, I have no doubt that there will STILL be children’s librarians out there debating the merits (or lack thereof) of picture books designed with older child readers in mind. To bring this subject up is akin to throwing a lit match on diesel soaked tinder, but what the heck. You see, walk into any decent library and you’ll find a picture book section teaming with fantastic 32-48 page titles that simply do not circulate. And why? Because of the standard belief, sometimes by children, sometimes by adults, that when you reach a certain age you “outgrow” picture books. As if they were a pair of shoes liable to give you blisters if you kept them around too long. This is, naturally, bupkis. Picture books are appropriate for all ages, really (and if you don’t believe me why don’t I just introduce you to a little number I know called The Woolvs in the Sitee). So the fact that a book like Michael Hall’s Cat Tale exists pleases on both the 6-year-old level as well as the 10-year-old level should surprise few. Wielding homonyms like weapons, Hall brings his artistic sensibilities (to say nothing of his love of controlled chaos) to the wordplay realm and the end result is that everyone’s a winner for it.

Meet Lillian, Tilly and William J. Three little cats that are out for a day. In rhyming verse we watch as at first their adventures are small. “They pack some books and kitty chews. They chose a spot. They spot some ewes.” As the book continues they cats become more adventuresome. “They train a duck to duck a shoe. They shoo a truly naughty gnu.” Yet the words begin to get tangled and the cats are in a state. Should they use a rock to squash a berry or use a squash to bury a rock or (after a pause) use their paws to rock a squashberry? Finally everything gets too crazy and the cats find their way out thanks to their tails/tales.

Like many people, when I think of homonyms in works of children’s literature my mind instantly leaps to good old Amelia Bedelia. She continues to reign as the homonym queen to this day. After all, without them she wouldn’t get confused in the slightest. Hall could have done a storyline very much like Amelia’s. The cats could have just wandered about and gotten confused about the difference between boarding a plane and getting to plane a board. Ho and also hum. Instead, Hall takes a risk. He actually connects the sentences and uses his illustrations to make seemingly disparate phrases relate to one another. Now the text reads, “They flee a steer. They steer a plane. They plane a board. They board a train.” All this makes sense in the book since we see the progression from place to place. Note too that just to ratchet up the challenge a little, Hall is making this book rhyme on top of everything else. That’s sort of explained on the title page (Hall wastes no time) where it reads, “From word to word they find their way, Lillian, Tilly, and William J.” Interesting that Hall went with “Lillian” rather than “Lily” since “Lily and Tilly and William J.” has its own nice rhythm. There’s no denying how satisfying it is to begin with a Lillian and end with a William, though. Even if they don’t rhyme precisely.

When Hall wrote his previous book The Perfect Square there was wit on display but it seemed to be mostly of the visual variety. Cat Tale doles out the wit a little more on the verbal end of the spectrum, but there’s no denying that the art is also just great. As with the aforementioned Perfect Square Hall’s art consists of acrylic painted textures and paper cutouts that were combined digitally. Not that you can tell where the computer came in or how it was used. The colors in this book don’t have that faux clip-art coloring so often found in slapdash computer art. Instead it looks like Hall took out his sponge and his brightest hues and created something truly lovely. From the vibrant orange of the train to the deep and satisfying blue of the steer, there’s a method to Hall’s madness. A beautiful sumptuous method.

There is admittedly one moment in the book where I got seriously confused, so I wonder how it’ll fly with the pre-adolescent set. To be fair, that’s sort of the whole point of the spread. As the cats go along the homonyms gets crazier and crazier until there’s a virtual explosion of cats, steer, gnus, ducks, cars, shoes, ewes, you name it. The trouble is that I couldn’t make the mental leap from that image to the next one involving the cats’ tails. I know it makes sense on a practical level, but I felt like the transition was a bit too rough. Something a bit slower, a bit more staid, could have suited the storyline a little better.

I know a librarian who uses older picture books for her 2-3rd grade parent/child bookclub. It’s as good a solution as any I know to get those book circulating, that’s for sure. Of course, my dearest hope is that teachers discover this book as well. With the rise of interest in the Core Curriculum, folks need to remember that teaching homonyms doesn’t have to be rote and dull as dishwater. It can involve naughty gnus and rocked squashberries! A visual feast and too clever by half, Hall’s latest begs to be read aloud and pored over. A little book that deserves all the attention it can receive. Teachers, parents, librarians, and booksellers, take note.

On shelves August 28th.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish

• Dear Deer by Gene Barretta

• Aunt Ant Leaves Through the Leaves by Nancy Coffelt

• Did You Say Pears? by Arlene Alda

Other Blog Reviews:

• Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
• There’s a Book

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Publishers Weekly
• A star from Kirkus

Misc:

• Browse inside the book here.

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Cover Shot! is a regular feature here at the Café. I love discovering new covers, and when I find them, I like to share. More than anything else, I am consumed with the mystery that each new discovery represents. There is an allure to a beautiful cover. Will the story contained under the pages live up to promise of the gorgeous cover art?

