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Morning, folks. We’re beginning this Sunday morn with stuff that’s good for the soul.  How often have you said to yourself, “I’d love to own some original art from illustrator Matthew Cordell but I’m too busy spending all my cash on children’s literacy foundations”?  Well, fear not!  Now you can do both.  In celebration of their book Special Delivery, Messrs. Cordell and Philip Stead are going to hold a raffle for five pieces of awesome art.  You win by donating money to good causes.  The details are here and the video here:

Next up, the American Hogwarts.  I mean, it is if by “Hogwarts” you’re referring to a well-established university setting with a clear cut amazing children’s collection, staff, program schedule, and more.  Princeton finally decided to create a little trailer for the Cotsen Children’s Library, and I have to say I’m stunned. First off, there’s my girl Dana Sheridan killing it with the storytimes.  Then there’s the just wide range of services they provide.  And the furniture, dear GOD the furniture!!  I’m fascinated by the Cotsen Critix program too since bookclubs for 9-12 year-olds are my weakness.  Wish I lived closer to it!  Here’s more background information and here’s the trailer:

Someday I shall teach a course on the art of the book trailer. In it I will show all the different myriad styles and techniques one can utilize when coming up with your very own.  And always assuming that I remember, I shall include this simple, lovely trailer for The Mystery Hat by Rune Brandt Bennicke and Jakob Hjort Jensen .  Sometimes it’s all in the soundtrack, folks.

There go Scieszka and Biggs.  I’ve suspected for years that they were in the pocket of Big Audiobook but never had the proof . . . until now!!

Seriously, though, I’m-a wanting that crazy white wig.

So this year we are seeing not one but TWO different early chapter book series about Latino girls. This is a good thing since the running tally before 2015 was . . . um . . . yeah, it was zero.  Zero series in total.  The first is the Emma Is On the Air series by Ida Siegal and illustrated by Karla Pena.  The second is the Sofia Martinez series by Jacqueline Jules, illustrated by Kim Smith.  But only one of these (as of this post) has a book trailer:

It’s not a children’s book.  It’s not even a YA novel.  It’s (*gasp* *shudder*) an adult book . . . but its book trailer is adorable.  I can resist it, not at all.

Thanks to Alison Morris for the link.

I had not yet taken the time to see the trailer for the Lena Dunham/Hilary Knight documentary. Nothing too surprising to see here, but it’s certainly a very clear cut case of a famous person attempting to shine their light on someone they admire who might not be a household name (though Eloise certainly is).

Thanks to educating alice for the link.

And I’m not feeling too creative on the off-topic video of the day.  And when the going gets tough, the tough links to cat/dog videos.  So goes the world.  So goes the world.

by Philip Stead (Roaring Book Press, 2014)

This boy. This book.

We know Philip Stead can tell a story. Even his Number Five Bus interview series (with wife and creative partner Erin and ‘potentially interesting interactions with fellow book people’) is like a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a blanket.

Here’s what I love about this book.

That the copyright page tells us the art was made with pastels, oil paints, and pressed charcoal. Those things make your hands dirty and rub all the story off with it. There’s a feeling of grit there that I can’t quite figure out, but somehow these drawings feel loose and messy and full of both turbulence and elegance. The color is both rich and muted, deep and spare.

This red bird, that shows up on every single page. A constant companion to Sebastian’s wandering. A comfort.

That Philip Stead varies his compositions throughout, so that sometimes you are intimate with this cast, and sometimes you are pulling back for a wide shot of their world. That sometimes you are bobbing along with them and that sometimes you are floating free. That you feel the magnitude of this balloon trip, that you go with the wind too.

This leafless tree that gets the lumpiest-in-my-throat moment when it returns in glorious color. It was hard not to show you what I mean, but if you haven’t seen this part, then see this part. I won’t wreck the magic.

That the closest Sebastian comes to a smile is in sharing pickle sandwiches with his friends.

The way this milky gray fog is drawn. Moody and slightly scary and a barrier between the reader and the page. You can’t warn them about the pop because they couldn’t hear you through its thickness. They have to endure the danger.

That each character’s face is solemn and expressionless, but full of understanding. For each other, for pressing on, for seeing something. The tension there is the curiosity and the hope that they are finding comfort in their journey.

These sisters. Because.

###

This ramshackle roller coaster. Both “the most perfect roller coaster they would ever see” and chipped and faded and bent and broken and overrun with pigeons. And the pigeons, for where they go next.

That Sebastian thought to bring a boat and a ball of yarn.

And that I have a love/hate relationship with Caldecott speculation, but that big moon and patchwork balloon would look especially nice with a third round thing on the cover.

P.S. – Did I tell you about my spin on the Let’s Get Busy podcast with Matthew Winner and Kelly Light? That’s here if you want a listen. This book love guilt thing is no joke, because I keep thinking of other 2014 favorites that didn’t make our list, like this one. Huge thanks to book people for making great things. Don’t slow down. Also, here’s a super conversation between Philip and Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. More art! Not to miss.

