Harper Collins Fall 2008 Librarian Preview

One day you’re in a Flatiron Building scarfing down brownies as fast as you can cram them in your mouth, the next day you’re with the good people of Harper Collins in an entirely different format.

First of all, the Coraline graphic novel should be hitting bookstore shelves in July of this year.  I was curious to see that the art will be by a P. Craig Russell.  I vaguely know him from his work on Gaiman’s Sandman series, so it’s not too surprising that he’d be tapped to do the GN of this novel (though I had kinda hoped that Dave McKean would try his hand).  No galleys of this were available, I’m afraid.  Galleys were available for The Graveyard Book, another novel by Gaiman for kids rather than teens or adults.  It’s one of those kid-raised-by-sweet-weirdoes stories that I’m rather fond of.  The cover is positively lovely as well.  Yum.

Now one book that I picked up out of a sense of "Eh, whot!  Whot, eh?" was Lemony Snicket’s new tiny picture book The Lump of Coal.  You may recall that Snicket came out with a bit of Christmastime fare last year through McSweeneys with the terribly marketed The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming.  Wasn’t a fan of that one myself, truth be told.  Something about the tone and the pictures didn’t gel.  Now Snicket has paired with his old partner in crime Brett Helquist and the result is much much better.  The Lump of Coal walks a delicate line between modern cynicism and honestly good storytelling.  It’s a delicate balancing act that (having read it quickly on my own) works, and I think readers will be very pleased with the outcome.

I already have my copy (next on my list) but in case you haven’t heard, Louise Erdrich’s newest book in her Birchbark House series is coming out and it’s called The Porcupine Year.  These books serve as a kind of alternative to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series, and I love ’em.  Finding good children’s fiction with Native American is near impossible some years.  Best of all, I’ve learned that Erdrich plans to write three more after this book, chronicling the life of Omakayas’s son and then another three for her grandchild.  Epic, eh? 

Table number two and the star of the show was Kevin Henkes (naturally).  No, Mr. Henkes himself wasn’t there personally but his upcoming book Old Bear proved to be just one of those books you love on sight.  Virginia Duncan and Steve Geck actually had on hand the physical dummy that Henkes turned in of the book, which was fun to page through.  The story is of a bear dreaming of different seasons as it hibernates, only to eventually wake up and find that Spring has arrived.  Very sweet and more than a touch lovely to boot.  I should mention that the books at this table consisted of a lot of Greenwillow fare, so there was much original art to enjoy. 

Ian Schoenherr’s Cat and Mouse is an interesting one to keep an eye on too.  With the teeniest brushstrokes imaginable, Schoenherr brings to life a cat and a mouse alongside three classic nursery rhymes.  What’s more, he’s somehow able to make a coherent story out of the lot.  I’m a cat person myself, so I was particularly partial to the kitty in this book, delicate stripes and all.

The problem with attending Greenwillow previews periodically is that you find yourself waiting for a really long period of time for cool books to come out.  One book that I’ve been anticipating since last fall is Carin Berger’s The Little Yellow Leaf.  Berger did the art for Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky, but I hope she won’t mind my saying that I liked this bit of autumnal fare better.  Using the bright colors cut from magazines (apparently J. Crew and Martha Stewart provide particularly nice shades and tones) the book is this amazing bit of meticulous collage-work above and beyond the usual slapdash fare.  Keep eyes peeled please.

Newbery Award winning author Lynne Rae Perkins has never really conformed to the usual rote roles her position might incline her to slot into.  Consider her newest picture book, The Cardboard Piano.  First of all, it stars Debbie.  Do you remember Debbie?  Debbie is the main character in All Alone in the Universe and Criss Cross.  That’s right.  Perkins has taken a character from a middle grade/YA novel, gone back in time, turned her into a kid, and put her into a picture book.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen an author do this to their own character before.  What’s more, the book will come accompanied by a DVD.  The DVD will then consist of real live kids reenacting the picture book’s story, to the accompaniment of Ms. Perkins’ own musical score.  How on earth do you characterize this kind of thing?  It’s just so interesting and odd that I guess I’ll just have to see the end product to judge how well it works.

Brandon Dorman is a god.  I mean you knew that, right?  He’s the kind of artist a publishing house is lucky to stumble onto once in a clear blue moon.  His next project, however, sounds like it will be hugely popular with the masses and perhaps make his name better known.  Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face and Other Poems consists of a massive collection of Jack Prelutsky poetry, some 200+ pages long.  It encompasses Prelutsky’s entire career and Dorman (who illustrated the man’s The Wizard to much public acclaim last year) has gone crazy with the art.  He somehow manages to bring to life critters and creatures that insist upon multiple takes and double takes.  At one point Steve Geck pointed out that with some illustrators you have to learn to trust them.  Because Mr. Dorman does much of his work on computers, he’ll send in these pretty rough sketches of what the final product will resemble, and his editors have to take it on faith that it’ll be brilliant.  Just the same, this looks like one of those books that’ll be requested by kids (and, more to the point, elementary school reading lists) for years and years.  Now could someone talk Dorman into doing the same with Shel Silverstein?  Just for kicks?

