Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“Because it is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions inside the head and express something — perhaps not much, just something — of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are, from the momentary effect of the barometer to the force that created men distinct from trees. Something of the inaudible music that moves us along in our bodies from moment to moment like water in a river. Something of the spirit of the snowflake in the water of the river. Something of the duplicity and the relativity and the merely fleeting quality of all this. Something of the almighty importance of it and something of the utter meaninglessness. And when words can manage something of this, and manage it in a moment, of time, and in that same moment, make out of it all the vital signature of a human being — not of an atom, or of a geometrical diagram, or of a heap of lenses — but a human being, we call it poetry.

-– Ted Hughes *

It’s Poetry Thursday here at 7-Imp, because we have something else lined up for tomorrow. I didn’t want to miss the chance to mention a wonderful poetry anthology, published last year. To the children’s poetry devotees who read this post this will seem So Last Year. I have been slooooowwwwwly reading and enjoying it, and I’m so behind on reviewing it that I’m pretty much going to offer up a review round-up post here for those of you who might be interested in this title. Read the rest of this entry »

If you missed this post two weeks ago, you may not know that I’m going to attempt — as often as my schedule allows — a new 7-Imp series of sorts in which I round-up seven picture book titles with reviews for the impossibly busy parents of the world. As I said last time, there can’t be any advance-proof reviewing goin’ on in these posts, none of that this-book-is-filthy-cool-but-won’t-come-out-for-three-more-months bit in this new feature. I need to line up those titles that are new, yet should be available at your local library — or at least being processed and about to be added to the collection. You’ll notice in this post that most of these titles were released in September of last year; the most difficult one to find at your local library might be the one released in December, but JUMP BACK it’s worth waiting for, though I’m getting ahead of myself here. (And, yeah, I’m going to drop the “Alice’s tips” bit and just get right to it from now on). I’d like to do this weekly, but — as you can see with the timing of this second post — it might be more like every two weeks.

Last time my seven picks were geared at the preschool crowd. Here are some more sophisticated titles for your older picture book readers (I’m sorry I can’t be more precise than that. I’m no good at the Age Range Game, as it all depends on the child, though I know it’s sometimes necessary). I’ve even thrown in two titles in one entry. Bonus! Enjoy.

How I wish I’d thought of the premise for this picture book: Suddenly, it’s bizarre-o world, and instead of children getting such things as lollipops and stickers after hair trimmings and flu shots, they get to cart home a real, live dinosaur. Told from the point-of-view of a young boy, all in favor of this plan and who simply cannot believe his eyes, it’s a lively, clever, larger-than-life tale of (almost) every kid’s dream-come-true. At the bakery, you can buy a dozen and get a dinosaur (a triceratops, to be precise). At the doctor’s office, no stickers. Just stegosaurs. With a shot, you get two. Bonus! While the boy is doing an exuberant victory dance, his mother is near to passing out over the shock of it all — and the sheer number of dinosaurs they’re accumulating and must find a place for in their back yard. When it’s all said and done, though, she has found a clever solution to this problem, one that makes our gap-toothed, red-headed protagonist happy as well. I can’t imagine any other illustrator taking this text and bringing it to life as well as David Small, who has fun with perspective in his precise, detailed, and exuberant spreads and who is clearly still tight with his inner child. Guaranteed to make the day of your favorite dinosaur-obsessed child.

What happens when you get a group of poets together to attempt to solve a problem? This is an offbeat, but beguiling, tale that shows us just that. A young girl opens the door to her bird’s cage, and out Chirpie flies straight to the branch of a tree. She runs to tell her friend, Monica, and “{s}he calls the poets” (naturally! I love it). So, here comes Priyanka, Vincent, Lily, Pendleton, and Marion, all speaking in a rather bouncy rhyme: “You need not worry. Haven’t you heard? There are oodles of ways to lure a bird.” Read the rest of this entry »

I should state up front my bias for any book illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering. If there were ever any doubt of my fan-dom for his style of illustrating, then my adoration was sealed with his playful and offbeat art work in 2006’s playful and offbeat Mr. and Mrs. God in the Creation Kitchen by Nancy Wood.

