Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Oh, what are the odds? I popped over to the Poetry 180 site to look for a poem to post, and clicked on this one because I liked the title and it sounded, you know, springy… And what do I find: a poem about a girl dressed like a daffodil. The very day after Jules reviewed Daffodil, Crocodile – a picture book about a girl named Daffodil who drops the girly-girl bit and runs around pretending to be a crocodile for a while. Coincidence? I think not…

The character first appeared in Jenkins’s Daffodil (FSG/Frances Foster, 2004), a great story in which triplet girls, all named after flowers, rebel against their mother’s habit of dressing them in poufy concoctions color-coded to their names. Daffodil, naturally, is always forced to wear yellow – until she’s finally allowed to choose her own cherry-red pant suit. I like this girl. It’s no surprise to me that in her second book she’s accessorizing with a papier-mache crocodile head.

It’s fun to think about girls like Daffodil while reading this poem, “Because You Left Me a Handful of Daffodils” by Max Garland. I bet the narrator, so intimidated (and physically hindered) by this lovely girl in her layers of crinoline, has no idea what a cage that dress can be for a girl.

She wore a dress based upon the principle
of the daffodil: puffed sleeves,
inflated bodice, profusion
of frills along the shoulder blades
and hemline.

A dress based upon the principle of girl
as flower; everything unfolding, spilling
outward and downward: ribbon, stole,
corsage, sash.

…And escorting her down the runway
was a losing battle, trying to march
down among the full, thick folds
of crinoline, into the barrage of her
father’s flashbulbs, wading
the backwash of her mother’s
perfume…

Read the poem in its entirety here.

Yeesh, that’s a particularly painful post title, but my creativity is put to the test with each new picture book round-up. Let’s just forget it and get right to the books then . . .

Here’s to a determined advancement of one’s own views as only Emily Jenkins can tell it; make way (again) for Daffodil! As you may recall from the 2004 title, Daffodil is one of three sisters who all look alike and who all have rather florid names (Violet and Rose are her sisters). Even their poor mother sometimes can’t tell the girls apart. Always charming those they meet, without even meaning to (“They’re such NICE little girls . . . So clean. So pretty. So quiet. Like a bouquet of flowers”), Daffodil gets a bit fed up with being mistaken for her sisters, even in school, and with all the rather condescending, cutesy attention paid to her. One day she takes the papier mâché project her mother is creating, a crocodile head that fits just perfectly, and wears it around. “I like it! . . . Crocodiles are not flowers . . . Raaa raaa raaa Chomp chomp chomp,” she tells her sisters. Read the rest of this entry »

Laura Miller at Salon.com in her review of Un Lun Dun (Random House; February 2007; library copy) wrote those words you see in the post title: “China Miéville just may take adults back to their slack-jawed, book-drunk days of youth.” I love that too much to not share it. This is a vigorously original and inventive fantasy YA novel (that, incidentally — as every reviewer will tell you — will leave Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett fans very, very happy). I haven’t read anything like this in a long time, something which is packed with such indelible images that I will not for a long time forget the very experience of reading it. Best of all, as Miller puts it, Miéville “trains a healthy skepticism on those familiar and inherently conservative fantasy tropes about people who are born special and the need to slavishly follow ancient texts and rituals.” This fiddling with the conventions of fantasy narratives was one of the reasons this book was such a kick, so compelling — and humorous. Apparently, I’m not the only one to think so, as the novel is #10 on The New York Times Children’s Bestseller List and #2 of the Book Sense Spring Children’s Picks List.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey, everyone. Two random things:

1*  Jules insists that we share these photos of Eisha at Grace Lin’s birthday party. The one with Anna Alter is by Elaine Magliaro and is posted at Wild Rose Reader. And the one with Elaine is by Alvina Ling, from the Blue Rose Girls.

2*  A while back, Jules suggested the idea of interviewing Hank Green, the elusive other half of Brotherhood 2.0 and founder of EcoGeek. The idea was very warmly received by our fellow bloggers. We’re happy to report that he was very pleased with the idea, too!

Now, since everyone seemed so enthusiastic about it, we thought we’d share this opportunity with the rest of you, too. Is there anything you’d like us to ask Hank? We’d love to hear from you – just include your questions in the comments here, or email us at seventhings *at* gmail *dot* com.

Whew, this interview was almost difficult to snag. When we asked David at the excelsior file if he wanted to be interviewed in our blogger interview series, his response was one of interest and excitement, but he then said, “I haven’t even been at this blogging stuff for a year (at least not with kidlit) and I still feel as though I’m poking my way through the dark . . . there are so many bloggers out there, maybe they deserve it more than me?” Now, we think the last thing David would want us to do is make him out to be some sort of meek-and-mild saint, but it’s true when we say he’s (obviously) terrifically humble, even though we’ve said time and again (and again) here at 7-Imp that he’s one of our top-five favorite bloggers (do a search here at 7-Imp of “the excelsior file” and there are all kinds of links to David’s reviews, since — as Jules has stated here repeatedly — his reviews are always spot-on).

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s time for another installment of 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks . . . For those new to our series, this is where we all stop in every Sunday to report seven (more or less is fine) Good Things that happened to you (or that you read or saw or experienced or . . . well, you get the picture) this week. Absolutely anyone is welcome to contribute.

Whew! It’s been a crazy busy weekend, and it’s still going on, so let me just give you the highlights.

