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It's dark by 5 pm.  The longest night of the year is only two weeks away.  Here are some great books about nightime.

Owl Moon by Jane Yolen won the Caldecott award for the illustrations by John Schoenherr.  This is a quiet look at a winter night and the beauties of nature.  A father shares the night with his daughter as they hope to see an owl. 

Bear Snores On Karma Wilson.  Animals find their way into Bear's cave making more and more noise.  When Bear finally wakes up and wants t join the ensuing party, his friends are fast asleep.

The problem with this Fusenews feature is that if I don’t do them regularly then the news out there builds up, builds up, builds up, until there’s so much of it out there that I’m almost embarrassed to do anything with it.  Such is the case today!  And, as per usual, I’ll say that I’m just going to type these pieces up very fast, when in truth it’s pretty much going to be the same kind of thing I always do.  Truth!  Let’s do it.

• I highly recommend that each and every last one of you guys move to Illinois.  The people here are so freakishly nice it’s amazing!  Case in point, SCBWI-IL and The Center of Teaching Through Children’s Books are pairing up to have me talk to a whole bunch o’ folks on the evening of October 7th.  Isn’t that kind of them?  If you live in the area, please come by.  I like to blather and while doing it in my own head is fine, it’s much nicer when there’s a healthy number of other people out there to absorb the blow.

• In case you missed it the National Book Awards Longlist for Young People’s Literature was released last week.  A very YA-centric list indeed with only two clear cut books for kids.  Yet look in other categories and you’ll find that children’s authors do not relegate themselves solely to the children’s category.  For example, in the adult nonfiction section you’ll see that our beloved Sy Montgomery has been nominated for The Soul of an Octopus.

• New Blog Alert: Reading While White.  You might argue that that is the unspoken title of most children’s literature blogs, but in this case they’re acknowledging the fact freely and commenting on what that means all the while.  There are some fascinating pieces on there already, so if you’re anything like me you’re checking it daily.  Ooo, I just love folks that aren’t afraid to touch on potentially controversial topics for the sake of making the conversation at large a richer experience.

• In a particularly unfunny move, The Roald Dahl Estate has closed down the beloved Roald Dahl Funny Prize that was the brainchild of Michael Rosen.  Why?  There are hems and haws to sort through here but I think the key lies in the part where they say that in conjunction with next year’s centenary celebration, “the estate would be focusing on a new children’s book prize to be launched in the US.”  So clearly they didn’t want two Roald Dahl prizes out there.  One wonders if this mysterious prize in the US will also be for humor.  I suspect not, but I’d be awfully interested if any of you have further details on the mater.

• If you were once again faithfully checking your Iowa Review this season (ho ho) you might have seen three interesting things.  #1 – It contains a “portfolio” all about children’s books this month.  #2 – The cover is by Shaun Tan.  #3 – Phil Nel’s piece A Manifesto of Children’s Literature; or Reading Harold as a Teenager is free for viewing online.  I should note that the actual issue also has pieces by Jeanne Birdsall (yay!), Mr. Tan, and Kevin Brockmeier, so get thee to an academic library!  Stat!

• I don’t do much in the way of Instagram myself, but even without knowing it I can acknowledge that this Buzzfeed piece on what would happen if Hogwarts characters had it was rather inspired.  Thanks to Travis Jonker for the link.

• You ever hear the one about the bookseller who would get artists to draw their best beloved picture book characters on her arms and then she’d tattoo them there?  Yes?  Well, I hadn’t heard about her for a couple of years so I decided to check in.  And lo and behold, one of my new neighbors here in the Chicago area, Eric Rohmann, was the creator of her latest tat.

• If someone asked you to suggest a children’s book that they hadn’t read but should, what would you choose?  It helps if the person asking is British and wasn’t practically required by law, like those of us here in the States, to read certain books in the U.S. kidlit cannon.  My suggestion was actually Half Magic by Edward Eager.  See some of the others here.

• Wowzer. Children’s authors have power. Don’t believe me?  See what Marc Tyler Nobleman pulled off with DC Entertainment. Well done, sir!

• Speaking of superheroes, two years ago Ingrid Sundberg drew a whole host of children’s and YA authors as spandex-wearing, high-flying, incredibles.  It’s still fun to look at today here.

• Me Stuff (Part Deux): It’s a little old but I was interviewed by Joanna Marple not too long ago.  There’s some good stuff there, like shots of the dream office I aspire towards (hat tip to Junko Yokota, though).

• I feel a bit sad that I never read Lois Lowry’s Anastasia books when I was a kid.  I think I would have related to them (or at least to her glasses which originally rivaled mine in terms of width and girth).  How I missed these books I’ll never know.  Now I’m reading all about the changes being made to the newly re-released series.  Some make sense but others (changing Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst to Anastasia Off Her Rocker) don’t make a lick of sense.  I get that “analyst” is not a common term these days. I care not.  The term “off your rocker” is, after all, no less dated.

