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This week J. (my 12-year-old son) and I finished the audiobook version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in J.K. Rowling's epic series. We started listening to the first one in September 2010. J. was just starting sixth grade at a new school, and, until then, J. would have nothing to do with the series whatsoever. (Occasionally, and unfortunately, people become competitive about who has read what, and the same holds true even in elementary school.) I had read only the first book, and was neither here nor there about it. But the audiobooks! We became complete converts to the series and to Jim Dale's fabulous narration. Some evenings we sat in the car in the driveway, just to hear what would happen next, and I almost cried exiting I-95 as the last book came to an end. J. has read the books many times over, while I read ahead only once, preferring to be surprised.
As the HPs got longer and longer, I did need a break between 5 and 6. We listened to and enjoyed When You Reach Me, Rebecca Mead's Newbery-winning novel, although I have to admit that I am thick-headed when it comes to understanding time travel. I loved the New York setting and could completely picture those kids working in the sandwich shop.
Now we're onto a classic, Charlotte's Web, read by its author, E.B. White. Isn't that so cool that you can still hear E.B. White's voice? Out of nowhere J. remarked, "This is a good book." High praise!
My friend Mary Parmelee at the Westport Library says Eva Ibbotson's One Dog and His Boy, read by Steve West, is one of the best audiobooks she's ever heard. Now that we're dog owners, this novel sounds perfect. The online card catalogue summarizes the story this way, "When lonely, ten-year-old Hal learns that his wealthy but neglectful parents only rented Fleck, the dog he always wanted, he and new friend Pippa take Fleck and four other dogs from the rental agency on a trek from London to Scotland, where Hal's grandparents live." I'm putting it on the list now.
"Shanghai summers were long, hot, and humid—and as the war went on, the pool became too expensive to fill. So we spent the long summer days in the shade of the garden, with the shrill, hissing cicadas. They sang in unison whenever the sun reached them. Some of us read books from our family library or played cards and board games. [My brother] Hardy and I trained and fought our crickets."
from artist Ed Young's beautiful autobiographical book The House Baba Built: An Artist's Childhood in China (Little, Brown, 2011. Text as told to Libby Koponen.)
The scrapbook-style, multimedia (collages incorporating photographs, sketches, cut paper, and more) picture book, set during the World War II years, stays focused on its subject: a family's strength and resilience. Highly recommended.
Our seventh grader does not jump up and down with wild abandon when we hand him a book and say, "You'd like this." However, leaving intriguing-looking titles lying around to be "discovered" often works like a charm. Author Melissa Wiley once called this "strategic strewing."
Here a few books that happen to have been left out on the couch and in someone's favorite chair last spring and summer. I go by J.'s interests more than reading levels. Levels, schmevels.
Amulet #4: The Last Council, by Kazu Kibuishi (Graphix, 2011) The latest in a popular series of graphic novels. J. actually turned off the computer to read it.
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous, written by Georgia Bragg and illustrated by Kevin O'Malley (Walker, 2011)
Impressed by kids who substitute blog for their parents, I asked J. how he'd describe this book for people who hadn't read it.
"It's about how some famous people died," he said.
"Anything you want to add?" I asked.
"No."
Moving right along...
Darth Paper Strikes Back: An Origami Yoda Book, by Tom Angleberger (Amulet Books, 2011) Like its predecessor, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, this is a funny book with a middle-school setting.
Garter Snakes, by Heather L. Montgomery (Capstone, 2011). From a series called Wild About Snakes.
Oil Spill! Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, by Elaine Landau (Millbrook, 2011)
What to Expect When You're Expecting Larvae: A Guide for Insect Parents (and Curious Kids), written by Bridget Heos and illustrated by Stephane Jorisch. "Whether your babies are wriggly maggots, fat grubs, or fuzzy caterpillars, your larvae will look different from you." Geared to elementary-school-age children but the almost-12 J. still read it with appreciation. I think the title of the informational picture book is hilarious.
Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, by Chris Barton. Like How They Croaked and the next book, it was one of the great suggestions on the Westport (CT) Library's 6th grade summer reading lists.
