unadulterated.us

Somewhere under the radar - Overlooked Books of 2015

Sometimes we read books, sometimes they're just scenery.

Opened my email this morning to find an unusual year-end list from Kirkus: the Most Overlooked Books of 2015. I like that. That list made me think.

Usually this time of year I have no time for thinking. Even as the holiday BS is winding down, I'm usually busy reading hard and arguing loudly as a judge in the Cybils Awards. The Cybils are publicly nominated, with the finalists and winner agreed upon by a panel of judges. Finalists are announced January 1st, and the winners are announced on Valentine's Day - put it in your calendar. I'm not a judge this year though, so I get to sit back and spectate and read all the lists.

Because in addition to the Cybils, state lists and year-end best lists are proliferating like glitter under a craft table, all leading up to the big announcements of the Newbery/Caldecott/Printz/etc awards at the ALA Midwinter meeting January 11 (8am, in case you want to tune in for the live feed). The Nerdy Book Club awards have just been announced, and I love the Nerdies. Rather than a WINNER and a list of runners-up, the Nerdies publish lists of 10-30 books. Books are nominated via the website, a committee decides the finalists, and then the finalists are publicly voted upon. I love the thoughtful ways that the Nerdies, the Cybils, and some state lists (including the Maryland Black Eyed Susan, which I am on this year) try to ensure balance between the opinions of professional and general readers. 

 

Cece Bell, Jackie Woodson, Dan Santat and Yuyi Morales at the ALA Annual Conference, June 2015. It was a very good year for the ALA Youth Media Awards.

 

To be perfectly frank, however, I do not like awards. Too much of a democrat, I guess. I do not feel that books compete against each other, and I firmly believe that almost every book has its audience, even deeply flawed books. HOWEVER, it is impossible not to be conscious of the fact that, of all the consequences of a book getting an award, the largest one by far is the award's effect on the book's sales - general sales for sure, but school library sales in particular.

Purchasing for a school library is hard. I loved doing it when I did it, but I do not miss all the blood that ended up on the floor when I had to pare my lists down. And I am fortunate that I never had to justify my purchase decisions like so many librarians do. Awards, stars, and reviews in major publications are in some systems a requirement in order for a school librarian to purchase a title for his or her kids. And to that may I just say UGH.

Because, hard as award committees all work to consider all books, some great books, especially slightly off-kilter books - still manage to fly under the radar. Fun fact: not one of Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales has won a major Youth Media Award or Honor. And let me tell you - Nate's books are far from off-kilter. Every one of Nate's informative and entertaining nonfiction graphic novels should be in every school library in the nation. 

So, I were still buying for a school library, I'd start with the Cybils finalists and the Nerdy winners - not only are those lists longer than the National Book Award finalists and the ALA Award Honorees, but I find them to be more focused on kid appeal. Then I'd compare my working list to this spreadsheet compiled by EarlyWord, which aggregates the Year's Best lists published by Amazon, Booklist, Entertainment Weekly (which is - perhaps surprisingly - a reliable source of good critical reviews), Hornbook, HuffPo, WaPo, NYT, SLJ, WSJ (eff you Megan Cox Gurdon), Library Reads, Publishers Weekly, the National Book Awards, and TIME magazine, who should either get better staff on this or just quit it.

But I would still be missing some great stuff, and that's where this Kirkus Overlooked Books list comes in. It's not long enough though, covering as it does titles for all ages (including Scarlett Undercover, a debut novel that I started but put down for some reason, and am picking up again on their recommendation). So I've taken a nostalgic scroll through my 2015 Goodreads shelves and here for you are my own picks for Best Overlooked Books of 2015:

---

GIVE IT: All the goodies for this holiday season

 

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed... -- Lloyd Dobler, Say Anything

 

It's not just me, is it? Faced with the task of buying one or more THINGS per family member or dear friend - determining what that THING shall be, finding it, pricing it, procuring, storing, sometimes hiding it, then processing it via gift wrap and tags - doesn't everyone get a little Doblery? After all, he gives her his heart - something he had to neither shop for nor wrap. She gave him a pen.

But, for better or for worse, we're giving gifts. And you know what will make you feel a little better about participating in this annual collective shuffling of goods bought sold and processed? If those goods are actually, you know, GOOD. Like books. 

Read on, babies!

Mary Cassatt: Extraordinary Impressionist Painter by Barbara Herkert and Gabi Swiatkowska - review

A picture book biography is more than the product of an author. You could safely say that the responsibility for its appeal is shared by the author, the illustrator, and the subject, especially when the subject is herself an artist.

If you think of the recent picture book bio of Anna Pavlova, Swan: The Life and Dance of Anna Pavlova, you quickly realize that some people will pick it up because it's about a marvelous ballerina, some will snatch it because they are fans of the author, Laurel Snyder, while still others will be drawn in by artist Julie Morstad's exquisite and sensitive illustrations. 

I'm going to argue that there's one other person who should get a lot of credit for a truly extraordinary picture book biography, and that's the editor. If you listen to Laurel talk about Swan (and you should, on Matthew Winner's Let's Get Busy podcast interview of Laurel and Julie), you'll hear about the editorial process that resulted in words selected like gems from a velvet case and an illustrator who was an inspired choice by Melissa Manlove, the book's editor at Chronicle.

Similarly, in the acknowledgements for Mary Cassatt: Extraordinary Impressionist Painter, the artist thanks "Christy O." and for good reason. Christy O. can only be the editor Christy Ottaviano, who has her own imprint at Henry Holt. Christy must have been the one who read Barbara Herkert's picture book script about the life of Mary Cassatt, and thought, "Gabi Swiatkowska." At the very least, Christy's the one who signed off on the pairing. And it's a genius matchup. Here's why.

Gabi Swiatkowska has never not produced art that is interesting to look at. Her work is intentionally mannered and old-fashioned looking, but with a knowingness that winks at the reader. A little girl might be dressed in meticulous period gear, all pantaloons and petticoats, but her expression will be one of very specific discontent. See Queen on Wednesday.  I have wondered, however, how this serious-seeming but off-kilter art goes over with kids. Part of the wit of this work is in the interplay between the formal elements - the grown-up colors, the slightly surrealistic perspectives and the painterly textures - and the expressionistic content, and I don't know if children always can catch it.

