unadulterated.us

Read with a kid, learn something

Hello dear neglected unadulterated! I love my little old blog, I really do, but man, life goes by so fast these days! I am not as good at posting here as I used to be - nowadays I am more likely to post reviewlets to Goodreads or Instagram. This summer I've been keeping up with #bookaday - and lots of others have too, it's a good hashtag to browse.

What else is happening this summer? I've been pounding the kids' graphic novels (Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award Graphic Novels Subcommittee REPRESENT!) and ferreting out new middle grade novels that would make good read-alouds. I'm noticing more really stellar entries into the early chapter book market - Princess in Black and Yeti Files were just the start of a very nice trend, it seems. And my library system recently had our annual Make a Difference to Children Week.

Which always makes me laugh. Make a Difference to Children Week - as opposed to the other 51 weeks of the year, when we kind of just ignore them, right?

Ha ha NO. Of course not. But during MaDtC Week, we have additional opportunities to have enhanced interaction with kids. Not to bog you down with program details, but parents and kids are given incentives to spend quality time with library staff. These interactions are pure gold. Everybody learns something - the kid, the library staff member, and, if you do it right, the parent. Here are some highlights just from my week - and it's a big system, just think what was going on all over:

BEA 2016 - in living slideshow color!

Finally - my BEA recap in words and pictures! What a mob, what a crowd, what a show!

 

SLJ Day of Dialog 2016 recap

Bit late to the party with my BEA recap this year, but I had a lot to think about. So just think of this post as the online equivalent of the relieved sigh that came from each seat on the shuttle bus as it was claimed by a footsore, shoulder-sore convention-goer at the end of the day. Ahhhhh....

 

School Library Journal's DAY OF DIALOG 

This annual one-day feast of author panels and publisher pitches was so full of talent and intelligence, and went off with so few hitches, and in such a nice, spacious space that organizer Luann Toth has taken to calling it "Day of Sheer Delight." She deserves to - it was delightful!

I sat right down in the center of the second row with my friend Paula - having a like-minded partner at these things is an unacknowledged must. You really need someone to trade significant glances with when a speaker says something amazing or a publisher pitches a book that sounds... um, not amazing. Or else you find yourself standing on the side leaning against a wall, making reaction faces that apparently EVERYONE can interpret. Not that that's happened to me.

 

Richard Peck spoke. National Treasure Richard Peck, I should say. Japan has these Living National Treasures and I really think the U.S. should follow suit. Who should it be? Richard Peck, Lois Ehlert, Rita Williams-Garcia, Chris Hemsworth. What? Why not Chris Hemsworth! Shut up.

Ok AMONG the interesting things Richard Peck said: "Most of who we are is determined in those first five years - when schools fail, families fail first." NB: Peck is a former teacher. He quoted Twain, as well he might: "Humor is anger that went to finishing school." He talked about his themes: "My books are always about a boy looking for a role model. The best role models are dead and the worst are a year ahead of you in school."

And he held up a poster for his book and said, "This is my idea of a PowerPoint." Living. National. Treasure.

 

 

During the nonfiction picture book panel, Candace Fleming and Eric Rohman, husband and wife creators of Giant Squid, described fitting his art and her words together to form kind of a piecemeal picture of a creature about which little is known. Leafing through the book, it's like how we meet the alien in Alien - we see streaming tentacles, a close-up of an eye, every image like a startling flash photo from a camera trap.

Camera trap photo by George Shiras 3rd, National Geographic Magazine

 

Great quotes from that panel:

Mara Rockliffe: "I believe in a usable past - I pick stories to tell not just because they happened but stories that can teach us something. I want boys and girls to know there have always been adventurous women."

Candy Fleming: "I'm a storyteller, not a fact-teller. I wanted a picture book that had some musicality, that would work being read aloud."

And I can't remember who said "Nonfiction picture books can never meet nonfiction standards, because we don't have sources for every moment. If Darwin walks down the street and leans against a lamppost - we are never going to have documentation of every step he takes and every lamppost he leans on."

