Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Hey, everyone. Jules here. I just created a new page at the blog, one that lists the blogger interviews we have conducted thus far. It’s here. Why did I do this? Because, as I was thinking back on 2007, I remembered that our New Idea in ’07 was to do that blogger interview series, and so now we have a page that links to all the thrilling Q & As! And don’t think we won’t continue to add to it, ’cause boy howdy and howdy boy, there are lots of bloggers we still want to chat with and ask about their favorite sound and all that. True, we don’t read every blog in the kidlitosphere, but when we’re done chatting with the many folks left we want to cyber-visit, there’s always featuring new bloggers, too (as well as featuring those blogs that have been around a while and which we wish we had more time to read), which would also be fun. Read the rest of this entry �

Jules here (poor Eisha’s got some computer woes again; her computer pretty much just went kaput on her. But she’s also knee-deep in shortlisting with her fellow Cybils YA panelists, I believe, so that’s at least fun).

I’ve been reading the poetry of Deborah Keenan this week. Last year (it still feels odd to say that), Milkweed Editions released an anthology of some of her previous poetry as well as some new ones in Willow Room, Green Door. Keenan, a professor in the Graduate School of Liberal Studies at Hamline University, is new to me, but I’m happy to have discovered this anthology — at turns challenging, stirring, sometimes heart-rending. And she has this ability to capture moments of motherhood (when she writes about it, since — to be sure — she writes about many other subjects as well) in the precise and compelling manner of Deborah Garrison (whom I hope to cover on an upcoming Poetry Friday, and whom I have a wrung sponge to thank for introducing me to her poetry).

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As many of you know, the shortlisted titles for several categories in the Cybils ’07 were announced on January 1st. That included the category I organized and for which I served as a nominating panelist, Fiction Picture Books. I already posted a bit about how much fun it was to choose the seven shortlisted titles with my fellow panelists. I thought I’d go ahead and share my previous reviews of the shortlisted titles and share some of the titles I adored so mightily, yet which didn’t make the list. And then I promise to get back to regular ‘ol reviews here in the new year.

I am really happy with the shortlisted titles in our category. Here they are. I look back at my ’07 reviews now and see that I managed to review all of them except one this year:

* * * The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington and illustrated by Shelley Jackson — Here’s my review from May of this year. Love that chicken-chasing queen. LOVE her.

* * * Four Feet, Two Sandals — written by Karen Lynn Williams (who has her Master’s degree in Deaf Education — the sign language interpreter in me points that out and says “yes!”) and Khadra Mohammed and illustrated by Doug Chayka. Published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers in August 2007. This is the one title of all the shortlisted ones that I didn’t manage to review this year. This is a pensive, poignant glimpse into the world of two Afghani girls in a refugee camp, a world we don’t often see (for more than two femtoseconds in a brief news clip) in contemporary American culture. We’re talkin’ the crowded, harsh landscape of refugee life in which used clothing from relief workers is a novelty and a thrill — yet also, in this story, comes to represent more than just sartorial bliss.

* * * Go to Bed, Monster! by Natasha Wing and illustrated by Sylvie Kantorovitz — Here’s my review from November of this year. Move over, Harold. Make way for Lucy and Monster.

* * * The Incredible Book-Eating Boy — Here’s my review from June of this year. How do I love Oliver Jeffers? Let me count the ways.

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