And then you have Mary Cassatt, who was revolutionary for her time, painting scenes of everyday domestic life through the lens of a new generation of artists. Barbara Herkert does a great job in this book explaining the context of Cassatt's work - she saw the brighter colors and loose-limbed poses of Degas and his dancers and applied those ideas to the subjects she liked to paint.

Self-portrait, circa 1878, Mary Cassatt

When the modern viewer looks at her work, however, all we see are babies and moms. Babies and moms wearing placid expressions, depicted in pastel colors. Yawn. We have trouble seeing what's extraordinary about her work, because the angles and colors and the way she used materials - so shocking at the time - are now perfectly accessible to us.

 

From the book. The difference is subtle, but I see it.

So when you put Gabi Swiatkowska, who has always been interested in what her subjects are THINKING, onto the case of Mary Cassatt, whose content is no longer challenging to the viewer, you get the best of both worlds. A sweeter color range - and fewer random birds - in Ms. Swiatkowska's illustrations, and a sense of challenge and alertness in Ms. Cassatt's paintings. 

This book has finally made Mary Cassatt relevant to me. Good job, ladies!

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste - review

I love helping kids find books. I mean, der, that's what unadulterated.us is all about, that's why I work in the public library, etc. etc. But it bears saying. One of the things I love about it is surprising a kid. Say it's a kid who doesn't want a book. A kid who is reflexively embarrassed because his mom is insisting that he talk to the librarian. He just wants me to go away and stop asking him questions.

Nicki Minaj wants nothing to do with this reader advisory nonsense.

 

So I say, "What about a book where a bunch of people get killed?" And the mom's face goes like - "errr..." and the kid is just startled enough that he forgets how mortified he is by the situation.

 

Until she starts hearing about little girls battling supernatural fireball demons.

Now let's talk about The Jumbies!

A greatness of graphic novels - Winter 2015

Locked down and blizzarded up, you need a dose of color, don't you? The kids are kind of eating each other and you're sick of telling them to get off YouTube. Time to hit the graphic novel section:

 

The Golden Compass Graphic Novel, Volume 1 (His Dark Materials)

"You're going to have to realllly convince me," I can hear famous curmudgeon Philip Pullman mutter as he surveys the latest in what I imagine must be a never-ending parade of proposals to adapt his 1995 masterpiece trilogy His Dark Materials into graphic novels. He probably imagined himself as Penelope at her loom, trying to wave off a crowd of greedy suitors. He's got a Classics turn of mind, does our Phil.

But I'd say that the old atheist let the right one slip the ring on. This art - patently Frenchy in its scritchy artiness - is specific enough to let the reader's personal mental images of Lyra, Pan, Lord Asrael and NOT NICOLE KIDMAN Mrs. Coulter persist. It hews extremely closely to the original text (it's going to have to be hella long), so first-time readers will be no more lost than the rest of us were at first. 

 

 

And the images of the College, the bogs, the gyptians' boats, and the glowing, faded sky of Lyra's England are beautiful. Panels are very small - there are often as many as a dozen per page - but the exterior scenes are extraordinarily full of light and air. Go ahead and click on that right-hand image to see it larger. Yum.

More after the break...

Children's books that adults should read too - Brown Girl Dreaming and El Deafo

I'm a generalist. Professionally. Personally, I'm a bit of a specialist, but - hrmhm - that's just between us. No, I'm a generalist librarian - a librarian who serves both adult and juvenile customers. Most public library systems don't expect their professional staff to be proficient with teens, children, adults, and seniors, but the one I work for... does.

As you might imagine, librarians in other systems sometimes scoff at this arrangement. School librarians in particular are kind of amusingly horrified.

Generalists are expected to maintain at least a glancing knowledge of the adult best-seller list and genre fiction (I can name 3 Amish romance authors off the top of my head - we all can!) and stay abreast of trends in juvenile and young adult literature. It's admittedly kind of a lot. You read a lot of e-newsletters.

But the up side is that when I read an adult novel, I notice when that book includes teen or kid characters who are going through teen or kid things, and I file it in my head as possibly good for underage readers. Books like this are called Adult Books for Teens, and there's a whole blog over on SLJ devoted to them. There's also an award, the Alex Award. In an interesting boomerang effect, if you are an adult who likes books that are both well-written and fast-paced, you might mine these lists for suggested reading. I do.

By the same token, when I read children's literature, which I mostly do, sometimes I notice when the characters, the setting, or the obstacles they confront would resonate with the adult readers I serve. There's no blog for Children's Books Recommended for Adult Readers, but maybe there should be. 

 

Spring 2015 Preview - Soup to nuts!

What the heck. Let's do this.

For some reason - it's not like I've got nothing else going on - I have been unusually aware of upcoming titles recently. I've spent a bunch of time on Edelweiss and Netgalley scanning publisher catalogs, and just yesterday attended the Book Buzz that the AAP put on at DC Public Library.

Reps from Scholastic, Penguin, Sourcebooks, Quirk, Tor, and many others gave a roomful of librarians a preview of what they've got coming down the pike.

Here are the books that I thought really stood out, plus books that weren't represented at the event that I know about and am looking forward to. These are in age order.

Hello, I'm Johnny Cash by G. Neri - review

 

I don't know about these passion-project picture book biographies. Don't get me wrong - *I* love 'em. My colleagues love 'em. Awards committees love 'em. Parents sometimes love 'em.

But I have to heave a heavy sigh and admit that I have trouble getting a kid to take Andrea Davis Pinkney's marvelous, swingy Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa into his or her hands, or The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos, or the new picture book biography of Golda Meir, Goldie Takes a Stand!: Golda Meir's First Crusade.

