You know what’s even better than serving on an award committee? Having someone else write about it. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I was on the judging committee for this year’s Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards alongside Chair Joanna Rudge Long and Roxanne Feldman. It was Roxanne who reported on our discussion, and even took photos of where we met (Joanna’s gorgeous Vermont farmhouse), what we ate, and more. There is also a particularly goofy shot of me that is impressive because even without knowing that there was a camera pointed in my direction, I seem to have made a silly face. I am nothing if not talented in that respect.
Speaking of listening in on committees and their discussions, ALA is next week (she said, eyeing her unfinished Newbery/Caldecott Banquet outfit nervously) and that means you have a chance to sit and listen to one particular committee talk the talkety talk. I am referring, of course, to the ALA Notables Committee. This year they’ve released the list of books on their discussion list online for your perusal. A lot of goodies there, as well as room for a lot of books I hope they get to eventually.
I was very sad to hear about the passing of Lois Duncan. Like many of you, she was a staple of my youth. When Jules Danielson, Peter Sieruta, and I were writing our book Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literature we initially had a section, written by Peter, on why Lois stopped writing suspense novels for teens. It’s a sad story but one that always made me admire her deeply. She was hugely talented and will be missed.
Speaking of Wild Things, recently I was sent a YA galley by Marcus Sedgwick called Blood Red, Snow White. But lest you believe it to be a YA retelling of the old Snow White / Rose Red fairytale, it ain’t. Instead, it’s about how Arthur Ransome (he of Swallows and Amazons) got mixed up with Trotsky’s secretary and a whole lotta Bolsheviks. What does this have to do with Wild Things? This was yet ANOTHER rejected tale from our book. Read the full story here on our website where we even take care to mention Sedgwick’s book (it originally was published overseas in 2007).
As I’ve mentioned before, my library hosts a pair of falcons each year directly across from the window above my desk. I’ve watched five eggs laid, three hatch, and the babies get named and banded. This week the little not-so-fuzzyheads are learning to fly. It’s terrifying. Far better that I read this older Chicago Tribune article on the banding ceremony. They were so cute when they were fuzzy. *sigh*
In other news, Harriet the Spy’s house is for sale. Apparently.
Sharon Levin on the child_lit listserv had a rather fascinating little announcement up recently. As she told it, she’d always had difficulty finding a really fast way to catalog her personal library. Cause let’s face it – scanning every single barcode takes time. Then she found a new app and . . . well, I’ll let her tell it:
“Shelfie is a free app for iOS and Android (www.shelfie.com) where you can take a picture of your bookshelf and the app will automatically recognize your book spines and generate a catalog of your library. In addition, the team behind the app has made deals with over 1400 publishers (including HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hachette) to let you download discounted (usually around 80% off) or free ebook or audiobook edition of your paper books (right now these publisher deals cover about 25% of the books on an “average” shelf). The app also lets you browse other readers’ shelves. Shelfie will also give you personalized book recommendations based on how readers with similar taste in books to you organize the books on their shelves. The founder of Shelfie is named Peter Hudson and he’d love to hear any suggestions about how he can make the app better. Peter’s email is [email protected].“
Thanks to Sharon Levin for the heads up.
I leave NYPL and its delightful Winnie-the-Pooh toys and what happens? The world goes goofy for the story of A.A. Milne and Christopher Robin. Now we just found out that Domhnall Gleeson (a.k.a. Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films) has just been cast as Milne in an upcoming bio-pic. Will wonders never cease?
Are you familiar with the works of Atinuke? An extraordinary storyteller, her Anna Hibiscus books are among my favorite early chapter books of all time. They do, however, occasionally catch flack of saying they take place in “Africa” rather than a specific country. Recently, K.T. Horning explained on Monica Edinger’s recent post Diversity Window, Mirror, or Neither that Atinuke did this on purpose so that kids in Africa could imagine the stories as taking place in their own countries. That makes perfect sense. The ensuing discussion in Monica’s post is respectful, interesting, and with a variety of different viewpoints, all worth reading. In short, the kind of talk a blogger hopes for when he or she writes something. Well done, Monica.
Big time congrats to the nominees for the Neustadt Prize. It’s a whopping $10,000 given to a children’s author given on the basis of literary merit. It may be the only children’s award originating in America that is also international. Fingers crossed for all the people nominated!
Hooray! The Children’s Book Council has released their annual Building a Home Library list. I love these. The choices are always very carefully done and perfect for clueless parents.
In other CBC news, I got this little press release, and it’s worth looking at:
“For the second consecutive year, the Children’s Book Council has partnered with The unPrison Project — a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to empowering and mentoring women in prison — to create brand-new libraries of books for incarcerated mothers to read with their babies at prison nurseries. Fourteen of the CBC’s member publishers answered the call by donating copies of over 35 hand-picked titles for children ages 0-18 months for each library. The books will be hand-delivered and organized in the nurseries by Deborah Jiang-Stein, founder of The unPrison Project and author of Prison Baby. Jiang-Stein was born in prison to a heroin-addicted mother, and has made it her mission to empower and mentor women and girls in prison.”