Honestly, I don’t quite know why I even bother doing Fusenews posts on Saturdays.  As you might suspect, my readership dips considerably when the weekends hit, but an old Fusenews post is like a week old fish.  Time does it no favors.  As such, I shall cut through my seething envy of everyone at BookExpo this week (honestly, why are you folks having SO much fun anyway?) and pretend that Maureen Johnson’s tweets about how bad the coffee is there will convince me that it’s not that interesting anywa . . . wait a minute . . . they’re giving away copies of that Scieszka/Biggs early reader series in the Abrams booth?!?!  WAAAAAAHHHHHH!

• New Site Alert: We begin with the big, interesting, important news.  Phil and Erin Stead aren’t just Caldecott Award winners.  No siree bob, they also happen to be innovative interviewers.  Having just started the site Number Five Bus Presents (I approve of the title since it fits in nicely with 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast, A Fuse #8 Production, and 9 Kinds of Pie . . . we just need a blog that uses the number 6 to fill in the gap), the two are conducting a series of conversations with book makers.  There will be 9-12 episodes per “season”.  So far they’ve spoken with Eric Rohmann (consider this your required reading of the day) with many more interviews on the way.  You can read the reasons why they’re doing this here.  Basically it boils down to them wanting to connect to fellow book makers in what can often be a lonely field.  If I were a professor of children’s literature, I would make everyone in my class subscribe to this site.  Many thanks to Jules for the tip!

• About a month ago I was at an event where a venture capitalist with an interest in children’s literature was asking how much money a new children’s book prize should pay out.  “$20,000?  $30,000?” he ventured.  We all sort of balked at the amounts, assuring the man that any author would be grateful for $10,000, let alone a larger amount (the authors in the room, as you might imagine, were gung ho for the original mentioned amounts).  Meanwhile, had I but known, the people at Kirkus were debating the self-same thing.  Only when they came up with their brand new book prize monetary amount, they decided to play for keeps.  On October 23, 2014 some amazingly lucky children’s or YA author will win a $50,000 (you read that number right) prize for their book.  All it needs to have done is receive a star from Kirkus to be eligible.  The initial announcement in The Washington Post made the big time mistake of saying that the youth award would only go to YA.  Happily, the subsequent Kirkus announcement clarified that this was not the case.  Man.  I really really want to be on that jury someday.  The power!

• Just a reminder that the Kids Author Carnival will be up and running here in NYC today (Saturday).  Got no plans at 6 tonight?  Now you do.

• Aw, what the heck.  Need a new poster for your library?  How bout this?

You can download the PDF here if you so desire.

• Sure, the blog post Trigger Warnings for Classic Kids Books is amusing, but I would bet you dollars to donuts that at least half of these “objections” have been used in legitimate attempts to ban or remove from shelves these books somewhere, sometime.

• I did not know that Sun Ra and Prince were both influences on Daniel Handler but when said, it makes a certain amount of sense. PEN America’s biweekly interview series The Pen Ten recently interviewed the man and justified my belief that the most interesting authors are the ones that don’t give the same rote answers in every single interview they do.  Of course good questions help as well.

• In L.A.?  Wish you were in New York attending BookExpo?  Wish you had something in your neck of the woods to crow about?  Well, good news.  If you haven’t heard already, the Skirball Cultural Center is featuring the show The Snowy Day and the Art of Ezra Jack Keats from now until September.  Lucky ducks.

• Speaking of BookExpo (and is there anything else TO speak of this week?) I was much obliged to the folks at Shelf Awareness for their #BEA14: Pictures from an Exhibition post.  From that amazing diversity panel at SLJ’s Day of Dialog to singing sensation Michael Buckley and the Amazing Juggling Authors to James Patterson’s $1 million given out to bookstores (way to go, Watchung Booksellers!) it’s a great post.

• There’s a 2014 Children’s Book Week Bookstore Display Contest?  Oo. Good luck choosing amongst them, guys.

• Adult authors that write books for children are hardly new.  They’re also rarely any good.  Sorry, but it is the rare adult author that finds that they’re a natural in the children’s book realm as well.  There are always exceptions (heck, Neil Gaiman won himself a Newbery so howzabout THEM apples, eh?) and one of them might be Jo Nesbø.  Over at The Guardian, Nesbø discusses how he decides in the morning whether or not to write his gritty adult crime thrillers . . . or the fart books for kids.  Frankly, I’ll always be grateful to Nesbø because of the day I was sitting at the reference desk in the Children’s Center at 42nd Street and a group of young female Norwegians came in asking for Norwegian children’s authors.  Thank goodness for Nesbø and Peter Christen Abjorsen.

• Somewhat along the same lines, this has very little to do with anything (to the best of my knowledge the only children’s book she ever penned was The Shoe Bird) but if you have not already read Eudora Welty’s New Yorker application letter, you’re welcome.  Suddenly I want to see the biopic of her life with the character of Eudora played by Kristen Schall.  Am I crazy?