 

 

Golda. Meir. WHO... reads that book? HOW... do they end up picking it up? Without adult intervention, that book NEVER gets read. I interviewed the brilliant Chris Raschka about his new picture book biography The Cosmobiography of Sun Ra: The Sound of Joy Is Enlightening this past spring. And I somehow never got up the courage to ask, "What the hell, Chris Raschka? What child will be interested in the life of Sun Ra?" I played Sun Ra's music for my kids in the car, and after about 20 minutes, they politely asked me to turn it off because it was making them crazy.

 

 

They've never wondered about these people. They've never even heard of them, in some cases. It is usually possible to tease out a reason for kids to learn about them - we need true stories of struggle against adversity, the power of will, or an example of a kid "just like you" who grew up to find his or her place / succeed on his or her own terms / change the world. But in ten years at the library, I bet have helped fewer than ten kids who were looking for a picture book biography. 

I'm not saying they'll never get read. WITH the aforementioned adult intervention, they'll get read. They'll also show up in classrooms an get taken home for reports. Although since they aren't programmed to provide report answers (no bolded vocabulary words, no timeline, no maps), kids tend to reject them in favor of Time for Kids or Who Was when report time comes around.

Hello, I'm Johnny Cash stands a greater chance than most of getting plucked off the shelf by an auntie or a dad - there are plenty of grownups who just can't wait to share The Man in Black with their kids. Heck, my friends Aimee and Jim named their firstborn June.

And I'm so glad. I love this book. Greg Neri is clearly a devoted fan, inspired by the way struggle and talent shaped the life of this extraordinary musician. In a note at the back, Greg states that he shaped this biography around the stories Cash told about himself - in essence, telling Johnny's story the way Johnny would tell it.

That is such an interesting take on research, and I think especially thoughtful for a children's book. Everything I've read about Johnny Cash seems to indicate that he wanted to inspire people to do good deeds and follow their conscience, and to that end he would probably have told children about the poverty and sorrow that shaped his actions in his early years, and how music kept him going and ultimately lifted him up.

 

Big curves, arched body, and then the guitar angling just north of a horizontal line - everything points at Cash's squinty take-aim expression.

The oil illustrations are in a straightforward pictorial style, full of air and open faces. That picture on the cover pretty much says it all - this is one case where the cover is just as strong as the interior art (I'm looking at you Grandfather Gandhi - why is your cover so blah when your inside is so dramatic?!).

In the end, regardless my misgivings about the audience for picture book biographies, as long as the publishing companies will put a few bucks into them, I am of course happy they're around. School libraries should keep buying 'em, teachers should use them to introduce music units and history units and to put a human face on math and the sciences.

And I'll keep shoving them at youngsters and parents at the public library. "Golda Meir! Very important lady!" "Sun Ra! Um... it's important to show that even serious weirdos have a place in our culture!" Who knows, that kid may grow up to be our next serious weirdo, brilliant mathematician, or straight-shooting Israeli prime minister.

 

Books to end all books - WWI for kids

It's 2014, the centennial of the onset one of the bloodiest, most devastating wars in history. A war which should have taught the world the dangers of nationalism, military escalation, and imperialism. Well, we all know how that went.

On the UP side, the WWI centennial gives us (educators, parents, librarians) an excellent opportunity for engaging the kind of reader who connects with nonfiction, especially history, and especially the kind of history that involves guns. I'm not using the word "boys," but you know what I'm talking about.

 

 

Author Laurel Snyder's male-variety offspring enjoying a Civil War reenactment and Nathan Hale's Big Bad Ironclad at the same time.

My particular boys have been reading up on WWI because our family is going to Belgium for a bridge dedication. Their great-great-uncle did a heroic deed and then promptly died, making my husband's brothers and sisters the closest thing he would ever have to descendants. You can read about it here if you are so inclined. We will be touring battlefields and cemeteries and museums, and we have all been boning up just in case the plaques are all in Flemish.

Here are a few recent books for your WWI collection:

Series books for summer pleasure reading - This is the post for parents

 

I know what you want. I see you. You come in to the library with that little-bit-panicked look in your eye: "Oh shit there's no school for like MONTHS and they're going to do nothing but play Minecraft and moan about being bored." Or pull scary crap like balance-beam on an 8-foot fence. YEESH.

I am right there with you. Milo is in the basement right this second watching those awful Sky Does Minecraft YouTube videos. Or porn. No I did not just write that. I take it back. Wait, let me just get him up here, I'll be right back. 

................

He was practicing guitar. OF COURSE. God, I am so not ready for him to be a teen.

Anyway, you want book recommendations for your children so that they do not forget how to read / become glassy-eyed screen zombies over the summer. You want books that are IRRESISTABLE, books that they will plough through and then ask for the next. In short, you want series books, and you want series that have been out for long enough that there's no waiting for the next book.

 

How to pick a cookbook for your kids

 

It can't be easy, right? Writing a cookbook for kids? I mean, if you're writing a cookbook, that means you are a good cook. You know your asparagus from your elbow macaroni, if you know what I mean. And here you are writing instructions for people who don't know what the salt looks like when you tell them to get it out of the cupboard.

IT'S THE BLUE CYLINDRICAL CONTAINER. CYLINDER. YOU KNOW, ROUND LIKE A... oh Christ I'll get it. SEE? THIS IS SALT.

It's beginning to look a lot like BOOKSHELF - Great pairs of book to give kids 2013

 

 

Well there aren't a lot of shopping days left until Christmas, but the good news is that in these depressing final days, when the best that most stores can offer is a choice between Picked-over or Shopworn, your favorite independent bookstore is an absolute ACE at getting that brand-new book - or books - for you just about right away.

Let's place our order, shall we?

Captain Cat by Inga Moore - review

Captain Cat is a crazy-eyed, cat-lovin', Santa-bearded old sailing man. After a lifetime as a sort of less-than mediocre trader (he tends to swap valuable goods for worthless felines), Captain Cat decides it's finally time to see the places on his bucket list. Blown way off course by a really nicely drawn storm, he and his crowd of cats fetch up at a sweet, wealthy, rat-infested remote island presided over by a skinny-legged wild-haired Queen. With her unhinged grin and mens' shoes, the Queen is kind of like a tropical Pippi.

MAN this is a great story. I'm not kidding.