Supervillains.  I love them.  Especially when they are, deep in their heart, good guys.  Look at this guy.  Does he look like a devious doer of evil?  Nope!  I can hardly wait to get my hands on The Cloak Society by Jeramey Kraatz, to see just how bad Alex really is.  Or isn’t.  In stores October 2012

 

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How awesome is it when a cover and title do their job this well? I knew plenty about this book without opening it.
My son collects far too much stuff, so we've enjoyed reading and rereading this gem. Written by Margie Palatini and illustrated by Noah Z. Jones, Stuff may not get your little one to do away with his collections, but it might plant a seed, and will definitely bring you smiles and chuckles.

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Summer of the Gypsy Moths
By Sara Pennypacker
Balzer & Bray (an imprint of Harper Collins)
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-06-196420-6
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

Spoiler Alert – I am giving away every little detail about this book in this review. You have been warned.

As a librarian I’m always on the lookout for good middle grade books I can booktalk to kids. Often you don’t need an exciting cover or title to sell a book to kids. Heck, sometimes you don’t even need to show the book at all. Yet in the case of Sara Pennypacker’s debut middle grade novel Summer of the Gypsy Moths I fully intend to show the cover off. There you see two happy girls on a seashore on a beautiful summer’s day. What could be more idyllic? I’ll show the kids the cover then start right off with, “Doesn’t it look sweet? Yeah. So this is a book about two girls who bury a corpse in their backyard by themselves and don’t tell anyone about it.” BLAMMO! Instant interest. Never mind that the book really is a heartfelt and meaningful story or that the writing is some of the finest you will encounter this year. Dead bodies = interested readers, and if I have to sell it with a tawdry pitch then I am bloody selling it with a tawdry pitch and the devil take the details. Shh! Don’t tell them it’s of outstanding literary quality as well!

Convinced that her free floating mother will return to her someday soon, Stella lives with her Great-aunt Louise and Louise’s foster kid Angel. The situation is tenable if not entirely comfortable. If Stella is neat to the point of fault then Angel’s her 180-degree opposite. They’re like oil and water, those two. That’s why when Louise ups and dies on the girls they’re surprised to find themselves reluctant allies in a kind of crazy scheme. Neither one of them wants to get caught up in the foster care system so maybe that’s why they end up burying Louise in the backyard, running her summer cottages like nothing’s wrong. They can’t keep it up forever, but in the process of working together the two find themselves growing closer, coming to understand where they’re both coming from.

I always knew Pennypacker could write, of course. She cut her teeth on the early chapter book market (Clementine, etc.), which, besides easy books, can often be the most difficult books to write for children. The woman really mastered the form, managing with as few words as possible to drive home some concrete emotions and feelings. In Summer of the Gypsy Moths she ups the proverbial ante, so to speak. Now that she has far more space to play with, Pennypacker takes her time. She draws Stella and Angel into a realistically caring relationship with one another that overcomes their earlier animosity. By the end of the story you understand that they really do like one another, differences of opinion and personality aside.

Then there’s the writing itself. First and foremost, Pennypacker knows how to write some stellar lines. Things like, “Angel stared at me, looking like she was caught between snarling and fainting.” She’s also ample with the humor, as when Stella goes to school after the incident and reports, “Nobody seemed to notice the big sign I felt sure I wore, the one th

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Title: Inside Out & Back Again    Author: Thanhha Lai    Publisher: Harper Collins

May Contain Spoilers

From Amazon:

Review:

I love books about different cultures or ways of life, and Inside Out & Back Again delivers up an emotionally enthralling account of a young Vietnamese girl’s flight from her home country to the US.  As I read Ha’s adventures, recounted in simple yet moving free verse, I wondered what it would be like to have everything familiar ripped away.  Before the fall of Saigon, life for Ha was happy and content, despite the growing hardships caused by the war.  Her father has been missing in action since she was an infant, but her family still holds out hope that he will return home one day.  She loves her family, she is doing well in school, and she is eager for her papaya tree to finally yield fruit.  Her three brothers are happy, as well, and they are excellent students with bright futures ahead of them.  Everything changes with the fall of Saigon.

Ha’s mother is trying valiantly to raise four children by herself, but life has gotten more difficult.  It’s harder to make ends meet, and the price of everything keeps climbing.  As the communists threaten Saigon, she has a family meeting and asks everyone what they should do.  Should they flee, and try to built a new life in a country without Ho Chi Min and the war?  Ha and her brother Thoi don’t want to go.  How can they leave Ha’s papaya tree and Thoi’s chicken?  The pain of leaving their most prized possessions was a bitter pill to swallow for a new life with no guarantees.  I don’t think I could have done it.  Photographs, clothing, memories; all were left behind in Vietnam.

