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It’s back!  I’ve been doing my thing, buying lovely adult titles for my library system, and time and again I’ve run across ideas or names that fall squarely in the children’s book realm.  Here then are some real beauties. Things you just might not know about otherwise.

I know and like Elisha Cooper but I’m ashamed to say that before this book was announced I was unaware of his previous memoir A Father’s First Year which was released in 2006.  Since that time, Cooper’s daughter was diagnosed at the age of four with pediatric kidney cancer.  This book examines her treatment, recovery, and what this all did to Elisha himself.  On my To Be Read Shelf.

Thus continuing my series of books about people I know or have met, and yet never had any idea about when it comes to their personal lives.  In this upcoming August memoir, Nadja (who penned Lost in NYC amongst other things) opens up about herself, her mother, and even her grandmother.  It’s a deeply personal work about someone I’m desperately fond of (Francoise Mouly, Nadja’s mother, is the founder of TOON Books, as well as serving as the Art Director of The New Yorker, and she is delight incarnate).  Also on the To Be Read Shelf.

This inclusion is a bit of a stretch.  I really only put it here because in the Library Journal review of the book it said, “Soviet-style medical ethics or lack thereof frame an intimate story that the publicist calls One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest crossed with The Fault Is in Our Stars.”  So there’s that.

Jackie writes something for adults and people get very excited.  Book Expo America hasn’t even happened yet, but I’ve already been seeing this title showing up on lists of Best Books of the Summer and what have you.  I foresee some libraries have problems cataloging this title (the cover looks awfully similar to her YA novels and will be easily confused) but for all that, I suspect it’s going to be a book club hit and a New York Times bestseller.  Just you wait, just you wait . . .

No further comments, your honor.

For those of us floored by M.T. Anderson’s Symphony for the City of the Dead last year, here is a new biography of its star, Dmitri Shostakovich.  And it’s a novel.  It’s out May 10th.  Look for it.

A Garth Williams biography!  Whodathunkit? Seems pretty specialized and for a veeeery small market, but there you are.  I know the estate of Williams doesn’t exactly bend over backwards to allow folks to use his art (even his obscure art) in any context. They must have approved of this book from the start.  Heck, I’ll read it.

Happy Columbus Day to you!  I’ve not particularly insightful encapsulations of the day to offer you, though if you’d like to read some preview posts I’ve done on the day (completely with book recommendations) feel free to go here.

• I will start today with this rather interesting post about a recent brouhaha that arose when a Macalester College student created a spoken word piece called “To JK Rowling, From Cho Chang”.  The internet being what it is you could certainly predict the nasty flaming war that would occur in the wake of her talk, particularly when the video went viral.  What makes the whole incident singular, to my mind, is the student’s response.  She sat down and calmly discussed the top five point folks made about her piece.  She admitted mistakes, reinforced certain points, and basically acted like a civilized grown-up.  The internet is shockingly devoid of civilized grown-ups these days, so in some small part of my brain I wish that high schools around the country could show kids this piece and teach them about internet etiquette in the 21st century.  Own up and also stand up for your beliefs.  It’s a hard lesson and this woman did it with class.  Bravo.

• Now even before I read Travis Jonker’s fun post, I was aware that the Fuse channel had created something called Fuse News.  I can’t blame them.  It’s a catchy phrase.  Travis’s post is notable, by the way, because it manages to incorporate the phrase “Way to ruin my joke, Weird Al” completely within context.  And just so long as they don’t sue me for the term, we should be fine.  A Google search of the term “Fusenews” yields only them anyway.

• Flowcharts.  We’re crazy about them.  After my little Noodle flowchart got such nice press I heard from a lot of librarians the cry, “Why can’t we do that?”  Turns out, you can.  I was alerted not so long ago to this cool Which YA Novel Is Right for You?  Feel free to fill in the blanks and come up with your very own personalized flowchart.  Fun for patrons and librarians alike.

• I’m sure you already saw it at PW Children’s Bookshelf, but how clever were they to interview Elisha Cooper about his contemporary picture book Train alongside Brian Floca and his nonfiction picture book Locomotive.  Someone asked me the other day if Floca might be in the running for a Newbery.  It hadn’t occurred to me before but now . . . oh boy, I hope so.

• Got the following note the other day and it’s a fun idea for small pubs.  A bit too small for its own press release, I’ll just post it here.

Beginning on Thursday, 10/10/13, at 10AM EST an original apple will be revealed every day until 11/10/13.  Readers, librarians, booksellers, and educators who follow Blue Apple Books on Facebook or Twitter are invited to guess the name of the artist who created the apple.  Whoever is first to guess correctly on either social network will receive a Blue Apple book illustrated by that artist.

In that alternate universe where I am independently wealthy and spend all my days reporting on children’s literature (isn’t that what you would do if you were independently wealthy?) I spend certain days of the year traveling to different children’s rooms in libraries throughout the country to check out their original art by fantastic children’s illustrators.  Murals, paintings, stained glass windows, the works.  As of right now I think the only time I’ve ever actually reported on this blog on the art in a children’s room was when I went to the Kalamazoo Public Library’s back in 2009 (note how this was written before my blog was switched to its new format and thus *sob* I lost ALL the images).

