Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

I really intended for this round-up to include several more titles, but I’m doing what I can here with a new project for work that’s taking a considerable chunk of time and a storytelling gig on Tuesday. I’m off to practice my story one more time, but for now, here are three new titles, released this Spring, that are sure to entertain in one fashion or another. Perhaps tomorrow I can add some more titles to the mix. Enjoy!

This dog’s tale from Emily Jenkins and Pierre Pratt has Publishers Weekly saying that the picture book duo prove one more time that “author and illustrator are brilliantly simpatico.” Well, who would argue that? This is the story of Dumpling, “a dog of enormous enthusiasm, excellent obedience skills—and very little nose.” Yup, Dumpling’s smart and skilled at dog tricks and oh-so loving (she goes into “paroxysms of joy” when her people come home), but she can’t smell a thing and—as a result—has no friends (seeing as how dogs like to sniff around one another to get intimate). When the family moves to the country, Dumpling finds herself with an expansive new back yard and a doghouse. After encountering a skunk who sprays her multiple times, Dumping heads back inside, much to her family’s dismay (amusingly enough, they try a handful of tricks to get the skunk smell off the dog, most of them the determined mother has read “somewhere”). When Dumpling heads back out, she gets sprayed again, though she shares a meal with the skunk: “She couldn’t smell anything, so she didn’t care.” And so it goes—family tries another technique to get rid of the skunk funk and Dumpling heads back outside. Dumpling is bummed to discover his new friend has disappeared — or so he thinks. Turns out the skunk is waiting for him in his doghouse. A friendship is born: “And though she sometimes got sprayed, when the skunk was startled or in a cranky mood, Dumpling never minded a bit. She couldn’t smell anything, so she didn’t care.”

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Late-Sunday Addendum: Why don’t we leave our kicks post up on Monday? It was a holiday weekend, and some folks might not have been able to come kickin’ with us. So, if you didn’t, feel free to do so on Monday. Come on, you know your kicks-lists brighten our days.

Plus, we want to show Maris’ art work to more people.

Jules: Well, happy holiday weekend to one and all on this Sunday with the kickin’ numerology goin’ on (“7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #70”). It’s the first of the month again when we here at 7-Imp highlight the work of student illustrators or those new to illustration. This week we welcome Maris Wicks, whose above illustration is a re-imagining of Wonder Woman. “I submitted this to an on-line contest (Project: Rooftop) that challenged artists to redesign Wonder Woman’s costume,” she told us. Maris, who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, has found herself drawn (excuse the unintentionally lame pun) to the world of comics, as she explains below.

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Author Lynn Hazen asked us a good while ago to create a really bad poem for the Bad Poetry Friday contest she has going on over at her Imaginary Blog. We thought this sounded like a mighty fun thing to do, though M.T. Anderson is a tough act to follow with his touching poem about Peg. One-legged chickens. Pre-scrambled eggs and all that.

So, Eisha and I decided to write a sucktacular poem in two voices. Lynn is going to post it today, or so she said last night over at her fun blog. This means our Poetry Friday entry today is yet-to-come. Since I just KNOW you’re sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for our obscenely bad poem, I’ll update this post later.

In the meantime, Happy Poetry Friday, happy firecrackers and grilling out and such, and visit In Search of Giants for the poetry round-up today.

Addendum: Here it is. Happy (Bad) Poetry Friday to all . . .

I was going to talk and talk about some killer new picture books today, but I simply didn’t have time yesterday to formulate a halfway-coherent post.

Instead, I’ll direct you over to The Morning News (which is always wonderful) where recently, as in two days ago, severely talented writer and illustrator Elisha Cooper—and, most recently, author of ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool: A Year in an American High School, which I’m currently reading—published an essay on the dream vacation for him and his family. And it’s not what you might think. The Bahamas? The shore? Nah, they flew all over the world without leaving their neighborhood, something to which I can relate this summer. If you’d like to read the essay, a short read, it’s here.

Enjoy.

Good morning, all. Here’s what 7-Imp has to offer today: Three short (for us) co-reviews of some new titles. One is for middle-grade readers; the second for YA readers; and the last one is an actual adult fiction title, making our count for adult fiction reviews a whoppin’ 24 now! Yes, we initially set out to talk about books for all ages at 7-Imp, but we’ve been slacking on our adult titles. Edward Hardy’s Keeper and Kid, our last review here, is one attempt to remedy that.

This wonderful book was released in May, and Eisha and I have been sitting on ARCs for a while. Before we got to our review, it up and won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor in the category of Fiction and Poetry. Savvy, unlike any other book you’ll read this year, tells the story of Mississippi, or “Mibs,” Beaumont. She’s about to turn thirteen, and in her family that’s when the savvy strikes. A savvy, in their world, is “just a know-how of a different sort.” Not knowing what her savvy powers will be—but knowing full well she’s likely in for a huge surprise, since her brother can cause hurricanes, her other brother creates electricity, and her mother is truly perfect—Mibs is just a tad bit anxious about the birthday event. It’s even difficult for her to make friends: “It wasn’t safe to invite anyone over with Fish and Rocket still learning to scumble their savvies; we couldn’t risk someone finding out, or getting hurt by sparks or storms if my brothers lost control.” Yes, that said scumble, which means to learn to use your savvy or work around it; with words like that, you can see that this one’s definitely a read-aloud CHAMP.