You know who’s cool? That gal I mentioned earlier. Julie Danielson. She’s something else. For example, while many of us might just say we were interested in James Marshall, she’s actually in the process of researching him. She even received the James Marshall Fellowship from The University of Connecticut’s Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. As a result she spent a week looking through the James Marshall Papers there. Their sole stipulation? Write a blog post about it. So up at the University’s site you’ll find the piece Finding the Artist in His Art: A Week With the James Marshall Papers. Special Bonus: Rare images you won’t find anywhere else.
Daily Image:
I take no credit to this. I only discovered it on Twitter thanks to Christine Hertz of Burlington, VT. It may constitute the greatest summer reading idea I’ve seen in a very long time. Public libraries, please feel free to adopt this:
- As I write this there are countless souls right now in Las Vegas attending the American Library Association Annual Conference. I watch your tweets with envy, my friends. Would that I were there. Some of the first timers have asked me what they shouldn’t miss, but since I haven’t seen the official schedule of events I cannot say. Obviously you’d want to attend the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet on Sunday night. That’s a given. Other than that, I always love watching the Notable Children’s Books Committee debate up a storm. This year I don’t envy them the discussion. LOTS of good books are on the menu and it’s being chaired by my fellow Newbery committee member Edie Ching. A little sad not to see Boys of Blur by N.D. Wilson, Rules of Summer by Shaun Tan, Grandfather Gandhi by Arun Gandhi and Bethany Hegedus, Curiosity by Gary Blackwood, Three Bears in a Boat by David Soman and other favorites on the list of books being discussed but they can’t cover ‘em all. Don’t miss it!
Anything I say on the subject of the recently deceased Nancy Garden will be inadequate. However I would like to note that she provided invaluable help with the book I recently co-wrote with Jules Danielson. Without her aid we would have been seriously up a tree. I am very sorry she won’t be able to see the final copy herself. She was a joy to work with.
- On the one hand I’m rather grateful that Christian Science Monitor thought to present a list of 25 of the Best New Middle Grade Novels of 2014. With YA always hogging the media it’s very nice to see fare for the younger set getting attention from a publication that isn’t one of the usual suspects. On the other hand, we run into the old problem with defining what middle grade actually is. Threatened by Eliot Schrefer is great but he’d be the first to tell you that the book is straight up young adult. Ditto The Art of Secrets by James Klise, The One Safe Place by Tania Unsworth, Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic by Rachel and Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, The War Within These Walls by Aline Sax, A Creature of Moonlight by Katherine Hahn, and A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman. Otherwise, it’s very cool how the list concentrated a fair amount on small presses and Native American authors and publishers.
- Credit Phil Nel with coming up with one of the most fascinating pieces on Dr. Seuss I’ve seen in a long time. Think you know all that there is to know about his famous chapeau donning feline? Then you haven’t seen Was the Cat in the Hat Black?
- There are few thrills quite as great as unexpectedly running into the author of a book you admire. Special credit should go to those librarians that are able to spot the authors who aren’t yet household names but create truly remarkable fare. Extra special credit and cupcakes to those librarians who then get the authors to sit down for interviews. I am a BIG fan of Teri Kanefield’s The Girl From the Tar Paper School: Barbara Rose Johns and the Advent of the Civil Rights Movement. So imagine my delight when I saw that one of my librarians recently interviewed her. Well done, Jill!
- Speaking of librarians I admire, behold this woman:
I’m mildly peeved that I didn’t learn that the Lemony Snicket Prize for Noble Librarians Faced With Adversity had been awarded until I stumbled across the fact on Twitter. Reading this article I can see that the win of librarian Laurence Copel, the founder of the Lower Ninth Ward Street Library in New Orleans, is well and truly deserved. In fact, I sort of pity the committee in choosing anyone else after this. Copel kind of sweeps the floor with the competition. How on earth do you compete with THAT? Wowza.
- What do J.M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, P. G. Wodehouse, G. K. Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome, and A. A. Milne all have in common? Apparently they were all on the world’s worst cricket team of all time. I don’t even know how I went through life unaware of this until now. Read the article. The amusing “greatest hits” are gonna go right over a lot of American’s heads. So if any of today’s authors are interested in creating, say, a dodgeball team, I’d say there’s a precedent.
- Psst! Care to see some KILLER comics coming out this fall that you may have missed? Check these puppies out. I guarantee you’ve seen nothing like them before.
