Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Hey, we’ve been scooped! The Cybils decided to interview MotherReader at the very same time that we did! And somehow we didn’t notice until this moment that the Cybil interviews and our 7ITBB ones start off with the same two questions. Oh well, since we’re fellow Cybilians, I hope Anne and Kelly & Co. aren’t too miffed at us. And really, with the double-interview thing going on, do you need any more proof that Pamela Coughlan truly is the Mother Of All Readers? Can we officially declare this MotherReader Week? Get your Mo Willems tealights out…

What we love about MotherReader: She’s funny. Really, really funny. Her Tulane Readers Theatre post was one of the funniest things seen on any blog so far this year. And she’s passionate about great books, especially of the funny variety. She’s even got a MotherReader Suggests… sidebar on her blog, listing funny choices for every stage of reading, from newborns all the way to adults. She’s also unflinchingly honest about the not-so-great books, and has recently spearheaded a movement to prevent celebrities from misusing their fame to monopolize the children’s lit market: BACA, Bloggers Against Celebrity Authors. Can I get a “Hell Yeah!”? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a while since I’ve done a picture book round-up of more than two titles at once. Here are six from either the end of ’06 or just published in ’07 — and one is due to hit the bookstore shelves in February. So, let’s get right to it then . . .

Duck, Duck, Goose by Tad Hills (published by Schwartz & Wade Books; on the shelves — February 2007; my source: review copy) — I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Tad Hills’ Duck and Goose (published in January of ’06) for the Cybils committee work I did (unfortunately, I never got around to reviewing it). This book got all kinds of well-deserved accolades thrown at it, and it became a New York Times bestseller as well. “Readers will hope to see more of this adorable odd couple,” wrote Kirkus Reviews. And now said readers can cheer, because Duck and Goose are back. Read the rest of this entry »

{Note: Head here at Big A Little a for today’s Poetry Friday round-up} . . .

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Gail Gauthier’s recent post, “Why Blog Reviews Are Important,” in which she makes the case for reviewing older titles after discovering that her most recently published novel was reviewed — eight months after publication — on two different blogs. Blogs, she writes, can extend the season of a book. In today’s world, the season of a book (or movie or any number of other new events, for that matter) is pathetically short. I won’t go on and on about this, except to say that when Eisha and I created this blog, I never set out to review just new titles. But that’s exactly what I’ve done. Gail’s post is a nice reminder that reviewing older titles “remind{s} readers of books they’d been meaning to read but had forgotten about” (such as this review from this week at the excelsior file, one of my favorite blogs — and if it hadn’t been for Just One More Book’s review of the ’06 re-print of Margaret Shannon’s The Red Wolf, originally published in 2002, who knows how long it would have taken me to find this intriguing picture book).

On that note, here’s something else that’s been on my mind, and here’s where the poetry comes in: Mama Goose, which serves as a child’s introduction to poetry. I’ve been reading Chris Roberts’ entertaining Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme (first published in 2004 by Granta Books). Read the rest of this entry »

Donkeys might have a long history of being symbols of ignorance, but in Sonya Hartnett’s The Silver Donkey (Candlewick Press; First U.S. edition — September 2006; my source: library copy), the donkey is instead a symbol of many noble qualities: patience, dependability, allegiance, kindness, humility, courage, and much more. I should say right off the bat here: Hartnett is one of my top-five favorite authors. And, once again, she didn’t let me down with this middle-grade title, which is profound and intense and graceful all at once. Hartnett seems to be writing in the tradition of the classics of children’s literature here (think turn-of-the-last-century children’s titles) — persuasively and strikingly so. Read the rest of this entry »

Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky (Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers; January 2007) showed up unexpectedly on my doorstep as a review copy that I might be interested in reading. And here’s the thing: I don’t tend to read teen chick lit (and, lest anyone think that’s said in a derogatory manner, it’s not at all. It’s also how Snadowsky herself refers to the novel). If I weren’t taking a temporary break from librarianship and were working on a daily basis with teens, I’d read it way more often. But, since I currently am not spending my week days trying to encourage teens to read for pleasure, I tend towards the — as Eisha put it on our “About Our Blog” page — “Man Booker Prize-winning high art metafiction, whatever” . . . That might make me sound impossibly snobby, but believe me when I say that when I read others’ reviews (on my favorite blogs) of teen chick lit and the like, I envy them and the fact that they are, likely, way more in touch with what the average teen today would want to read.

Read the rest of this entry »

To run with Mitali Perkins’ analogy of middle school (or junior high school) crush-like feelings and someone on a blog you really admire mentioning your name or your blog (the so-called blog-crush phenomenon), Roger Sutton’s blog is the coolest, hottest guy sweeping past your shoulder in the hallway (okay, we feel weird just having called the blog of the Editor-in-Chief of The Horn Book “hot,” but we’re runnin’ with an analogy here). Just about everyone in that cyberspace realm called kidlitosphere wants to ask Read Roger to the Friday night dance in the school’s gym (you know, with the bad decorations and teachers standing around and girls and boys lined up on opposite sides of the basketball court, shuffling their feet).