Queen of the Falls, by Chris Van Allsburgh (Houghton Mifflin, 2011). I picked up my own strewn book and read it out loud. Fantastic! A widow in need of money decides to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Dude, that's crazy. And it's true.
Books I plan to "strategically strew" (but haven't yet seen)
Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick (Scholastic, 2011). Great writeup at Brain Pickings. J. enjoyed Selznick's Caldecott-winning Invention of Hugo Cabret.
America Is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell, by Don Brown (Flash Point/Roaring Brook, 2011) Reviewed at
"And just look at these books!" said Hermione excitedly, running a finger along the spines of the large leather-bound tomes. "A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions...The Dark Arts Outsmarted... Self-Defensive Spellwork...wow..." She looked around at Harry, her face glowing, and he saw that the presence of hundreds of books had finally convinced Hermione that what they were doing was right.
from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
When I heard Hermione proclaiming on the audiobook we were listening to, I was reminded of Katharine Hepburn (as Jo) in the 1933 movie "Little Women" on her first visit to the Laurences' home next door. "What richness!" she sings out in joy.
I understand completely.
A few children's classics made the cut in the Boston Globe's recent list of 100 "essential" books either about New England or written by an author with ties to the region.
Little Women (#2)
Make Way for Ducklings (#3)
Charlotte's Web (#15)
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (#54)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (#100).
Avid readers could make a case for lots of others, like anything by Dr. Seuss (born in Springfield, Mass.), Where the Wild Things Are (Sendak lives in CT) Barbara Cooney's Miss Rumphius, Donald Hall (author) & Barbara Cooney's (illustrator) Ox-Cart Man, Candace Fleming's The Great and Only Barnum (not to mention many other biographies of famous New Englanders), and The Story of Ferdinand (illustrator Robert Lawson was a CT resident).
Junior is now a rising 7th grader. How did that happen? I could have sworn that he just finished kindergarten.
This summer, when he's not app-surfing, he wants to read more Scientists in the Field books. That's the great series from Houghton Mifflin. Some that he has not gotten to yet are Diving to a Deep Sea Volcano; Saving the Ghost of the Mountain; and Wildlife Detectives. Along with many others, he's re-reading Harry Potter, too.
What are your kids reading these days?
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
by Nina Sankovitch
HarperCollins, 2011
I admire Nina Sankovitch, although I've never met her. Every day for an entire year, she sat down and read a book, and blogged about it all. She even wrote her own book, afterward. I just finished the resulting Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, a lovely collection of personal-and-literary essays. The author began her year as an antidote to the overwhelming sadness she was still feeling three years after the death of a beloved sister, and her conclusions about the value of memory and the backward glance inform every chapter.
Books like Sankovitch's always give me additions to my wish list. I wrote down these titles: The Open Door, by Elizabeth Maguire; The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon; A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines; Hannah Coulter, by Wendell Berry; Little Bee, by Chris Cleve; Indignation, by Philip Roth; The Sunday Philosophy Club, by Alexander McCall Smith; and Pastoralia, by George Saunders.
Not surprisingly, Sankovitch was an avid reader as a child—Harriet the Spy was especially beloved—and she does include some children's and YA books on her list of 365. Among the titles are American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang; Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card; Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke; The Picts and the Martyrs, by Arthur Ransome; Silverwing, by Kenneth Oppel; Twenty Boy Summer, by Sarah Ockler; Wizard's Hall, by Jane Yolen; and The Wright 3, by Blue Balliett.
If you need some lit-blogging inspiration, or just like to read about reading, don't miss Tolstoy and the Purple Chair.
"But the things I flat-out enjoy the most [about owning chickens] are not about virtue or use—they are about having them. Naming them, feeding them, talking to them (which is stupid I know, and I don't care) and just plain watching them."
Laura Cooper, as quoted in The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City, by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen (Process Media, 2010)
As someone who tells her hens good night, I can totally relate to the the "stupid I know, and I don't care" part. Chicken keeping is increasingly popular around here. We went to a ribbon cutting for some friends' big beautiful new coop recently, and one of the hens looked exactly like our Queenie. Exactly! She turned out to be Queenie's sister. Small chicken world.
