Jacob's Java?

This past Sunday, Debbie Reese's blog featured her friend and colleague Jean Mendoza's trip to Forks and La Push. With photos! The one thing I like about those books is the weather; Jean Reports that no Cullens were seen on her trip, probably due to the abundant sunshine.

Claire Takes a Bite

out of New Moon.

I guess it wasn't all candlelight and butter churns

Or maybe it was, and that was the trouble.

An object lesson in metaphorical consonance

The Silence of the Bunnies

Now this could haunt my dreams:




We've been entrusted with the care of Ruby for a couple of weeks. She may look like a rabbit but behaves more like a Sphinx, her silent inscrutability causing me to project all manner of implacable menace into her unblinking gaze. Dogs and cats, you know where you are with them. Not Ruby.

While it seems like every chapter book now contains, like the Obligatory Sex Scene of every 1970s adult potboiler, a de rigueur Escape of the Class Pet, the care of caged beasts were not a part of my elementary education. I can't imagine being able to concentrate on the SRA box with something like this staring at me all day long.
















(Photos by Richard, a braver man than I.)

Complete with pop-up nuns but no Nazis

"Maria always said that 'girls in white dresses' were among her favorite things, but she never thought she would be one of them!"--from The Sound of Music: A Classic Collectible Pop-Up, forthcoming in August from S&S.

Something to whet your appetites

Claire reviews the movie Twilight.

The happy couple

Aren't they bee-yoo-ti-ful?

Yeah, I only have the one suit

The fathers-of-the-groom walking up the aisle at Ethan and Becca's wedding in Sedona last Saturday. The monsoon took down the chuppah but we all soldiered on, and there was nary a drop during the ceremony. The officiant said that there was an ancient Sedona tradition (uh-huh) that rain on a wedding day was good luck, but come on--what else are they going to say?

There's a thousand library trustees just like her.

I wouldn't elect Sarah Palin to anything, but this old censorship charge is really reaching. As far as we know, as mayor of Wasilla she asked the public library director three times about the possibility of removing "objectionable" books from the collection. Three times the director said no. (Positively biblical!) Then Palin tried to fire the director but changed her mind. Unless that former director (who is not talking) tells us otherwise, we have no reason to believe that Palin's request went beyond the hypothetical.

This is actually pretty typical of people who get power--and three-year-olds, come to think of it. They want to see how far they can push it. Mayors, school superintendents and library trustees alike are often surprised to discover that they don't get to personally decide on library purchases or discards. It's the librarian's job to explain to them why this is a bad idea and arguably illegal.

I'm reminded of the time when Chicago aldermen removed--at gunpoint--a satiric portrait of the late Harold Washington from an exhibition at the School of the Art Institute. THAT was censorship. But just asking? Nope.

Tasha Tudor

I met her once--she was holding court at a Little, Brown party at an ALA, dressed to the nines in an old-fashioned gown and lace in her hair, seated regally in a wing chair while we gathered at her feet. We commemorate her passing with an article she wrote for the Horn Book more than sixty years ago.

The wedding . . .

the cake . . .



our visit to my friend Jo . . .



and her dog Whipper . . .


and running across the Golden Gate Bridge . . .



and dinner with old college friends Gary and Georgie (and Gary's fiance Matt).



I WON'T be sharing the pictures Richard took of me in the motel pool, and I promise to be on-topic tomorrow.

In lieu of a gift

I'm guessing they're too busy to read this but maybe you're not.

Star of the Day

I sang this song forty years ago on Community Auditions, a low-rent Boston precursor of American Idol. But Debbie makes me realize why I didn't win.

Going down a dark hall

I'd like to second Elizabeth's hopes (see comments in Monday's post) for a Gothic revival. I've just finished listening to Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, narrated by Tony Britton. When I told friends I was reading it, to a woman they started talking about their adolescent (around 10 up, I think) mania for Du Maurier. I vividly remember reading her short-story collection Kiss Me Again, Stranger (could be a Mary Downing Hahn title) and then the collection Don't Look Now, with the title story providing the story for an astoundingly sexual movie in 1967. Then Rebecca, in college, and that's all.

I can see how Jamaica Inn could be kind of pulse-pounding for a young teen: there's the exciting melodrama involving the drunken, dangerous uncle (the heroine, Mary Yellan, thinks he's a smuggler, but it's worse) and then there's Mary's rather anachronistically saucy badinage with the brooding love interest, and lots of semi-veiled musings on "instinct," which Mary keeps trying to tell herself is "love" but Du Maurier, semi-misogynistically, won't let her. The atmosphere and scene-painting are as good as Rebecca--it's the same landscape (Cornwall) a century earlier.

Is Du Maurier still doing things for teens?

It's Following Me!

I'm home from ALA and the Caldecott considerations only to bump back into the Newbery: Gary Schmidt and a gaggle of his Calvin College students are currently navigating their way to our offices. They are all in town this month for a course on "The New England Saints," (Hawthorne, Dickinson, etc.) so I'm guessing this afternoon's visit must be a very extracurricular activity. Or maybe Gary sees us as his lucky charm--the last time he did this was the day his Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy was named a Newbery Honor.

I did a little bit of podcast reporting from the awards press conference we hope to have up for you by the end of the week.

Magnum Opera

When Renee Fleming announced that upon consideration she would not, in fact, be singing Norma at the Met (or anyplace else), my first thought was, good call, Renee, but my second was to wonder if writers have any equivalent kind of challenge.

Bellini's Norma is something of a Mount Everest for sopranos. She's an allegedly virginal Druid priestess who has in fact been getting it on with with one of the occupying Romans with two children resulting. Then she finds out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her with her number-one handmaiden, Adalgisa. They sing a duet of "Does He Love You (the Way He Loves Me)?" later popularized by Reba McEntire and Linda Davis. Then Norma thinks about killing the children but instead decides to kill herself, and the boyfriend, realizing how good he had it, joins her in self-immolation.

It's passionate stuff, as you can see, but the challenge comes from marrying the drama with the sheer technical difficulty of Bellini's bel canto music--lots of fast scales, trills and other coloratura magic coupled with tons of close harmony. You need a big but agile voice and those are rare. There haven't been any hugely acclaimed Normas since Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland (although I've been hearing good things about a recent Edita Gruberova recording). But every big-girl soprano has it in her landscape if not in her sights: will I do it? Can I do it? Will I disgrace myself? etc.

But writers have to make it up for themselves every time; we don't say, "yeah, Holes was great, but when's he going to write Walk Two Moons?" I do know that children's writers, particularly, face the "so when are you going to write a real book" question, but only from amateurs. Is there a mountain a writer is expected to climb? Do you feel the need to write a Big Book? We'll leave the question of whether you should kill yourself, your boyfriend, your best friend, or your children for another time.

Meg Cabot as Alistair Cooke

Meg Cabot brings an American classic to life.

A reader requests . . .

. . . a "children's lit. guide to Boston." She'll be visiting from Australia next month and wants to know what children's-book places she should try and see. I don't get out much, but of course you can't miss the ducklings, and while you're there you can see the original address of the Horn Book at 270 Boylston Street. Some excellent contemporary bookshops for boys and girls include The Children's Book Shop in Brookline Village and the Curious George store in Harvard Square.

J.L. Bell at Boston 1775 could probably be called upon to point out some of the more historical connections; I'm personally grateful to the Freedom Trail for the time I got lost on the way to work and it led me right to the Horn Book's (former) door.

Moving a bit further afield, don't miss the Little Women stronghold in Concord, and I would urge a day trip to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst--catch up with dear, demented Emily while you're there.