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One-of-a-kind British writer Peter Dickinson died in December at age eighty-eight. His work cannot be easily categorized: a prolific author, he wrote everything from adult detective novels to speculative YA science fiction to heart-stopping adventures to intriguing almost-fantasies. The protagonists in his work for children range from an American-missionary boy who finds himself trekking through Tibet during the Boxer Rebellion (Tulku) to a blind teen who finds himself swept up in a plot by environmental terrorists to hijack a North Sea oil rig (Annerton Pit) to a human girl who finds herself transplanted into a chimp’s body (Eva). His books were wholly original, brimming with ideas, often concerned with the nature of religion and/or what makes us human — and also unfailingly compelling and masterfully plotted. Yet he did not consider himself an artist, but a craftsman: “I have a function, like the village cobbler, and that is to tell stories.”
Peter Dickinson’s 1993 Horn Book Magazine article “Masks“
Horn Book Magazine reviews of select titles by Peter Dickinson
“A Defense of Rubbish” by Peter Dickinson
The post Peter Dickinson, 1927-2015 appeared first on The Horn Book.
This coming Saturday evening, I’ll be interviewing Gary Schmidt about his new novel, Orbiting Jupiter, at the Peabody School in Cambridge, sponsored by Porter Square Books. It’s a very different kind of book from this author, and I am eager to talk with him. I hope you can join us!
The post Come fly with me appeared first on The Horn Book.
Look for The Horn Book’s new quarterly newsletter, WHAT MAKES A GOOD…? debuting on August 26th with “What Makes Good Narrative Nonfiction?” The issue features Five Questions for Steve Sheinkin, an essay about how to select NNF by the Junior Library Guild’s Deborah Brittain Ford, and brief reviews of our choices for the best narrative nonfiction published for kids and teens in the last few years. If you are already a subscriber to any of our newsletters you will receive this one automagically; otherwise you can sign up here. It’s free!
The post Oh look, another newsletter appeared first on The Horn Book.
Jack-the-lad
WHY I have to go to Chicago to see Jack Gantos when he lives only a mile away from my office is a question I’ll happily ignore to hear his Zena Sutherland Lecture at the Chicago Public Library tomorrow night. Join us if you can; otherwise you can read Jack’s speech in the Horn Book this fall. I’m also looking forward to brunch with Hazel Rochman, or, as Milton Meltzer once referred to her, “that damned Hazel Rochman,” the lady having incurred his ire for insisting, in a far-reaching and lastingly influential Booklist editorial, that nonfiction writers for the young cite their sources. Now it’s hard to imagine that they didn’t!
The post Jack and Hazel appeared first on The Horn Book.
Author T. A. Barron instituted the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes in 2000. Named for the author’s mother, the Prize is given annually to fifteen young people “who have made a significant positive difference to people and/or our environment.” Each winner receives $5,000 toward his or her work or higher education.
Barron’s latest fantasy novel, Atlantis in Peril, will be published in May by Philomel Books, and look for his thoughts about his main man Merlin in the forthcoming May Horn Book Magazine, a special issue on the theme of Transformation. Nominations for the 2015 Barron Prize can be made through the website linked above, but the deadline is April 15th so burn rubber, jk.
This is the first in a series of interviews with children’s book people about what else they do with their time.
1. RS: Over the fifteen years the prize has been awarded, have you seen any shift in the kind or focus of activism from the nominees?
TAB: The quality and diversity of these kids has always been extraordinary – they blow my mind every single year. But there have been dramatic shifts in what kinds of activism motivate them. For example, there’s been a big increase in young people helping other people and the environment at the same time – such as one recent winner who invented solar lanterns to replace dangerous and polluting kerosene or dung ones in developing countries. Another change is that nearly all our nominees these days have created their own activism websites and have a real social media presence, which definitely wasn’t the case when we started!
