The Horn Book

Your words, Nate’s mouth

Roger Sutton — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:27:03 +0000

Big Nate: Comix by U! (based on the books by Lincoln Peirce; HarperCollins and Night & Day Studios, December) is a kind of Colorforms set for new media starring Nate Wright, a sixth-grade antihero who makes Greg Heffley look like a wimpy kid. In this app, Nate’s fans and budding playwrights press-and-place a variety of characters, templates, settings, props and speech-balloon options to create their own brief Big Nate comics. Budding comics artists (like Nate himself) might sneer because there is no drawing involved at all: just choose a blank template or a “story starter,” choose a few characters from the Big Nate pantheon, and start ‘em talking. So this:

becomes this:

Seven characters are on offer (Nate, Gina, Francis, Jenny, Teddy, Mrs. Godfrey, and Spitsy the dog), each one in at least a few poses and two sizes, regular and close-up. Backgrounds include school, home, and park; various props and sound effects provide comic prompts, possibilities, and punctuation. Comics can be saved and shared; all of the available options mix and match with drag-drop ease, and they provide just enough structure for users intimidated by a blank canvas. Just what trouble can you get Nate into?

Review of We March

Betty Carter — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:20:07 +0000

We March" width="170" height="219" />We March
by Shane W. Evans;  illus. by the author
Preschool, Primary Porter/Roaring Brook 32 pp.
1/12 978-1-59643-539-1 $16.99
Many young children know there was a march on Washington a long time ago and that Martin Luther King Jr. gave a famous speech that day. Some know why the march took place; fewer still know how it happened. Using a minimalist text (no more than ten words per page) as he employed in Underground (rev. 1/11), Evans covers the last two points. The how-we-march thread is the strongest and most understandable to very young listeners and readers. A mother and father rouse their two children from bed, leave their house, pray at their local church, make signs, board a bus, march on the Mall, and listen to Dr. King speak at the Lincoln Memorial. Small touches, such as the father tying his son’s shoes and the mother buttoning her daughter’s sweater (the march began on an unseasonably cool morning), clearly anchor the story within the experiences of a small child. Quietly dramatic full-bleed, double-page illustrations bring context to the simple text. “We work together,” for example, captions the local church members making signs. The book begins with a family of four; the number of marchers increases page by page, deliberately showing the power of the larger community to make its voice heard. An author’s note, aimed at an older audience, fills in details of the march on Washington and the civil rights movement.

Celebrating a Wrinkle

Lolly Robinson — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:08:16 +0000

A couple of weeks ago Roger let me out of the office to attend the big 50th anniversary event for A Wrinkle in Time in NYC. I was going to post about this along with a piece on the new book design, but time’s moving on, so watch for a separate interview with Molly Leach about the book design next week.

Lots of bloggers have written about this event already, but it was truly a privilege to be there. Betsy Bird acted as M.C. and moderator, smoothing out what could have been some serious wrinkles given the time constraints and the varied cast of speakers:

One of Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughters
A panel discussion with Lois Lowry, Katherine Paterson, Rebecca Stead, and R. L. Stine
Jane Curtin reading from the book
A high school’s dramatic reading of a different passage from the book
Leonard Marcus reading from HIS upcoming biography of L’Engle

So, wow!

Multimedia was used as an interstitial element before and between all of the above, starting with this to-die-for “90-second-Newbery” from James Kennedy:

The sold-out house, at least 1/3 full of kids, loved this! They also showed Macmillan’s new book trailer and a slideshow with audio from interviews with L’Engle and photos taken throughout her life.

It was hard to tell how many people in the audience were there for Wrinkle and how many were there to get books signed by members of the panel. R. L. Stine admitted that he only read the book a week ago, and none of the panelists really knew L’Engle, though Paterson met her a few times and felt intimidated. But Stead is and was a die-hard fan of the book, as anyone who has read When You Reach Me might have guessed. What I found most interesting about the panel discussion was the way all of them managed to praise the book’s emotional appeal to kids while hinting that it might not stand up to in-depth critical appraisal. I found this refreshing, and it’s a good lesson for all of us. Nothing will ever sway my devotion to Meg and her family, but it has taken me almost 20 years to get over the feeling of let-down when I re-read this book as adult and found it lacking in a literary sense.

Happily, I’ve gained perspective as I age and now have no qualms about celebrating a book that has profoundly affected so many children, including those us who now wear wrinkles of our own.

Before the event, the line for tickets extended to the end of the block.

Some of L'Engle's relatives signed posters and posed for pictures after the event.

