I'm over the Moon!

Okay, not really, but I just finished talking with Buzz Aldrin, who really has been over--and on--the Moon. How cool is that? I was interviewing him for the upcoming issue of Notes from the Horn Book, wherein we feature his and Wendell Minor's Look to the Stars.

Everybody has something that will get them talking, and for Mr. Aldrin it was SCUBA-diving.

March/April 2009 Horn Book Magazine

The Horn Book has a snow day today but our latest issue is out and, partly, up. We've posted an intelligently bristling argument from Farah Mendlesohn what's wrong with contemporary YA SF as well as veteran Joanna Rudge Long's thoughts on what to look for in a "Three Little Pigs." The print Magazine also includes Susan Fletcher's moving account of her epistolary friendship with Elvand, an Iranian writer and translator and we solicited stories of similar friendships from a handful of other authors for children. Catherine Murdock weighs in on the absence of mothers in children's books--it's A Good Thing--and Elizabeth Wein looks back in time. In better bookstores, bathrooms, and libraries now (or soon).

Palin/McCain for peace and quiet

Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go has won the Guardian's children's fiction prize. The book was published this month in the U.S. by Candlewick and will be reviewed in the November issue of the Horn Book Magazine. It's an SF novel about a society where people can hear each other think. Like that dude on Heroes!

When Worlds Collide

Our designer Lolly Robinson was spending a choir rehearsal break sitting in a Plymouth coffee shop and re-reading Shaun Tan's The Arrival, only to emerge and see this:


Lolly emailed me, "It made me wonder what other experiences like this people have had while still in the thrall of a children's book." It reminded me of when I saw Independence Day one summer day in New York, emerging afterwards into the full-on Manhattan Friday five o'clock rush hour just like the mad dash from the aliens the New Yorkers made in the movie. They ARE here. I also remember a train trip on a rainy day through a wooded portion of Connecticut while listening to an audiobook of The Fellowship of the Ring--full-on cognitive assonance!

New Notes, August 08

We've just emailed the latest issue of Notes from the Horn Book, which this month covers new books about school, nature study and space; some good recent chapter books, and five writers' (and an editor's) own summer reading choices. Sign up now!

And, especially for teachers, this issue provides a link to TeachingBooks.net that gives free access to Notes-related content (curricular connections, author videos, etc.) on their site. Lemme know how this works out for you.

Are They Here?

Does anyone else think it's kind of wild that the New York Times published an op-ed warning us to take UFO's more seriously? I mean, I will, I do, just strange to see it there.

The TV debut of the Teletubbies was not at all surprising to those of us who had read John Christopher's When the Tripods Came.