2. RS: Where do you see the intersection between your work as a novelist and as a conservationist?
TAB: Both are about young people – their struggles, ideals, and surprising power to change the world. Every day, I’m worried about the terrible planetary mess we are handing to our children. Yet every day, I’m amazed by the honesty, freshness, energy, dreams, humor, and courage of young people. So in my writing, I try to authentically earn the idea that every kid, of any description, has a special magic down inside – magic that could change the world. Add to that “hero’s journey” core how much I like to weave ecological ideas into my books…and you have the two themes that flow through all my stories.
Similarly, in my conservation work, I try to share stories of real people who have made a difference to creating a more healthy environment – people like Jane Goodall (visionary), John Muir (activist), Rachel Carson (writer), and Johnny Appleseed (tree planter). We actually do have the power to give Mother Nature the space and flexibility she needs to survive – but we have to believe that before we can do it. The stories we tell young people – the seeds we plant metaphorically as well as physically – can help us get there.
3. RS: Could you describe one of the most surprising or inventive projects you’ve seen submitted for this prize?
TAB: I’m still waiting and hoping for the bright young kid out there who will invent a way for me to write books faster (as a community service, of course)! Alas, that isn’t going to happen. Some of my most favorite recent projects are: (1) Waste No Food, linking food donors with charities that feed the hungry, thus helping people and keeping food waste out of landfills. (2) Literacy for Little Ones, providing new books and early literacy information to nearly 10,000 families with newborn babies. (3) Project TGIF (Turn Grease Into Fuel), collecting waste cooking oil from residents and restaurants and refining it into biodiesel to help New England families with emergency heating needs.
4. RS: What do you think is the key to growing a lifelong idealist?
TAB: Here’s what I hope to convey to any kid from any background: See your life as a story – a story of which YOU are the author. So make it the very best story you can! Tell it with courage; tell it with passion. And also find a way to have a chapter or two where your dreams for how to make the world a better place are made real by the small, everyday things you do in your life – as well as the broader causes you support.
5. RS: If I told you I wanted to save the world, what would you give me to read first?
TAB: I’d give you three books: (1) Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman (on the power of every person to make a difference). (2) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (on the power of love). And (3) The Hero’s Trail (the new 2015 edition) by T. A. Barron. (I know it’s shameless of me to include that last title…but this new edition is so packed with inspiring stories of real young people who have shown amazing courage and compassion that I just can’t resist.)
The post What ELSE do you do?: five questions for T. A. Barron appeared first on The Horn Book.
The other night, Martha Parravano and I attended an “Ink and Drink” at Candlewick Press for visiting author Chris Haughton. Boston was a stopover for Haughton, an Irishman who lives in London, on his way to Mississippi to accept the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Award for Shh! We Have a Plan, which received a starred review in the November/December 2014 Horn Book Magazine. His other books include Little Owl Lost and Oh No, George! and he developed a snazzy-looking app called Hat Monkey.
Haughton started as a graphic designer, then got hooked in to People Tree, a fair trade organization specializing in fashion/textiles and gifties. He talked about his time in Nepal, including co-founding a free-trade carpet and knitwear organization called Node that works with an adult education and support center to train and employ women, many of whom are domestic violence survivors or otherwise victims of oppression. This little guy — a George hand puppet (from Oh No, George!) — is one of the projects.
Just when you thought he couldn’t get any more big-hearted, he also created the artwork for a hospital children’s ward. And he read Shh! We Have a Plan aloud to us. And all with an Irish accent. The evening was lots of fun. Thanks for hosting, Candlewick!
The post Shh! We have an author event! appeared first on The Horn Book.
Please join us for the 2015 Zena Sutherland Lecture, “A Pair of Jacks to Open,” with Jack Gantos. Friday May 1, Harold Washington Library in Chicago, 7:30PM. The lecture is free but tickets are required.
The post 2015 Zena Sutherland Lecture by Jack Gantos appeared first on The Horn Book.
