{"id":1822,"date":"2009-10-29T00:01:25","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T06:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1822"},"modified":"2009-10-29T00:01:25","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T06:01:25","slug":"name-that-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1822","title":{"rendered":"Name That Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(Click to enlarge spread.)<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

I’ll be back next week with a continuation of this post<\/a><\/strong>, the Men of Children’s Lit and What They’re Up to Now (my unofficial title). Instead, I’m making a quick art-and-poetry stop today with some spreads from J. Patrick Lewis’<\/a><\/strong> new title, Spot the Plot: A Riddle Book of Book Riddles<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, illustrated by Lynn Munsinger (Chronicle Books, August 2009). Lewis, on each page, is riddling us, quizzing children—and children’s lit aficionados—on children’s titles: “Her hair’s the stairs,” pictured above, is my favorite one. With answers listed in the back, you’ve got Charles Perrault’s Cinderella<\/em>; Charlotte’s Web<\/em> (“Do you know this spider, \/ this spiderweb writer?…”); Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio<\/em> (“Toy \/ boy \/ cries, \/ lies. \/ Nose \/ grows.”); and Doreen Cronin’s Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type<\/em> (“No bedding? No butter. \/ No blankets? No udder.”)… Plus much more. This is for delighting and challenging the bookworm children in your lives. Or riddle-lovers. (Hey, I live with a five-year-old, learning the art of knock-knock jokes and riddles. It’s painful sometimes. She’s even fond now of saying “Get it? DOUBLE GET IT?!” for jokes that are hardly jokes. Ah, it’s a challenge, this learning-of-wordplay. She’ll get there.)<\/p>\n

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Munsinger’s watercolors—featuring two children, dressed as detectives, on the hunt for answers—are warm and inviting. And a perfect match for the light-hearted fun of the title. In a clever move (hey, can you blame ’em?) on the part of author or illustrator or editor (I just dunno), one of the riddled titles is Helen Lester’s<\/a><\/strong> Tacky the Penguin<\/em>, illustrated by Munsinger herself. Perhaps the inclusion of that riddled title is Lewis’ own homage to Munsinger’s work. <\/p>\n

Here are two more spreads. Enjoy. Find the nearest child and quiz away:<\/p>\n

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“Imagine a castle \/ without any towers, \/ or a thundercloud bursting \/ without any showers. \/ Now imagine a bull \/ who loved only flowers. \/ One day he went wild \/ (The cause: a bee sting!<\/strong><\/font><\/font>) \/ So they brought him to fight \/ matadors in the ring. \/ Instead he sat smelling \/ the flowers of spring. \/ You can’t make a bull \/ always follow the herd. \/ The very idea is \/ completely absurd.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread.)<\/center> <\/p>\n

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“The sky shook, \/ the wind tossed \/ me in the air. \/ Toto<\/strong><\/font><\/font>-ly lost, \/ I came upon \/ three strangers. We \/ kept each other \/ company. \/ Adventures followed \/ without pause, \/ and it was all, well, \/ just bec-Oz<\/strong><\/font><\/font>.”<\/em>
(Click to enlarge spread.)<\/center><\/p>\n

* * * * * * *<\/center><\/p>\n

SPOT THE PLOT: A RIDDLE BOOK OF BOOK RIDDLES. Copyright \u00a9 2009 by J. Patrick Lewis. Illustrations \u00a9 2009 by Lynn Munsinger. Published by Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Click to enlarge spread.) I’ll be back next week with a continuation of this post, the Men of Children’s Lit and What They’re Up to Now (my unofficial title). Instead, I’m making a quick art-and-poetry stop today with some spreads from J. Patrick Lewis’ new title, Spot the Plot: A Riddle Book of Book Riddles, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}