• It took them a bloody long time but at long last the Bologna Children’s Book Fair has announced when the 2015 dates will be.  So . . . if anyone feels like sponsoring me to go I wouldn’t, ah, object or anything.  *bats eyelashes charmingly*

• A library can lend books.  It can lend tablets.  It can lend laptops even.  But lending the internet itself?  NYPL is currently doing just that (or is about to). In this article you can see that, “The goal of this project is to expand the reach and benefits of free access to the Internet provided by The New York Public Library (NYPL) to underserved youth and communities by allowing them to borrow portable WiFi Hotspot devices from their local libraries for a sustained period of time.”  We’ll just have to see how it works out, but I’m intrigued.

• Tell me this isn’t awesome:

As you can see, this is a selection of animal sounds found in the Orbis Sensualium Pictus (or The World of Things Obvious to the Senses drawn in Pictures), also known as the world’s oldest children’s picture book.  And if you can read through it and not suddenly find the song “What Does the Fox Say?” caught in your head then you’re a better man than I.  Thanks to AL Direct for the link.

• When I read the i09 piece 10 Great Authors Who Disowned Their Own Books I naturally started thinking of the children’s and YA equivalents.  So far I can think of at least one author and one illustrator off the top of my head.  The author would be Kay Thompson of Eloise.  The illustrator I’ll keep to myself since he’s still alive and kicking.  Any you can think of?

• “In France, I can publish a funny picturebook one month and a YA novel about revenge porn the next.” Maybe the best thing I read all day.  Phil Nel directed me to this absolutely fascinating piece by Clementine Beauvais called Publishing Children’s Books in the UK vs. in France.  Just substitute “UK” for “US” (which isn’t that hard) you’ll understand why this is amazing reading.  Obviously there are some difference between the UK and US models, but they share more common qualities than differences.  Thanks to Phil Nel for the link!

• How many illustrators sneak pictures of their previous books into other books?  Travis Jonker accounts for some of the titles doing this in 2014.  Along the same lines, how many authors put in in-jokes?  It was my husband who pointed out that Jonathan Auxier put a sneaky reference to his blog The Scop into The Night Gardener this year.  Clever man.

• Daily Image:

I have good news.  You can order this as a poster, should you so desire.

Thanks to Lori for the link!

#18 A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip Stead, illustrated by Erin E. Stead (2010)
71 points

Too soon to appear? I think not. Amos and his friends feel as if they have been with us forever, as they will be. Also because the penguin’s red socks are just so irresistible. – DaNae Leu

This is a recent book, but it’s destined to be a classic. Everytime I read this book I feel the need to hug the book at the end-that’s how much I love it. Amos and his animals feel so real and I love being part of their story for awhile. – Sarah

The last time this poll for picture books was conducted the year was 2009.  That is the sole reason, insofar as I can tell, that A Sick Day for Amos McGee did not make the Top 100.  After all, it’s a modern classic.

The description from my review reads, “Each morning it’s the same. Amos McGee gets out of bed, puts on his uniform, and goes to his job as zookeeper in the City Zoo. Amos takes his job very seriously. He always makes sure to play chess with the elephant, run races with the tortoise, sit quietly with the penguin, blow the rhino’s runny nose, and tell stories to the owl at dusk. Then one day Amos wakes up sick and has to stay in bed. The animals, bereft of his presence, decide something must be done. So they pick themselves up and take the bus to Amos’s house to keep him company for a change. And after everyone helps him out, Amos reads them all a story and each one of them tucks in for the night.”

In an interview at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Ms. Stead spoke a little bit about creating this book.  It was her first picture book, written by her husband, and she explained her process to Jules, beginning with “The first tactic I use in order to make a picture is to avoid my drawing table area entirely. I’ll walk the dog, sit on the porch, or bake. There is too much pressure at the drawing table, and I like to get to know my characters before I draw them. Once I feel confident navigating a blank piece of paper, I do a sketch or two. Some are better than others, but most are not very pretty.”

• You can read the Children’s Book-a-Day Almanac piece on the book here.

PW said, “Newcomer Erin Stead’s elegant woodblock prints, breathtaking in their delicacy, contribute to the story’s tranquility and draw subtle elements to viewers’ attention: the grain of the woodblocks themselves, Amos’s handsome peacock feather coverlet. Every face–Amos’s as well as the animals’–brims with personality. Philip Stead’s (Creamed Tuna Fish and Peas on Toast) narrative moves with deliberate speed, dreaming up a joyous life for the sort of man likely to be passed on the street without a thought.”

Said SLJ, “The artwork in this quiet tale of good deeds rewarded uses woodblock-printing techniques, soft flat colors, and occasional bits of red. Illustrations are positioned on the white space to move the tale along and underscore the bonds of friendship and loyalty. Whether read individually or shared, this gentle story will resonate with youngsters.”

Booklist had an unexpected take, saying, “