Roger Sutton, Paul Zelinsky, and George Nicholson at Elizabeth Law’s apartment; photo by Elizabeth Law
…to the sad news that George Nicholson, whom I had first met at an ALA, more than thirty years ago, has died. I first knew George when he was publisher at Dell; he later moved over to Harper and then to a successful second career as an agent, at Sterling Lord Literistic. He was a very kind man, scarily well-read, deceptively soft-spoken, and had great hair. Those Yearling and Laurel-Leaf paperbacks you grew up with? Thank George. Leonard Marcus interviewed him for us back in 2007; go take a look.
The post Goodbye, George appeared first on The Horn Book.
Make Way for Ducklings, by Nancy Schön
Leonard S. Marcus, whose look at Robert McCloskey’s emergence as an illustrator appears in our current issue, will be speaking on the occasion of the illustrator’s hundredth anniversary at the Cambridge Public Library on Monday, September 15th at 7:00PM. The Horn Book is happy to co-sponsor this event, and Porter Square Books will be on hand to sell, I presume, books by both distinguished gentlemen.
The post Marcus and McCloskey appeared first on The Horn Book.
Crossing the Simmons quad this morning, I spotted a familiar figure: long white hair and beard, flowing robes, and twinkling, bespectacled eyes… Professor Dumbledore?
No, it was Professor Bob White, a beloved Communications department faculty member. Still, his big smile and cheery “Good morning!” added a little bit of magic to my morning.
The post Headmaster? appeared first on The Horn Book.
Author Donald J. Sobol died on July 11, 2012, in Miami, Florida, at the age of eighty-seven.
He is best known for his long-running and beloved boy detective series Encyclopedia Brown. The series was honored with a special Edgar Award in 1976 and inspired both a comic strip (1978-1980) and a television show (1989). Sobol’s twenty-eighth Encyclopedia Brown book will be published by Penguin in October 2012.
Sobol’s more than eighty books include children’s novel Secret Agents Four (1967) in addition to adult fiction and nonfiction.
For more information about the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, click here.
Roger Sutton and Rebecca Stead prepare to announce the awards. Photo: Mark Tuchman.
Photo: Mark Tuchman.
A large crowd gathered to listen and tweet. Photo: Mark Tuchman.
Photo: Mark Tuchman.
NONFICTION WINNER:
Chuck Close: Face Book, written and illustrated by Chuck Close (Abrams Books for Young Readers)
NONFICTION HONOR WINNERS:
• Georgia in Hawaii: When Georgia O’Keeffe Painted What She Pleased by Amy Novesky, illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Harcourt Children’s Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint)
• The Elephant Scientist by Caitlin O’Connell & Donna M. Jackson, photographs by Caitlin O’Connell and Timothy Rodwell (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint)
Photo: Mark Tuchman.
Photo: Mark Tuchman.
FICTION AWARD WINNER:
No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Carolrhoda Lab, an imprint of Lerner)
FICTION HONOR WINNERS:
• Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet (Candlewick Press)
• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Hyperion Books for Children, a Disney imprint)
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Photos from the 2012 BGHB announcement at BEA as of 1/1/1900
Left to right: Roger Sutton, Maurice Sendak, Sergio Ruzzier, Frann Preston-Gannon, Ali Bahrampour, Denise Saldutti. Photo by Richard Asch.
Last year, I went to Maurice Sendak’s house to spend a day with the Sendak Fellows, four artists who were given time and studios to work on any project they desired, as well as access to Maurice for advice and encouragement. So who better to talk about his legacy? I asked each Fellow “what’s the most important thing you learned from Maurice?” (And, as a bonus, asked them for their favorite Sendak titles.)
Frann Preston-Gannon:
1. Maurice confirmed so many things that I already felt but didn’t have the confidence to admit. He taught me that while creating books everyone else should be forgotten, even children themselves. As he said during our stay: “Kids…What do they know?” In his profound and wonderful way he repeatedly told us “don’t let the bastards get you.” Most of all, the fellowship made me utterly grateful and proud to call myself an illustrator and to be doing what I love.
