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A lot to say and so little time to say it.  Let’s get started!

Today, if you are at all feeling blue, I suggest you read The Toast piece Jaya Catches Up: A Little Princess which is a killer breakdown of what is inarguably a problematic book.  The Marie Antoinette portions are particularly choice.

Next, the 2016 Hans Christian Andersen Award Winners were announced. What does that mean for you? It means you should be boning up on your international children’s book knowledge, of course.  Commit the names “Rotraut Susanne Berner of Germany” (who won for Illustration) and Cao Wenxuan of China (who won for Writing)” to memory. For more info on the books and the winners, go here.

If you were speaking to the man on the street (or woman, or child, or what have you) and they said, “Boy, those children’s books took the hardest left turn a series ever took”, what series would you assume the person was speaking about?  Here is your answer and it’s a heckuva amusing post to boot.

Seven Impossible Things features Gareth Hinds.  And all is right with the universe.

Oh. In a weird way this makes sense.  They’re turning The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, the biography of Dare Wright, creator of the Lonely Doll book series, in to a film with Naomi Watts and Jessica Lange.  You know what that means, don’t you?  Lonely Doll fever is poised to sweep the nation.  Be wary. Be warned.  And buy stock in frilly underwear.

Remember when J.K Rowling said she had this “political fairytale” that was going to be her next non-Harry Potter children’s book?  Looks like it’s kaputski.  Which is to say, about 30 years after Ms. Rowling’s death someone will pull it out of that drawer and publish it anyway.  So it goes.

This next one’s roundabout three years old but I only just found it.  The mom from the Cat in the Hat finally speaks.  Quite frankly, I always found that polka-dotted dress of hers rather fetching (to say nothing of her keen shoes) but that may just be me.

If you had the great good fortune to see the NYPL exhibit The ABC of It then you would have noticed one section was dedicated to a fascinating array of Soviet children’s art.  I remember helping curator Leonard Marcus locate these books (of which NYPL owns a goodly number) and he picked and chose the best amongst them.  But where did they originate?  Having recently finished M.T. Anderson’s Symphony for the City of the Dead, I took the little bit of context I’d acquired and applied it to this fabulous piece on tygertale called Revolutionary Russian Children’s Books. Now I’m just beginning to understand. Thanks to Phil Nel (I’m pretty sure) for the link.

Growing up my mom had a machine in the attic that could type out braille.  I don’t know why we owned it but I liked it a lot. Braille children’s books available in a mass market context have always been difficult to obtain, though.  With this in mind, I’m very pleased to see DK is now releasing a braille board book series.  Wow.  Way to go, DK!

All right.  My four-year-old is upstairs asleep and in her room are all my Harry Potter books.  Otherwise I would check this myself.  You see, they just released the first look of the new Jim Kay illustrated Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  And I am staring and staring at this cover and I need your help.  Look at the cover right here:

Am I crazy or is that car chock full of Weaselys?  And doesn’t Harry drive to Hogwarts with just Ron?  At least that’s what the old British cover told me:

So . . . huh?  [Note: Interestingly the Buzzfeed article has plenty of comments but no one is pointing this out so I may just be completely and utterly wrong about everything]

In other news, the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy longlist was just released.  Frances Hardinge made the cut!!!  Wooty woot woot woot!!

Seriously Wicked, Tina Connolly (Tor Teen)
Court of Fives, Kate Elliott (Little, Brown)
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan UK 5/14; Amulet)
Archivist Wasp, Nicole Kornher-Stace (Big Mouth House)
Zeroboxer, Fonda Lee (Flux)
Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older (Levine)
Bone Gap, Laura Ruby (Balzer + Bray)
Nimona, Noelle Stevenson (HarperTeen)
Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)

Oh, I absolutely love this. Children’s art.  Not art for children, mind you, but art by children and its ramifications when studying history.  Again, I think I have Phil Nel to thank for this one.  He finds all the good stuff.

Daily Image:

The Make Way for Ducklings statues are nothing new (nor are they the only ducklings as my old post on all the public children’s literature statues in America attests).  Nor is it new to put hats on them.  That said, this recent yarnbombing goes above and beyond the call of duty.  That’s some seriously good knitting!

Read more about them here.

Welcome back!

As part of our Book-Jumper Summer Reading Series and Secret Garden week here at Jump into a Book we are giving away a Frances Hodgson Burnett Book Collection. The author of the Secret Garden penned over 40 books and we’re giving away some of her 4 most known and well loved classics plus a copy of our own A Year in the Secret Garden. It holds 12 months of wonderful activities, recipes,crafts, games,character and historical background information.

A Secret Garden Booklist Giveaway

The Secret Garden

A beautiful and timeless story about friendship, secrets, and the power of the human spirit, The Secret Garden tells the story of orphaned Mary Lennox, who is sent to live in her uncle’s house on the Yorkshire moors. With the tragic death of her uncle’s wife ten years earlier the house is an unhappy one. Miserable and lonely, Mary starts to explore the house’s gardens and soon discovers a key to the secret garden her uncle had sealed off. There she discovers a secret so important, so enchanting, that it will change her life forever.