We live in the suburbs, not the heart of the city, but there's plenty of practical advice in The Urban Homestead for anyone interested in living practically. I've spent the better part of May (when it wasn't raining) in the yard with J., planting tomatoes, herbs, okra, flowers, radishes, and other things. He is going to saw down some of our abundant bamboo for poles for Kentucky Wonder Beans.
Meanwhile, the Harry Potter audiobooks have taken us through a school year's worth of car rides. What a gift! We're now on #5. The Goblet of Fire, #4, was my favorite so far. So much is happening. I also noted how J.K. Rowling paints an absolutely awful portrait of the journalist Rita Skeeter. She lies, sneaks around, misquotes. Ouch. The Goblet movie is waiting for us at the library, so I'd better run and pick it up.
Happy Memorial Day to all.
The second grade class I read to each week is so smart! The students are doing double-digit addition, with re-grouping. "Get out!" I said. "Re-grouping, too?" One girl nodded, then whispered that they could do triple-digit addition, too. She raised her eyebrows as she said it, knowing I'd be impressed. I was. Back in the day, that was third-grade stuff, at least.
In terms of read-alouds, lions have been very popular. I should definitely take in Jerry Pinkney's The Lion & the Mouse; the kids could pore over the visual details in the 2010 Caldecott winner.
Meanwhile, they loved Library Lion, written by Michelle Knudsen and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes, in which a lion becomes a story-time regular until some rules are broken. More text-heavy than the usual picture book, it's perfect for the second grade.
What surprised me, though, was the reaction to Lions, a nonfiction title from Hodder Wayland's "In the Wild" series. I'd tossed it into my bag, thinking, if I have time, I'll read this one. You could have heard a pin drop as the class listened intently. I had forgotten that what lions eat, how the mama carries the cubs, what a mane looks like, etc., were all very interesting things to consider. Sometimes a straight-up informational book is just what you want to hear. That's why in the next few weeks I'll be searching for good ones on snakes, whales, dolphins, and iguanas, all requested. Suggestions welcome!
Today the UK's Guardian newspaper launches a new site for children's books—and it's for children themselves, not the gatekeepers. (However, this gatekeeper has already spotted several intriguing titles.)
The site will encourage child-to-child sharing with older children discussing their favourite books and authors with the younger ones.
Guardian Books Editor, Claire Armitstead, views the child-to-child sharing element of the site as vital. She said: "When you think of the resource that older friends or siblings represent, it seems astonishing that child-to-child reading gets so little attention. A sibling or a friend stand outside the circle of school, parent and child: you obey a parent, but you look up to an older sibling and you share enthusiasms with friends. In a culture with many different models of what family means, the resource of other children becomes even more valuable. It's with this in mind that the Guardian is launching a children-only website."
Read the entire press release here.
One of the many wonderful things that I discovered when I started blogging was the Guardian's excellent online literary coverage. I wish the new venture well. Cheers!
The second graders and I, their volunteer weekly reader, knew that cheetahs are the fastest land animals, but we did not know that a group of cheetahs who hunt and hang out together is called a coalition.
The teacher Ms. B. had mentioned that her class really enjoys nonfiction. I found a new book, Cheetahs, written by Kate Riggs, at the public library, and reading it aloud led to lots of discussion about the big felines ("cousins of lions, right?") and talk about other animals, too. I loved listening to the group think out loud.
I did dodge the question, "How do cheetahs give birth, Ms. T.?" by responding with a happy "Like other mammals!" It turned out that the questioner really wanted to give his own answer, which was imaginative but off the mark. I left it to Ms. B. to correct, or not, at another time.
Anyway.
Part of a Creative Education series called "Amazing Animals," Cheetahs makes a great second-grade book, with large photographs (including, aww, baby cheetahs...you see where the question came from), large print and short paragraphs, lots of white space on the page (making it easy on the eyes), and definitions of possibly unfamiliar terms, like savanna, right there on the page. Many of the children can read it themselves, too. The book ends with a little recap of an "African" myth (I wish the author had been more specific; Africa is pretty large) of how the cheetah got its tear lines near its eyes.
The "Amazing Animals" series spotlights elephants, koalas, dolphins, and more; the kids want to hear Lions next. I have not read the others, but to judge from the response to Cheetahs, our friendly, non-hunting coaltion is onto something good.
