Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

It’s a new year, and new titles may be rolling in (both review copies as well as new additions to my local library’s shelves), but I’m still catching up with 2007. Here are reviews of three YA titles I read and enjoyed over the holidays. Let’s get right to it.

In the Fall of last year, Scottish author James Jauncey presented this taut, edge-of-your-seat dystopian thriller to the world of YA lit, and it seems to be vying for most under-the-radar title of the year, according to my web search. Jauncey had me at the book’s opening where he quotes, before the book begins, the brilliant composer Arvo Pärt (“If you approach silence with love, music may result”), but I digress. Set in the Scottish Highlands at a time in “the not-too-distant future” during a violent war over land ownership reform (and based on Scotland’s very real Land Reform Act of 2003), we meet eighteen-year-old John MacNeil, who is the sole witness to a bloody massacre at the hands of the despotic government, in conflict with terrorists who oppose their tyrranical reign. After eventually returning to the scene of the violence, he finds Ninian, a young, mentally-disabled boy, terrified into silence (John later learns Ninian has Fragile X Syndrome). The two flee into the mountains, pursued by soldiers and up against the harsh winter landscape, with John’s goal being to find his own father and return Ninian to whomever his family may be, eventually discovering the boy has strong ties to the rebel cause, ties John couldn’t have possibly imagined.

The heart of the story is John, a complex hero and rather tortured soul. Read the rest of this entry »

Jules here, actually. Alice is a bit waylaid. The Queen yelled a rude comment about her head and it being, ahem, off’ed. And then Alice protested: Something about the Queen and the King and the Knave and everyone else all being nothing but a pack of cards, and, well . . . this is her predicament at the moment. So, I’ll take over and tell you about Alice’s New Idea for 7-Imp in ’08, numero two (the first one being revealed last Sunday. Do go see, if you missed it and if you’re so inclined).

For my part, when Eisha and I started this blog, my goal was to reach out to mama friends who would ask me for children’s lit book recommendations. Turns out that our audience here has been entirely different — primarily, other bloggers, publishers, authors, illustrators, editors, even literary agents, etc. Basically, a big ‘ol gaggle of Children’s and YA Lit Nerds (and I say that ever-so lovingly and respectfully. Of course of course. You’re my peeps, and I love you all).

But this new series, “Alice’s Seven Picture Book Tips for Impossibly Busy Parents,” would have those parents I initially had in mind as the audience. The idea is that I will list seven new picture books for busy parents as often as I can pull it off. I’d love to say once a week, but I reserve the right to not meet that goal (hey, we bloggers do this for fun, and I have to let work-that-pays come first, so I may not get to it every week, by all means). And here’s my challenge: I’ll have to be brief. ¡Aye Carumba! Can I do that? Yes, I’m up for the challenge. In my typical picture book round-ups (which I vow to continue as well), I do one paragraphs, but these will have to be even shorter, methinks, for those terrifically busy parents. Read the rest of this entry »

Not only is the Wicked Cool Overlooked Book series Colleen Mondor’s brainchild, but I also have her to thank for telling me about this book, released in September of last year by Candlewick. You’ll see at the end of this post excerpts of and links to other reviews, meaning you can argue its under-the-radar-ness with me, but it’s true that there haven’t been any reviews of it in Blogistan (as my husband calls it) — none that I can find anyway — so I’m stickin’ to my decision to feature it today.

Geared at the 9 to 12 age range, The Museum Book: A Guide to Strange and Wonderful Collections is a 51-page book in picture book format that I would argue would also work quite well with high schoolers interested in history, particularly your collectors and curator-wannabes. It was written by Carnegie Medal-winning Jan Mark, one of Britain’s most distinguished children’s book authors, who passed away about two years ago. If you’ll allow me a quick digression here, this obituary at Guardian Unlimited, for whom she reviewed books, is a good read. And I love this first sentence, reminding me of the whole idea behind Wicked Cool Overlooked Books and the second sentence just making me laugh: Read the rest of this entry »

Jules: Welcome to our first kicks list of 2008! Our weekly 7 Kicks list is 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. As our readers and fellow kicks-listers know, we feature a different illustrator every Sunday when we gather to list our kicks. But one of my New Ideas in ’08 is to feature — on the first Sunday of every month — a student illustrator or a newly-graduated illustrator wanting to break into children’s books. I am excited about this idea more than I can say, the opportunity to see tomorrow’s children’s book illustrators. Who doesn’t wanna see some new blood? Plus, maybe the next Maurice Sendak or Ruth Krauss will pass our way. I’m just sayin’. You never know. And it’s thanks to Jarrett J. Krosoczka and Anna Alter (thank you! thank you!), to whom I turned for assistance, that I already have some students (or new grads) lined up for the next couple of months. Oh, and as for this week’s featured illustrator — our first one ever in this new feature — I have Little Willow to thank. She pretty much just read my mind and emailed and said, “look at this new illustrator’s site I just stumbled upon?” That Little Willow is puh-sychic.