Julia Kuo: "On the other hand, because of this, you can draw everything the author had to edit out."

Eric Rohman: "Picture books are a collaborative artwork - like opera."

 

Middle grade masters Gidwitz, Holm, Reynolds

The middle grade panel was intriguingly titled, "Truth be told: Big questions in middle grade fiction and what adults keep from children." It's kind of amusing that this panel was nominally about questions, because moderator Betsy Bird got the chance to ask exactly ONE: - her panel of Kelly Barnhill, Adam Gidwitz, Jenni Holm, Jason Reynolds, and Raina Telgemeier picked up that question and RAN RAN RAN. This was a 100% all-star panel - all of these guys write books that are not only popular but, ugh sorry I'm going to have to resort to fancy critic vocabulary - good. Like, DARN good.

 

 

Kelly Barnhill: "As far as your book is concerned, memory and imagination are the same."

Raina: "What you feel is always true regardless of whether it's historically accurate."

Kelly: "We've been telling stories since before we could talk. We invented language to tell stories more efficiently. Story seeks to blend the experience of the teller and the listener." Speaking of efficient - that last sentence is the best functional definition of a successful reading experience I've ever seen that was less than book-length.

Jason Reynolds: There will always be a commonality if the writer is authentic - pain, family, etc. You may not be pursued by knights like Adam's characters or live in Brooklyn like mine but a kid is a kid and if your kids react correctly then you can make a connection. (this is a big paraphrase - Jason is an incredible speaker with unerring word choice, and I wasn't writing fast enough to get it right)

Oh and may I just interrupt myself to say - yes of course I read Ghosts right off the bat and yes it is just as good as you hoped it was going to be. Raina stated during the panel discussion that she was a little worried about this foray into out-and-out fiction, but the story is marvelous, the characters are totally real, and the art - the art surpasses everything she has done to this point. With every book you can see Raina drawing a few more landscapes, adding a few more panels with scenic backgrounds and plants in the foreground, and this book, set on the Northern California coast, has some magnificent drawings of the cliffs and the bay, and the kind of semi-kooky bungalows and plant life you find in that part of the country. Plus, it is so much about endings and transitions and making your peace with change and... I have to admit I got kind of emotional there toward the end.

 

Me and Laini Taylor. I used to have that hair. Remember when I had that hair?

Laini Taylor was the after-lunch keynote speaker, and if Richard Peck is a hero author we all had grown up with, Laini is like our carpool/coffee shop/Twitter sisterwife. In discussing her new book Strange the Dreamer, she spoke about genres and how much she loves them and how she likes it when two of her favorites get together and have mutant babies.

She quoted herself from the New York Times Book Review (girl, there is no shame in that - if I ever get published in the New York Times Book Review, I am going to quote that shit every chance I get): something about how plot conventions and the uses of genre are so popular because they satisfy "cravings that have been satisfied by myth since the dawn of time - cravings like heroism, true love, villainy." She said, "This accounts for the passion of genre readers - their reading becomes part of their identity." And she made up a word that we all immediately took to heart: "readers find things in [genre fiction] - the satisfaction of the desire to be special. We have a myth-hole that wants to be filled."

"Myth-hole," she giggled. "That sounds so wrong." SO WRONG IT'S RIGHT, ya pink-haired Fluevog-wearing intergalactic fairy warrior mom! Laini Taylor is just the best.

How am I doing? Still on the first day, I see. Sigh. Every year I think I'm going to recap BEA in one post, but then I get going and...

 

 

Panel III was a bunch of YA fantasy authors - all women, as it turned out. They were asked if they'd ever felt any pressure or expectations in the way that female characters were portrayed, and the answers were very nuanced. I've asked this question - notably of male authors - and gotten kind of a harrumph answer: 'I don't let market demand push me around;' 'I must stay true to the character;' all that stuff. Which, sure, that's true. But it's also true what Roshani Chokshi said: "Female readers can be extraordinarily critical of female characters - because we identify and care about them so strongly." They all talked about how they're sick of the word "strong," saying, "We don't all have to be Katniss." 