Table Three.  That would be Barbara Lalicki and Katherine Tegen then.  So I’m not a Mary Engelbreit fan myself.  Is that a kind of cardinal sin?  I almost think it is.  In any case the upcoming Mary Engelbreit’s Nursery Tales doesn’t lure me much, but I was intrigued to see that Leonard Marcus had written the Introduction.  The book is a collection of classic fairy tales and that’s fine.  I guess we haven’t seen one of these done by a big name in a while, and I was relieved to see that even in Engelbreit’s world the wolf still eats granny.  There was much said about the balance of scary images with funny images and the whole kerschmozzle is weighing in at 128 pages.  Interesting stuff, anyway.

With the book The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong I want you to help me come up with a term to describe this kind of jacket.  The name of the game these days is having covers where a character’s eyes have been cut out of the picture.  I blame The Gossip Girls for this particular trend, but how shall we name it?  The Half-Head Decapitation?  The Eyeless Wonder?  The latter has my vote, but feel free to chime in with terms of your own.  Once you start noticing them, you’ll never be able to escape. 

Apparently it’s so harrowing to look at, that they’ve rejiggered the entire structure.  Interestingly, I found the newer cover to be more frightening by what it doesn’t show, compared to this somewhat jovial monster-type fellow. 

Here’s a fun question.  How many female pop-up book artists can you name off the top of your head?  Go on.  As many as you like.  Not so easy, is it?  Well, a Ms. Patricia Fry is a student of Sabuda’s and she’s coming out with a Nutcracker this holiday season that I suspect will do very well for itself.  You know how you sometimes get those reference desk requests for "all" of one book series or another?  I’ve had girls come in wanting "all" our Nutcracker books.  If I had this one on hand, I’d definitely offer it up first.

Terry Pratchett’s new novel Nation arrived in my mail the other day but I haven’t picked it up yet.  By all accounts, it is brilliant.  They call it Terry’s masterpiece.  He himself has said something along the lines of "I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on a book."  With that in mind, you would think that they would stop shackling the man with terrible CGI covers.  First Wintersmith, now Nation.  So in a fit of pique I’m putting up the UK cover instead, which I like very much indeed.

I know very little about Spirit by J.P. Hightman.  By all accounts it’s just fun ghost-fighting fluff.  But the concept sounded so cool that I couldn’t help but extrapolate it in my mind.  It’s apparently about 17-year-old married ghost hunters in the past.  I envision them as the Nick and Nora of ghost hunting, though that’s probably too much to ask.  Still, how cool would that be, eh?

And now it’s the Margaret Anastas and Phoebe Yeh table.  Some interesting goodies here.  Jane Yolen has an upcoming biography of Johnny Appleseed with illustrations by Jim Burke.  The book illuminates a short ballad about the man with facts about the time period.  Sounds fun.  We actually haven’t had a new Appleseed book for our biography section lately.  Usually people just grab the Steven Kellogg one and go with that.  It’ll be nice to have something a little newer on the shelf.

In my library there is a Little Book Section.  This section contains those picture books that are made for small hands and get lost easily amongst the larger picture books.  One such book is a little lovely wonder called Come Back, Cat by Joan L. Nodset and illustrated by Steven Kellogg.  In 1973 it was even dedicated to Mimi Kayden, which is kind of cool.  Well, Kellogg has taken it upon himself to reillustrate the book into a larger format.  The illustrations are now done in a kind of homage to Ezra Jack Keats, which I thought was interesting.  Looks like it’ll make for a nice Fall title.

We’re in the final stretch and the presenters don’t even look tired.  Table Six, the final table of the day, contained Laura Geringer, Jill Santopolo, Karen Nagel, and Alyson Day.  And first on the menu?  If You Give a Cat a Cupcake by Laura Numeroff.  Aw yeah, Numeroff’s back, baby!  Of course, I don’t have to say much about this one.  The concept is pretty self-explanatory.

I have at least one, probably two copies of Mascot to the Rescue! by Peter David, illustrated by Colleen Doran in my home that I need to read.  The combination of graphic novel with prose novel isn’t that original, but how about graphic novel elements plus middle grade realistic fiction?  Definitely rarer.  With a professional comic book artist illustrating it the book sounds funny.  And if you’ve been following the Oz and Ends series on Robin from the Batman strips, you’ll probably get some of the in-jokes in this book.

Lisa Graff’s The Thing About Georgie is now new in paperback, and I must say that the new cover is a big improvement.  The old one just didn’t quite feel right to me.  Admittedly, putting feet on a cover is not exactly a new idea.  But because the untied shoelaces actually do apply to the plot, I’m going to allow them here on a technicality. 

Francesca Lia Block – You can say a lot of things about her, but boring she is not.  Her upcoming book of poetry How to (Un)cage a Girl features a gal on the cover who happens to be one of her MySpace friends/fans.  In fact, some of the poems in the book even talk about Ms. Block’s MySpace community.  Did I just blow . . . your  . . . mind?

Other than that, all that was left for the day was lunch which was tasty indeed.  After writing all this up my head is kinda close to exploding, so I can’t imagine how hard it is to present the same books six times in a row for ten minutes apiece.  Glad I’m on the receiving end.  And now, dear readers, so are you.

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