• Daily Image:

There are fans and then there are fans.  And best beloved is the author or illustrator who meets a fan who knows, really knows, how to quilt.  Ms. Sibby Elizabeth Falk showed this to Jane Yolen recently.  It’s Owl Moon like you’ve never seen it before:

© 2013 by Jane Yolen

I have a Muse who works overtime, or at least that’s how it looks from the outside. But I think about something my late husband once said. An ardent birder and, in his retirement, a bird recordist whose tapes now reside in both the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds and the British Natural History Museum, he was known in the birding community as “a lucky birder.” That meant he seemed to find more rarities and more hard-to-see birds than anyone else. But his response was, “I show up.” And that’s what I think the Muse actually is: the writer showing up every day and doing the hard work of writing.

If you write FOR a particular market or FOR a particular editor you will often miss the mark. But if you write because your fingers have danced across the keyboard, because a character has tapped you on the shoulder, because a story has settled in your heart, then even if you never sell it you have done the work you were meant to do. And sometime, dear readers, real magic happens.

Let me tell you about a picture book I recently wrote because of a haunting photograph I saw on line. If I had stopped to think about its saleability, I wouldn’t have started it. But I plunged in.

The photograph was of an apartment house in Paris on which a three story, three-dimensional angel with widespread wings had been carved on the facade. There was a newspaper story about how the angel had been built and survived World War II.

I knew there was a story there, and three things leaped out at me: angel, Paris, World War II.

Before I knew it, I was beginning to write a picture book (40 page picture book at first which I eventually got down to the more ordinary 32 page format), called “The Stone Angel.” It was about a Jewish family and the daughter about six or seven narrates. The Nazis come in, the yellow stars, escape to the forest where they live with Partisans, and then their escape across the mountains to Spain and then to Britain where they stay in the country till war’s end. And on their return, the father’s job is reinstated and he finds an apartment in, yes, the angel building.

A picture book? Really? Not a novel? It sounds like the plot of a novel. Yeah, I kept hearing that in my head and I kept dismissing the idea. I finished the picture book, sent it editor Jill Santopolo who was doing my fairy tale novels. It was not her kind of thing at all.

And in two weeks, she’d bought the book, found an illustrator, helped me shrink the text to a 32 pager (saying, “I love this as a 40 page book and if we can’t make it work at 32 pages with the same power, I can make the case for the longer picture book.”).

But sometimes the magic works.

Jane Yolen is an author of children’s books, fantasy, and science fiction, including Owl Moon, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?

She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century.

Jane Yolen’s books and stories have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christopher Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award among many others.

Her website JaneYolen.com presents information about her over three hundred books for children. It also contains essays, poems, answers to frequently asked questions, a brief biography, her travel schedule, and links to resources for teachers and writers. It is intended for children, teachers, writers, storytellers, and lovers of children’s literature.

Morning, folks.  Bird here.  Seems this book I’ve written with fellow bloggers Peter Sieruta of Collecting Children’s Books and Jules Danielson of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast is in the last stages of completion.  Fun With Copyedits is the name of the game this week, which means that my blogging may suffer a tad here and there.  Mea culpa.  I give you a bright and shiny blog posts to make it up to you.  Eat it in good health.

• First off, April’s only here and that can only mean one thing.  There’s a call for new spine poetry.  Do you have what it takes to stack books in a coherent and literary manner?  Well, do you?  Punk?

• I love Cracked online but honestly sometimes their headlines tip a little too far into the realm of the hyperbole.  Consider the following: 5 literary classics that put x-rated movies to shame.  It’s actually not inaccurate to say that of numbers one through three, but by the time you get to number five (Where’s Waldo) it’s stretching it a tad.  Then again, the naked clown on the pogo stick isn’t exactly normal . . .

• In case you missed it, Marjorie Ingall alerted me to the children’s literature reference name dropped by Bob Balaban on a recent episode of Girls.  Sorry I missed this one.  I’ve been too busy catching up on episodes of Once Upon a Time which is admittedly corny, but weirdly similar to LOST before the show went haywire.  Hence the fix.

• And what will YOU be doing on April 2nd of this year?  Celebrating International Children’s Book Day, I certainly hope.  Seriously, are you going to let this Ashley Bryan poster go to waste?  For shame!

• Speaking of worldwide travels, care to attend an Irish children’s literary conference?  Would I kid?  Observe:

“We are delighted to announce that the CBI 2013 Conference Rebels and Rulebreakers is now open for booking! We’re really looking forward to a weekend with some of the most exciting names in writing, illustration, publishing and criticism in the fabulous surroundings of Lighthouse cinema on May 18th and 19th. Click here for the booking form or call CBI on 01 8727475 to secure your place. Remember the conference is open to everyone with an interest in children’s books so tell your friends! We’ve started counting down to the conference weekend with blog features on Sarah Ardizzone, Sarah Crossan and Colmán Ó Raghallaigh.”

• Though she was by no means the first children’s librarian in the country, NYPL’s own Anne Carroll Moore was a force to be reckoned with, back in the day.  Now there’s a picture book bio of her coming out called Miss Moore Thought Otherwise by Jan Pinborough.  A Women’s History Month series celebrates the book and Ms. Pinborough discusses why she wrote it in the first place.  Thanks to Lisa Taylor for the link.