A Little Princess

Alone in a new country, wealthy Sara Crewe tries to settle in and make friends at boarding school. But when she learns that she’ll never see her beloved father gain, her life is turned upside down. Transformed from princess to pauper, she must swap dancing lessons and luxury for hard work and a room in the attic. Will she find that kindness and generosity are all the riches she truly needs?

A little background information from Frances Hodgson Burnett herself:

THE WHOLE OF THE STORY

I do not know whether  people realize how much more than is ever written there really is in a story—how many parts of it are never told—how much more really happened than there is in the book one holds in one’s hand and pours over.

Stories are something like letters. When a letter is written, how often one remembers things omitted and says, “Ah, why did I not tell them that?” In writing a book one relates all that one remembers at the time, and if one told all that really happened perhaps the book would never end. Between the lines of every story there is another story, and that is one that is never heard and can only be guessed at by the people who are good at guessing. The person who writes the story may never know all of it, but sometimes he does and wishes he had the chance to begin again.

When I wrote the story of “Sara Crewe” I guessed that a great deal more had happened at Miss Minchin’s than I had time to find out just then. I knew, of course, that there must have been chapters full of things going on all the time; and when I began to make a play out of the book and called it “A Little Princess,” I discovered three acts full of things. What interested me most was that I found that there had been girls at the school whose names I had not even known before. There was a little girl whose name was Lottie, who was an amusing little person; there was a hungry scullery-maid who was Sara’s adoring friend; Ermengarde was much more entertaining than she had seemed at first; things happened in the garret which had never been hinted at in the book; and a certain gentleman whose name was Melchisedec was an intimate friend of Sara’s who should never have been left out of the story if he had only walked into it in time. He and Becky and Lottie lived at Miss Minchin’s, and I cannot understand why they did not mention themselves to me at first. They were as real as Sara, and it was careless of them not to come out of the story shadowland and say, “Here I am—tell about me.” But they did not—which was their fault and not mine. People who live in the story one is writing ought to come forward at the beginning and tap the writing person on the shoulder and say, “Hallo, what about me?” If they don’t, no one can be blamed but themselves and their slouching, idle ways.

After the play of “A Little Princess” was produced in New York, and so many children went to see it and liked Becky and Lottie and Melchisedec, my publishers asked[vii] me if I could not write Sara’s story over again and put into it all the things and people who had been left out before, and so I have done it; and when I began I found there were actually pages and pages of things which had happened that had never been put even into the play, so in this new “Little Princess” I have put all I have been able to discover.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

“But only be good, dear, only be brave, only be kind and true always, and then you will never hurt any one, so long as you live, and you may help many, and the big world may be better because my little child was born. And that is best of all, Ceddie, — it is better than everything else, that the world should be a little better because a man has lived — even ever so little better, dearest.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s conviction that love conquers all is memorably embodied in this classic rags-to-riches tale of an American boy who is transported from the mean streets of nineteenth-century New York to the splendor of his titled grandfather’s English manor; A Year in the Secret Garden

A Year in the Secret Garden

Valarie Budayr and Marilyn Scott-Waters have co-created A Year in the Secret Garden to introduce the beloved children’s classic, The Secret Garden to a new generation of families.

This guide uses over two hundred full color illustrations and photos to bring the magical story to life, with fascinating historical information, monthly gardening activities, easy-to-make recipes, and step-by-step crafts, designed to enchant readers of all ages. Each month your family will unlock the mysteries of a Secret Garden character, as well as have fun together creating the original crafts and activities based on the book.

Giveaway! One Lucky Winner will win ALL FOUR BOOKS!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

ONE winner will receive a copy of each of the fours books.  Giveaway begins June 5th, 2015 and end June 21st.

• Prizing & samples  courtesy of Authors of the above books
• Giveaway open to US addresses only
• ONE lucky winner will win one copy of each of the above books (A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Little Lord Falteroy and A Year in the Secret Garden).
• Residents of USA only please.
• Must be 18 years or older to enter
• One entry per household.
• Staff and family members of Audrey Press are not eligible.
• Grand Prize winner has 48 hours to claim prize
• Winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter on June 22nd

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Can’t wait? Enjoy more month-by-month activities based on the classic children’s tale, The Secret Garden! A Year in the Secret Garden is a delightful children’s book 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.  Grab your copy ASAP and “meet me in the garden!”

The post The Book-Jumper Summer Reading Series and a Secret Garden Booklist Giveaway appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

#56 A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1905)
37 points

At eight, I found nothing as exciting as a poor mistreated orphan. Swoon! - Anna Ruhs

I read this again fairly recently and couldn’t capture the sense of wonder that I had as a child, but refreshing the story in my mind was enough to make me remember falling in love with a book. - Pam Coughlan

Ah, the Burnett begins!  Last time we clocked A Little Princess in at #27.  This time it’s #56.  Notice how so many books have fallen in their ranks?  What can account for their replacements? Heh heh.  You’ll see . . .