Recent standout picture books - SUMMER 2013

Portmanteau post time! Since returning from vacation I've made a concerted effort to catch up on new picture books. It's a burden. I'm kidding. It's a joy. I love paging through a giant stack - it's like sitting on your friend's floor going through her records. Thirty years ago. *shakes head* *misses 12" record albums for a minute* *wonders where all her Siouxsie and the Banshees records got to*

Anyway, when you read ten or twenty picture books at a time, the winners - and the weirdos, and the "hmm" books - quickly distinguish themselves from the rank and file.

 

 

And some of them BOWL ME OVER

 

 

Herewith:

Summer reading - had me a blast

 

Man, I do love talking about books on the radio. Last week, the Marc Steiner Show needed a librarian for a segment about what kids are reading this summer, and I was lucky enough to be in the supply chain for that request.

I had never been to the WEAA studio at Morgan State University, and it was spacious, bright, and airy. Plus, it was extremely wild to conduct a conversation with That Voice. Marc has been on Baltimore radio for ever - he is smart, friendly, and uncompromising, and I've tuned in to his wave a thousand times I'll bet.

Enoch Pratt librarian Jessica Brown and I tag-teamed Marc with some great books we'd brought for the occasion. It was a great dynamic - Jessica and I propped each other up, collaborated, illuminated more than one side of some of the books discussed, and were mutually stumped when Marc brought up a book that sounds like a political parable about Jerusalem's West Bank.

Here's the audio of our talk:

Battle Bunny - the rock opera

Not really. Nobody sings. Well, they sing, but it's not... Oh just watch it.

 

 

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, sure, she's always complaining she has no time to read, but she'll spend most of Memorial Day weekend - when she should be barbecuing or binge-watching Arrested Development (Fun fact: I have never watched Arrested Development!) clipping video."

It's true. But I can't help it. I love making videos with my kids. And this one was inspired by the forthcoming Battle Bunny by Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett, pictures by Matthew Myers.

Actually, I was just looking for an excuse to dress Ezra up in an Afro wig and a pink bed jacket. If you look closely, that's the same jacket Miss Volker wore in our production of Dead End in Norvelt. Jack Gantos was a good sport about our massacre of his Newbery Award-winning book, hope Mac & Jon don't get too mad at us for blowing their framing device.

 

 

Oh my living room is such a mess and I haven't even been to BEA yet! Middle grade boy books, Spring 2013

 

I know it's a losing battle, keeping the place in some kind of tidy shape, and it's certainly not all the fault of my kids. The books, lord the books. But sometimes I am just in a GET IT ALL OUT OF HERE mood, and such is the mood that descended tonight.

I haven't had the time to read hardly anything lately, so as we picked up books and shelved them or put them in the Back to the Library bag, I got Milo (11) and Ezra (nearly 10) to talk about the books they've read.

 

 

Ezra: Battle Bunny is the result of a ten year old who just watched a whole lot of apocalypse movies making his mark on a cute little Birthday Bunny tale. It's terrifically funny - there's a picture on Battle Bunny's wall that shows a bunny mama leaning over a bunny baby and the ten-year-old added the words "Drink your poison."

NB: The overstimulated ten-year-olds actually responsible for Battle Bunny are Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett, with illustrations by Matthew Myers... 

Read and grow rich - How my kids did on the 1922 SAT-10

 

As the kids were getting ready for bed last night, my husband pulled out Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun and flipped through it.

Unbored is a pretty great book - it has about a million unexpected and funky things for a kid to do: DIY Fiction! Farting Games! Make a Cigar Box Guitar! and it sits on our shelf until somebody pulls it out and has a little fun with it and then puts it back where it'll sit for another 6 months. That book makes a great gift (although if there's a second edition, I'd recommend the illustrations to be a little less hipster/retro. If it were me, I'd get Stephen Gilpin to do 'em. And I might spring for color.).

Anyway, tonight Bob found this page of questions from the 1922 Stanford Achievement Test, and just for fun started reading them out loud. I am always pretty amazed at the random stuff my kids know, and tonight I just had to ask - how do you know that?

So here's a sample of the questions from page 202 of Unbored, and how my kids knew the answers. VERRRY interesting, and a huge validation of leisure reading.

Building our house by Jonathan Bean - review

A family of hippie hipsters - or post-hipster hippies if you want to split hairs - move from their Hampden rowhouse to a field outside of Monkton and build a house, two toddlers in tow and a bun in the oven. Does mom wear glasses? Does dad wear plaid? Is their jeep a vintage Willys, are their shoes extra-chunky? Does a cat lurk on the periphery?

Do not hold any of these things against them.

Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex - guest video review by Milo!

I am a lucky woman. By almost any metric, that's me, Lady Lucky. I can walk under ladders.

One of the ways in which I am lucky is that there are about five authors out there whose work is just exactly what I want to read. I can go to those authors and always always be surprised and moved. Gibson. Liz Jensen. Nick Harkaway. Charlie Higson. Ian Fleming (but that's more of a sick obsession). And by "always always" I mean - no duds. No books that make me go "ehhh." Neal Stephenson for example. Love everything he's written either side of the Baroque Trilogy, but those three books made my eyes roll back into my head, and so he doesn't make this list. 

What I'm getting at - obviously - is that Adam Rex does. I don't know what is similar in our backgrounds or genetics or whatever, but his imagination travels paths that seem enticing and familiar to me - as if they are paths that I glimpsed once from a passing car and wished I had the time to detour into. His humor makes me laugh out loud on trains and in bars.

Which is why I can't review his latest book, Unlucky Charms, the second in The Cold Cereal Saga. This author speaks so clearly to me that I can't tell how he sounds to other people. I can't be objective while I'm giggling out my nose. Luckily, I have a couple of clear-eyed readers in my house who can be relied upon to give you the what when I can't. Here's Milo:

 

 

Now, I admit I read the ARC of Unlucky Charms as soon as I snagged it at ALA Midwinter, and I admit I was going to pass it to Milo as soon as I got home, and I further admit than when this hardcover came in the mail - pretty much before I got home, thank you someone at Harper! - Milo grabbed at it as if he were a magnet and it was made of paperclips, but let me tell you, Milo is not a man who will allow preconceptions to influence his appreciation of a book.