And for today’s Daily Image, I bring you the coolest idea of all time. When Angie Manfredi tweeted that her library was doing a spy party for the kids called Spy Night, I was impressed. She asked for spy picture books, but all I could come up with was Andy Rash’s Agent A to Agent Z. At any rate, this is the laser maze set-up they created in one of the stacks.
So brilliant I could cry. Thanks to Angie Manfredi for the image!
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.
Oh, you think the award season is done, old bean? Why we have only but BEGUN to hand out the 2011 awards! The Newberys, Caldecotts, and other ALA Media Awards are just the tip of the old iceberg. There are so many others to explore. For example, did you get a chance to really examine the 2012 Notable Children’s Books list from ALSC that was recently released? Absolutely fascinating stuff. Some books delight, some baffle, and some I’ve not even heard of. To the library! Don’t forget that the Sydney Taylor Awards were given out recently too. Offered to books that “authentically portray the Jewish experience” there were twenty-eight for 2011 alone. Woot! The Scott O’Dell Award went to a book that’s a bit better known since this past Monday. Fun Fact: That award hasn’t gone to a Newbery Award winner since 1998’s Out of the Dust. Then on the mystery side of the things the Edgar Award nominations were released. I adore that they distinguish between “Juvenile” and “Young Adult” books. Icefall is a particularly clever inclusion (I hadn’t categorized it as a “mystery” but I suppose that it is in the old-fashioned sense of the term). Heck, I’m surprised they didn’t include Dead End in Norvelt as well. And if I’m not mistaken, at some point here the American Indian Youth Literature Awards for 2012 should be released. Anyone know roundabout when that might be?
- Meanwhile, other blogs have been doing their post-ALA Award round-ups as well. There are many to pick and choose from, but I think I’ll highlight the Seven Impossible Things post that shows some prototypes from A Ball for Daisy and Travis at 100 Scope Notes who gives everything a once over.
- Who told me about this on Twitter? Was it you, Rocco? Or you, Mr. Schu? Whoever it was I’m still puzzling it over. Basically it boils down to five words: Sweet. Valley. High. Television. Musical. Throw in Diablo Cody and the guys behind Next to Normal and . . . words, for once, fail me.
As you may have heard, last week author William Sleator passed away. I met him once during the Midwinter ALA Conference in Philadelphia. He was part of an Abrams brunch in which librarians munched on food and spoke to various authors. I was pleased to get Mr. Sleator’s autograph on a book for a friend and remember him as a nice guy. I also remember another fellow there who spoke to the occasional librarian but was by no means hounded by them. Since that brunch Jeff Kinney and his Diary of a Wimpy Kid books have gone on to fame and fortune but Mr. Sleator was big in his own way and his last book, The Phantom Limb, will be published this October by Amulet Books. A page in remembrance of Mr. Sleator is up here. If you’d like to leave a comment, please do.
- Speaking of ALA Conferences, when I attend one there’s nothing I like better than to slip into an ALA Notables meeting to watch the crew eviscerate the unworthy and laud the laudable. Now the ALSC blog informs us that “The 2012 Notable Children’s Books Committee invites ALSC members to suggest titles for consideration for our annual list of notable children’s books.” Awesome! If there are titles that you think are particularly worthy, please be so good as to visit the blog to find out how to nominate them. I’ve already a couple of my own favorites in mind . . .
- And if it’s “Best” lists you’re looking for, why not check out a new one compiled by the two most prominent young, male, web-savvy children’s librarians out there. You can probably already guess who they are, cantcha? Yes, Mr. Schu and Mr. Jonker have joined forces (when you say their names like that, don’t they sound like Batman villains?) and produced their Top 20 Children’s Books of 2010. A remarkable list, it pays homage to books I adored (The Night Fairy, Farm, etc.) though there will always inevitably be one or two you love that get missed (Hereville, man, Hereville!). Well worth checking out.
- Now it is time to brag. Because while I’m sure your moms are awesome and everything, only one mom won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry for 2011. Yup. That would be mine. Her manuscript, A Mind Like This, will now be published by the University of Nebraska Press. Because, naturally, she’s one of our greatest living poets. Just sayin’.
- This one goes out to the librarians in the field. The Oxford University Press blog has revealed info on 120 years of census data on American librarians. There’s lots of fun info to be culled. Personally I like the fact that “Today, the marriage rate among librarians is the highest it has ever been with 62 percent of librarians married in 2009.&
In 2008, Feiwel & Friends published my first hardcover novel, Six Innings, a book that was eventually named An ALA Notable. The cover was fabulous, featuring the work of gifted illustrator Chris Sheban, whose style you might recognize from the covers of Because of Winn-Dixie, Brooklyn Bridge, Punished, The Tiger Rising, and more.