Fortunately for us all, Roger and his blog will not — as Susan put it in the comments section of the aforementioned Mitali link — brush past you in the hallway, shoving you into a locker and giving you the ‘ol brush-off. He has agreed to an interview in our fledgling Seven Impossible Interviews Before Breakfast series. Read the rest of this entry »

Who Is Melvin Bubble? by Nick Bruel
Roaring Brook Press, 2006
(source: library copy)

The premise of this picture book is kind of like Citizen Kane for kids. The author, Nick Bruel (of Bad Kitty fame), gets a letter from a boy named Jimmy, suggesting that he write a book about his best friend Melvin Bubble. So Bruel embarks on a series of interviews to discover just “who is Melvin Bubble?” Almost every page is a separate “interview,” with a different character rattling off everything they know or don’t know about the mysterious Mr. Bubble. His mom thinks he’s “the messiest boy in the world,” his teddy bear wants us to know that “he really likes hugs,” his dog chimes in with “Woof Woof Arf Woof…” and you even get random commentary from the Meanest Man in the World, the Tooth Fairy, and a zebra. You also get a little of the author’s reaction to each interviewee (“Hmm… Maybe we should move on.” for the monster), just before he transitions to a new character with “Now let’s ask…” Finally, it all comes together when the author asks Melvin Bubble himself who he is.

This book is so brilliant. Each interview is laugh-out-loud funny, and the author’s pithy reactions bring the reader in on the joke. But it’s also a lot of great lessons wrapped up in an accessible, enjoyable, non-didactic package: in defining one’s identity as something separate from how one is viewed by others, in not judging others by what someone else says about them, in the value of going straight to the source if you want to know the truth about something. The cartoonish, brightly-hued illustrations are a perfect compliment to the goofy text: think Michael Martchenko’s collaborations with Robert Munsch.

Clearly, I loved this picture book a lot. But you shouldn’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself.

About: It’s just what the title tells you. A little girl lists all the things she’s gotten busted for, most of them targetted at her younger brother — such as, stapling his head to the pillow; gluing his slippers to the floor; telling him his fortune (involving consumption by hyenas), while reading his palm; and freezing a dead fly in his ice cubes.

Read the rest of this entry »

{Note: Head here at Chicken Spaghetti for this week’s Poetry Friday round-up} . . .

Winter has finally come to Massachusetts.  Sort of.  We’re finished with that weird, wrong, lingering balminess that made Christmas seem more surreal than festive.  It’s really really really cold out there now.  There’s what David Foster Wallace called a “true, religious-type wind” blowing around.  But.  January is almost over, and we haven’t even had a single inch of snow.  Not one.  A couple of flurries – that’s it.

I moved up here for snow.  What the hell?  Is it really just El Nino, or is this global warming?  Have I seen the last of the serious, two-foot New England blizzards?  Do I have to move to Saskatchewan? What is the point of single-digit temperatures with you-don’t-even-wanna-know wind chill factors if there’s NO SNOW?

Anyway, here’s a bit from a poem that pretty much sums up the weirdness: “A Winter Without Snow” by J.D. McClatchy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hello there. Jules and Eisha here, continuing our interview series . . . There is much blog-crushing going on — in the kidlitosphere and even beyond — for A Fuse #8 Production. Betsy (we’ll call her Fuse) runs the show over there, and she always keeps things quite informative and entertaining. As Roger Sutton put it, she’s intrepid.

So, let’s get to know her a bit, shall we? And we’d like to quickly add again — in the name of Coming Attractions — that upcoming interviews will feature Roger Sutton, the editor-in-chief of The Horn Book (as if we have to tell you kidlitosphere folks his title); author Haven Kimmel (if you haven’t read about our good fortune, read here); and author Emily Jenkins, who has graciously agreed to an interview. Eisha and I are big fans of her work, especially her latest title, co-reviewed here. We are really looking forward to talking to her and bringing her to you, our readers. More blogger interviews to come soon, too. We promise.

Before we get to Fuse, here’s our Perfunctory Curse Word Disclaimer: Remember that we use the Pivot Questionnaire in our interviews. Remember that it includes the what-is-your-favorite-curse-word question. It’s optional for folks to answer, but if they do, we will not edit their responses in any way; yup, we’ll post their responses exactly as they send them to us. Some people might not use “*”s to edit their saucy words. If you’re easily offended, just don’t read that question.

Here’s what we here at 7ITBB love about Betsy at A Fuse #8 Production: Read the rest of this entry »