Bartholomew Biddle and the Very Big Wind, by Gary Ross, illustrated by Matthew Myers,
Candlewick, $17.99, ages 6 and up, 96 pages, 2012.
A boy flies away from home to escape his ordinary life, only to discover that he misses his parents, his tasks and routines.
In this exhilarating poem by film director Gary Ross, Bartholomew Biddle straps on a bedsheet and soars out of his window at night to see what the world has to offer.
"'Why, that looks like fun! / Just look at those trees! They're bending in half -- yeah, that's quite a breeze,'" he says, as a wind blows in to carry him away.
In bare feet and pajamas, Bart paraglides out over houses and cars, and fancies himself the "World's Best Bedsheet flier."
"'Wow, this isn't bad!' / he said, swooping and soaring, / buzzing the rooftops while / people were snoring."
Bart climbs higher and "levels 'er off," then decides he's ready to go somewhere. In the next chapter, Bartholomew wakes up cradled in his sheet between limbs of a banana tree.
Looking down, he realizes he's on a tropical island and sees a band of pirates as merry as can be. In no time, they invite him down to dig up gold and feast on mango pie. It's paradise. And yet it's almost too perfect even for pirates.
One day, Bart hears crying and learns that the pirate's captain is homesick for the sea. The captain misses being surprised by life and not having things work out perfectly right: "Fun isn't fun fun / when it's all that you know."
Bart realizes he misses those things too, and tells the pirates he's "gotta be going" and sets off in search of home. "'Cause tough as it was / to admit to himself / he missed his old room / and the toys on his shelf."
"And even his mom / at a quarter to eight: 'C'mon sleepyhead -- you're one hour late!"
As Bart takes flight again, the wind ripples through his pajamas, now tattered at the cuffs like those of a pirate's slops -- reflecting the adventuring he's already done.
But wind, like life, is uncertain and as Bartholomew coasts for home, he finds himself plummeting down into more peculiar places: where people never leave because they're afraid to or they feel stuck.
Each landing comes abruptly, while Bartholomew is reflecting on things he misses back home, and is also serendipitous: while stranded in these places, Bart learns what it means to really live.
First, the wind peters out over a sad little town where men head off to work with their eyes toward the ground. While Bartholomew loses altitude, he wonders if his dad is like these men, shuffling off to work in a daze.
"Each morning and night / he'd pass through that door, / but what comes in the middle? There's got to be more..."
Then Bartholomew remembers a glistening day, when he and his dad lay on the floor with 500 shades of crayons, marveling at all of the possibilities life has to offer.
"You're young, and the future / is yours to be plucked," his dad said that day.
But then Bart clips a tree and is startled back to reality. He falls into a mucky pond by an austere-looking boarding school, where students have so many rules, they can hardly keep track.
"No running, no jumping, / no chewing of gum, / No teasing, no sneezing, / no crying for your mum."
But then Bart befriends one of the students, Densy, who longs to explore too and Bart asks him to fly away with him. Though Densy longs to do so, he's afraid to break the rules and at the last minute, chooses to stay.
Reluctantly, Bart leaves his new friend behind and soars up until Densy is just a dot on the ground. Soon, Bart is lost in a cloud that leads to a storm and then he's pitched back to the ground.
With rain pelting down and his sheet tearing, Bart plummets into a canyon where all sorts of explorers and risk-takers are stranded. Among them an aviator "Amelia", a balloonist, windsurfers, a Swiss mountaineer and pioneers.
The canyon is enclosed by sheer cliffs and everyone has assumed there's no way out. "They sit and they stare / at nothing at all," having lost the spirit of adventure that got them there.
Will Bart lose his ambition too? Or will a friend new to all this adventuring take a chance, and come and try to save him?
Ross' debut into children's writing is wondrous and though the poem is epic (for a picture book), it has an easy cadence that keeps readers bounding along to the end.
The message for children is simple and wise, and reminiscent of something Dr. Seuss would write:
Life's for living -- seize the moment, break free. But then come home -- check in, learn the things you need to know before setting off again.
I read this to my eight-year-old son and knew almost instantly we'd read straight to the end. It was his punctuated laugh and beaming face that cued me in, as he reacted to the line, "He'd turned from a ten-year-old / to a small plane."
It took almost an hour to read the book and though my voice got a little craggy, we didn't want to stop till the end. When the last page did come, we felt as if we could float off to bed.
Myers' paintings are exhilarating, particularly those of Bart in flight, and have whimsical touches that float about the page. When Bart learns how explorers blew into the canyon, Myers scatters humorous images of them between poem columns.
The edges of the pages become the walls of the cavern as characters tumble down: On one side, a tornado whirls down with a flag at the top, representing a golfer who got swept away, and below that a man falls clutching the arm of a giant clock to represent being in the right place at the "wrong time."
Not all of the pages are illustrated, but after awhile it didn't matter. By the end of the poem, I realized we'd already filled in all of the blanks with our imaginations.
This is a joyful read for any child who wishes they could lift off and fly.
Of course, we don't want children experimenting with flight. (A cautionary note appears at the beginning of the story.) But wouldn't it be great to see them in the backyard on a windy day, running around with a sheet at their backs?