Here at New York Public Library you might think that the branches are filled to brimming with the art of local authors and illustrators.  While it may be true that we have some lovely pieces by Ezra Jack Keats and Faith Ringgold here and there, it doesn’t come up all that often.  So I need not tell you how excited I was when I heard that Elisha Cooper had volunteered out of the goodness of his golden glorious heart to paint art for the children’s room in Greenwich Village’s Jefferson Market Branch.

A little background.  When I first got my bright and shiny library degree and moved to New York City I was under the distinct impression that the only available positions with NYPL were on Staten Island.  As I came in for my final interview, however, the nice recruiter who changed my life offered me the chance to be in Greenwich Village instead.  Hence I came to the most gorgeous branch in the system. Built in the 1860s with a clocktower that holds a giant spider puppet year round (this is true), converted jail cells in the basement, and more stained glass than many a church, it’s a beauty.  It had a huge children’s room on the first floor with these massive white blank walls.  And there was nothing on a single one of those walls either, long after I left.  Not for years and years and years.

Enter Elisha Cooper.  You may know him best from his numerous amazing picture books.  My personal favorite is Farm followed by Beach, but I understand the love many hold for Magic Thinks Big or Beaver Is Lost or even this year’s Homer.  Long story short, the man has this beautiful, distinctive style that somehow turns the merest of outlines into works of beauty.  He’s also a Greenwich Village resident and he saw the great gaping walls of the Jefferson Market children’s room and thought he should do something about it.

What did he do?  Ladies and gentlemen he brought, from his own home, six empty white canvasses into the branch.  Then he got permission to paint on them in the programming room next to the children’s room.  His process looked something like this:

Those images were taken by Christopher “Flash” Smith.  That is why they were good.  These next images are from my camera phone.  That is why they are less good.  Each canvass, as you can see, contains a variety of different animals.  Elisha did think to possibly make each one represent a different continent, but I’m not sure whether or not he proceeded with that plan until the end.

(I love that he worked in that honey badger)

I’m sorry I don’t have a close-up shot of these three canvasses since those are the ones that contain the most children’s literature homages.  You can find the ducklings from Make Way for Ducklings (apropos since that book was created in a tiny Greenwich Village apartment), Kitten from Kitten’s First Full Moon, Ferdinand, and a bunch of other folks in these paintings.

Big thanks to Elisha for showing me his art and for passing along some of these photos.  So for any of you passing through Greenwich Village, be sure to stop by the Jefferson Market Library at 6th Avenue and 10th Street and admire what’s on display.

As new regulations forced New York City restaurants to display their health inspection grades, the Three Lives & Company bookshop decided to show off an A+ “Literary Inspection Grade.”

The Vanishing New York blog posted a photo of the sign, a reproduction of the food inspection grades hand-drawn by author and illustrator Elisha Cooper.

By Nightfall author Michael Cunningham once called Three Lives & Company “one of the greatest bookstores on the face of the Earth.” How would you rate your local bookstore?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Farm
By Elisha Cooper
Orchard Books (an imprint of Scholastic)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-545-07075-1
Ages 5-10
On shelves now

As a children’s librarian living in New York City, I get a really skewed view of the world. For example, a book like Christoph Niemann’s Subway will get released and all the children I see are hugely into it. For them, the subway is a part of life and that book shows them what they already know. What I have to remind myself is that Manhattan children, for all their charms, are aberrations. Lots of kids in the United States haven’t a clue what a working subway system looks or feels like. So when a book like Farm falls into my lap my brain has to do a 180 in the opposite direction. Lots of city kids have never been to a real working farm before. They understand them in the vaguest of senses. Growing up they learned that animals lived on the farm with a moo moo here and a baa baa there. Actual working farms, however, are the kinds of things you see outside your car window on your way from one part of the country to another. They are near magical places. All that land. All that sky. That’s why I’m delighted that a book like Farm even exists. It has a twofold purpose. For kids who have never experienced a farm firsthand, it provides a glimpse into a world as different and magical as any fantasy land. And for kids who already have a working knowledge of farms and the countryside, the book is a magnificent mirror that takes the practical beauty of their everyday lives and spins it into storytelling gold.

We begin in that time when spring has only started to make some headway against winter. When the days start to warm up but the fields are just a mass of brown dirt. We meet the equipment, the family, the hired hands, and the animals. We watch the tiller turn the soil, “the fields change from the color of milk chocolate to the color of dark chocolate.” We see seeds being planted, rains come, and crops grow. We meet the cats and the cows, and follow the family into town on occasion. There are summer nights and days and kids going back to school once again. To crops come in, the winter falls, and it’s all in the life of a single farm.

Kids love process. Not all kids, but a lot of them. They like to know how things are made and how things come to be. Farm, in a sense, is all about process, but it doesn’t get hung up on the concept. So you’ll learn about different kinds of farms, how tractors work, and what the various seasons resemble. But you’ll also see the downtime of the farmer and his kids. They go to town and chat with neighbors. The boy amuses himself by throwing tomatoes at birds or building forts out of straw. The girl, who is getting older, spends time reading books or staying away from home more and more often. Best of all, kids these days have a tendency to think that farming is an occupation of the past. So this book works in current technology without making it so prominent that the book will date anytime soon. A broken tractor means that a farmer has to call a neighbor on his cell to get it fixed. Much later during the harvesting “The farmer checks the corn’s yield on his computer and ta