The plot description from the publisher reads, “In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic tale, Sara Crewe learns that deep down, being a real princess is an attitude of the heart. She is a gifted and well-mannered child, and Captain Crewe, her father, is an extraordinary wealthy man. Miss Minchin, headmistress of Sara’s new boarding school in London, is pleased to treat Sara her star pupil as a pampered little princess. But one day, Sara’s father dies, and her world suddenly collapses around her. However, Sara does not break, and with the help of a monkey, an Indian lascar, and the strange, ailing gentleman next door, she not only survives her sufferings but helps those around her.”

There were actually three versions of this story in the end. Says Twentieth-Century Children’s Writers, in the publication St. Nicholas the short story, “Sara Crewe [Or What Happened at Miss Minchin's?] first appeared in 1887. It was a story drawing on some of her experiences as a child at the Miss Hadfields’ school in Manchester, but was set in London. Like nearly all Burnett’s stories, its theme is the reversal of fortune.” Still. It wasn’t quite enough. Burnett would later say, “Between the lines of every story there is another story. … When I wrote Sara Crewe I guessed that a great deal more had happened at Miss Minchin’s than I had time to find out just then.” In 1902 Burnett turned the story of Sara Crewe into a play. “The following year, her editor at Scribner’s came up with the suggestion that she write a new, longer version of the book under the play’s title, A Little Princess, incorporating the new material she had introduced in the play. He wanted the book quickly, the play was still running and sales would be splendid. Fortunately at that point Burnett was committed to two other plays. The book was not rushed and was not finally finished until November 1904.”

Of course, one has to mention the use of Ram Dass, the Indian servant who brings Sara such magic. As Eileen Connell pointed out in the article Playing House: Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Victorian Fairy Tale that “Like other discourses of this period, the story represents India as the locus of the exotic. In doing so, Burnett obscures the reality that the imperialist exploitation of India contributed significantly to the economic expansion in nineteenth-century Great Britain that both produced and upheld the ideology of separate spheres informing British domestic life . . . Instead of representing an Indian who gratefully receives the fruits of English civilization, Burnett constructs an Indian who gives Sara the services and commodities representing his subjugation to a country that robs his own country of its resources.”

On the flip side, Mitali Perkins had a loving ode to the book in her Paper Tigers piece Books Can Shape a Child’s Heart. After recounting her own childhood response to Sara’s unselfishness

It has become a holiday tradition on the OUPblog to ask our favorite people about their favorite books.  This year we asked authors to participate (OUP authors and non-OUP authors).  For the next two weeks we will be posting their responses which reflect a wide variety of tastes and interests, in fiction, non-fiction and children’s books.  Check back daily for new books to add to your 2010 reading lists.  If that isn’t enough to keep you busy next year check out all the great books we have discovered during past holiday seasons: 2006, 2007, 2008 (US), and 2008 (UK).

Sally G. McMillen is the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History and Department chair at Davidson College. Her newest book, Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement illuminates a major turning point in American women’s history, a convention and its aftermath, which launched the women’s rights movement.

Selecting a favorite children’s book is nearly impossible since so many wonderful ones have been published. Thinking about books I loved to read to our children, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, Ferdinand the Bull, Amos and Boris, and Charlotte’s Web come immediately to mind. But in recalling my own childhood and how much I enjoyed curling up in a comfy chair and burying my head in a book, probably the one that I loved most was A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I must have read it a dozen times, and I still revisit it as an adult. Years ago, on our first trip to London, my husband and I stayed in a B & B whose third-story window looked out over the rooftops of the city. For a few minutes, I stood there transfixed and pretended that I was Sarah Crewe in her garret. Burnett’s old-fashioned story with its satisfying ending pleases a reader who is somewhat old-fashioned and incurably romantic.

What appeals most to me is the main character, Sarah Crewe. She personified the kind of girl I dreamed of becoming—selfless, kind, empathic, well-mannered, and smart. Brought from India to a London boarding school by her doting father, Sarah quickly adjusted to her new environment. The school’s headmistress, Miss Minchin, however, resented the accomplished and privileged Sarah. Girls started calling her “princess,” some in adoration but others in derision. When Sarah’s father died and lost his entire fortune, Sarah was left alone and destitute. Miss Minchin moved Sarah to the attic and forced her to work as a scullery maid.

Sarah’s ability to endure sudden loss and deprivation—cold, hunger, exhaustion, and brow-beating— inspired me. Becky, the scullery maid who resided in the garret ne

Alright, this book, in some ways, doesn't need to be reviewed; it's a mainstay in a children's literature bookshelf. However, if you're like me, then you haven't read the book for years and have vague memories of the story mixed with images from film/t.v. of varying qualities. So, to do the book justice, I reread it.