Candlewick has just released Ering’s latest title, one he both wrote and illustrated, Necks Out for Adventure: The True Story of Edwin Wiggleskin (January ’08; review copy). The protagonist, the titular Edwin, and his world look as far-out as the title sounds. Prepare to enter a world in which Ering channels his Inner Dahl in spirit and vocabulary (there are, for instance, red-spotted scrintalberry leaves, glimmering golden-eyes sliverstones, and a hideous hornly scratcher, who — in one particular illustration — seems himself to be channeling Seuss’ The Grinch and his never-ending diabolical grin). Read the rest of this entry »

Jules: Welcome to our weekly 7 Kicks list, the meeting ground for listing Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week (whether book-related or not) that happened to you.

This week we’re happy to be featuring the art work of illustrator Doug Chayka, whose critically-acclaimed illustrated books are listed here and whose most recent title is the Cybils-shortlisted Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2007). The above illustration is from this title, a poignant tale of courage about two girls in a Pakistani refugee camp who share a pair of sandals that begins a friendship. The book was inspired by a refugee girl who asked the authors why there were no books about children like her. Here’s another one of Mr. Chayka’s beautiful acrylic illustrations from this title, the final illustration in the book:

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There’s this wonderful episode of Firefly called “Jaynestown,” where the gang sets out to do business on Canton, a little backwater planet that uses slave labor to harvest clay. While there, they discover that a botched robbery a few years before has led the “mudders” to revere Jayne – crass, mercenary, borderline-despicable Jayne – as a folk hero. Since I saw it again the other night, I can’t get the mudder’s tribute song out of my head. So once again I’m stretching the concept of Poetry Friday to indulge my own obsessions. Here’s the chorus to “Hero of Canton,” or “Jayne’s Theme,” depending who you ask:

Oh, He robbed from the rich
and he gave to the poor.
Stood up to the man
and he gave him what for.
Our love for him now
ain’t hard to explain.
The hero of Canton
the man they call Jayne.

Click here to read the rest of the lyrics; or better yet, watch the clip from the show:

And… here’s a website, where you can buy your own version of the cunning hat that Jayne’s mom sends him in the mail in the episode “The Message.” It totally gets shipped to you in a box with funky Firefly-esque postmarks all over it, and a handwritten copy of the letter from Jayne’s mom. Serious! And it’s even for a good cause: the knitter is funding her autistic daughter’s occupational and speech therapy with the proceeds. My sister-in-law and her husband got ’em – but then, they had to, ’cause they’re Firefly fans AND THEY TOTALLY LIVE IN CANTON!!! Okay… Canton, North Carolina… but still. Awesome.

Thanks, as usual, for indulging me. Next week we’ll have some proper poetry, I’m sure.

Eisha and I couldn’t be happier that school librarian Camille Powell (or, Miss BookMoot — “Jenny Holm called me that one time and I quite liked the sound of it,” she told us) is our first blogger interview of this new year. We already liked her blog BookMoot and had the pleasure of meeting her briefly in Chicago at the 1st Annual Kidlitosphere Conference, but then she gave us the fabulous responses below in this blogger interview, and we like her even more. If I could only hand-pick school librarians for my daughters . . . Ah, if only. Camille would be first on the list. And if you read BookMoot, you probably know well her passion for school librarianship and getting good books in the hands of children. However, if you don’t read BookMoot on a regular basis, then keep reading. Her thoughts on “good books” in this introduction to her short Q & A and her response to the Pivot what-turns-you-on question (and what-turns-you-off, for that matter) show your more run-of-the-mill librarians what having commitment to and passion for school librarianship is all about. Snap, snap. (And could there be a lovelier, more sincere response to the prom-date question?).

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New year. New titles. Pretty exciting. In no way does this mean I’m going to ignore my ’07 review or library or personal copies of titles that I have yet to read. I’m still working on those, believe it or not.

But if you head over to Chasing Ray today, you’ll see that Colleen is talkin’ titles that she can’t wait to see this year, and she’ll be rounding up other bloggers doing the same (yes, only one day after the big awards were announced — YES, HUGO! — but we Book Nerds are like that, revelling in last year’s great titles and looking ahead to the new ones). Here’s my stab at a list, though invariably I’m going to overlook some thrilling title I will have forgotten about (not to mention some publishers still haven’t announced new releases for the year yet). I’m also a little bit nervous, to be honest, as this list will reveal in a most glaring fashion my fiction bias (sorry, non-fiction) and my near-obsession with picture books. But just humor me. I’ll do my best.