I'm on a new reading kick. Using Three Percent's longlist of best translated fiction 2010 (for adults), I started with Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky. Megan O'Grady at Vogue writes, "Infused with an arrestingly immediate understanding of Berlin’s past, it’s the tale of a grand summer house on a lake just outside the city whose inhabitants have much to reveal about the ravages and battling ideologies of the twentieth century." An excellent book. I highly recommend it.
Three Percent is an online resource for literature in translation and international literature. It's part of the University of Rochester's translation program. Words Without Borders: The Online Magazine for International Literature is another good site.
Meanwhile, Zoe at Playing by the Book reminded me of the UK's Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation. Achockablog highlights the shortlist and winner, announced recently.
"Translation expands our ability to explore through literature the thoughts and feelings of people from another society or another time. It permits us to savor the transformation of the foreign into the familiar and for a brief time to live outside our own skins, our own preconceptions and misconceptions. It expands and deepens our world, our consciousness, in countless indescribable ways."
from Why Translation Matters, by Edith Grossman. Yale University Press, 2010. A paperback edition comes out next month.
The American Library Association sponsors a prize that honors translation (into English) in children's literature. The 2011 Mildred A. Batchelder Award went to the publisher of A Time of Miracles, written by Anne-Laure Bondoux and translated from the French by Y. Maudet. Honors were awarded to the publishers of Departure Time, written by Truus Matti and translated from the Dutch by Nancy Forest-Flier, and Nothing, written by Janne Teller and translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken.
The most recent kids' works in translation that we've read are probably the middle-grade novels of Cornelia Funke's Ghosthunters series. In very small type on the copyright pages you'll see that Helena Ragg-Kirkby translated the books from the German. I noted a while back that the Ghosthunter books are good read-alouds, and I'm now more aware, after reading Why Translation Matters, that part of the credit, at the minimum, must go to Ragg-Kirkby. Edith Grossman points out, "[w]hat should never be forgotten or overlooked is the obvious fact that what we read in a translation is the translator's writing."
Reading this post from March 2007, I remembered how much fun it was making maple candy. We have the syrup, we have the snow, maybe we'll try this again. Meanwhile, I'm going to have to hitch up the team of horses to the sleigh to fetch Jr. at school today. The flakes are really coming down right now at 11 a.m.
Laura Ingalls Wilder Inspires Kitchen Mess
Our house smells so good right now, like maple syrup, because we did it! We made maple candy just like Grandma Ingalls did in Little House in the Big Woods. The weather cooperated by providing us with fresh snow this morning. We boiled up maple syrup into the "soft ball" stage, which candy makers evidently know about, and which, by luck, we managed. Junior was great about stirring the syrup and then, when the big moment came, running outside for plates of snow. Because the mixture was so hot, I (not Junior) drizzled it onto the fluffy snow. And, lo, there was candy! The taste is subtle, a gentler maple flavor than I expected. Perhaps that's attributable to my store-boughten syrup; I don't know.
Our plan was to follow Grandma Ingalls's example and make maple sugar when our ca
ndy syrup started to "grain." That was not to be; the potion burned. No flames, don't worry. I should have turned down the heat, or congratulated myself on the first success and stopped. Still, it was fun, and a good activity for a snowy day. And our kitchen got very messy and sticky.
Here is the picture of a modern-day sugar house, at a local organic farm. You can click on the photo to enlarge it. Yesterday I wrote about some great books for children on maple sugaring, in addition to Little House.
The most prestigious prizes for American children's books were announced this morning at the midwinter meeting of the American Library Association. For more details, more awards, and the titles of the honors books, see this press release from ALA.
