More fantastic books for older readers
Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst, McElderry, 14 years and up.
Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Feiwel, 12 years and up.
Diabolical by Cynthia Leitich Smith, Candlewick, 14 years and up.
The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff, Penguin/Razorbill, 14 years and up.

Snow daze
No Two Alike by Keith Baker, Beach Lane/Simon, 2–5 years.
Over and Under the Snow written by Kate Messner, illus. by Christopher Silas Neal, Chronicle, 3–6 years.
Perfect Snow by Barbara Reid, Whitman, 4–8 years.
Extra Yarn written by Mac Barnett, illus. by Jon Klassen, Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, 4–8 years.

Picture books for Presidents’ Day
George Washington’s Birthday written by Margaret McNamara, illus. by Barry Blitt, Schwartz & Wade/Random, 5–8 years.
Looking at Lincoln by Maira Kalman, Paulsen/Penguin, 5–8 years.
The Camping Trip that Changed America written by Barb Rosenstock, illus. by Mordicai Gerstein, Dial, 6–10 years.

On black history
We March by Shane Evans, Porter/Roaring Brook, 4–8 years.
Freedom’s a-Callin Me  written by Ntozake Shange, illus. by Rod Brown, Amistad/HarperCollins, 8–12 years.
To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement by Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Flash Point/Roaring Brook, 12 years and up.

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P.S. Don’t forget that you will be able to watch the award announcements live at 8:45 AM EST on the 23^rd. Visit ALSC for details about the webcast.

Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

The post From the Editor – January 2012 appeared first on The Horn Book.

In George Washington’s Birthday: A Mostly True Tale, Margaret McNamara debunks the famous cherry tree fable plus others, intermingling them with real facts to imagine Washington’s seventh birthday. Boxed notes distinguish truth from fancy, and George’s page-long first-person concluding note sorts out the truth once again. His last comment brings us neatly around to the holiday: “My mama was right — nobody forgets my birthday anymore!” Barry Blitt’s energetic pen and watercolor art is appropriately lighthearted for this good introduction to Washington — and to a healthy skepticism toward unexamined information. (5–8 years)

“Who was he?” a young girl asks herself of our sixteenth president in Maira Kalman’s Looking at Lincoln. At the library, she discovers facts but gets “lost in the photos of his unusual face. I stared at one. I could look at him forever.” The narrative lists some basic facts about Lincoln’s life and then moves to the narrator’s childlike musings. The story gradually becomes more sophisticated, introducing war and slavery, and concludes with Lincoln’s death. A gloomy funeral scene is a sobering, even startling, note among the profusion of bright gouache illustrations. (5–8 years)

“What if everyone owned the wilderness?” In The Camping Trip That Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Our National Parks, Barb Rosenstock tells the story of two visionaries and their one encounter camping in the Yosemite wilderness in 1903. By the end of the trip, Roosevelt had been persuaded to create “national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and national forests.” Mordicai Gerstein brings his usual verve to the expedition. This is a compelling account and a fine example of an effective government responding to a vital need in a timely manner. (6–10 years)

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Shane W. Evans introduces Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic march on Washington for very young listeners and readers in We March. Opening with a family waking that morning, the story covers each stage of the event — from preparation (praying at church, making signs, boarding a bus) to the crowded march and Dr. King’s speech at the Lincoln Memorial — while simple, small details anchor it to a small child’s perspective. Quietly dramatic illustrations bring context to the spare text, and an author’s note fills in historic details. (4–8 years)

Spanning the entire freedom-seeking journey, Ntozake Shange’s poems in Freedom’s a-Callin Me begin with a man in a cotton field, dreaming of freedom, and end with three newly free African Americans in Canada posing for a photograph with white abolitionists, Rod Brown’s tension-filled paintings, most of which are necessarily dark (as escapes happened at night), accompany each poem and perfectly complement the sense of urgency in the text. (8–12 years)

In To the Mountaintop: My Journey Through the Civil Rights Movement, journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, one of the first two students to successfully desegregate an all-white college in the South, weaves her own experience into a larger history of the U.S. civil rights movement. Hunter-Gault chronicles, year-by-year, events of the movement that paved a way for Barack Obama’s groundbreaking election. New York Times reproductions, photographs from the period, and extensive, informative back matter nicely supplement this gracefully written history of an important struggle. (12 years and up)

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In Keith Baker’s No Two Alike, two little red birds explore a snowy landscape. Rhyming text coaxes readers to look carefully at the illustrations and to notice variation in the pictures — and, by extension, in the natural world: “No two snowflakes are alike, / almost, almost . . . / but not quite.” At the end of the book, children will want to go back and view each picture again looking for similarities and differences. (2–5 years)

“Under the snow is a whole secret kingdom, where the smallest animals stay safe and warm,” a grownup tells a child while cross-country skiing in Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner. They see a squirrel, a mouse, and other small creatures slip into warm crevasses just below the snow while aboveground a horned owl, a red fox, and a hare wait patiently for signs of dinner. Block-print-looking illustrations by Christopher Silas Neal contrast the cool tones of winter with the forest creatures’ warmth. (3–6 years)

Perfect Snow by Barbara Reid follows two boys as they celebrate a big snowfall. Small, delicately drawn comic panels in ink and watercolor help move the action along, as the smaller boy struggles to build a snowman while the bigger boy tries to build a fort; the two end up combining forces to create “The World’s Greatest Totally Massive Snowman Fort!” Reid captures their exuberance; her Plasticine illustrations alongside the comic panels make it all look real. (4–8 years)