I think I'm kind of in love with Roshani Chokshi - when asked about explicit romantic behavior in their books, she said, "I wanted to write more kissing scenes, but I was living at home with my parents. My dad would walk in the room where I was working and be like, 'What are you writing?' and I'd be like 'DAAAAD!'"

 

And then there was the last panel, which was so chock full of talent I literally was unable to take notes. Kate Beaton was on it, y'all. Kate Beaton has written a book about how babies do not GAF, and she described some of her observations of babies. "You'll be in this coffee shop and there's all this stuff going on, people are having conversations and what not, and the baby is just oblivious. The baby is just trying to get its foot in its mouth." She talked about her sister's baby's first Christmas, "My mom is like, 'do you think he has any idea about the birth of Our Lord?' and I'm like, 'Mom I think he's just discovered his toes.'"

There were other people on the panel. Lots of them. Like, Erin Stead. Jerry Pinkney - Living National Treasure Jerry Pinkney and you can look that up, he won two lifetime achievement awards this year alone. But I have to be honest. KATE BEATON.

 

Kate Beaton drew a tiny Vagrant-y cartoon in my autograph book!

 

After a final round of applause, it was into the signing room! TWENTY-FOUR artists and authors were seated behind tables signing free copies of their newest books to attendees. WHY is Day of Dialog worth the price of admission? IN ADDITION to getting to hear some of the top brains in the business talk about their work? It's because you get to meet the creators face to face and walk away with - literally - as many books as you can carry. Cue ecstatic sigh.

 

Lauren Castillo found a cute place to sign my book.

Lauren Castillo is herself pretty darn cute.

 

Erin Stead looked for a long time for the perfect spot.

 

Michelle Cuevas admires Scott Campbell's autograph in my old book.

 

Kelly Barnhill knew just what to say, cementing the impression I had gotten of her from the panel she was on.

KATE BEATON KATE BEATON OMG

I had every intention of turning this right over to my friend John, but then I started reading it. Mmm... you guys, this right here is quite a thing. You're going to want to read it. No idea about the slippers thing though.

 

Ramming speed!!! SummerTeen, KidLitCon and more

Last night, while strolling with my husband through one of the lovely, artful outdoor evening events that occur with some frequency in Baltimore, we were treated to a vocalist and a little combo absolutely butchering Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On."

"You take on Marvin Gaye," observed Bob, "you better be at the very top of your game."

Why am I talking about Marvin Gaye? Because a) this post is about what's goin' on and b) you will be at the very top of your game once you avail yourself of all the exciting opportunities for professional and personal growth that I am about to list for you!!!

SummerTeen!
Baltimore Book Festival!
KidLitCon!
Books for the Beast!

Also because I get a little breathless when I reach for those high notes.

 

BEA recap? Don't mind if I do!

I am home, at my kitchen table in the dimness of my house, birds and windchimes and helicopters (and the 12 o'clock boys) are all I hear, and my ears are still ringing from the din of a thousand conversations in the cavernous hollow ice cube that is the Javits Center in New York.

That's just me being metaphorical. My ears always ring like this.

But sure, let's do it. Let me put my thoughts in order, or at least jot them randomly into a blog post and see if I learned anything at BEA this year.

BEA, or Book Expo, is an annual book industry trade convention. Publishers and others stake out booths where they showcase their upcoming titles, sometimes by trotting out the authors to meet and greet and sign and press the flesh.

 

 

Poor authors. You just know some of them got into this game thinking that once they became successful they could just "eat cheese in a cave" as Rainbow Rowell said during her EXTREMELY funny speech at the Children's Book Author Breakfast. She is possibly not as shy as she makes herself out to be: "I made Nathan Lane laugh!" she marveled at one point during her talk. "The rest of you don't count."

(Nathan Lane was there as the moderator of that breakfast. He qualifies as moderator because he has a forthcoming Celebrity Picture Book about his French bulldog, Mabel.) (There is only one reason for celebrities to write children's books, and that is so that we can have a famously entertaining moderator at the Children's Book Author Breakfast. In past years I've seen Julie Andrews, Chris Colfer, Neal Patrick Harris, and Octavia Spencer.) (Colfer wins it, by the way.) (Even without singing.) (I know you were curious.)

unadulterated.us

So, uh, hi. I changed the name of my blog.