Here is a partial list of winners:
Caldecott Medal: A Sick Day for Amos McGee, illustrated by Erin E. Stead and written by Philip C. Stead
Newbery Medal: Moon over Manifest, by Clare Vanderpool
Coretta Scott King Book Awards
- Author Award: One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia
- Illustrator Award: Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave, illustrated by Bryan Collier and written by Laban Carrick Hill
Geisel Award: Bink and Gollie, by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee; illustrated by Tony Facile
Morris Award: The Freak Observer, by Blythe Woolston
Printz Award: Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi
Pura Belpre Award (author): The Dreamer, by Pam Muñoz Ryan; Pura Belpre Award (illustrator): Grandma's Gift, written and illustrated by Eric Velasquez
Schneider Family Book Award
- The Pirate of Kindergarten, written by George Ella Lyon and illustrated by Lynne Avril (ages 0 to 10)
- After Ever After, by Jordan Sonnenblick (ages 11-13)
- Five Flavors of Dumb, by Antony John (teens)
Siebert Informational Book Award: Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot, by Sy Montgomery, with photographs by Nic Bishop
Stonewall Book Award: Almost Perfect, by Bryan Katcher
YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults: Janis Joplin: Rise Up Singing, by Ann Angel
Susan Wyndham, the literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, compiled a list of ''15 Australian books - and some extra suggestions - that every Australian can enjoy if they want to understand our literature, our country and ourselves. Culture is a conversation and knowing these books enables us to talk to each other." You can read Wyndham's list here.
As a followup to Wyndham's list, journalist and children's book expert Judith Ridge rounds up the "15 Australian picture books that everyone should know." She's planning to do the same for middle-grade and YA books, too. Ridge writes, "It is a list that, if you read them all, would go some way towards an understanding of. [...] the preoccupations Australian children's literature, and what those preoccupations say about Australian childhood and adolescence (or perhaps our adult perceptions of and ideas about Australian childhood and adolescence)."
The prolific children's book author Dick King-Smith died earlier this week. King-Smith's book The Sheep-Pig (published in the U.S. as Babe: The Gallant Pig) was the basis for the movie "Babe." Obituary at the Guardian. (news via @pwkidsbookshelf)
Jason Wallace's debut novel, Out of Shadows, won the UK's Costa Children's Book Award. The Herald Scotland reports that Out of Shadows, based on the author's experiences in post-independence Zimbabwe, was turned down by more than 100 agents and publishers before Andersen Press picked it up. The book will be published stateside by Holiday House in April.
Back to the States, Rita Williams-Garcia's middle-grade novel One Crazy Summer has won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Details at Read Roger, the blog of The Horn Book's editor, Roger Sutton.
Will One Crazy Summer go on to win the Newbery? We'll see soon. The Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, etc., are announced on Monday morning, January 10th. The American Library Association provides more information.
Speaking of the Coretta Scott King Award, author Kyra E. Hicks offers some thoughts on potential winners of the prize for "outstanding books for young adults and children by African American authors and illustrators that reflect the African American experience." See Hicks' blog,
Loyal Chicken Spaghetti readers know that I like to take pictures of book displays. (On a similar post last summer, a few others confessed to doing this, too. My people!) Yesterday's family outing to the charming holiday train show at the New York Botanical Garden gave me an excuse to hang around its gift shop, acting like a spy and taking pictures with my shoe phone.
Store displays are great ways to get recommendations. I spotted a mix of fiction and nonfiction, including Big Yellow Sunflower, by Frances Barry; Bugs in a Blanket, by Beatrice Alemagna; The Grouchy Ladybug and The Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle; I Love Dirt: 52 Ways to Help Your and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature, by Jennifer Ward; Snow Is Falling, by Franklyn M. Branley; The Carrot Seed, by Ruth Krauss; a new edition of The Secret Garden, illustrated by Inga Moore; The Practical Naturalist, by Chris Packham; Blue Potatoes, Orange Tomatoes: How to Grow a Rainbow Garden, by Rosalind Creasy; and NYC books like Old Penn Station, by William Low, and I Love N.Y., by Christoph Niemann.
And that's just one table! As a snowflake cutter from way back, I also wanted to buy Peggy Edwards'
Make Your Own Paper Snowflakes and Cindy Higham's
Snowflakes: Creative Paper Cutouts. Hats off to the children's book buyer at the New York Botanical Garden. Great gifts galore!
Speaking of snowflakes, while I did not see The Secret Life of a Snowflake (Voyageur Press, 2009) at the NYBG, this 48-page Cybils nominee is well worth seeking out. Author Kenneth Libbrecht, a physics professor at Caltech, studies crystal formation and takes stunning photographs. Subtitled "An Up-Close Look at the Art & Science of Snowflakes," the picture book for older readers (about nine and up) offers just what it promises.