2. I hesitate to say Where the Wild Things Are as it seems too obvious, but that book means the world to me — and for the wicked Wild Thing inside, I believe it always will. The Sign on Rosie’s Door was also a great love of mine as a child.
Sergio Ruzzier:
1. That I will probably never be able to get rid of self-doubt. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
2. The Little Bear books, which were among the very first books I saw. Those pen drawings made an everlasting impression on me.
Ali Bahrampour:
1. It’s hard to pick out something I learned in any didactic sense. Maurice Sendak was himself a lesson: his integrity, his devotion to his art, his warmth and generosity to the fellows. I know that if I am ever tempted to make some concession or take the easy road, I will think of Maurice and be too ashamed to betray myself.
2. Part of me wants to pick In the Night Kitchen. Another part wants to pick the gorgeous drawings for Hector Protector. But my childhood self chooses Pierre, for whom I felt a perverse admiration for sticking to his principles even from inside the lion’s belly.
Denise Saldutti Egielski:
1. Live your life, he would say, be happy (he loved to laugh), it’s okay being different, it’s okay being sad or even frightened or frightening at times, let love rule, be brave and be bold, be yourself in your art, and then tell children anything you want. Maurice has had a profound effect on my life since he was my teacher when I was twenty and more recently when I was a Sendak Fellow. I feel like I’ll never stop learning from this great artist. I know I will never stop missing him.
2. Recently my sister sent me Somebody Else’s Nut Tree and Other Tales from Children by Ruth Krauss, illustrated by Maurice Sendak. I had never seen this book before, and now I can’t put it down — it’s so full of life, warmth, humor, sadness and all “gracefully illogical.”
Leo Dillon has passed away. Over a career that spanned five decades, the formidable illustrator, along with his collaborator and wife Diane, won numerous awards, including two Caldecott Medals (Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears, 1976 and Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, 1977), a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award, and several Coretta Scott King Honors.
Editor Phyllis J. Fogelman shares her thoughts about the Dillons in a 1976 piece in The Horn Book Magazine.
In this entertaining article from a 1977 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, Leo and Diane pay tribute to each other — and son Lee talks about them both.
The Dillons in 1977. Photograph by Kenneth M. Bernstein.
The Dillons at the Eric Carle Museum in 2008. Photo by Deborah Hallen.
photo by Lolly Robinson
Reigning (wait, is it incoming until he actually gets his mitts on the goods?) O’Dell and Newbery Medalist Jack Gantos stopped by the office last Friday for a bit of cake and champagne to celebrate the success of Dead End in Norvelt. (And to fortify himself for his daughter’s pajama party, which he was supervising that evening.) We were glad to learn he was already working on his Newbery speech, which is good because it’s due in less than a month.
We're working on a feature for the May issue, "What Makes a Good Graduation Gift Book?" and it's causing me to think about how complicated gift-giving can be. As Betty Carter says in the article, any gift of a book comes with an agenda: here's what I like or think is important and/or here's what I think you like or should find important. In either case, here's what I think about you. I remember the time an acquaintance gave me a Madonna CD for my birthday, and my acerbic friend Ruth remarked, "that's the kind of present a straight girl gives a gay man . . . she doesn't know very well."
Me, I generally give a gift card rather than a book, a dodge that Anne Quirk rightly denounced as cowardice. Richard is braver and/or more thoughtful, and almost always comes up with gifts of books or music that reveal he keeps a close eye on my tastes as well as what I already own. But for my last birthday he gave me a copy of Arthur Phillips' The Song Is You. It was a good guess, all about love and music and iPods, sort of a higher-minded High Fidelity, but reading it was complete hell--the prose was simply way too rich for my taste. But I gamely soldiered on, a few pages here and there, always packing it in my bag for vacations but never getting much beyond page 75. You have to, right, when it's a present from someone who loves you?
