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Time for another post that justifies my current job.  As you may or may not know, as Evanston Public Library’s Collection Development Manager I buy all the adult books.  Which is to say, they apparently make them for people over the age of 12 these days.  Who knew?  Happily, there are plenty of connections to the wide and wonderful world of children’s literature in the grown-up book universe.  Here are a couple of interesting recent examples you might enjoy:

Though she’s best known in our world as a mighty successful picture book author (with a killer ping-pong backswing) Rosenthal’s that rare beast that manages to straddle writing for both adults and kids.  The last time she wrote an out-and-out book for the grown-up set, however, was ten years ago (Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life).  This next one’s a memoir of sorts (I say “of sorts” because the subtitle belies this statement).  Here’s the description:

“… each piece of prose is organized into classic subjects such as Social Studies, Music, and Language Arts. Because textbook would accurately describe a book with a first-of-its-kind interactive text messaging component. Because textbook is an expression meaning “quintessential”—Oh, that wordplay and unconventional format is so typical of her, so textbook AKR. Because if an author’s previous book has the word encyclopedia in the title, following it up with a textbook would be rather nice.”

Sorry Permanent Press Publishing Company.  This cover doesn’t do justice the myriad children’s book references parading about inside.  I read all the reviews and tried to find the best description (the official one is lame).  Library Journal‘s was the one that piqued my interest best.  As they said:

“Jonathan Tucker lives with his dog Nip on 20 acres on Long Island, having left his job with a high-powered law firm three years earlier after his wife and two children were killed in a traffic accident. Now his mentor, a senior partner, asks for help. The firm’s biggest client, billionaire Ben Baum of Ozone Industries, has died in London under suspicious circumstances. A descendant of L. Frank Baum of Wizard of Oz fame, Ben had been obsessed with fantasy, in particular the works of Baum, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lewis Carroll. Attached to his will, he left behind an enigmatic letter, prefaced by runes and filled with puzzles hinting at forces of evil arrayed against him. It’s up to Jonathan and his team to unravel what may be a deadly conspiracy with a host of suspects, each one poised to benefit from Ben’s premature death. . . . Readers may enjoy the kid-lit nomenclature—characters include Alice, Charlotte (who spins webs), Dorothy, Eloise, Madeline, Herr Roald Dahlgrens (a “peach of a man”), Frank Dixon (the Hardy Boys), Peter Abelard, and the Baums—and may not mind the sometimes too-evident craft, e.g., characters who “tell their story” at length and dialog laden with exposition.”

Admit it.  It sounds fun.  But that cover . . . I mean, did they just hire someone who just read the title and found the nearest Getty Images of crows?  No points there.

I feel like it’s been a while since one of these round-ups included a book about a picture book author/illustrator.  This one counts.  In this story, said picture book creator has lost her inspiration.  Other stuff happens too, but with my tunnel vision that was pretty much all I picked up on.

Um.

Moving on.

Part of the joy of my job is buying the “cozies” i.e. sweet little murder mystery novels (usually in paperback).  You would not believe the series out there.  There are quilting mysteries, yoga mysteries, jam mysteries, bed and breakfast mysteries (that one makes sense to me), you name it.  The newest series I’ve found?  Little Free Library mysteries.  I kid you not.

As for other mysteries . . .

Now I know what you’re thinking.  You’re wondering if this is actually a book about a murder that occurs at Misselthwaite Manor.  And the answer is . . . . it’s not.  No, it takes place at a book-themed resort where a secret garden has been created for the guests.  How do folks die?  Deadly herbs!!  That gets points from me.

Oh ho!  This one almost sneaked past me the other day.  I read the review, dutifully put it in my order cart, and just as I was moving on to the next book my eye happened to catch the name of the author.  Marjorie?!  The same Marjorie who writes those magnificent yearly round-ups of Jewish kids in books at Tablet Magazine at the end of each year (to say nothing of her posts throughout the other seasons)?  That’s her.  The book’s getting great reviews too, so go, Marjorie, go!

So here’s the problem with this book.  It should be in the humor section alongside the Amy Sedaris title Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People.  Instead, it somehow ended up legitimately with a “Craft” Dewey Decimal Number, a fact I’m going to have to rectify at work tomorrow.  Not that you couldn’t actually do the crafts if you wanted, but the book’s far funnier than it is practical.  No one knows what to do with the thing when they see it, of course.  So why am I including it here?  Because darned if the author isn’t Ross MacDonald, the author/illustrator of fine picture books everywhere.  I did my due diligence to make sure it was actually the same guy.  Yup.  It sure is.  So Macmillan, about that DD# . . .