I borrowed the cover image at the right from WorldCat.
Blog Blast Tours, organized by Colleen Mondor, feature interviews with authors who write for children and teens. Taking place at different blogs during the week, the chats cover many ideas and genres, from nonfiction to fantasy and more. Always interesting and original, without the canned PR spiel that one sees elsewhere.
The latest Winter Blog Blast Tour starts on Monday, December 6th. Colleen Mondor says, "This schedule will be updated daily with quotes and direct urls so be sure to check back as the week goes on." Check this page at Colleen's blog, Chasing Ray, for links.
Monday
Elizabeth Hand at Chasing Ray
Maya Gold at Bildungsroman
L.K. Madigan at Writing & Ruminating
Paolo Bacigalupi at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
R.J. Anderson at Hip Writer Mama
Tuesday
B.A. Binns at The Happy Nappy Bookseller
Daisy Whitney at Bildungsroman
Adam Gidwitz at A Fuse #8 Production
Salley Mavor at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Josh Berk at Finding Wonderland
Wednesday
Andrea Seigel at Shaken & Stirred
Adele Griffin at Bildungsroman
Susan Campbell Bartoletti at Chasing Ray
Charles Benoit at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
Sarah MacLean at Writing & Ruminating
Allen Zadoff at Hip Writer Mama
Thursday
Kathi Appelt at Shelf Elf
Heidi Ayarbe at The Happy Nappy Bookseller
Julia DeVillers & Jennifer Roy at Bildungsroman
LeUyen Pham at Finding Wonderland
Friday
Marilyn Singer at Writing and Ruminating
Jennifer Donnelly at Shelf Elf
Ted Chiang at Shaken & Stirred
Sofia Quintero at A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
Maria Snyder at Finding Wonderland
John Ciardi's poem "Mummy Slept Late and Daddy Fixed Breakfast" begins, "Daddy fixed the breakfast./He made us each a waffle./It looked like gravel pudding./It tasted something awful[,]" and goes on to describe an utter fiasco. The poem is one of many included in the "I'm Hungry!" section of The Random House Book of Poetry for Children, an anthology that I highly recommend, especially for parents to share with kids nine or so and younger.
Quite the contrast to the scene Ciardi depicts is Stay at Stove Dad, the blog of my friend and former colleague John Donohue. Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP newsletter recently said, "[John's] recipes are great for parents who, like him, are thrifty shoppers and like for their families to try lots of different kinds of food without getting too complicated." His recipe for pancakes with fruit sounds delicious—and as unlike gravel pudding as you can get.
Next May will bring Man With a Pan: The Culinary Adventures and Misadventures of Fathers Who Cook for Their Families (Algonquin Books), which John edited. He told me that it's a recipe and essay collection featuring works by the likes of Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, Mark Kurlansky, Jim Harrison, and Stephen King. Nice!
Finally, among the many "best of 2010" lists popping up is Smithsonian Magazine's guide to new children's books about food. The Food & Think blog sets out an enticing array of picture books, chapter books, and cookbooks.
For more poetry talk, see the Poetry Friday roundup at the always lovely blog The Miss Rumphius Effect.
Kids' book mentioned above
The Random House Book of Poetry for Children:
A Treasury of 572 Poems for Today's Child
Selected by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Arnold Lobel
Random House, 1983
This book is still on the shelves at bookstores and in libraries, of course.
In the car
An unabridged audiobook of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl (HarperChildren's Audio, 2005). Monty Python's Eric Idle is the narrator. It had been a long time since I read this one, but I remember Charlie's yearning as he breathed in the delicious chocolate aroma on the way to school. I'd forgotten how insane the Oompa-Loompas' songs are.
We're on the hold list for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Random House Audio, 1999). Audiobooks have proved to be an ideal remedy for people (like me) who get fidgety/impatient/insanely bored in the car.
Junior, age 11
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, by Jeff Kinney (Amulet Books, 2010). The latest in the popular series.
Controlling Earth's Pollutants, by Christine Petersen (Marshall Cavendish, 2010). An ideal hour of reading for the kiddo: cocoa, blanket, cozy chair, and a book on pollution.