1*  Friday night I saw an excellent event sponsored by my fave independent bookstore: Daniel Handler in conversation with Gregory Maguire. The idea was that they would talk about DH’s most recent adult novel, Adverbs. But of course, when you have two guys that funny and smart and literate up on a stage… well, they talked about Adverbs, and about how tall Meryl Streep really is, and about the drinking game DH made up based on Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide… Dudes. It was hilarious.

2*  And while they were signing books afterwards, we were treated to a performance by a really good local band, Chop! Chop! I’d never heard them before, but I enjoyed it a lot – I was sad there weren’t any CDs to buy. I thought it was an excellent idea to provide entertainment while we stood around in line. Hey, book signing event organizers, take note! Read the rest of this entry »

Yeah, I need to just drop the whole parts-to-a-whole idea on my picture book round-ups. If you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to be more productive when it comes to reviewing new picture books, and I have decided to review as many new titles as I can this year. Perhaps at the end of the year, I can say that here at 7-Imp I reviewed (or co-reviewed with Eisha) a Cybil winner or the Caldecott Honor or some such thing. Plus, I enjoy it immensely. Even if I didn’t have two young children who enjoy them, too, I’d be returning from the library with a huge stack of them every week.

So, I’m going to forgo the whole Part So-and-So idea and continue reviewing as many of them as I possibly can in various and asundry picture book round-ups. Onwards then . . .

I made that book cover image huge on purpose. Isn’t that a handsome book? There’s no dust jacket; the book is covered in a rich red fabric; the black letters you see there (the title and author/illustrator) are embossed; the wonderfully weird small illustration centered there does not overwhelm the cover; and the endpages are mysterious and gorgeous. Keep going, and it gets even better. Yoo’s detailed watercolored etchings are simply divine. For the most part, they’re rather opaque, but then Yoo knows exactly when to bring the light in. The colors are primarily sepia-toned — nothing more than browns, blacks, and a bit of grey — until the fish appears in bright red . . . Yes, JeJe is visiting his grandfather at his old library in the middle of the forest, and he’s brought along his little red fish for the visit. It’s the first time JeJe’s ever seen the library, crammed with books wall-to-wall, and he’s amazed and explores freely. He soon falls asleep, and when he wakes, the room is dark and empty, and “{h}e felt as though he had been swallowed up by the darkness.” Read the rest of this entry »

{Note: Kelly at Big A, little a has the Poetry Friday round-up here this week} . . .

I just finished reading Catherine Reef’s E.E. Cummings: A Poet’s Life (Clarion Books; December 2006; library copy). I’m a big ‘ol E.E.* fan, but I was surprised at how little I knew of his life. Reef does a fine job of not only bringing this unconventional, provocative poet’s life to the reader (from his birth in Cambridge in 1894 to his death in 1962 at his beloved Joy Farm in New Hampshire at the age of sixty-seven) in an engaging prose, but she weaves into the biography many details about and a respect and appreciation for his poetry. The book is meticulously-documented with Reef’s source notes as well.

Beginning with his early life in Cambridge, Reef provides a detailed description of the city during the late 19th century when Cummings was a wee child (having been the firstborn and christened Edward after his father, but using his middle name, Estlin), Read the rest of this entry »

Teaching sequencing skills, anyone? You will want to experience this title, in which LaRochelle takes the traditional fairy tale structure and turns it on its head, saying “shh, shh, don’t speak” to conventional storytelling. And it’s delightful. I’m even going to tack a star onto this little review (though I’m not planning on making this a habit), just ’cause I like this book so much and just for fun and just so the star might catch your eye . . . When you read this one, you learn that “once upon a time a clever princess decided to make a big bowl of lemonade,” but that, in fact, is the final spread in the book (well, right before the closing title page spread). Read the rest of this entry »

In Harlem Summer, Walter Dean Myers’ new novel (Scholastic; March 2007; library copy), we are welcomed into the steamin’ hot New York City borough of Harlem in the summer of 1925. Sixteen-year-old Mark Purvis just wants to land a record contract and play his sax in a hot jazz band. But when his family’s land down South is sold for back taxes, it’s Mark who is expected to get a job and contribute to the family’s income. His “snooty” Aunt Carolyn (whose “lips stuck out like she was holding a strawberry in her mouth”) finds him a summer job on 14th Street at The Crisis magazine, who needed “a Bright Young Man to work in its advertising department” for four days (from the chapter entitled “How the Ruination of My Whole Summer Started and I Began to Be a New Negro When I Wasn’t Really Through Being the Old Negro I Used to Be” — and, yes, all the chapter titles are that wonderfully long-winded). The Crisis magazine was founded in 1910, published by the then-newly-formed NAACP, and edited by the civil rights leader, poet, scholar, educator, and sociologist Dr. W.E.B. DuBois, who — along with many other well-known figures of The Harlem Renaissance — appears in this novel.

Miss Fauset, Mark’s immediate supervisor, explains to him that the folks at the magazine represent what is being called the New Negro: “Dr. DuBois has said that the Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional people.” Mark is baffled and simply bummed that he has to wear a jacket and tie to work. Eventually, Mark meets such luminaries as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Alfred Knopf, A’Lelia Walker, Effie Lee Newsome, Ethel Waters, and DuBois himself. To Mark, “it didn’t seem that exciting . . . I lived in Harlem and I figured that was about as black as you could get without being in Africa.” Read the rest of this entry »