And finally, just because I thought it was cute . . .

Now someone go out and write a picture book of the same name for all our budding scientists out there.

Author Padma Venkatraman‘s most recent novel A Time to Dance was an Honour Winner in the 2015 South Asia Book Award and was chosen for inclusion in IBBY’s 2015 Selection of Outstanding Books for Young … Continue reading ... →

You may remember my mention last week of the upcoming Frances Hodgson Burnett Sesquicentennial Event Celebration. If you read that post you know how excited I am to celebrate an author who has touched my life in so many ways, and also one who is from my home state of Tennessee.

While researching my book A Year in the Secret Garden I discovered that author of the original classic children’s take The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett, lived in the United States from 1865 until she went back for a visit to England in 1872. Another great discovery was that she lived in the town next to our Knoxville and then up in the Jefferson City area of Tennessee.

This year the New Market/Knoxville areas are celebrating 150 years since Frances Hodgson Burnett’s moved to the United States in 1865. On hand will be her great grand-daughter Penny Deupree, as well as her great great grandchildren. Penny Deupree, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s great-grand daughter, is coming from her home in Texas to give three free public presentations and display some of Burnett’s personal belongings.

The new piece of this puzzle is that I will be making many appearances during the month of November in honor of this wonderful event! Below are some places you can meet up with me or join me in experiencing The Year in the Secret Garden like you never have before!

• Tuesday, November 17th 5:30-6:00pm Secret Garden Activities for kids at the New Market School in New Market, TN
• Tuesday, November 17th at 6:00-6:30pm Book Signing of A Year in the Secret Garden at New Market School in New Market, TN
• Thursday, November 19th 10:50 to 11:45am The importance of Extension Activities in Children’s Literature, Carson Newman College in Jefferson City, TN.
• Thursday, November 19th 3:00pm Jefferson City Public Library Homeschool Event Exploring the World of the Secret Garden. Fun and Activities included.
• Thursday, November 19th 5:30-6:00pm Book Activity at the Jefferson City Courthouse
• Thursday, November 19th 6:00-6:30pm Book Signing of A Year in the Secret Garden at the Jefferson City Courthouse
  

Saturday November 20th Live and Silent Auction. A Year in the Secret Garden Basket, and a chance to bid on a real live Secret Garden Tea Party. New Hope Blount County Children’s Advocacy Center.

This holiday season, give your children the gift that will nurture a lifetime of positive habits; give the gift of a book.

As parents, we want/need quality books with extension activities to help our young ones unplug and create memories. Pulling books from shelves, and stories from pages, is also an important act that will aid in them being life-long readers. Quality books with companion book extension activities are not only work to create special family time, it allows kids to solve the world’s problems without major consequences.
A Year in the Secret Garden is just such a book. This delightful children’s book from authors Valarie Budayr and Marilyn Scott-Waters offers unique and original month-by-month activities that allow readers to delve deeper into the classic children’s tale, The Secret Garden! With over 120 pages, with 150 original color illustrations and 48 activities for your family and friends to enjoy, learn, discover and play with together.
This book will make a great gift and be the catalyst of many hours of family growth, learning and FUN! Grab your copy ASAP and “meet me in the garden!” More details HERE!

The post Author Appearances at Frances Hodgson Burnett Sesquicentennial Event appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

Welcome to Weekend Links!

So far this month has been jam-packed with insightful education, booklists, outdoor activities and cool nature resources for kids and parents interested in raising global citizens.  I would like to share them this weekend as my Weekend Links Round-up. Enjoy!

Check out my guest post at Kid Lit Celebrates Women’s History Month; The Mother of Trees Wangari Maathai -so honored to be included!

This was shared by one of our dedicated readers Donna Marie and the it’s from the author of the Secret Garden’s house. Bookish Illuminations; Entering The Secret Garden at Great Maytham Hall. It’s fantastic!!

How to Find Children’s Books in Spanish in One Easy Step from Spanish Playground

5 Amazing Multicultural Novels in Verse and the Kid Lit Blog  via PragmaticMom

10 Simple Ways Kids Can Celebrate Earth Day-via Multicultural Kids Blogs

We Need Diverse Books Tells AWP 2015: Write Diverse Books That Sell  via Publishers Weekly

Reading: It’s good for their health.  Harper Collins Children’s Books

Grab it before it’s GONE! My Free Curious George Gets a Medal Rocketship Craft and Activity!