I mean, come on, "Pink Me" was always kind of dumb. The day I decided to spin all the children's book review posts off my (ahem) other blog, I had to quickly come up with a name that was short and memorable (having learned a valuable lesson from that other blog, whose name is 25 letters long and includes at least one difficult-to-spell word). I named Pink Me after my hair color at the time. I guess it could have been worse.

 

Giant 13-year-old boy voluntarily reading a picture book is on board with the name change. Or at least agrees, "Yeah, Pink Me was kind of stupid."

WHAT IS UNADULTERATED?

But six years and 770 blog posts later, it's time for a more meaningful name (or rather, a name with any meaning at all), and Unadulterated is it. I like it. It means pure and undiluted, and Pink Me has always been reviews and very little else. It's also a dumb pun. As in... I review un-adult books?

What is more, I've been working in the public library for more than a decade now, and reading and reviewing kids' and teen fiction for almost as long. I have formed opinions. UNADULTERATED is they. They appear on this blog UNADULTERATED. Waffle-free. Un-mealy-mouthed. With occasional swearing.

UNADULTERATED.US is not affiliated with my employer (which I never identify) and I don't soft-pedal my observations out of respect for my corporate pals (any pals I have in publishing must love me despite my big mouth).

Choosing a new name for Pink Me has caused me to think about not only what I write and how I write it, but how I work, and my attitudes about kids and reading. And you know what? I'm pretty damn comfortable with UNADULTERATED.

Unadulterated is the steely glint I get in my eye when I start a new teen sci-fi novel and all the girls in it are healers and babysitters. Unadulterated is the ribbon of resolve that threads through my spine when I meet a parent who insists that his child only select books that are "challenging" or "not junk." My belief in the ability of untrammelled pleasure reading to improve skills and enrich lives is - say it with me - UNADULTERATED.

 

 

2008 flashback: some of the kids I often shared books with back then.

WHY IS IT .US?

Well, I was going for .com, of course. Or .net, like parenthetical.net. (Parenthetical was completely my inspiration for allowing myself to consider adjectives by the way - thanks Sam!)

But some Indiana basement-dweller bought unadulterated dot com in like 2002 and has been sitting on it ever since. Won't accept a penny below $4500 - I assume he's holding out for a porn site. Lord knows kidlitters don't have that kind of money. I spent $21.00 to find all that out and it nearly killed me. Not the basement-dweller part. Please. I'm a librarian. You give me a corporate name and I will find a home address, look it up in the tax database for that state, AND look at the place on Google Street View. 

I'd just like to go on record as saying I would NEVER do that to YOU. 

ANYWAY. Making lemonade! I decided that the .US announces the inclusivity of this site! It is US who are unabashed and unfiltered! We ALL have opinions that we fiercely hold and animatedly debate! And here we do it.

 

 

Same kids in 2014: she's the youngest performer in the Baltimore Rock Opera Society And she can kayak circles around you. She's the towhead looking at the camera in 2008. 

 

DOES PINK ME STILL WORK?

Yes. No links or feeds need to be updated. But all of the Pink Me content will also appear at unadulterated.us. It's easier to type.

 

A picture book roundup from Feb 2008. I see Peter Brown's Chowder, Iggy Peck, Jacqueline Jules, and Englebert Sneem!

IT'S NOT AN END BUT A BEGINNING

I'm going to end this post with a paragraph that has lived on the About Pink Me page for many years. It's a paraphrase of the best speech made by Crash Davis, the last likeable character Kevin Costner ever played, in the only baseball movie I have willingly watched more than once. 

I believe in the word, the picture, the rhyme, the cover of a children's book, the illustrated endpaper, nonfiction, illustrated poetry, I believe that the novels of Susan Cooper are sheer, unadulterated genius. I believe more middle grade chapter books should feature nonwhite main characters. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing celebrity-penned picture books and the unreliable narrator (I'm lying about that). I believe in the audio book, teen romance fiction that is not necessarily about vampires, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in reading for pleasure to, with, and around children.