The star of Mac Barnett’s Extra Yarn finds a box containing yarn of every color. Young Annabelle knits herself a sweater, then she makes one for her dog. Soon she’s knit colorful garments for everyone in her snowy, dreary town. An archduke steals her box of never-ending yarn, but the magic doesn’t work for him — and all ends well with the town colorful and happy. Jon Klassen’s digitally created illustrations help bring Barnett’s clever yarn full circle. (4–8 years)

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Sixteen-year-old vampire Pearl discovers she can withstand sunlight after an encounter with a unicorn in Sarah Beth Durst’s Drink, Slay, Love. Her family sends her up to the local high school to procure refreshments (i.e., students) for the upcoming king’s feast. Pearl becomes attached to perky Bethany and gorgeous Evan, but her violent subterranean life ultimately forces her to choose sides. A lively antihero, Pearl is fierce, smart, and sarcastic in this sweet, unusual romance. Durst creates an original, tough-as-nails brood of vampires…who will leave you thirsty for more. (14 years and up)

In Marissa Meyer’s debut novel Cinder, the first book in the Lunar Chronicles series, teenage cyborg mechanic Linh Cinder is treated as subhuman while living with her evil guardian stepmother and two stepsisters. A chance encounter with New Beijing’s Prince Kai changes Cinder’s life forever. As Cinder aids in Kai’s search for the missing heir to the Lunar throne, she and the prince are drawn to each other. Add in plague, androids, hovercrafts, and a palace ball for a sci-fi/fairy tale mash-up that is out-of-this-world fantastic. (12 years and up)

Diabolical is the fourth book in Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Tantalize series. When guardian angel Zachary teams up with wolfboy Kieren to make a daring rescue at the mysterious Scholomance Academy, they find themselves locked in and joining forces with an eclectic group of students to face down their demonic instructor, an axe-wielding caretaker, and the very hounds of hell. The Harry Potter–worthy final battle between good and evil — with a welcome dose of devilish humor added in — make this installment an expertly woven narrative, bringing new readers up to speed while satisfying invested fans with a happily-ever-after ending. (14 years and up)

The daughter of a demon and a fallen angel living in Pandemonium, one of Hell’s cities, Daphne is the unlikely heroine in Brenna Yovanoff’s The Space Between. But when her favorite brother, Obie, disappears on Earth, Daphne must venture from her protected life to the gritty sludge of Earth to find him. Aided by Truman, a self-destructive mess of a boy, Daphne must scramble to understand Earth as she attempts to complete her mission. And thanks to alternating narration by Daphne and Truman, the teenagers’ hard-earned love unfolds compellingly. (14 years and up)

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© 2011 by Jason Stemple

For a writer so notoriously prolific (closing in on three hundred titles, according to Wikipedia) Jane Yolen is notable for maintaining a high standard of writing across many genres, including poetry, picture book texts, and fiction of both the realistic and fantastic kinds. Her latest novel, Snow in Summer, is a fresh blend of historical fiction and fairy tale, a “Snow White” set in 1930s West Virginia.

1. The world has probably forgotten more folktales than it remembers — what do you think makes the difference?

Jane Yolen: Three things really (don’t you love fairy tale conventions, like the rule of three!):

First, cultures are born, grow, thrive, and die. And if they die before developing a written language, there may only be shards of story, or corrupted bits of story left.

Second: some stories simply do not or cannot live outside their cultures. They are so culture-specific that they don’t travel well.

Third: some stories are intrinsically more interesting than others, and even added to and/or changed by different tellers (think Cinderella, think Disney), they still remain in the public consciousness.

2. Snow in Summer’s heroine Summer has the nicest fairy godmother–figure in Cousin Nancy. Was there a Cousin Nancy in your childhood?

JY: Good grief, I never thought of it like that. However, yes, there was, and I expect that means my cousin/aunt (by marriage, but she felt like a blood relative) Honey Knopp was who Nancy is patterned after. Not that my parents were like Stepmama and Summer’s father. Not at all. But Honey was the one who taught me about conscience and Quakerism, liberal politics, hootenannies, and who struck the flint of my poetry. Meanwhile my father said, “Your poems are nice, Jane, but you can’t make a living that way.”

3. How does a longtime fantasy writer feel about being in a publishing world that can feel like all-fantasy-all-the-time?

JY: Well, it’s getting harder and harder to make the unreal seem real. Or rather make the stories’ magical elements seem . . . magical . . . when we have things like faster-than-sound travel, e-books, bestsellers about telling your child to go the f**k to sleep, 3-D movies, multiple dystopian novels battling for top space on the bestseller lists, Avatar blue people running along tree limbs, Kindles kindling sparks, and sparkly vampires.

4.Do you believe in magic?

JY: I believe there are prestidigitators who can do card tricks and saw-the-woman-in half tricks. I believe there are politicians who can make us believe up is down and wrong is right. I believe there are preachers who try to sell us a mess of pottage.

And then I believe that an owl in flight, a hawk in stoop, an otter rising out of the duckweed, a triple rainbow over the Isle of May, the New Jersey skyline as seen from the Highline in Manhattan on a night of the full moon, the small greenings of spring, honeybees on a blossom, and a newborn’s finger curled around mine are small everyday miracles, another word for ordinary magic. And that I believe in.

Oh — and if anyone can show me a real fairy, or a ghost, or a unicorn, I am so there . . . .

5.  If you could keep a single folktale or fairy tale in your pocket, what would it be?

JY: A single one? Impossible. But three, possible: “Brother and Sister” (a Russian tale); “Beauty and the Beast,” from the French (only I want the prince to remain older and seasoned); and “Iron John” from the Grimms.

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