So when he tells you it is funny and brave and awesome - you better believe it. Available Feb 5.

 

 

From Unlucky Charms by Adam Rex - Marcos Horchata reporting

 

PS: Good lord I have written yet ANOTHER review of something involving Adam Rex in which I forgot to mention the art! How do I keep doing that? Adam Rex is supernaturally talented as an artist. His illustrations are the kind that kids pore over, looking for clues, soaking up the visual realization of scenes they have already mentally assembled from the author's words.

They exhibit charm, draftsmanship, and a particular genius for realistic expression, facilitated I believe by his habit of sculpting little heads and using them as models. I like to think he mounts those heads on tiny plaques and hangs them on the wall when he's finished - a miniature hall of horrors. Maybe he talks to them, they're like a Greek chorus when he's stuck on a drawing. "Make him fatter," grunts Frankenstein. "With bigger eyebrows!" yells Grandpa Ned. "What is that sweater about?" snipes Barnett. 

This art, by the way, is not something I am worried I'm biased about. I know art, and I'll borrow a technical term from art criticism here and call it GOOD. It's GOOD ART.

Buy this book, buy all his previous books. Support him so that he can keep feeding my habit, and I swear you will thank me for it.

 

Reading on the radio: Gift books for kids 2012

From The Brick Bible Christmas Story

Hey ho it is time for me to haul a giant tote bag of beautiful and enticing books for the kids on your gift list down to Maryland's NPR station (WYPR 88.1 FM) and let Maryland Morning's Tom Hall pick a few he'd like me to talk about! Unfortunately, that segment got lost in the scheduling shuffle this year, so I'll have to make do with a list on Pink Me. NOT a hardship - on the Internet, I have unlimited air time!

So here are the books I am sticking in my Santa sack:

I’d love to call these “holiday” gift ideas, but the fact is, Hannukah gift purchasing is all but DONE. I missed that Galilean fishing vessel. So unless you give gifts for Kwanzaa or Yule (God Jul to you Dances With Chickens!), at this point, it’s all about Christmas. So what is the fat man going to bring the kids you love?

 

I am so handsome by Mario Ramos - review

If you read picture books to kids on any kind of regular basis - that is, if you are now or have ever been a parent, a teacher, or a librarian - chances are you have come across the books that you just can't sell. The words you can't wrap your tongue around, the insipid characters whose lines you just hate to hear yourself saying, the forced rhymes that refuse to bounce where you expect them to.

And then there will be that beautiful day when you crack open Your Book. The book that flows off your tongue, the book whose jokes you were born to sell. That book might be I Must Have Bobo! by the Rosenthals, or Banana! by Ed Vere. Could be you found your book long ago and it was Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino, or Jamberry by Bruce Degen.

But for me... my book came in earlier this week. My book is I Am So Handsome by Mario Ramos.

Rip Haywire and the Curse of Tangaroa by Dan Thompson - review plus bonus boy book rant

 

Secret agent Rip Haywire is half Mark Trail, half The Spirit, and half Bruce Campbell. His canine sidekick TNT is half Lassie, half Mr. Peabody, and half the dog from Family Guy. Ooh, this is fun! Rip's girlfriend/archenemy Cobra? Let's see... half Miss Scarlet, half Agent 99, and half Natasha Fatale. And if those character descriptions add up to 150%, well, that's just how far over-the-top Dan Thompson, creator of the globe-trotting rock-em-sock-em noir parody graphic novel Rip Haywire and the Curse of Tangaroa! plays it.

Unusual Creatures: A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth's Strangest Animals by Michael Hearst - review

Come for the freaky pictures, stay for the entertaining text. Boy, if I could give aspiring nonfiction writers one piece of advice, it would be - try to make a book that I can recommend to kids using that sentence. Although I guess it doesn't work for like, presidential biographies. Freaky pictures of presidents are rarely appropriate for kids.

Anyway. Michael Hearst, the author of Unusual Creatures: A Mostly Accurate Account of Some of Earth's Strangest Animals, seems to have figured that magic sentence out all by himself in this, his first nonfiction book for kids.

The Goldilocks Variations, words by Allan Ahlberg, pictures by Jessica Ahlberg - review

A new MAD Magazine anthology has been published, celebrating - errr, "celebrating" - 60 years of, as they call it, "humor, satire, stupidity and stupidity." Good old MAD. It's where we went for dumb grunting laughs before God invented Homer Simpson.

And although sometimes it's easy to forget the huge amount of satire in MAD, MAD is also kind of where we went for snarky, well-informed chuckles before God invented Jon Stewart.

AND it was our source of slightly baffled grins while we were still too young to be well-informed or snarky. In fact, MAD was making snide remarks long before "snark" was anything other than some kind of bandersnatch variant.

The Amazing Hamweenie by Patty Bowman - review

This I love. The Amazing Hamweenie is the tragic story of a cat whose vast ambitions for fame and stardom are viciously thwarted by his mundane surroundings.

Viciously. Thwarted. "Don't you know who I am?" he cries, in the piteous tones of a diva plucked from her glittering dressing room and plunged into a life among peasants. He is forced to endure tea parties with stuffed animals, he is transported in a doll carriage, and while he can see the exciting world out the window, all he can do is lounge on the sill, suffering.

Planet Tad by Tim Carvell

This is going to be a great go-to for those middle grade boys who think they like nothing but Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The MAD Magazine logo on the cover is going to help. It's formatted like a blog, including those little mood icons from - what was that? LiveJournal? I'm forgetting already. Even the word "blog" sounds dated. Even to me, who writes two.

Diary-like entries detailing Tad's aspirations and humiliations are interspersed with flat-out observational comedy: Do you think flightless birds think they're going to fly one day, and then realize that's never going to happen (paraphrase)? The comedy made me laugh out loud, and then share with the class.

My To-Read List - A Book Festival Recap

 

Kate Milford, Jonathan Auxier, and Morgan Keyes signing at the Baltimore Book Festival. Obscured: Shannon Hale and Sheila Turnage. All-star!