So, let’s get right to it. Who has graced our post this week? Her name is Ashley Smith, and she just graduated in December from Brigham Young University – Idaho with a BFA in Illustration (“Upon writing this — 22 days, 10 hours and 37 minutes later — I am thrust into the harsh realities of post-graduation-freelance-job-search,” she told us, “but I am certainly not complaining. A vacation from the frenetic vigors of five years of deadlines has been a welcome change; however, my creativity thrives on those deadlines, so I am looking forward to a new life defined by them”).

Read the rest of this entry »

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).

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jules here. I wanted, even though I mentioned this yesterday, to remind everyone that the shortlist titles in some — but not all — of the Cybils ’07 categories will be announced on January 1st. And that includes the category I organized and on which I served as a panelist, Fiction Picture Books.

I think our shortlisters for Fiction Picture Books are wonderful titles; I’m happy with the list and anxious to share it with everyone. There were three titles I had in my mind as Ones That Would Make Me Moan and Wail and Kick and Scream and Pout Like a Two-Year-Old If They Did Not Land Squarely on the Shortlist (including an illustrator whom I wanted to appear on the list in one way or another), and only one of them made it*. For a moment, I considered standing on my rooftop and yelling, in the words of Chief Wiggum, “you know what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society.” My own barbaric yawp across the rooftops of a small town in middle Tennesee. But, nah, I love the rest of the shortlist; it’s an impressive collection of picture book titles; I’m proud of it; and I particularly loved creating and molding it into shape with my Cybils ’08 peeps: Marcie at World of Words; MotherReader; Annie at Crazy for Kids’ Books; and Cheryl Rainfield. I was telling Cheryl yesterday if we channeled her passion for good books, we could power the globe. But if you channel the passion of all four of those panelists put together, you could power . . . uh, the . . . uh, solar system. Or the universe AND its screened-in back porch. Ahem, it’s hard to take that metaphor any further.

But you get the idea.

So, be looking for our shortlist at the Cybils blog tomorrow! This post over there will remind you which shortlists will be revealed tomorrow — and which on January 7th (Eisha’s category, Non-fiction Picture Books, falls into the latter category, though she is a nominating panelist for Young Adult Fiction, whose shortlist also will be revealed at that later date).

Oh and also, HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL! Wahoo! My self-imposed blog break (well, minus this post and yesterday’s — Ooh! Ooh! R. Gregory Christie stopped by! Go see) might extend a bit further into the week, as it’s almost 2008, which so completely needs to be celebrated; my husband still has off work; and I’m still just kicking back a bit. But you know I’ll be back soon and running my mouth about books.

Happy ’08! In the words of Mark Twain, “now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

* Actually, there were a couple other titles that I’d put in the screaming and pouting category, but I didn’t have to argue for them, as it was immediately clear that we all loved them and they’d ez-ily made the shortlist.

Jules: Well, hello there! Eisha and I have been taking a holiday blog break for a while here, and — as I type this — I’m still not even sure she’s done with her holiday travelling. I hope she is and is able to contribute her kicks this week.

You may have noticed last week that we went ahead and kicked it old-skool style — and then some — with Arthur Rackham at our very brief kicks post. Well, we had originally planned to feature some new art work from the talented R. Gregory Christie, but we re-scheduled that for this week. We were worried no one would see it last week, due to the busy holidays, and we hope that folks are around to see it this week, too, since we’re excited to be featuring it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hi to all, and happy holidays! We’re not exactly listing kicks today, since it’s such a busy time of year. But for anyone who might have stopped by (and you’re still welcome to leave your kicks), here’s a 1915 illustration by Arthur Rackham, a bit of Charles Dickens in the spirit of the holidays. Since the Edwardian times featured rather prominently in my post from yesterday, I figured we’d quickly feature the man considered the leading decorative illustrator of the Edwardian period.

My big kick is that my family and I get to visit with Eisha and her husband today. I think I even get to meet her punkin’ head sugar britches nephew, whom she loves so. Happy happy and merry merry whatever-you-celebrate to all our readers and our 7 Kicks community. We’ll be on a holiday break for a while, but we’ll see you soon!