Get Out in to the Garden! Have you missed the last few Secret Garden Wednesdays? These are too much fun not to read!

• Secret Garden Wednesday: Building a Bee Watering Hole
• Secret Garden Wednesday: Robin Cake
• Secret Garden Wednesday: Studying the Class of Hunger
• Secret Garden Wednesday: Planting Time
• Secret Garden Wednesday: Book-Inspired FUN
• Secret Garden Wednesday: Perfectly Good Porridge
• Secret Garden Wednesday: Garden in a Jar
• Secret Garden Wednesday: Sticky Toffee Pudding

If you are in the mood for another and inactive story, check out the enhanced digital eBook for kids, The Ultimate Guide to Charlie and The Chocolate Factory!

The Ultimate Guide To Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is a step by step roadmap to this magical world.   Just some of the fun includes:

• A story filled with beautiful graphic illustrations including tantalizing Treasure Maps and vibrant tutorials.

• Over 20 Crafts and activities that not only entertain, but educate.
• You get to jump inside the book and enjoy creating the adventures yourself (Templates, maps, and more are included.)
• Ever wonder where chocolate comes from? Or how gum is made?  Wonder no more. Now you get to make your own.

• Conduct activities in the areas of crafting, cooking, and game-playing as well as exploring many facets of candy production.
• The option to take Charlie’s journey over the course of several days or take shorter journeys if you wish.
• The creation of a new ritual of reading time with your family and the opportunity to experience the reading of this imaginative tale as a group activity, not a solitary event.

Go HERE to learn more and grab your copy from iBooks!

The post Weekend Links Earth Day, Garden and Other Assorted Book Fun appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

I read The Secret Garden to Rilla recently. She loved it beyond reckoning, same as I did at her age—same as I do now. During fraught passages, she couldn’t keep still: had to roll around on the bed, wave her legs in the air, hug herself, squeal, stand up and jump. All that emotion had to manifest in movement. It was fascinating to witness the way the book literally moved her. It brought a whole new dimension to my understanding of that expression.

***

Often, after I’ve read a book aloud to my kids, they take it away and immediately reread it. I thought Rilla might want to do that with Secret Garden but she looked almost shocked by the suggestion.

“No!” she exclaimed. “After you read me a book, I kinda treat it as an artifact too fragile to be touched.”

Well. I’m going to have to think about that. She probably won’t feel that way forever, and I imagine there will come a day when she does curl up with this tome for a delicious, private reread. Maybe around age ten or eleven—she’s only eight, after all. It’s interesting to contemplate, though. Was the experience of this book so fully engaging, such a complete kinesthetic, aural, visual, imaginative absorption that it feels enough? Have you ever experienced a book that way—a first encounter so complete that you never wanted to go back again?

Okay. News of a double quick time fashion today, folks. Let’s see what you can do with these yummy numbers:

Maurice Sendak as hot young man. Now that I have your attention I will now direct you to this magnificent interview with Phil Nel. As you may have heard he has a helluva biography coming out about Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss publishing this fall and Jules at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast has the season’s must read interview with the man on the topic. If you follow no other link today, follow that one. I wasn’t kidding about the Sendak photo (Jules thinks he looks more like a superhero, so you make the call).

• Jealous at all of those folks who can afford to buy original art from great illustrators? Wish you had the means? Well, here’s a solution I wish more people considered. Sergio Ruzzier was cleaning out his desk drawers and decided to just sell the extra stuff he found in there. Whether it’s a map of Thailand or some seriously laconic bees, Ruzzier’s got the goods. Just saying.

• Things that make you say, “Awwww”. I am thinking specifically of this lovely little piece from Horn Book called The Secret Garden’s Perennial Wisdom . . . for Parents. Yes, the title sounds schlocky yet Ms. Andrea Fox’s writing is anything but. It’s just good honest goodhearted honestness. Honest (and it’s good).

• It’s back! It’s back, it’s back, it’s back! Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!!

• Well, I’ll be hornswaggled. I’m fairly certain that the Parents’ Choice blog has never linked to me before. First time for everything! And I’m just pleased as punch that they’re highlighting this year’s 90-Second Newbery Film Festival. Remember folks, any kid can enter a video. Go to it!