 

Book Expo 2014 Recap - DAY FOUR: Day of pretending I'm not at BEA anymore

NO THANK YOU. Although I think that's my friend Lori off to the left there.

 

DAY FOUR 

I did two full Javits Center days at Book Expo this year, and swore I wasn't coming back on Saturday, when the show opens to the general public and the signing lines GET REAL.

But I did. I skated in quietly on Saturday to see who won the Boston Globe / Horn Book Awards. These awards are less well-known than the big ALA awards, but to some they are more prestigious. The committees that award them are small and thoughtful and savvy.

 

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith won the top Fiction award, and anybody who has read it will 1) agree with that choice and 2) try to remember the last time such a funny and deeply weird book won so high an award. I stayed up til after 2am reading it on my iPad in a dimly lit hotel lobby in Philadelphia. It's that good.

I will venture to say that the Boston Globe Horn Book Award might not be the only big award this year for this book. Ha - "Not since James Joyce's Ulysses has a book so preoccupied with spooge won so much critical acclaim." That'll be the tagline for the movie rights auction. That's yours for free, Smith.

 

 

Boxers & Saints by Gene Yang won an Honor for Fiction. Also a bold choice, as this is a twinset of graphic novels. Although it is a twinset of graphic novels that has won just about every award it is eligible for - you teach those Boxers to dance and I swear it would win a Tony too. I have placed multiple copies of Boxers & Saints in an 8th grade classroom of by and large reluctant readers, and these books - about the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1899! have been read to ribbons by those kids.

 

 

In a year of superlative picture books, Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown won top honors. I was on the Cybils Fiction Picture Book committee this year and we looooved Mr. Tiger. One of my fellow committee members wrote the most beautiful, informed breakdown of its brilliance I have ever seen. At the Awards announcements, I totally annoyed Peter by making him draw a Mr. Tiger in my autograph book next to his signature. I am sorry, man. But I have my reasons.

 

Shaun Tan's Rules of Summer won an honor in this category. I just the other day reviewed the app of that book, for School Library Journal's Touch and Go blog. I said, "The title itself implies sunlit, child-governed anarchy, exploration, arbitrary tests of fearlessness—a world in the process of being interpreted anew through a child’s eyes. And in this app, what they see is mind-blowing." The book is LUSCIOUSLY printed - if you can get your hands on it, do.

 

Later that day, in another part of the forest:

 

 

That's Jen Downey, author of the tantalizingly titled The Ninja Librarians: The Accidental Keyhand, playing Book Title Charades at the NYPL Kids Author Carnival, a BEA-adjacent event at which the adults were - finally - purely peripheral. Tim Federle emceed the charades - I guess they thought he'd be a ringer if they let him act out titles.

 

Caroline Carlson (ooh second Mostly Honorable Pirates book is coming soon!), Chris Healy (when Milo heard that the third Hero's Guide book is available, he whipped his head around and gave me such a stinkeye! Ok! I'll bring it home for you!), and Matt Cody (Supers of Noble's Green and MAN I like those covers) were un-self-conscious and enthusiastic Charadesters. I have photos and/or video of all of them. FYI. 

There were almost 40 authors at the event, and they all leapt (in some cases literally) into the activities that were planned for the kids.

 

• 
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There was Pictionary too - this is Laurel Snyder drawing clues to The Secret Garden, which the kids got RIGHT OFF. Smart cookies, these kiddos. Her book Seven Stories Up is SO good.

 

 

Was that it? That was it. Now we're home. Milo is sitting in a tiny uncomfortable chair giggling over Lish McBride's new book Firebug. Ezra will not be parted from Guts & Glory: The American Civil War, a nonfiction book by Ben Thompson, creator of Badass of the Week, where I have just spent an entertaining half hour giggling over Queen Tamar of Georgia. Oh, Tamar. You murderous huzz.

