2005

So long, 2005! You've been an unexpectedly good year, so I'm reluctant to give you up. I hope your new sibling is just as kind.

Looking back (inspired by Susan at Chicken Spaghetti), I find my favorite children's books of 2005 have been entertaining, snappy reads. Nothing too philosophical here—just good clean fun.

In the middle-grade category, my top six are:

Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Sue Halpern, Introducing Sasha Abramowitz
Judy Goldschmidt, The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez
Linda Sue Park, Project Mulberry
Greg Leitich Smith, Tofu and T. Rex

Three picture books especially impressed me this year, two for younger kids and one for older children. For the youngest youngsters, I loved:

Mo Willems, Leonardo the Terrible Monster
and
Mo Willems, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale (okay, this one is from 2004 and by the same author, but it was new to us in 2005)

For older kids, check out Alison Lester's Are We There Yet?, a wonderful picture book about a family's six month journey around Australia.

Finally, I have to mention Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart's Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs. This is a book of genius. Gorgeous, complex, and detailed, buy it for anyone who appreciates beautiful things. The dinosaurs are almost beside the point.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Friday Odds and Ends

Interested in Carson Kressley's new children's book, You're Different and That's Super? Then check out this AP story in the LATimes.

Kressley is the fashion guy on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." And he has a new picture book for children. Take a deep breath and add him to the celeb-author list.

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Liz B. of A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy details what she likes about MetaxuCafe, including the fact we kidlit bloggers have our own category (Thanks, Bud Parr!) and that the site has brought her some traffic.

Michele at Scholar's Blog did not like the new Harry Potter film and she has some very good reasons why. Check out her post from December 29. (Read the comment thread as well--MetaxuCafe has sent her blog some new readers too.)

An Irish Artemis Fowl

The Irish Examiner reports that Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl is being translated into Irish.

Maire Nic Mhaolain, who translated Harry Potter Agus An Orchloch, is completing the translation for Puffin.

Thanks to Bookninja for the link.

The Misadventures of Maude March

Looking for a rip-roarin' adventure? Then give Audrey Couloumbis' The Misadventures of Maude March a whirl.

Eleven-year-old Sallie March's life is turned upside down when her aunt and guardian is shot on the wild streets of 1869 Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Sallie and her older sister Maude are taken in by a "kindly" pastor and are quickly put to work minding numerous children, cooking, and cleaning for the family. When an elderly suitor requests Maude's hand in marriage, the girls cut off their hair, steal a couple of horses, and head off for Independence, MO in search of long-lost Uncle Arlen.

On the road to Independence, the girls run into all sorts of trouble—snowstorms, outlaws, and wild animals. Most significantly, they run into Marion Hardley, the man who shot their aunt. Hardley goes by the name Joe Harden, who happens to be the outlaw hero of Sallie's favorite popular novels. Despite the fact Hardley orphaned the girls, they soon warm up to him: he's a charmer and experienced on the road. Unfortunately, he robs a bank in Des Moines and Maude, who followed Hardley into the bank, is in the wrong place at the wrong time. She becomes "Mad" Maude March, outlaw of the day and media darling.

The Misadventures of Maude March is more than an adventure story. Couloumbis plays with notions of fact and fiction in the media, literature, and life. Sallie, influenced by her favorite Western novels, attributes more to Marion Hardley as Joe Harden than he deserves. Maude becomes a media darling (to her disadvantage) until someone more glamorous commits a crime. I really enjoyed reading an adventure set in my current neck of the woods and highly recommend The Misadventures of Maude March to readers aged 8 and up. **

Check out Random House's Misadventures website, complete with information, activities, and historical information. You can even make your own WANTED poster here!

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**(I must admit, however, that one scene in the novel really troubled me, but I suppose its violence keeps with the 1869 Wild West.)

Tidbits

USAToday has published a couple of small articles related to children's books today.

The good news is that J.K. Rowling is dedicating 2006 to the writing of HP7. The AP piece quotes J.K. from her website:

• "I contemplate the task with mingled feelings of excitement and dread, because I can't wait to get started, to tell the final part of the story and, at last, to answer all the questions (Will I ever answer all of the questions? Let's aim for most of the questions); and yet it will all be over at last and I can't quite imagine life without Harry."

I have to say I can't quite imagine life without Harry as well. The books have been such an central part of my kids' lives and there are so many questions that have remained unanswered. I really want to know, for example, where's the rest of Harry's family? Why does/did Dumbledore have such a connection to Harry? Is Snape truly evil? Will Percy come back to the Weasleys?

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Bob Minzesheimer talks to Jeanne Birdsall, who admits to googling herself, for USAToday. Minzesheimer writes, "Jeanne Birdsall has received scores of great reviews for her debut children's novel, The Penderwicks. But her favorite comes from a third-grader who wrote, 'This book is about being a good listener even if you are a grown-up.'"

Birdsall found the review on the Northport-East Northport (N.Y.) Public Library site, which publishes reviews by children, "who are awarding their version of the Newberry Prize." Click here for the reviews by children of the Northport-East Northport Public Library.

Monday Shorts

Steve Chawkins investigates which is the wardrobe for the LA Times. The article begins:

• "You are a child returning from adventures with a lion and a witch in the magical land of Narnia when you tumble out of a wardrobe and you're staring at the secretary of the English department at Westmont College. Alternatively, you might pop out of a wardrobe and into a research library at Wheaton College outside Chicago, gaping at a clutch of C.S. Lewis scholars who, of course, would be gaping back at you."