On the nightstand is Nic Bishop Lizards (Scholastic, 2010). Fantastic photos, per usual with Bishop. "Lizards lead lives that are full of surprises." Yeah.
Read-aloud
In the Wild, a picture book written by David Elliott and illustrated by Holly Meade (Candlewick, 2010). Poems about wild animals. Sheesh, this is a beautiful book, with its watercolored woodcuts and all. I asked my son to vet this one for the second grade class I read to. He thought they'd like it.
Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum, by Meghan McCarthy (Paula Wiseman/Simon& Schuster, 2010). We're thinking the second graders will like this one, too. Great idea for a nonfiction picture book.
Me
Lots of Cybils middle grade/YA nonfiction books, including The Dark Game: True Spy Stories, by Paul B. Janeczko (Candlewick, 2010). Two of the most famous Civil War spies were women. I never knew that.
Second-grade class read-aloud
Lousy Rotten Stinkin' Grapes, written by Margie Palatini and illustrated by Barry Moser (Simon & Schuster, 2009). A new take on the Aesop fable. Very funny, with priceless expressions on the animals' faces. The class loved it. Now, clearly, we must get a hold of Palatini and Moser's Earthquack! (Simon & Schuster, 2002).
Last Wednesday the National Book Award for Young People's Literature went to Kathryn Erskine's novel Mockingbird (Philomel Books/Penguin Young Readers). The other nominees were Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker (Little, Brown), Laura McNeal's Dark Water (Knopf), Walter Dean Myers' Lockdown (Amistad/HarperCollins), and Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer (Amistad/HarperCollins).
Kathleen T. Horning, director of the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said,
"If you haven't yet read all of the nominees for this year's award, I urge you to do so. They are all excellent books; each one is so different from the others. As a group they demonstrate the range of outstanding literature currently available for children and teens. In fact, if you wanted to introduce someone to current children's and young adult literature, you could start with these five books."
The Cooperative Children's Book Center maintains CCBC-Net, a listserv "encouraging awareness and discussion of ideas and issues critical to literature for children and young adults." I took the quote from there, and use it here with permission; I thought it was great advice. Kathleen T. Horning is also the author of From Cover to Cover, the definitive guide to children's book reviewing, newly revised in 2010. If you write about books for kids, it's a must-have.
Happy November, everyone!
Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is around the bend, and it's time for the big list of lists, The Best Children's Books 2010. The link appears on the right, under Pages.
That link marks a work in progress. I've begun rounding up the year-end "best of " lists (from newspapers, journals, magazines, et al.) for children's books, as well as children's literature prizes. I'll be continuously updating the 2010 list of lists through next year.
Right now the UK has the lead on 2010 announcements, but the American lists will start rolling in soon. Publishers Weekly's November 8th issue is devoted to its top choices in all genres, and School Library Journal reveals its picks of the year on December 1st. The Newbery and Caldecott Medals follow on January 10th, 2011, and the Cybils February 14th. Those and many, many more await us.
Author Russell Freedman mentions a number of WWI books for children in the bibliography of his excellent new book for young adults, The War to End All Wars. These include the following:
Nonfiction
The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage, by Walter Dean Myers and Bill Miles (Amistad Press/HarperCollins, 2005)
Eyewitness World War I, by Simon Adams (DK Publishing, 2007)
Causes and Consequences of World War I, by Stewart Ross (Raintree Steck-Vaughn, 1998)
Fiction
Lord of the Nutcracker Men, by Iain Lawrence (Delacorte, 2001)
Private Peaceful, by Michael Mopurgo (Scholastic, 2004)
Poetry
War and the Pity of War, edited by Neil Philip (Clarion Books, 1998)
*****
The Willmette (Illinois) Public Library offers a good reading list of WWI books for kids, also.
"Terrible Trenches," a WWI exhibit at London's Imperial War Museum continues through October 31st. Terrible Trenches is also the title of an upcoming book in the UK's "Horrible Histories" series for children. ("It's history with the nasty bits left in!") The prolific Terry Deary is the author. (See this interview with Deary, at the Guardian.)
You'll find additional posts on nonfiction books for children at the blog Write About Now, the host of Nonfiction Monday today.