Based on a TOTALLY scientific survey of current middle grade fiction, i.e., attending the back-to-back National Book Festival (grueling) and the Baltimore Book Festival (delightful!), talking to a jillion kids and their parents, a few booksellers, and a dozen or so authors, I have updated my To Read list in the following ways, and for the following specific reasons:

 

Guest post by Ellis Weiner - in which I give the author of The Templeton Twins Have an Idea permission to swear

Pink Me can't resist a funny man. It's true - you can show me your muscular prose, your scenes of wooing and swooning, but when a writer rips out something that makes me laugh out loud, well then, you can cancel my appointments for the next few days.

That is how, even though I have always foresworn the Blog Tour thing, I am a stop on Ellis Weiner's Blog Tour. Ellis Weiner is funny. His first book for children, The Templeton Twins Have an Idea: Book One, has made the rounds in my house (I read it, both boys have, it tops one of the stacks on our coffee table in the current banner photo, and our copy currently resides on my husband's bedside shelf alongside multiple back issues of The Economist (I assume for bedtime readalouds to the kids but after all I don't know what happens around here when I have second shift at the library)), and made each of us giggle. Why haven't I reviewed it? See about a dozen previous posts subtitled OH WOE I AM OVERCOMMITTED and GAH! LIFE!

Also, Ellis Weiner is from Baltimore, and my friend Eerily Similar Paula and I have been nagging the crap out of him to come home and visit our libraries and schools. So when I had the chance to solicit a guest post, I asked him to reminisce about growing up here. 

 

A Pantheon of Picture Book Creators: Recent great picture books

My gods are better than these gods #remakefail

Maybe it's because the kids are re-reading all the Percy Jackson books, or maybe it's because I'm re-watching Battlestar Galactica and half those characters are named after classical gods and heroes (my children are so much more highbrow that I am right now, it's embarrassing).

But whatever the impetus, I am on a deification kick right now.  And just for the moment, just because these are the great picture books that have crossed my path recently, these are the effigies decorating my shrine:

Reading on the radio: Great graphic novels for kids

 

From Rapunzel's Revenge, by Hale, Hale, & Hale.

 

Here's your latest list of great graphic novels for kids, courtesy of the legwork I did prior to a recent appearance on WYPR's Maryland Morning. This time, host Tom Hall and I were joined by author and librarian Snow Wildsmith (my idea!) for a talk about which graphic novels, how graphic novels, and, most importantly, why graphic novels for kids. Snow and I get all smarty-sounding at a couple of points there, I totally encourage you to listen:

8-17-12: Comics: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Literally, the Ugly.).

The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee by Tom Angleberger - review

I swear these Origami Yoda books just keep getting better. The current crisis at Ralph McQuarrie Middle School is... how will everyone get by without the guidance of Origami Yoda, now that Dwight has transferred to fancy Tippett Academy? And by the way, what is going ON with Dwight? Reports are filtering in that he is no longer digging holes and sitting in them, speaks in complete sentences, and, strangest of all, has stopped bringing Origami Yoda to school!

While The Strange Case of Origami Yoda was about accepting and appreciating Dwight and his weirdness, and Darth Paper Strikes Back was about accepting - while not exactly appreciating - Harvey's oblivious jerkiness, each book also has seen the kids gradually gaining consciousness of how their actions affect other people. In other words, Tommy, Sara, Kellen, and their friends are developing - naturally, spasmodically, at different paces (the girls are quicker) - the emotional intelligence of teens. And listen, if you think teens have no emotional intelligence, try spending time with a bunch of 5th graders. Secret of the Fortune Wookie continues this progress, in a way that I can't reveal without spoiling the Fortune Wookiee's actual Secret.

All this emotional growth is delivered in a way that is subtle as hell, though, and conveyed with so much humor that no child will put down this book feeling like he has been Shown How To Be A Better Person.

BONUS: Han Foldo
THING THAT MADE ME SNORT: Mr. Good Clean Fun's puppet sidekick Soapy the Monkey
SEQUEL I CAN'T WAIT FOR: At the end of Fortune Wookiee, we get some big news about big changes afoot at McQuarrie Middle, and I am going to LOVE seeing Tommy, Kellen, Sara, Rhondella, Harvey, Quavondo, Cassie, Remi, Amy, Tater Tot, Lance, Dwight, and even stuck-up Brianna band together to take down the Evil Teaching To the Test Curriculum. I also can't wait to see the Star Wars puns Tom Angleberger will come up with for standardized testing.

Benny's Brigade by Arthur Bradford, pictures by Lisa Hanawalt - review

I have been in a weird mood all day. I just finished reading a really cool and funny adult sci-fi novel (Year Zero by Rob Reid), plus I'm by myself in the house, my whole entire family being out of town, and I'm working the evening shift. So I feel a little unreal.

And then the first picture book I picked up at work today features a pocket-size walrus who emerges from an oversized walnut. Yeah. I should just start drinking right away, don't you think?

 

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again by Frank Cottrell Boyce - review - aka an excuse to go off about Ian Fleming, which I have been wanting to do for a long time

It's not all that often somebody tries to write a sequel to a classic like this. It's a really big risk - tough to avoid looking like you're just totally crassly trying to cash in on the love and affection for the original book... or else you just look like you're writing fanfic. I'm sure there are any number of "Arwen and Aragorn's Honeymoon" manuscripts languishing in the depths of your laptop's hard drive. And rightly so. Do not print that thing out. Ever.

Praise the things I can't forget - books about Bigfoot!

I lead a pretty prosaic life. The biggest, hairiest, most mysterious creature in my life (no cracks about library customers, please, esteemed co-workers!) is our big orange cat, Babe. Named for Babe the Blue Ox, not Babe Didrickson Zaharias or Babe the Gallant Pig. But as mystifying as Babe's behavior sometimes is, he is depressingly accessible. He's no cryptid, in other words.

And sometimes you just need a little mystery. Ergo, Bigfoot...