New blog on the block

Roger Sutton — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:53:45 +0000

Horn Book alum Alvina Ling helps kick off the Children’s Book Council’s new blog CBC Diversity (And thank you, Shelftalker, for pointing me to it.)

Ripperology: Saucy Jack is back

Cynthia K. Ritter — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:35:20 +0000

Jack the Ripper has been creeping into children’s literature recently: Gordon Korman included him in his 2011 Titanic trilogy (Scholastic). (Incorporating a Ripper mystery aboard the famed ship now marking the 100^th anniversary of its sinking? That should sell a few books.) Last September saw the release of the first book in Maureen Johnson’s exciting new Shades of London series, The Name of the Star (Putnam), a modern-day story combining paranormal activity and a Ripper-esque murder mystery. For the Horn Book Magazine’s March 2012 issue I reviewed Stefan Petrucha’s Ripper (Philomel, March), a turn-of-the-century steampunk re-visioning of Ripper lore, in which the fourteen-year-old protagonist discovers his father is the infamous serial killer. Amy Carol Reeves’s paperback mystery set in 1888 Whitechapel is also titled Ripper (Flux, April) and involves Saucy Jack, psychics, and a secret immortal group.

Is this a new trend, or is it just coincidence that multiple Ripper books have been released lately? Barry Lyga’s new book I Hunt Killers (Little, Brown, April) seems to take some cues from the popular TV show Dexter. Perhaps these Ripper books are inspired by the show as well. Any other idea about what’s sparking this newfound interest in the notorious Whitechapel serial killer?

Are books about serial killers the successors to the paranormal craze? The children’s book market can be as methodical yet unpredictable as Jack himself was—I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Do you know of other Ripper books in the pipeline?

What Would Mickey Do?

Roger Sutton — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:57:30 +0000

At a preconference in Anaheim this June, ALA is offering you tips on how to turn your library into a Magic Kingdom™. No, you first, I insist.

This is a very strange list

Roger Sutton — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:29:46 +0000

USA Today and Scholastic Parent & Child bring you the 100 Greatest Books for Kids. Does anyone know how this list was put together? It’s an odd mix of classic titles, contemporary comers, and also-rans. And, what’s this I see, no Harriet the Spy? FINKS

Dorothy, how does that make you feel?

Elissa Gershowitz — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:41:50 +0000

feel?" width="108" height="166" />The formidable Kenneth Kidd explores the entwined history of children’s literature and psychoanalysis in Freud in Oz: At the Intersection of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature (Univ. of Minnesota, November). Essays include “Three Case Histories: Alice, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz,” “’Maurice Sendak and Picturebook Psychology,” and “T Is for Trauma: The Children’s Literature of Atrocity.” The book, with its extensive endnotes, thorough bibliography (The Horn Book makes a cameo), and well-organized index, is a psychoanalytic literary critic’s dream.

feel?" width="105" height="163" />On a related note (sort of), I’m reading Out of Oz (Morrow, November), the last in Gregory Maguire’s cycle of adult books that began with Wicked. Has anyone psychoanalyzed those? Galinda and Elphaba: more than friends? Liir and Nor: mommy issues? Animals and animals: identity crisis? Master’s thesis, anyone?

Ebooks, schmeebooks

Roger Sutton — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:34:21 +0000

After wrapping up our March special issue on books in the digital era, a meeting about Horn Book web strategy, and another meeting to tour the virtual space that will host an upcoming SLJ event about YA books (this summer; I’ll keep you posted), I’m feeling completely pixelated. I recognize that I have an imagination that turns rather too easily to the apocalyptic, but does anybody else worry that a) we’ll be completely fucked if the electricity goes out and b) (slightly more reasonably) that once we are reading everything on a screen, books as we know them will cease to exist? I know, humankind’s need for Story, blah blah blah, but I think the current thinking and/or worries about ebooks apply only to a transitional moment. Once we are reading everything on screens, what will we want to read? I assume the alphabet is too broadly useful to go away anytime soon, and people will still read, but will they read, say, novels (themselves a product of a certain stage of technology)? Twenty years ago, you could hold a book in your lap. Now you can have the whole world there, whose virtual nature will only become more real. What will make you choose to read a book?

Conferences and Events

Horn Book — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:29:07 +0000

April 2012

Presented by the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, A Sense of Wonder: Stories of Nature, Science & History is a one-day conference to be held on Thursday, April 5, for teachers and school librarians. Speakers will include Sy Montgomery, Wendell Minor, Anita Silvey and Catherine Thimmesh. For more information, see the professional development page on the Library’s web site at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education/Teachers/Professional-Development.aspx