To make matters worse, Mibs’s father is in a terrible accident the day before her party, and she now longs to discover she possesses a savvy which will save her father’s life. When she finds out it’s an entirely different and unexpected one, she has to adjust, though in the process she comes to understand a bit about hearing one strong voice in her head—her own—and tuning out others’. And when she stows away on a delivery bus which carries pink Bibles, only to eventually be joined by the preacher’s son and his sister with Quite The Attitude—a bus that heads in the altogether wrong direction—she’s gotta find a way to get to her Poppa.

eisha: This was a fun read. It has that kind of folksy tall-tale language we both dig, with fabulously far-fetched metaphors like… oh, I’ll just open to a page at random… like this: “Momma exhaled a long, slow breath, like she was singing the last note of a lullaby, and my heart almost broke with the total sadness of it.” There’s also frequent use of delicious-on-the-tongue words like “persnickety” and “frou-frou frippery.” Awesome.

I also liked the concept. I love a story that can introduce a bit of the fantastical into an everyday setting, and this one pulls it off nicely. The idea of a family of extra-specially-abled people is irresistibly cool, but the author does a good job of painting a realistic picture of what that would really mean: balancing out the benefits of, say, being able to generate electricity or control the weather with the sort of drawbacks that any kid can relate too: being different from other kids, having to hide who you are to fit in, and having family members who can embarrass the heck out of you in public.

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We’re not the only ones interviewing today (see my chat with author Gail Gauthier below): Don’t miss Jama Rattigan’s chat with picture book creator extraordinnaire Marla Frazee over at Jama’s Alphabet Soup, posted today. You know I love my illustrator interviews, and Jama does it up right, my friends. Lots of fabulous questions and wonderful images, and Marla talks about the story behind her latest, award-winning book, A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, reviewed here at 7-Imp. (She also mentions working on Liz’s text — boy howdy and howdy boy, I can’t wait to see that book!).

Scoot. Scat. Vamoose! Go read and enjoy.

P.S. This isn’t the first great illustrator interview Jama’s done. There’s also a great chat with Laura Vaccaro Seeger here, Grace Lin here, and much more over there at her yummy Alphabet Soup.

There are two reasons we’re pleased that author Gail Gauthier has stopped by 7-Imp for a cyber-chat today: First, she’s in the midst of a blog tour for her second early chapter book about Hannah, Brandon, and one monster cat named Buttercup. A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers—the sequel to 2007’s A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat—hits the bookshelves this month and continues the story of Brandon, reluctantly sent to neighbor Hannah’s house for after-school care. Hannah, to put it mildly, has quite the imagination, not to mention a ginormous, over-sized cat. In these new adventures of Hannah and Brandon, Hannah’s neighbors, the Sunderland triplets, try to steal the cat, Brandon and Hannah then setting out to save Buttercup. Just like the first book, A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers is high-energy, packed with adventure, and told with spot-on humor to the elementary students at which it’s aimed, those just becoming interested in chapter books. The books, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons, are illustrated by Joe Cepeda; some of the interior art from the new book is included below in this interview.

The second reason we’re happy to host Gail today is that she is a formidable presence in the kidlitosphere corner of Blogistan and has been since 2002. We are chatting with her today as not only an author but also as a blogger — one I’ve wanted to interview for a long while now. (And, no, we haven’t forgotten our blogger interviews. It just so happens that the last three people we’ve asked to interview are terribly multi-faceted and in-demand and . . . well, busy. We’ve stalled on that interview series for a bit out of necessity. But we’re patient. And I digress.)

Where was I? Over at Gail’s blog, Original Content, Gail talks a little bit about Everything Kidlit — her writing, trends, other books, publishing, blogging, etc. And what I love in particular is that she tells it like it is and isn’t afraid to pose questions — whether she’s talking about her thoughts on award-winning books, authors blogging, celebrity authors, or why blog reviews are important.

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Hey, everybody. Have you had a chance to check out author Lynn Hazen’s Imaginary Blog? Well, this would be an excellent time to do so, because she just did a fun group-interview with me and Jules, Betsy of Fuse #8, and Cynthia Leitich Smith of Cynsations. She made us write a pyramid-shaped poem-like thingy about our blogs, which was a hoot. Go check it out!

We’re speaking in code today, prompted by Alec Flint, Super Sleuth.

Anyone remember this recent post I (Jules, that is) wrote? It’s all about what I called EarlyEmergingBegin-
ningInterChapterMe-
diateReaders, books that fall somewhere between picture books for children and what are often called middle-grade novels. Well, things are comin’ up very EarlyEmergingBeginningInterChapterMediateReaders this week at 7-Imp — at least at the beginning of this week. Today, we’re hosting a book give-away* (which is the translation of our super-sleuth code up there), and tomorrow we’re going to chat with Gail Gauthier, author of two early chapter books herself.

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Jules: We have the ever-resourceful and thoughtful Little Willow to thank for our featured illustrations this week. Knowing that we like illustration and knowing that we have a particular fondness for Alice images, Little Willow passed on the web site of Argentinian illustrator Fernando Falcone to us. And then we all three ooh’ed and aah’ed over his art work featured over there; pictured here is A Mad Tea-Party (created in 2006). And then I shamelessly asked him if we could feature some of those illustrations over here at 7-Imp. Despite our language barriers (man, I wish I spoke Spanish), he agreed to let us show his art work. Isn’t it amazing? Eisha is travelling as I type this, but I believe her words when she saw the White Rabbit here were “positively terrifying” (and that’s a compliment).

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