He eventually noticed that it was languishing, however, and took it for his own enjoyment. (Perhaps this was his motive for buying it in the first place, the way I bought him Simon Mawer's The Glass Room, which, fortunately, he loved and I am loving.) But today, triumph! I just got an email from him quoting from the Phillips, "her breath a cumulus the size of a peach," adding, simply, "slows you down, doesn't it?" Uh huh.
“Give Jerry Pinkney the damn medal, already!" and I have to say I was never so happy to not be surprised. We are working on the awards webpage, with a listing of all the winners and links to our reviews, right now; in the meantime you can read my interviews with Medalists Jerry Pinkney and Rebecca Stead.
Our "Five Questions for . . ." series at Midwinter on Saturday went really well, good answers and large audiences and (except for a glitch when I interviewed the most tech-savvy of all, Mitali Perkins, so embarrassing) a working sound system. I'll post pictures tomorrow after I figure out how to get 'em out of the camera.
"That damned Horn Book"--the first words Milton Meltzer ever said to me, upon our mutual introduction fifteen years ago. Meltzer was ever-watchful of how the review journals were treating nonfiction books, a crusade begun by him in our pages more than thirty years ago. We commemorate the passing, on September 19th, of this omnivorously curious and immensely prolific writer with a profile of him written by Wendy Saul upon the occasion of Meltzer receiving the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award in 2001.
An interview with Richard Peck leads off the latest issue of Notes from the Horn Book.
I'm going to New York next week to help select the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and I'm taking names. Here are the criteria:
Author or illustrator of fiction or nonfiction books
U.S. citizen, living in the U.S.
Excellent and facile communicator
Dynamic and engaging personality
Known ability to relate to children; communicates well and regularly with them
Someone who has made a substantial contribution to young people’s literature
Stature; someone who is revered by children and who has earned the respect and admiration of his or her peers
Most important, he or she will have to follow in the big clown-shoe footsteps of Jon Scieszka. Who do we like? Leave your suggestions in the comments.
Drinks for anyone but Elizabeth who can identify the musical quoted in the title.
The Simmons program Crime and Misdemeanors is ending this morning with closing remarks from M.T. Anderson, and my responsibilities--save paper-grading--will be through. I've been twittering away from the back of the room, but it's difficult to convey the extravagant genius and delivery of a Jack Gantos in 140 words. (And something tells me that Mr. Tobin Big Words won't be any easier.) If you go to the HornBook feed (linked over there on the right) you can at least get a sense of who's been talking.
Yesterday I was on a panel with Vicky Smith (Kirkus) and Deborah Stevenson (BCCB) about reviewing; the best moment for me was when Deborah and I confessed to letting House in the Night slip by while Vicky quietly crowed that Kirkus had named it the best picture book of the year. What we neglected to get into is how incestuous this whole business is--I used to run BCCB, Vicky formerly reviewed for the Horn Book, Deborah taught the Simmons summer course the last time and has an article coming up in our November issue. It's a very small pond.
I'll try to get you some more moments from the Institute later this week but am off tomorrow for some kind of management retreat in Ohio. If they think I'm doing trust circles or paintball wars . . . .
"Once you have found him, never let him go. Once you have found him . . . "
Like Leila, I'm in something of a reading slump, or in my case listening, as none of the several audiobooks I read on my commute seem to be doing it for me. The new Anna Pigeon mystery reminds me of why I gave up on Nevada Barr years ago (lurid and incoherent); Elizabeth and Mary is repetitive and overfond of the first queen at the expense of the second; the new Dennis Lehane is too hairy-chested; and those New Yorkers pile up as readily on my iPod as they do on the bathroom scales.
Let's just say I've been in a mood. But what hand of Providence brought me to download At Home in Mitford, the first of Jan Karon's novels about the mild-mannered Episcopalian Father Tim and his flock in a cozy Blue Ridge Mountains hamlet? Oh my goodness (as F.T. might say) I am loving it. And the hero has already made me a better person. Last night I came home to see Richard folding the t-shirts I had left in the dryer last weekend. To cover my own embarrassment at falling down on the job, my left-handed Scorpio instinct was to say something caustic about it being high time someone got around to the laundry but I thought, what would Father Tim do?, and instead said "I'm sorry I left the t-shirts in the dryer."