Six Innings sold reasonably okay, earned some kind reviews (and a Judy Blume comparison!), and nobody got rich; we were happy. When it was time for the book to go to paper, my publisher had to make a decision. Come up with a new cover, or simply reproduce the existing cover in a paperback format, which is what they did.
And the paperback edition did not sell. Understatement. It struck out, looking.
This could be for a variety reasons, but one line of thought was that we were dealing with two different markets. The hardcover, with awards and good reviews, sold well in the institutional market. Paperback was a different animal, targeted more directly to the reader. I want to say the less sophisticated consumer, but that’s not right. Children these days are plenty sophisticated, it’s just that their tastes are their own. To them, these days, the photographic approach seems to hold more immediacy. At least that’s the current thinking.
So check out the new look (the original is up top in the header):
While I’ve got you (as my dad used to say), Linda Sue Park’s Keeping Score was another baseball-themed book that came out at the same time. And I confess: I hated the cover. That poor book, I thought. It just struck me, a former 10-year-old boy, as all kinds of wrong.
Someone must have agreed. Take a gander at the paperback.
Quite a difference, huh? It doesn’t look remotely like the same book. Curiously, in this case, the publisher went from a photographic to an illustrative approach, but more significantly re-thought the cover content and updated the design. A successful change, I think, though a dog and a fire hydrant makes me think of only one thing. Was that the idea? Dog pee? Maybe dog pee figures into the book somehow (I have not read it). The ex-boy in me wouldn’t have picked up that cover, either.
It’s also possible that the book was rewritten, with the girl character replaced by a black lab.
This past Mid-Winter I got a chance to sit in on the ALA Notables committee to watch them pick the best books of the year. Should you ever get a chance to attend a Mid-Winter conference, this is an activity that cannot be beat. Unlike those debates that go on behind closed doors, the Notables are chosen in an open room. At one end is the table with the committee members. At the other are chairs where anyone can slip in and watch the proceedings. I assume that it must make a huge difference to a person when they debate a book in front of its editors, but there would have to be a kind of thrill involved, right?
This year I was pleased as punch to recognize at least three people on the committee. Lisa Von Drasek, Rita Auerbach, and Katie O'Dell (who proves that I know librarians outside of the NYC area) were exemplary. It was also rather cathartic to have finished the Newbery and then watch people go through the very process I'd just completed. Better than a massage. Really.
And now the list is up. I was saddened by the gaping holes where A Drowned Maiden's Hair and Fly By Night should have been, but otherwise it's a great list. Lots of stuff that's been missed by other Best Book showings. Los Gatos Black On Halloween, for example, deserved greater attention this year. Definitely worth checking out.
I had a momentary lapse of judgment where I toyed with the idea of applying for an upcoming Notables committee, but I think I'll take a break of a year or two instead. I am not, after all, insane.
You know what’s even better than serving on an award committee? Having someone else write about it. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I was on the judging committee for this year’s Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards alongside Chair Joanna Rudge Long and Roxanne Feldman. It was Roxanne who reported on our discussion, and even took photos of where we met (Joanna’s gorgeous Vermont farmhouse), what we ate, and more. There is also a particularly goofy shot of me that is impressive because even without knowing that there was a camera pointed in my direction, I seem to have made a silly face. I am nothing if not talented in that respect.
Speaking of Wild Things, recently I was sent a YA galley by Marcus Sedgwick called Blood Red, Snow White. But lest you believe it to be a YA retelling of the old Snow White / Rose Red fairytale, it ain’t. Instead, it’s about how Arthur Ransome (he of Swallows and Amazons) got mixed up with Trotsky’s secretary and a whole lotta Bolsheviks. What does this have to do with Wild Things? This was yet ANOTHER rejected tale from our book. Read the full story here on our website where we even take care to mention Sedgwick’s book (it originally was published overseas in 2007).
Are you familiar with the works of Atinuke? An extraordinary storyteller, her Anna Hibiscus books are among my favorite early chapter books of all time. They do, however, occasionally catch flack of saying they take place in “Africa” rather than a specific country. Recently, K.T. Horning explained on Monica Edinger’s recent post Diversity Window, Mirror, or Neither that Atinuke did this on purpose so that kids in Africa could imagine the stories as taking place in their own countries. That makes perfect sense. The ensuing discussion in Monica’s post is respectful, interesting, and with a variety of different viewpoints, all worth reading. In short, the kind of talk a blogger hopes for when he or she writes something. Well done, Monica.
Birth that book. All Best! Loving the clock shoe.
I LOVE that Timeless Court Shoe! WANT!
All the best on that book, Betsy–sounds right up my alley.
Three cheers for Zombie Makers! Also, did you notice just how well represented nonfiction is on this year’s Notables list? Warms my heart, it does.
the froggy pump’s the one i want too. go to the link, there are tons more choices! leave me the frog.
Love those shoes! I’ll be waiting for the knock-offs from Target!