(Note: If I were really organized, I would have started noting release dates before I started feverishly listing titles. But I linked to the publisher on each title if you’re really dying to get a release date yourself. For Henry Holt and Farrar, Straus and Giroux links, you’ll be taken to the search page or a main page of new titles, and you’ll have to either type the title in yourself or just browse and search. Oh, one more note: I’m leaving off some brand new titles that have been recently acquired and added to my to-review stack. New reviews to come then, as my schedule allows).

All Things Illustrated

* Any new Elephant & Piggie titles Mo decides to share with the world (Fuse has the titles in her own most-anticipated-titles list from today);

* Any new Mo picture book (is this a sneak peek into a new title perhaps?);

* The forthcoming titles LeUyen Pham shared with us in October;

* Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Sean Qualls (I already have an ARC from Henry Holt, and it’s good stuff. Review to come);

* Big Bad Bunny by Franny Billingsley and illustrated by G. Brian Karas (a Richard Jackson book for Atheneum Books);

* Buster Goes to Cowboy Camp by Denise Fleming (Henry Holt);

* A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee (Harcourt);

* The Dangerous Alphabet by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Gris Grimly (HarperCollins);

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Meet Lulu Atlantis. She’s feeling a bit overshadowed by Sam, her new baby brother; is convinced her mother would rather not have her around; and is trying her best to acclimate to life without her father, who is “away on his crusades” (when the story opens, he’s off to save “the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus”). Her best friend, a daddy longlegs spider who wears a top hat and white gloves and calls her “miss” (and whom no one else can actually see), is her trusty companion and joins Lulu in her earnest quest for the meaning of True Blue Love. Together — and throughout the four related, chapter-divided stories of the book — they explore the world under the Umbrella Tree, the large mulberry tree, “studded with luscious purple berries,” at the bottom of her lawn on Sweet Pea Lane; brave grouchy ‘ol Farmer Wallenhaupt’s pond to find Lulu’s Frog Prince; rescue a yogurt-eating skunk who calls her “toots” and says things like “darn tootin'”; and meet — in the laugh-outloud funny, most outstanding story in the book — the three chefs of the Gangster Bakery (that would be Scarecrow, Lefty-Righty Louie, and Jimmy Creamcheese) in their search for the secret ingredient for Mother’s oatmeal. There’s also Princess Fancy, Lulu’s archnemesis, the haughty stray cat who shows up in the final story, descending through clouds and silver stars at night, in a hot air balloon.

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Jules: Welcome to our weekly 7 Kicks list, the meeting ground for listing Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week (whether book-related or not) that happened to you.

We’re featuring Eric Rohmann today, which is quite a thrill. I’m a huge fan of his books and the beautiful art work he creates. If you’re not familiar with his books (well, you know you know the Caldecott winner, My Friend Rabbit), here’s one place you can begin, a link that includes another link to a bibliography. The above illustration is from his new picture book, A Kitten Tale (released this month by Knopf Books), which I raved about maniacally in this post (hey, 7-Imp is — mostly and for all intents and purposes — a fan site, and Eisha and I are geeky Rohmann fans. And he doesn’t disappoint with this title, which just adds to his already impressive track record). Summary if you don’t want to read the afore-linked review I wrote: A Kitten Tale is a wonder. It’s a splendid tale for the very young. Here are three more images (I hope the colors on these illustrations are right; they look slightly different than the ones in the ARC I have, but it could be an artifact of my computer). And p.s. these images are just for Little Willow.

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So, my upstairs neighbor (a poet) loaned me a couple of books of poetry over the holidays. Due to my Cybils duties, I haven’t been able to open them until recently. One of them is by Galway Kinnell, and I’m loving it. So I thought I’d pay my neighbor’s good deed forward, and share him with you all.

“The Correspondence-School Instructor Says Goodbye to His Poetry Students”

Goodbye, lady in Bangor, who sent me
snapshots of yourself, after definitely hinting
you were beautiful; goodbye,
Miami Beach urologist, who enclosed plain
brown envelopes for the return of your very
“Clinical Sonnets”; goodbye, manufacturer
of brassieres on the Coast, whose eclogues
give the fullest treatment in literature yet
to the sagging breast motif; goodbye, you in San Quentin,
who wrote, “Being German my hero is Hitler,”
instead of “Sincerely yours,” at the end of long,
neat-scripted letters extolling the Pre-Raphaelites:

I swear to you, it was just my way
of cheering myself up, as I licked
the stamped, self-addressed envelopes,
the game I had of trying to guess
which one of you, this time,
had poisoned his glue.

Click here to read the rest of the poem. It gets even better.