Westmont and Wheaton Colleges each have one of C.S. Lewis' wardrobes and it isn't entirely clear which is the real life model.

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The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art has put together an exhibition of Dutch children's book illustrations. The exhibition, titled "Dutch Treats: Contemporary Illustration From the Netherlands," will be at the UBS Art Gallery in New York (1285 Avenue of the Americas) before moving to the Carle in March.

Katherine Shattuck covers the exhibition for the New York Times. The star of the exhibition is, of course, "Miffy's father" Dick Bruna. The works of Max Velthuijs, Jan Jutte, Fiep Westendorp, and Yvonne Jagtenberg are also featured. The event's curator has a larger message:

• 'We wanted to show very interesting children's books illustrators that are seen as normal artists in the Netherlands,' Truusje Vrooland-Löb, an expert on Dutch children's literature and the show's curator, said in a telephone interview from Amsterdam last week. 'Their work can hang on the wall as well as any other artwork.'

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas (and Happy Hanukkah) to all!

Santa brought quite a few good books this year including The Penderwicks, Fairyopolis, Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-Up Adaptation, and Dragonology Handbook.

For those of you still needing gift ideas (we still have New Year's ahead, a gift-giving holiday for half the family), check out Susan Faust's recommended "good, fun books about being bad" for SFGate.com. And, the Washington Post suggests Patricia C. Wrede's Book of Enchantments: Ten Tales of Wonder. Wrede, write the editors at the Post "mixes... love of fantasy with some laugh-out-loud funny scenes" and "with 10 stories, this seems a perfect book for winter break." Finally, Elizabeth Ward recommends books of poetry for kids of all ages for the Washington Post.

News from the U.K.

The U.S. news seems to have slowed some in the days leading up to Christmas, but there are a few interesting articles in the British press.

1) Jeremy Laurance reports for the Independent that Harry Potter has a positive effect on childhood injury levels. "Stephen Gwilym, an orthopaedic surgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, and colleagues investigated the impact of the books on accidental injuries to children at the peak of their use." And this is what they found:

• They found that in the two weekends when the latest Harry Potter books were launched - 21 June 2003 for The Order of the Phoenix and 16 July 2005 for The Half-Blood Prince - injuries to children fell to their lowest level.

Nice to see the kids are really reading. Sam Lister covers the study for the Times as well.

2) Dina Rabinovitch contributes a fascinating article to the Guardian. The opening of the article is thoughtful and beautiful. Rabinovitch writes:

• One of the many things I like about the children's authors I meet is the way they are living in their own fairytale right now. For years they've toiled, elves in the night, producing one finely crafted work after another, only to disappear in the cool daylight of the review pages - their imaginations unremarked-upon, their industry little noted. One book after 15 years from a respected adult author generates reams of copy; meanwhile, children's writers such as Michael Morpurgo think nothing of churning out three titles a year, weaving words into yarns with apparent effortlessness.

Rabinovitch's article is essentially an appreciation of Jan Pienkowski's The Fairy Tales (not yet published in the U.S.). She finds, after reading The Fairy Tales, "Because the void has finally been filled, it's possible to see exactly what has been missing all these years. And why it matters, even in these lush times, when there is surfeit of imagination all about and a thousand new tales for every old one." Read the article. It is an exceptional one in this year of good writing about kids literature.

3) Amanda Craig reviews her favorite Christmas picture books of the year for the Times.

The Famous Five

The Famous Five is tops in the U.K.

A YouGov poll of 2,688 adults determined the Famous Five series with its "middle class children who take pride in being 'jolly good sports'" was the favorite children's book or series of British readers. The top ten? Results are as follows:

1 Famous Five
2 Chronicles of Narnia
3 The Faraway Tree
4 The Hobbit
5 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
6 Black Beauty
7 Treasure Island
8 Biggles
9 Swallows and Amazons
10 Lord of the Rings

The poll was "commissioned to launch a drive by the National Literacy Trust, sponsored by Starbucks, to get 50,000 books for schools donated to Starbucks stores this Christmas."

John Ezard, writing for the Guardian, notes the adventures of the Famous Five were "fuelled by their inexhaustible addiction to ginger beer, lemonade and sandwiches." And I have to say that, as a child reader, I really appreciated Enid Blyton's loving attention to food. Every feast, every picnic is breathlessly detailed. Stolen chicken, stashed bottles of ginger ale, candies--all are given their due.

(Arthur Ransome also paid appropriate attention to food in his Swallows and Amazons series.)

Birdsall interview

Tracy Grant interviews Jeanne Birdsall for the Washington Post today. Here are some highlights:

• TG: Are you working on a sequel to "The Penderwicks"? JB: YES! I think I'm about halfway through. It's hard to tell because I work vaguely from start to finish. But I also find myself going back. Something will happen in Chapter 12 that will make me go back and change something in Chapter 3, which then means I need to change something in Chapter 6. It's a kneading process.
• TG: Why do you think "The Penderwicks" has been so successful?
  JB: When I sat down to write a children's book, the only path I understood was to write the kind of books that I loved as a child. So . . . I wrote from my heart and memory. It's a very child-centric book . . . and I think maybe that's what children are responding to. I was never interested in the books where the adults had a large role. I was interested in children having crazy adventures and figuring things out.

I really appreciate her response to the second questions. Kids books really do have to be about the children to be successful. An ever-present adult can really be annoying unless the adult is childlike as well.

"KidsPost," also in today's "Style" sections, provides more information about The Penderwicks author. Birdsall's neighbors include Jane Yolen and Eric Carle and her favorite food is macaroni and cheese.