Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Fellow Kid-Lit colleagues, I need a little help.  I am the Childrens/YA Librarian in a smallish public branch library.  I have a 9-year-old female patron who keeps asking me for “romance” books.  But without S-E-X, of course – seriously, she explicitly stated this.  Like I was about to hand over an Elizabeth Lowell novel.  But I digress…

Today I gave her Juliet Dove, Queen of Love by Bruce Coville.  We were also contemplating Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (I haven’t read it, but it’s got the sort of thing she seems to mean when she says romance – princesses and princes), but based on reviews I think it may be a little long, and a little short on the actual princess-getting-together-with-prince.  

The fact is, I’m stronger in YA and picture books than I am at middle grade fiction.  So I thought I’d throw this out to the blogosphere… any ideas?  Fuse #8, Big A little a, Brookeshelf… you guys are awesome at middle grade stuff.  Anyone else?  Whoever comes up with the most titles gets… um… a free set of Edward Tulane postcards.  And my undying affection.

Oh, and I should mention… she’s reading at grade level (4th) – maybe slightly above.

Brrrr. It’s cold. So, let’s take a look at two picture books about the splendid seashore that made a bit of a splash (awful pun intended) this year so that your imagination can run away with you and warm you up at least for a moment or two.

Beach by Elisha Cooper — Has Elisha Cooper ever even made a bad book? I think not. He is the go-to man for depicting the extraordinary in the ordinary, one of the best examples of this being 2005’s A Good Night Walk — one of my favorite picture books — which was borne of evening walks with Cooper’s infant, fussy-in-the-evenings daughter, seeing and celebrating every, little thing along the way. This is the quality at which he excels and which children inherently possess — quiet, keen, potent powers of observation. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s talk four new, beguiling bed-time books, shall we? We can add them to our growing list. One of them is from an award-winning, master author/illustrator who has been at his craft for over four decades; one of them does not set out to be a bed-time book but works well as one; one of them even features — subtly, that is — a certain jolly, sack-carrying, gift-giving man of the holiday season, should you be seeking out some good, new Christmas titles; and one of them might get the wee ones riled up before bed-time, but I’m still putting it in this category. Just humor me. And each one of them, save for one, was expertly crafted by one person, an author/illustrator. Let’s get right to it then . . .

While You Are Sleeping by Alexis Deacon — This one is told from the point-of-view of a young girl’s toys and all their efforts to take care of her during the night. Parents will, in particular, get a chuckle out of the opening scene of the fatigued toys, collapsing at the end of a long day of play: “We are the bedside toys. Do you ever stop to think what we go through, night after night, to look after you?” Read the rest of this entry »

*{Note: Read here at Big A little a’s site for today’s Poetry Friday round-up. And to read a thumbs-up review of another of Kulikov’s illustrated picture books, be sure to read the review at the top of that link, Kelly’s thoughts on Betty Lou Blue by Nancy Crocker} . . .

In a fairly recent Poetry Friday post, I told you about a picture book that is not written in rhyme and not a poetry anthology of any sort — The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter and illustrated by Giselle Potter, published in March of this year. But I chose it for Poetry Friday, because — chances are — if you love poetry, you love words. And here, I wrote, is a picture book for you. Well, along came the über-talented Kate Banks in August of this year to bring us Max’s Words, illustrated by Boris Kulikov — which, I’m happy to humbly suggest, is what you can read right after you read Schotter’s book. The Boy Who Loved Words rejoices in those marvelous morphemes. And Banks’ cunning, playful book rejoices in putting those wayward, winning words together to make our savory sentences and unique, little units of meaning; our beguiling stories; our shapely, pleasing poems. Ah, how sweet it is . . .

Read the rest of this entry »

Whew. Where to begin? This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn by Aidan Chambers is his tome — 808 pages that take us into the mind, the heart, the soul of one teenaged Cornelia Kenn. And it completes what he calls his Dance Sequence of novels (“a dance because it was while I was writing Dance on My Grave that I realised there would be six novels,” he writes on his site. “Together they paint a portrait of a certain kind of youthful life, of becoming adult in the last years of the twentieth century and the first of the new millennium. Each is especially concerned with particular kinds of experience.” Read the above Dance Sequence link to read more about this, his six-novel sequence). To say This is All is verbose is to put it mildly; I dare say that I’ve yet to read a more comprehensive — and fascinating — look at a teen’s inner life. This is one addictive read. I found myself exasperated with and frustrated by and seduced by and in love with this character — often all on one page. Read the rest of this entry »

{So, I never said titles were my strength} . . .