As my recent review of the Matilda musical will attest, I’m a sucker for stage adaptations of children’s books.  So how completely and utterly delightful does this version of Owl Moon look to you?  Picture book adaptations are always difficult, whether it’s to the stage or the screen.  Dance is honestly the only way to go sometimes. Consider this post your required reading of the day.

Hey!  In all the flutter and kerfuffle surrounding the ALA Youth Media Awards it’s mighty easy to forget about the 2013 Notable Children’s Books list that was announced at the end of February.  Nice to see my beloved Zombie Makers getting some love.

Daily Image:

Oh good.  Something new to desire.  I was running low.  It seems that a certain Charlotte Olympia has taken it upon herself to create a fairytale line of shoes.

If you happen to purchase that $985 froggy pump for me, I honestly won’t be embarrassed by the largess of your generosity.  Scout’s honor.  You know where to reach me.  Many many thanks to Marjorie Ingall for the link.

Jaclyn DeForge, our Resident Literacy Expert, began her career teaching first and second grade in the South Bronx, and went on to become a literacy coach and earn her Masters of Science in Teaching. In her column she offers teaching and literacy tips for educators.

One aspect of the Common Core that I get asked questions about all the time is thematic text sets.  What are they?  How do you know which books to use?  What types of texts should you be pairing together?

Fear not!  I’ve compiled some examples of text sets that cover one topic and span multiple genres and reading levels and over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing these sets with you.  Some of the titles you may already have in your classroom library, and others I think you’ll enjoy discovering.

Theme/topic:  The Moon

Grade: 2nd

Informational Text:  The Moon Book by Gail Gibbons (Shared Reading)

• provides scientific information about the moon
• can be used to address informational text standards

Nonfiction Poetry:  A Full Moon is Rising by Marilyn Singer  (Read Aloud)

• provides scientific information about the moon
• provides information regarding moon-related festivals, traditions, holidays, and celebrations
• can be used to address informational text and literature standards

Realistic Fiction: Owl Moon by Jane Yolen  (Guided Reading)

• the moon plays a central role in the setting of the story
• can be used to address literature standards

Realistic Fiction:  Surprise Moon by Caroline Hatton (Independent Reading)

• discusses celebrations and festivals related to the moon 
• can be used to address literature standards

from A Full Moon is Rising

What books would you put on this list?  Add your favorites in the comments!

#30 Owl Moon by Jane Yolen (1987)
55 points

When I read this book, I can feel and hear the snow crunching under my feet. I can actually hear the silence. – Susan Lang

It seems appropriate that just as the weather warms up for summer we take one last plunge into winter at its deepest and darkest.  This wintery tale marks the appearance of yet another Caldecott Award winner on the list and there’s nothing better for evoking the chills brought on both by nocturnal cold, and the awe inspiring appearance of meticulously rendered wildlife.

The plot as described by Publishers Weekly reads, “A girl and her father go owling on a moonlit winter night near the farm where they live. Bundled tight in wool clothes, they trudge through snow ‘whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl’; here and there, hidden in ink-blue shadows, a fox, raccoon, fieldmouse and deer watch them pass. An air of expectancy builds as Pa imitates the Great Horned Owl’s call once without answer, then again. From out of the darkness ‘an echo/ came threading its way/ through the trees.’ Schoenherr’s watercolor washes depict a New England few readers see: the bold stare of a nocturnal owl, a bird’s-eye view of a farmhouse.”

In the Norton Anthology of Children’s Literature Ms. Yolen is described as, “one of today’s most prolific and experimental writers of fairy tales.”  Because the entry is primarily concentrating on her work as it applies to the story The Lady and the Merman.  So it’s funny that while Norton’s mentions her various books, it doesn’t whisper a word about the fact that her book Owl Moon won a Caldecott.  It reads instead that, “She writes with grace and painstaking care to create tales that evoke the atmosphere of long ago and other worlds, employing metaphors and symbols in unusual combinations that produce new associations.”  And then here today we instead find picture book that is realism incarnate.

In fact, in Cullinan and Galda’s Literature and the  Child (5th edition) the book gives Owl Moon a close look specifically in a section called “Contemporary Realistic Fiction”.  Says the title, “The story is deceptively simple, for poetic prose evokes powerful images of the cold, dark winter night, the silence, the beauty of the woods white with snow, and the adventure that child and father undertake.”  And in terms of the Caldecott winning illustrations Cullinan and Galda go on to say, “His [Schoenherr’s] pictures correspond to what the text is saying, but they also transcend it.  His use of light and white space is extraordinary, making the dark spruce woods and winter night seem lit from within.  In most of the pictures the father and child are small, insignificant intruders in the forest of towering trees and pristine snow.”

Does the name “Schoenherr” sound oddly familiar to you?  Do you have the vague feeling that you’ve seen it on books recently, though perhaps not with the first name “John”?  Perhaps you are familiar with a talented young man by the name of Ian Schoenherr then.  An artist of uncommon talents, Ian is the son of John and has put out such laudable books as Cat & Mouse and (now on bookstore shelves) the unbelievably useful to children’s librarians Read It, Don’t Eat It.

In terms of Owl Moon, Jane’s website allows you to see the