 

 

There are a few books I wish I'd gotten my hands on. Evil Librarian, for obvious reasons. Lies We Tell Ourselves, about race and love during the time of school integration. Jim Averbeck's middle grade mystery adventure A Hitch at the Fairmont, which I have already read and very much enjoyed, Perfectly Good White Boy by Carrie Mesrobian, and Greg Neri's Knockout Games. I think I can get them all on Edelweiss or Netgalley, but it is dang difficult to booktalk a new book while holding up an ereader.

 

 

My short list is so long I can't even think about it. So I am going to start with the new collection of stories edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales. Just as soon as I hit Publish on this post!

Thanks for playing along with my recaps of SLJ's Day of Dialog (DAY ONE), and BEA DAY TWO, and DAY THREE. It was exhausting but fun!

Book Expo 2014 Recap - DAY THREE: Day of Random Connections Made in Line

DAY THREE 

Apparently, for picture books, brown is the new blue.

 

My Day Three was actually Day Two of Book Expo. People had settled in, figured out where the hell they'd stashed the Disney/Hyperion booth, and patiently assembled into signing lines.

But first! The Children's Book Author Breakfast. With your host, Jason Segal. Unlike BJ Novak, I know who this guy is. He does stuff on Funny or Die sometimes. He was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was not about my friend Sarah Marshall, who is a printmaking professor at 'Bama. AND! I have read the sample chapters of his book, Nightmares!. 

 

 

Eh. Not bad. It's co-written with Kirsten Miller (Kiki Strike), whom I think is marvelous. It's not going to win any awards, but it is a solid midlist middle grade safe-scary mystery. Goes along with Tales from Lovecraft Middle School and maybe Misadventures of Edgar and Allan. Get those on audio, BTW - Arte Johnson reads 'em.

Next there was... you know, before I move on, I would just like to observe that it takes a special kind of fame to decide to title your book merely "Nightmares" and reliably expect that it's going to come up anywhere near the top in an Amazon search. Which it just did when I searched it. So I guess... that's all right for Jason Segel then.

 

At the breakfast we also heard from that Solid Gold dancer of the Florida swamps, the hilarious Carl "It's the 'a' that's double, not the 's'" Hiaasen, whose new book Skink--No Surrender introduces a favorite foulmouthed oddball from his adult books to a younger audience. In his talk he called the readership of the Miami Herald "mutants." I love that guy.

Lovely Mem Fox came all the way from Australia to give us a little weep - when she described listening to her daughter sing a lullaby to her grandson that her own mother had sung to her, her voice caught, and not because the syntax of that sentence is so difficult. Unfortunately, her new book, Baby Bedtime,while a lovely rhyme, has rather uninspiring illustrations. 

And then Jeff Kinney talked about reading Judy Blume, getting rejection letters, and opening an independent bookstore. What I took away from his talk is that 1) people still use Prezi and 2) I like Prezi so much more than PowerPoint.

 

My friend Paula and I stood in line to get books signed by Marla Frazee, Bob Shea and Lane Smith, Sophie Blackall, and Tony DiTerlizzi. I missed at least as many as I got - Lorna Landvik, A. S. King, Patrick McDonnell, Libba Bray, Scott Campbell. Scott's new book Hug Machine looks - say it with me - adorable. It's got kind of a Children Make Terrible Pets vibe.

 

They were out of copies of Adam Rex's new book Smek for President! by the time I got to the Disney booth. It's a sequel to True Meaning of Smekday, and coincidentally, just today I came across a post I wrote while reading that book for the first time seven years ago.

My kids and husband showed up midafternoon on Friday. I dumped a couple tote bags of books in the minivan and then snuck my twelve-year-old into the show with me for about an hour. He got a book signed by his pal Jon Scieszka, who demanded a movie of Frank Einstein. "But I'm only about halfway through it!" protested the boy. Milo also picked up a Pathfinder Tales novel and The Farting Dead, and then we hightailed it back uptown.

 

Not a BEA author.