• That nice Travis Jonker guy has been busy. First he ends up on the cover of SLJ talking about eReaders in comic form (love it). Then he’s up and bought by SLJ! That’s right folks. 100 Scope Notes will soon be joining the happily family here. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer, smarter fellow.

• Here’s the deal. If you were me would you go see Eric Carle Museum curator Jane Curley speak on the topic of ILLUSTRATED BOOKS IN THE AGE OF VICTORIA: BRITISH PICTURE BOOKS, 1837-1901? In a word: Duh. It’s free. It’s December 11th at 6:00 p.m. I am so there.

• I think my mom asked if anyone else had sent me this link to educator reformer Jonathan Kozol talking about the children’s books he’s been reading. That would be a definite nope. I’m glad she took the initiative though since Kozol’s great. He expounds on many fine points. Just listen to this description of Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse: “It’s a delectable story of an irreverent girl.” I am now claiming this description for my eulogy someday. Dibs!

• I’m very pleased to announce that the very first winner of the PEN/Steven Kroll Award Honoring the Author of an Illustrated Children’s Book has been chosen by a distinguished panel. Kudos to Carmen Agra Deedy, Susan Kuklin, and Vera B. Williams for selecting the magnificent Never Forgotten by Patricia McKissack. Just such a lovely work. Well played!

• Ugh. Reading articles like this just remind me that I need to do another critical review soon. Fortunately I found the perfect candidate recently. Stay tuned.

• FYI, our wonderful blogger turned author Gwenda Bond has a new book out and it’s getting reviews of the rave variety (and SHE doesn’t need to pay for them).

• Daily Image:

Book fountain, book fountain, book book book fountain!

Thanks to Aunt Judy for the pic.

#15 The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911)
88 points

This the very first book I read by myself, and my dad insists I read this book to him over 1000 times. It’s one of the few picture books I keep on my shelf, rather than my son’s. – Erin Moehring

Back before having small children zapped my time/attention span, I read this every year around March. Because it feels like spring. And “Here Comes the Sun” is my favorite song. These may be related. – Amy M. Weir

How nice to start a book with an irritating child instead of a lovable one. And Mary’s plea, “Might I have a bit of earth?” has been calling across the decades to hundreds of young readers who long for—something. It took Frances Hodgson Burnett to give that yearning a shape, and even if the shape isn’t quite what a particular child might ultimately choose, the reader knows the feeling for what it is. This is a book about hope. Its old-fashioned plot about Colin being healed rather mystically is almost beside the point. There’s just something magical about that secret garden. – Kate Coombs

Coming in at #8 on the previous poll, Mary Lennox slips a little, leaving wide open another spot on the top ten. Meanwhile this is almost a perfect children’s book.

The synopsis from the publisher reads, “Has any story ever dared to begin by calling its heroine, ‘the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen’ and, just a few sentences later, ‘as tyrannical and selfish a little pig as ever lived?’ Mary Lennox is the ‘little pig,’ sent to Misselthwaite Manor, on the Yorkshire moors, to live with her uncle after her parents die of cholera. There she discovers her sickly cousin Colin, who is equally obnoxious and imperious. Both love no one because they have never been loved. They are the book’s spiritual secret gardens, needing only the right kind of care to bloom into lovely children.  Mary also discovers a literal secret garden, hidden behind a locked gate on her uncle’s estate, neglected for the ten years since Colin’s birth and his mother’s death. Together with a local child named Dickon, Mary and Colin transform the garden into a paradise bursting with life and color. Through their newfound mutual love of nature, they nurture each other, until they are brought back to health and happiness.”

A.S. Byatt once referred to Frances Hodgson Burnett as “Perhaps the first truly transatlantic writer.”  This may strike you as strange, until you know the woman’s history.  When The Secret Garden was written Ms. Burnett was living in . . . wait for it . . Long Island, New York! Tis true. According to Elizabeth Keyster in the October 1991 edition of Hollins Critic, ” An Anglo-American, Burnett came to the United States while in her teens, returned to England for nine years in midlife, then spent the remainder of her life in this country.” By this point in her career she’d already written Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess so her reputation was secure.  According to Anita Silvey’s 100 Best Books for Children, “First serialized in American Magazine, the story appeared under the title ‘Mistress Mary.’  It sold out its first edition even before publication and was widely read by adult fans of Burnett’s earlier books, but it achieved little notoriety during the author’s life.”  Instead, she got far more praise for Fauntleroy of all things.  Says Silvey, “In fact, her New York Times obituary never even mentioned The Secret Garde