 

So Ashley Spires put out this absolutely cute picture book a couple months ago, Larf, that is all about being alone - and that's ok - and reaching out to someone - which is also ok - but being nervous about it - understandable, and also ok - but then meeting someone nice anyway. Which is way ok.

Love Larf. Love Ashley Spires! Ashley Spires, in case you didn't realize, which I didn't, is the person responsible for that farting dreamer of a housecat, Binky (Binky the Space Cat). Every one of those books is a charmer, as is Larf. Larf is, contrary to what I think are most people's expectations about Sasquatches, rather a neat person. He folds his laundry and washes his dishes after he uses them. He wears a neat red scarf. He lives alone but he's not lonely. Not super lonely anyway.

Video reviews PART DEUX: Invisible Sun, Fake Mustache, The Drowned Vault, and The Familiars

The mountain range of books on our coffee table is a constantly shifting pile of bait for my boys. I bring books home from the library every day that I work - sometimes they place requests, but more often I just snag books that I think they'll like or that I am interested in looking at for this blog. The "leave it out casually and they will pick it up" strategy has been praised by many parents, and even endorsed by Judy Blume, and I can vouch for it as well.

Not so say there haven't been some hiccups, as when I found ten-year-old Milo reading Railsea by China Miéville, which I had pretty much brought home for myself. He is also a big David Macinnis Gill fan now, thanks to this practice.

 

Video reviews! Milo and Ezra review my pile of ARCs - PART ONE

Don't call me lazy. No, man, really you can't. I have been reading nonstop - just, I have other obligations, and the books I am reading are not for Pink Me. (Except for Necromancing the Stone by Lish McBride, oh and The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi, and Sons of the 613 by Mike Rubens - I've read those recently, I just don't have time to review them! Aagh! They're all great? Can I just say that for now? I promise there will be reviews later.)

Also, they all have great covers:

So, in the interest of actually performing some sort of informational service, which is all I've ever tried to do (insert pious expression and posture here), I brought out the Flip camera and asked my boys about the books on my coffee table. My boys are, after all, the target audience. And they read, oh Jesus they read like crazy!

Here's the big pile of books and an introduction to my reviewers:

 

One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, pictures by David Small - review

 

Oh David Small! For decades you and your wife gave us stories that we loved, populated by characters that, for all their exaggerated features, were wonderful, recognizable real people. Your landscapes and buildings always looked effortless but terrific. Then you wrote Stitches: A Memoir, and we all cried our eyes out. Amazing graphic novel memoir. And I don't know about other people in my industry, but I figured, given the acclaim Stitches garnered, David Small would then by and large quit illustrating picture books.

So pleased to be wrong!

In and out of days: Great new picture books that just happened to cross my path the week Maurice Sendak died

 

Author-illustrator Gary Taxali's tribute to Maurice Sendak was featured in Sunday's New York Times

 

I would have liked to have met Maurice Sendak. As impatient and uncompromising as he seems to have been, he took this stuff seriously in a way that I feel like I recognize - and he knew it was all folly at the same time.

I will wager that almost every person involved with picture books has learned something from Maurice. I know I have. In the Night Kitchen taught me to look at all the stuff inside the pictures; Where the Wild Things Are, with its expanding and contracting picture area, taught me to look at the page as a whole; and his illustrations for the Little Bear books showed me that animal characters need not be cartoonish or unrealistic to be endearing. 

It is a fitting coincidence, therefore - a random tribute - that this past week was a particularly good one for illustration in picture books. Here are the ones I brought home to share and savor with my sons, not a line of 'ordinariness' in any of them:

Dead mice, shy cats, problematic whales and Goldie Hawn: Pink Me talks to Mac Barnett and Adam Rex!

 

In the new picture book Chloe and the Lion, a little girl blows a jarfull of change on the merry-go-round, gets dizzy, loses her way in the woods, and meets a hungry lion. Then she ends up standing on a street corner wearing a tube top in order to lure more unsuspecting children into the lion's clutches.

Wait. No. That's not what happens at all! That's me, the reviewer, hijacking the story. Which I am completely not supposed to do. Bad reviewer! Fired!

Hey and you know who else is not supposed to hijack the story of a picture book? The illustrator. Yup. The illustrator is not supposed to draw a purple dragon instead of a hungry lion (even if a dragon is way cooler), because if he does, the author is going to step in with a WAITAMINIT, VARLET - YOU DRAWS WHAT I TELLS YA TO DRAW, and then maybe the illustrator will retaliate by drawing the author in a variety of interesting and humiliating outfits, and then the illustrator will find himself FIRED. And eaten.

Like it? Me too!

Nonfiction Monday - Ancient Egypt: Tales of Gods and Pharaohs by Marcia Williams - review

Do you love Marcia Williams? I love Marcia Williams. Marcia Williams is a British illustrator and author. She writes large-format, intensively-illustrated adaptations of classical literature for kids.

Let me tell you how great this is: lots of little kids get into tales of adventure, and then their parents think to themselves, "Oh, I'll bet he would love Robin Hood!" Or King Arthur, or the story of Troy, etc. And then they ask the librarian - "I want him to read King Arthur." Whereupon the librarian is like, "Errr... you know that adultery and patricide play a big part in that story, right? Is he ready for The Sword in the Stone?"

Nursery Rhyme Comics: 50 Timeless rhymes from 50 celebrated cartoonists - review

FIFTY ARTISTS FIFTY! It's like a Ziegfeld chorus line up in this fine large-format comic anthology, except hairier. And less able to walk and sing at the same time. Probably really bad at doing anything in unison.

 

From "Hush Little Baby" by Mo Oh. I love her line and her delicate colors.

Fifty of your favorite comics artists have taken on 50 old-fashioned nursery rhymes, resulting in an anthology that is funny, strange, sweet, and surprising. Some of the artists, like Nick Bruel (Bad Kitty) and Marc Rosenthal (Phooey!), are familiar names in children’s publishing; others, like the talented Mo Oh (Lily Renee, Escape Artist, which is not a good example of her sweet and funny style) and Jen Wang (Koko Be Good), are relative newcomers.