What they have in common is that they’re the subjects of some more entertaining ’06 picture book titles, ones I’ve been meaning to tell you about for a good while now but am finally getting to. So, let’s get right to it, shall we?

I read two fantasy short-story collections recently – Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman, and The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke – and it turned out they both had a lot in common, so I thought I’d tell you about them together.  Both are by highly-regarded fantasy authors (although Gaiman is very well-established in all kinds of media, and Clarke just blazed onto the scene a couple of years ago with her brilliant, amazing Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell), both collections have stories that tie in to previous novels, both were very high on my to-read list for Fall 2006, and both were satisfying in their individual ways.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman.  This collection of short stories, poems, and odds-and-ends is a must-read for any Gaiman fan.  Most of the pieces have appeared before in various anthologies, websites and Tori Amos tour booklets, but he’s included a fabulous Introduction that describes the where/when/why/how of each piece’s origin that gives an interesting glimpse into the workaday world of a writer, plus gives a new context to pieces you might have seen before.  I was lucky enough to see Gaiman at the Children’s Literature New England conference in 2005, and I was happy to find a couple of the pieces he read collected here:  “Locks,” a poem about a father telling his daughter (and the other way around) the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears; and “Instructions,” a poem that acts as a guidebook to anyone who wanders into a fairy tale – here’s an excerpt:

Read the rest of this entry »

 An Abundance of Katherines by John Green.

I can’t think of any young adult novels published in 2006 that were more highly-anticipated than John Green’s sophomore effort, An Abundance of Katherines.  Hardly surprising, given all the critical acclaim and general reader-love he raked in over his first novel, the Printz-winning Looking For Alaska.  If you read the lit-blogs you probably caught at least one interview on his blog tour this past September/October (a seriously cool idea – I wish more authors would do that), or maybe saw a review or two.  Well, now Julie and I have both read it, and are ready to throw our opinions into the blogosphere, with another of those co-posting dialogue thingies we like to do.

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*{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy} . . .

Hello, Dear Readers.  Happy day-after-Thanksgiving.  Did you all make it through okay?  Personally, I’m having trouble reaching past my tummy to the keyboard, but I’m okay with that.

I’ve been thinking this morning about Thanksgiving, and its place in the Fall-to-Winter holiday continuum.  Julie was right, it is a very nice holiday, all about taking time to recognize what’s most important to us – family, friends, and the pleasures of home and hearth.  I think it’s become a way to galvanize us, too, for the uberstressful capital-H-Holiday season.  In a few weeks, when we’ve been fighting crowds in malls and standing in checkout lines for days on the quest to get exactly the right gifts for those we care about, we can look back on Thanksgiving, remember being surrounded by those very same loved ones, maybe eating a fabulous pecan pie baked by the very relative whose name we are currently cursing because she is so very hard to shop for – and take a breath, and remember why we’re putting ourselves through this, why we do it over and over again every year:  love.

I may only be thinking in these terms because my husband and I didn’t go home this Thanksgiving.  We live literally a thousand miles away from our extended families, and just don’t make it to Tennessee for every holiday.  We still cooked up a big meal, though, and we made the dishes that remind us of home.  (Okay, so we bought the pecan pie.  I can’t do it as well as my mom, but Whole Foods is pretty close.)  So I’m feeling very nostalgic right now.  And that may be why, when I went to my pile of Cybil Poetry nominees to choose one to write about, I was drawn to the Barefoot Book of Classic Poems, compiled and illustrated by Jackie Morris.

If I were stranded on a desert island and could only take one book of poetry with me, this would not be a bad choice at all.  Read the rest of this entry »

Jules posting here — and on behalf of Eisha. I don’t know if this is Eisha’s favorite holiday — Thanksgiving, that is — but I think it’s probably mine, because it’s the least commercialized and everyone’s not running around all insane trying to buy gifts for those distant (or not-so distant) relatives or co-workers or you-name-it whom they don’t even really like. Instead, you sit down with your friends and/or family or friends who are your family and feast and take a moment to be grateful for what you have. Aw, nice. You don’t have to be all obvious about it, all Tiny-Tim-God-Bless-Us-Everyone about it. Even if you yourself just pause in one quiet moment to take stock of your life’s joys, it’s a nice thing. So, happy Thanksgiving, and in honor of it, I’m going to share a piece of writing I stumbled upon that I had written down years ago in a journal — the words of Thoreau, writing to H.G.O. Blake, once a Unitarian minister, in December of 1856:

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