The pleasure of the book is its comfortable, steady-paced, dullness--right now, Father Tim is trying to settle on the menu for a dinner party he wants to have for his friends. He's just gone jogging for the first time. His irrepressible (by Mitford standards) dog Barnabas will only sit when Father Tim orates Scripture. The village vet and his wife, in their middle age, are expecting a baby. I am completely engrossed. Martha says if I like this sort of thing I should try Miss Read's books, too.
I've been editing a lot of Guide and Magazine book reviews this week, and the contrast to my new reading crush could not be greater. Once you get above chapter book level, it seems like almost all new fiction for kids is (or wants to be) thrilling, exciting, harum-scarum, suspenseful, non-stop, etc. Don't kids ever read to relax?
I was sorry to hear of Craig Virden's death today. We first met when I was chair of the Margaret Edwards committee and he was Richard Peck's publisher at what is now Random House. Craig was more excited than winner Peck (who got the news while transiting the Panama Canal, so there's that). We weren't close friends but I always found Craig to be genuine and honest and contagiously engaged--enthusiastic. You can read his blog postings from the recent Bologna book fair to get a real sense of his voice.
It's true that giving books as gifts to adults can be tricky. They pretty much have settled down in their tastes. And they tend to bristle if it appears you're trying to impose your ideals on them. But with children, we adults are helping them to search out what they like and don't like. Why not give a favorite niece (or nephew) Almost Astronauts, even if she doesn't usually read nonfiction for fun. Maybe she will like it - maybe she won't. But at least you've exposed her to a new kind of reading that she might not have ventured into on her own. If she gets to page 10 and says - eh, this is not for me, that's OK. Next time I'll give her something different.
Lloyd Alexander's "The Extraordinary Journey of Prince Jen."
A wise book about a young man setting out into the word for the first time and almost getting smooshed by it. A gentle reminder that a diploma doesn't mean you know everything there is to know.
Personally, I want to give every teen-ager in the world a copy of *Lions and Shadows,* by Christopher Isherwood. It seems to me the ultimate book about the deadly seriousness and importance of both friendship and self-absorption at that age.
But I'm weird.
The problem with getting adults books is to find one that they'd like that they haven't already gotten for themselves.
Oh, agreed, choosing gift books is so hard! I'm confident with one my sisters, who tends to love what I love, and with my Dad, because some books just call out his name to me. And my baby twin nieces are pretty easy to buy board books for :). But beyond that, I'm often helpless. Makes me wonder about the complicated algorithms Amazon and Netflix and so on use to recommend titles.
The best gift book I recieved after my high school graduation was a brand new dictionary - with $1000 inside. I still have the dictionary; wish I could say the same about the cash.
A Mother's Gift: Probably not the kind of answer you're looking for--but I'll share anyway.
I wanted to give my daughter something special when she graduated from high school. I decided to make her a memory book of her life from the day of her birth through her senior year. It included her birth certificate, some birthday/greeting cards she had received from friends and relatives over the years, photographs, and poems—some of which I wrote myself. I divided the memory book into sections: the day of her birth and her first days at home, her christening, her birthday parties, holiday gatherings, relatives, her reading with her dad and me and some favorite childhood books, her years at school, sports, friends, vacations, my daughter with her dad, my daughter with me. I spent a couple of months on the project--and I shed lots of tears while I was going through hundreds of photographs—and writing and selecting poems. (The memory book included poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye, Nikki Giovanni, Mary Ann Hoberman—among others.)
My daughter LOVED her gift. She showed it to every friend who came to visit at our house that summer—and she took it off to college with her.
She is thirty now, lives in her own home, and still has the memory book I made for her a dozen years ago. It is one of her most prized possessions.