Ross is the director of many acclaimed films, including The Tale of Despereaux, Pleasantville, and The Hunger Games.
The New York Times reports that filmmaker Francis Lawrence has come on board as the director for the next installment of The Hunger Games movie series, Catching Fire. Lawrence started off his Hollywood career directing music videos. He has since progressed on to movies including literary adaptations such as Constantine (2005) and Water for Elephants (2011).
Here’s more from the article: “Mr. Lawrence said in a statement that he ‘fell in love with the characters’ of Ms. Collins’s novels, as well as ‘the themes and the world she created,’ adding that ‘this chapter opens all of these elements up in such a thrilling, emotional and surprising way.’” MTV reports that star actors Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson feel sad that Gary Ross did not sign up to direct the sequel film. However, they both look forward to working with Lawrence.
Lawrence is not the only new addition to The Hunger Games movie crew. Simon Beaufoy, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who adapted Slumdog Millionaire (2008), penned the first draft of the script for Catching Fire. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate is negotiating with Michael Arndt, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind Little Miss Sunshine (2006), to polish Beaufoy’s draft.
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The New York Times reports that filmmaker Francis Lawrence has come on board as the director for the next installment of The Hunger Games movie series, Catching Fire. Lawrence started off his Hollywood career directing music videos. He has since progressed on to movies including literary adaptations such as Constantine (2005) and Water for Elephants (2011).
Here’s more from the article: “Mr. Lawrence said in a statement that he ‘fell in love with the characters’ of Ms. Collins’s novels, as well as ‘the themes and the world she created,’ adding that ‘this chapter opens all of these elements up in such a thrilling, emotional and surprising way.’” MTV reports that star actors Liam Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson feel sad that Gary Ross did not sign up to direct the sequel film. However, they both look forward to working with Lawrence.
Lawrence is not the only new addition to The Hunger Games movie crew. Simon Beaufoy, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who adapted Slumdog Millionaire (2008), penned the first draft of the script for Catching Fire. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lionsgate is negotiating with Michael Arndt, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind Little Miss Sunshine (2006), to polish Beaufoy’s draft.
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
You’ve got your big-time fancy pants New York publishers on the one hand, and then you have your big-time fancy pants Boston publishers on the other. A perusal of Minders of Make-Believe by Leonard Marcus provides a pretty good explanation for why Boston is, in its way, a small children’s book enclave of its own. Within its borders you have publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Candlewick holding court. The only time I have ever been to Boston was when ALA last had a convention there. It was nice, though cold and there are duckling statues.
So it was that the good people of Candlewick came to New York to show off some of their finest Fall 2012 wares. Now the last time they came here they were hosted by SLJ. This time they secured space in the Bank Street College of Education. Better location, less good food (no cookies, but then I have the nutritional demands of a five-year-old child). We were given little signs on which to write our names. I took an extra long time on mine for what I can only assume was an attempt to “win” the write-your-name part of the day. After that, we were off!
First up, it’s our old friend and Caldecott Honor winner (I bet that never gets old for him) David Ezra Stein. The fellow’s been toiling away with his paints n’ such for years, so it’s little wonder he wanted to ratchet up his style a notch with something different. And “something different” is a pretty good explanation of what you’ll find with Because Amelia Smiled. This is sort of a take on the old nursery rhyme that talks about “For Want of a Nail”, except with a happy pay-it-forward kind of spin. Because a little girl smiles a woman remembers to send a care package. Because the care package is received someone else does something good. You get the picture. Stein actually wrote this book as a Senior in art school but has only gotten to writing it officially now. It’s sort of the literary opposite of Russell Hoban’s A Sorely Trying Day or Barbara Bottner’s An Annoying ABC. As for the art itself, the author/illustrator has created a whole new form which he’s named Stein-lining. To create it you must apply crayons to wax paper and then turn it over. I don’t quite get the logistics but I’ll be interested in seeing the results. Finally, the book continues the massive trend of naming girls in works of children’s fiction “Amelia”. Between Amelia Bedelia, Amelia’s Notebook, and Amelia Rules I think the children’s literary populace is well-stocked in Amelias ah-plenty.
Next up, a title that may well earn the moniker of Most Anticipated Picture Book of the Fall 2012 Season. This Is Not My Hat isn’t a sequel to
4 Comments on Librarian Preview: Candlewick Press (Fall 2012), last added: 4/25/2012
Jennifer Lawrence will star in a new adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden..jpeg?picon=3103)
Lionsgate has released photos from the set of The Hunger Games adaptation. The photo embedded above shows actors Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth playing Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mallark.
Golden Globe-winner Donald Sutherland (pictured, 
I just cannot get over how amazing these covers are. Candlewick’s art and design team consistently knock it out of the park. I’m a total sucker for a graphic cover, and this is an entry of such eye candy.
I have been a proud follower of Candlewick since their inception. What I wouldn’t give for a tour of their facility and a preview of their lineup. What a lucky reader you are!
I agree with Karen–I especially can’t wait to see those Toon Books. Wowza!
Thanks for the preview. Lots to note here. I must say that I am always impressed by Candlewick Lists.
And, by some fortuitous alignment of the stars, I received an arc of Personal Effects. I haven’t blogged about it yet, but was blown away by this debut. One to note for sure.
brenda