 

I've also written a recap of the SLJ Day of Dialog and Day One of BEA 2014 (which I misleadingly titled "BEA 2014 DAY TWO" - you're welcome). I've got one more day in the pipeline and Day Four? IT HAS CHARADES.

 

Book Expo 2014 Recap - DAY TWO: Day of Shoptalk

DAY TWO 

You have to maximize your time when you're in New York. Even when you live there, you're grouping errands geographically in your head, trying to do at least two things at once, strategizing time and transit and factoring in how much crap you are hauling with you at any given time.

 

E.g., it is darn convenient that NYPL's Jefferson Market branch is so close to C.O. Bigelow.

Which is how I found myself in the sale racks at Brooklyn Industries during the ten-minute gap before the shuttle came to ferry a group of us back to the Javits Center from a semi-informative tour of the Recorded Books studios. I had been wearing an ungodly unflattering sweater, so when they told us we had a few minutes, I ran across the street for an iced coffee and a discount blazer.

And a t-shirt for my son. What?! It was 30% off the sale price when you bought two items!

 

 

Backing up. I got to go to the Adult Book Breakfast on Thursday, emceed by the now terrifyingly thin Neil Patrick Harris, who has frailed himself down for Hedwig and the Angry Inch. OH I would like to see that show. Here he talks about his love for pop-up books and Choose Your Own Adventure. Which should probably remind us not to give up on kids like that - they may have other gifts. 

 

Me, Paula and Sam in line to get books signed

The convention floor itself was a bit of a blur. Long lines for the likes of Maggie Stiefvater, Kate DiCamillo, and Rick Riordan. You couldn't get anywhere near Daniel Handler, not that you'd necessarily want to. I tried to do a little trendspotting but nothing really stuck out. Except the rise of the middle grade novel - oh yeah middle grade is charging onto the field like a bunch of 4th grade soccer players hopped up on sugar and adrenaline.

To wit:

 

 

Also blue covers are a trend. Apparently blue is the new blue.

About these books - both of my boys have already ripped through Frank Einstein, and though they acknowledge that it is aimed at younger readers (say, 3rd-4th graders), they very much enjoyed it. Brenda Woods (The Blossoming of Violet Diamond) was on the Day of Dialog diversity panel, and she was very impressive. Pithy. Wise. Thoughtful. We trust industry stalwarts Jennifer Holm, Jarrett Krosoczka, Shannon Hale, and Cece Bell to deliver strong and peppy middle grade fare always, but there are also some wild cards that publishers are rolling the middle grade dice on this season too.

 

Also perfect for middle grade is Low Riders in Space (Book 1), which was my number-one get this year. I have been looking forward to it for months already - a graphic novel about three cuates (buddies) obsessed with ranflas (lowriders) who dream of opening their own garage. In a note, author Cathy Camper praises "the artistry, inventiveness, mechanical aptitude, resilience, and humor that are all part of low-rider culture." Well, she might as well have been writing about the book itself, because it's got all those things.

 

 

The high kid appeal Bic pen art by Raul the Third brings to mind MAD Magazine, Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and Jim Woodring. Rich, imaginative, funny, compositionally exciting. I can see I'm going to have to write a whole review of this. It's the rare item that will appeal to grownup art nerds like me and Cartoon Network-loving kids at the same time.

 

We took a break to attend the AAP Author Lunch. That's always kind of a neat event - they'll have 4 or 5 authors speak, and you really learn something about each. This year we learned that forensic anthropologist and best-selling novelist Kathy Reichs has the worst case of Resting Bitchface I've ever seen - so imagine what a nice surprise it was when she gave a smart, relaxed, sarcastic talk. She was the last to speak, and noted that several people had gotten up and walked out before she began. "Twenty-nine - I counted," she said. "And I'm having them all investigated."

 

Matt Richtel, Cary Elwes, and Garth Stein.

Speaking of which - AAP, you guys throw this lunch in just about that same room every year. Every time someone goes in or out the doors make this terrible squeaking moan, which is very distracting when, for example, Cary Elwes is recounting tender stories about Andre the Giant. When are you going to learn to pack a can of WD-40 in your Javits Event Emergency Kit?