I loved Ha and found her easy to relate to.  She has been thrust into a new life that she doesn’t want, and one that doesn’t seem to want her.  Her new neighbors in Alabama aren’t very neighborly, she can’t understand the confusing language she is immersed in, and her classmates mock and bully her.  Her teacher doesn’t understand her and doesn’t try to make her feel welcome.  Instead, Ha, a bright, curious girl, is left feeling stupid and ignorant.  As she begins to pick up the language, she wishes she did not understand the names she is called or the jokes that her peers make about her.  She is angry, justifiably, but there is no outlet for her rage.  Ha is the one who must make concessions to fit in with a group of kids who can only see

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Title: Storybound Author: Marissa Burt Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 978-0062020529

 

May Contain Spoilers

From Amazon:

Review:

I am having a fantastic winning streak of wonderful Middle-Grade novels so far in 2012.  Storybound turned out to be another winner.  The premise is fantastic, and I could not put the book down.  I was literally glued to my reading chair for an entire afternoon as I frantically turned pages, eager to see what kind of trouble Una would find herself in.

Like Harry Potter, Una has never known her parents.  She has been shuffled through the foster care system, and she currently lives with Ms. McDonough, an odd woman who speaks to her cats far more frequently than she speaks to Una.  Una is fine with that, because she finally has some time to herself after being fostered in big families where she never felt that she belonged.  She feels invisible, both at her foster home and at school.  One day when Una is reading in the library in the basement at school, she finds a mysterious book.  A book about her.  Before she even has a chance to catch her breath, she finds herself sucked into the book, trapped as a character in the story.  Now she must  find her way back out again, all without getting killed.  Whoa!

In the land of Story, Una finds must become a student at the school where the children of Story learn how to be characters in books.  All of the citizens of Story have roles in books, and they all have to behave in a manner consistent with the character they are playing.  I loved the concept of this world.  Una’s ally, Peter, is learning to be a Hero.  He takes his studies very seriously, and when Una is magically zapped into one of his practical exams, he is not very happy when she screws it up for him.  With Peter’s help, Una learns that she was Written In.  Peter is shocked, because no one has been Written In since the Tale Keepers overthrew the evil Muses and took control of Story.

I am going to gush about how much I adored Una.  She is resourceful, clever, and loyal, and she is my favorite kind of protagonist.  She meets setback after setback, but each one makes her more determined to figure out what is going on.  Something is stinky in the land of Story, and Una won’t rest until she discovers what it is.  There is something wrong with the Tale Keepers, and she doesn’t believe that the Muses were evil.  With the help of Peter and Sam, a talking cat, she  searches for the truth, even when it puts her in mortal danger.  And Una is in a lot of danger.  She doesn’t belong in Story, and she needs to get back home before someone fi

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Is graffiti art or vandalism? Keep reading… Our Mayor has been on a warpath, making it his agenda to clean up the city. I happen to live behind one of the city’s most notorious graffiti alleyways, and I think it’s beautiful. These pieces aren’t made by gangs marking their territory and damaging private property, these [...]

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The One and Only Ivan
By Katherine Applegate
Illustrated by Patricia Castelao
Harper Collins
$16.99
ISBN: 9780-06-199225-4
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

All right, the topic is Famous Ape Books of Children’s Literature. And . . . go. Care to name any? Well there’s Curious George, of course (often mistakenly called a monkey in spite of his lack of tail). He’s the most famous but after that it gets harder. Eva by Peter Dickinson might count (also a chimp). Or a book like Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby (chimp). Gorillas appear to be much rarer, which is funny when you consider it. I would think an animal as big and impressive as a gorilla would be a no brainer children’s book hero. As it happens, Ivan of The One and Only Ivan is a rarity, and not just because his story covers ground that few other books have (with the exception of the odd Good Night Gorilla). Katherine Applegate’s title is a cry for animal rights that works on its reader in slow subtle steps. You will find no screeds or speeches or long lengthy lamentations. Instead, it’s just a gorilla living what life he can, until the day he can stay silent no longer. Thanks to its restraint the book ends up being a gem. One of the best of the year, no doubt.

Basically what we have here is Charlotte’s Web if you took that tiny spider and replaced her with a 300-pound gorilla. Which, to be frank, would normally bode badly for said gorilla. And certainly badly is how Ivan, the titular hero of this tale, bodes when you consider that he is trapped in an off-highway mall circus. Ivan’s never questioned his fate seriously, considering that he’s been there for twenty-seven years. Then one day Mack, the owner of the mall, decides that the only way to drum up more business will be to buy a new resident. There’s already Ivan and Stella, the elephant with an injured foot that doesn’t seem to be getting better. To this mix comes Ruby, a baby elephant not long captured from her home in the wild. Thanks to Ruby, Ivan sees that this is no place for a baby of any sort and he must use all his brains and intelligence to find a way to save not just her but himself as well.

It is the temptation of every author, bad or good, to simplify ethics when they write for kids. Bad guys are bad, good guys are good, and never the twain shall meet. This is particularly true of animal abuse stories. After all, who wants to go about digging up a heart of gold in a character that kicks puppies? Yet the best books for kids are often the ones that allow for at least a glimpse of the human inside the villain. It’s the reason Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s 6 Comments on Review of the Day: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, last added: 3/7/2012