Zero the Hero by Joan Holub and Tom Lichtenheld - review

It's a Friday afternoon and my son, 8-year-old Zhou, is helping me review Zero the Hero. Joan Holub wrote this book, and Tom Lichtenheld did the drawings. Lichtenheld has been a Pink Me favorite ever since Shark vs. Train for his clear, happy colors, lovely layering, and strong, funky line. And Joan Holub's Goddess Girls books are getting a lot of play with my middle grade girl readers. She sent a stack of goddess bookmarks along with the ARC of this picture book, and they were snapped up in a jiffy.

Your Neighborhood Librarian: So, youngster. What do you like about this book?

Precious Little by Julie Hunt and Sue Moss, illustrations by Gaye Chapman - review

 

You know the kid. She puts star stickers on the apples of her cheeks. He insists on wearing a cape everywhere. She may grow up to be the kind of lady who spraypaints one boot yellow and the other silver. He may grow up to be the guy who owns fifty hats and knows how to ride a unicycle.

I know a disproportionate number of people like that, I think. How has that happened?

 

Anyway, Gaye Chapman, the illustrator of this dreamy silken kaleidoscope of a picture book, is probably one of those people. Lord knows she draws for them. But before I start piling up a bunch of adjectives about the art, let me summarize the story:

 

Cold Cereal by Adam Rex - review

 

Sometimes it is hard for me to respond to a book as a reviewer. Some books hook me just the same way a book would have hooked me when I was ten years old, and I am in, along for the ride, imagining myself sleeping in Anne Boleyn's bed at the Met, or confronting an evil horseman in a snowy lane in Wales.

I think that's why I do this.

And do you know how kids recommend books to each other? Have you heard them try? It's no use trying to teach them to sketch the main character and then set up the situation - they're going to either tell the entire plot in minute detail or they're going to reproduce a run of dialogue, bafflingly out of context and unintelligible due to their uncontrollable excitement.

Possibly they're going to try to relate the mood of the book to an experience they've had - my friend Rabbit, who is thirteen, does this all the time, and I love it. I can never follow his parallels: "You know how like you could be in the desert, but it's cold, except it doesn't look like it could be cold? This book is exactly like that," but I could listen to him all day.

Reading on the radio: Newbery thoughts

Oy, the book awards. Not the Nerdies, which are voted on by you the public; nor the Cybils, which have open nominations and then two panels of book bloggers as judges; and not the Maryland Black Eyed Susan Awards (nominated by school librarians, voted on by students), the Eisners, the National Book Award or the Roald Dahl Funny Prize, which I sure wish we had in the U.S.

No, I'm talking about the ALA's annual awards: the Caldecott, the Printz, and especially the Newbery.

The Cheshire Cheese Cat by Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright, illustrated by Barry Moser - guest review by Zhou, bonus rant by me

 

It's been a very Dickensy week here at Ye Olde Crumbling House of Bookes. Not Dickensian, thank goodness - we've all been getting three square meals and wearing actual shoes most of the time. Admittedly, you might catch my children looking doe-eyed and pathetic when asking for a fourth bowl of cereal (four bowls the other morning! I might as well serve it in a trough!). And if you've been following the other blog to which I contribute, you might detect a scent of Scrooge in our posts about drinking one's way through the holidays.

But, you know, I don't hate Dickens. No, nope, I don't. I hate fake Cockney accents, Barbie(™) in A Christmas Carol, I hate animatronic carolers and a hell of a lot of things that are inspired by Dickens, but I will give the man his due. Although a run like this past week is pushing it:  

 

Reading on the radio - Gift books 2011

 

There is a secret joy that librarians are allowed at holiday time. Although we are ardent in encouraging people to borrow, not buy, most of us... well, we're kind of into books. We can't help wanting to own them. And though librarians vary in the extent to which they successfully keep themselves out of bookstores - some don't even try - all bets are off when it comes to buying gifts for our family and friends.

I stopped in at WYPR's Maryland Morning to talk to host Tom Hall about this subject. I brought a great huge stack of books and asked Tom to pick out the ones he wanted to know more about. If you miss the broadcast, you can listen to our conversation on the Maryland Morning website by the end of the day. The station has also posted a list of the books I brought to the station, or click "Read more" to see an expanded version (book trailers! whee!).

 

Electronic Thursday - Monkey Boy to Lunch Lady by Jarrett J Krosoczka - review

 

If success could be attained via charm and personality alone, Jarrett Krosoczka would have had this fame and fortune thing sewn up a long time ago. I'm admitting this right here - I love the guy. His books are a joy, and he's a born showman in person: at panel discussions, he sings, he draws, he engages the crowd and sometimes wears costumes. In the strange, airless space that is the online author visit or virtual storytime, he is responsive and enthusiastic and introduces his dog.

 

That's Jarrett in his red pleather suit at the Guys Read: Thriller panel at BEA last year, seated between Jack Gantos and Jon Scieszka (who is not wearing a wig) (for once).

But as important as enthusiasm and hard work are, they do not automatically translate to stardom in the demanding, puppy-eat-puppy world of children's lit. Jarrett's newest publication, From Monkey Boy to Lunch Lady: The Sketchbooks of Jarrett J. Krosoczka, tracks the ups and downs of his career as an author/illustrator and the sometimes crooked path along which an idea travels on its way to becoming a book.

Catching up on middle grade chapter books

It's Election Day here in Maryland - the midterm general election, not the primary, so there's not much hoopla. Oh, Maryland. Stay sweet. Anyway, the children are off school, and it's Tuesday, my day off, and it's a beautiful fall day, so I thought I'd catch up on what my boys have been reading. 

They've both reached the point that they are reading for fun independently. And kind of a lot. It's great, but I have to say, a little scary. I bring stuff home from the library I think they'll like, and they read that stack in a weekend, and then start eyeing the review copies I get in the mail.

This is going to sound like a back-door brag, but I am legitimately worried that they're a little too erudite for their own good. Zhou, who is in grade 3, complained at a class book discussion a couple weeks ago that he thought the metaphor in the title of Jerry Spinelli's memoir Knots in My Yo-Yo String was insufficiently reiterated in the text. In almost those words. Right? That's an oy vey moment, for sure.