 

Jon Scieszka and Jack Gantos, the Rowan and Martin of children's literature. I think I took the best picture at the whole damn convention.

 

Back at the lines, more middle grade. We found Jack signing The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza and Jon signing the new Guys Read anthology, Guys Read: True Stories. But that might have been Friday. As I said, it was all kind of a blur!

See DAY ONE here, and stay tuned for Days Three and Four of BEA 2014!

Book Expo 2014 Recap - DAY ONE: Day of Listening

SO much happened at Book Expo (BEA) last week and this weekend. I'm breaking it up into four posts. Four! (Don't worry, they're each pretty short. Except maybe for this one.)

 

DAY ONE

The School Library Journal Day of Dialog BEA preconference! I have said it before - possibly THE best single day of the year in children's literature. Smart, insightful authors - hell even the audience is better qualified than the presenters at most events... Oh my gosh we saw Cabaret this week and I must paraphrase the Emcee:

 

The authors - are beautiful! The presentations - are beautiful!
Even the audience! Is beautiful.

SLJ has a terrific set of recap posts and videos highlighting the Jackie Woodson keynote speech, the Garth Nix lunch speech, marvelous round table discussons on diversity and unreliable narrators. That unreliable narrator panel was particularly good - Emily Lockhart should teach I swear to god. So insightful and entertaining, with many wild arm movements guaranteed to keep students paying attention.

 

I did kind of an Inside the Author/Illustrators' Studio thing with Lois Ehlert, Chris Raschka, Peter Sis and Raina Telgemeier. I think I'm going to need to write blog posts about each of these people and the things that I thought while I read every book each of them has ever had a hand in creating. "Overprepare and then improvise" - that's my motto.

 

And I made them crowns, for reasons I can't actually explain. Really helped me think about the art though.

 

The AAP Children's Author Dinner happened after Day of Dialog, and it was a pure treat. Seven authors spoke to a roomful of librarians while we ate the chicken and drank the wine. Here are some highlights:

 

Adele Griffin talked about how reading Edie: American Girl, a biography of heiress and Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick at the tender age of ten changed her life. I'll bet it did! Changed my life too, and I didn't read it til maybe high school. Her new book The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone is about a young beautiful artist who dies tragically - totally inspired by Edie. I can't wait to read it, but I also couldn't resist giving it to my young beautiful artist niece, so I'll have to get another copy when it comes out.

 

We met Arin Andrews and Katie Hill, the young authors of a pair of memoirs about growing up transgendered, Some Assembly Required: The Not-So-Secret Life of a Transgender Teen and Rethinking Normal: A Memoir in Transition. Katie was a big reader when she was little - she said she loved reading about noble, courageous characters who did great deeds, and how she never felt she could be noble and courageous like them because she was different.

Pretty much summing up the whole thrust of the We Need Diverse Books campaign, don't you think? Anyway, both she and Arin have now written those books, and the whole room wiped away a couple of tears and got ready for the next speaker.

 

Who was BJ Novak, a name which meant nothing to me but whom I suspected, due to the symmetricality of his face, to be an actor. This doesn't always mean the book's gonna suck. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. So my niece Ali and I took it for a test run back at the hotel:

 

Post by Robert Pipik.

I can only imagine what the other guests thought was going on in our room. 

 

 

We also heard from Phil and Erin Stead. They talked about drawing birds and were generally adorable and then Erin spoke of what she misses most about working in a bookstore: saying "yes" to people. "Do you have a book for a reluctant reader?" she asked, and then flashed a slide of Nick Bruel's Bad Kitty as she said "Yes." "Do you have a book about a fish?" "Do you have a book about a truck?" "Do you have two?" It became a very fun game to try to anticipate what book she was going to show in answer to each question, and the librarians all began answering "Yes!" out loud.

It IS what is sexy about librarians. Ask us just about anything - we will say YES. Although no, you cannot borrow the reference desk scissors to trim your bloody hangnail. Sorry.

 

STAY TUNED. Days two, three, and four are coming soon.