Librarian Preview: Simon & Schuster (Summer 2010)

Which brings us to Cute Pet Book #2: Where Is Tippy Toes? by Betsy Lewin.  Don’t even bother playing the I-won’t-be-charmed-by-this-book-game.  Just give up.  Lewin already proved that she could do superb cats when she illustrated Karla Kuskin’s So What’s It Like to Be a Cat?  With this book little die-cuts reveal the small feline.  It’s an early reader interactive book.  Awwww.  Kitty!

Can’t quite figure out a couple of things when it comes to George Ella Lyon and Lynne Avril’s The Pirate of Kindergarten. #1: Why has no one written a title like that before? Tis awesome. #2: Why has a book about a kid with double vision and, by extension, an eyepatch never been turned into a book where the kid pretended to be a pirate? Or perhaps it has been. Inform me masses!

Fans of Susan Fletcher and, more specifically, her Dragon Chronicle books will be thrilled to pieces to hear that the series is being rereleased with all new covers. The series is basically like those Anne McCaffrey Dragonsong books but without the whole Pern backstory. Speaking of which . . . could we rerelease the McCaffrey Pern books for teens now? I mean, the kids who love Eragon but are now YA could definitely love ’em to death. Failing that, could we rerelease the Menolly Dragonsong books with illustrations by, oh I dunno, Tony DiTerlizzi? Just a thought.

Nice, right? I haven’t been keeping up with the Alice books since she went on teen on us but basically this one’s about neo-Nazis, inappropriate student/teacher relationships, and college applications. Whoo-whee! They say that Naylor is only doing a few more and then the series is over. I don’t buy it. Can’t you see her writing chick lit Alice tales for the adult set? Absolutely you can. I’ve been waiting for years for there to be a children to teen to adult series. Now’s the time.

Okay. Here’s the good stuff. While at mid-winter ALA I spotted a small poster saying that the S&S booth had some new Jon Scieszka novels in its possession. So I rushed over, bugged the nearest employee (who was literally on her hands and knees working hard), and she thrust Spaceheadz into my greedy grasping digits. Which… I have yet to read. Sorry! It’s not out until June! Anywho, now that Scieszka has all this post-ambassadorial time on his hands, I hope we’ll be seeing more of this kind of stuff. The premise behind the book is that three aliens decide to disguise themselves on earth so as to save the world. Think 3rd Rock From the Sun. The only way to save the world, however, is to convince 3,400,001 children to BE SPHDZ. The catch? Two of the aliens are now kids, and their leader is a hamster. Worse still, they’ve befriended a kid who will need some convincing to help them in their quest. All the websites in the book exist, but it doesn’t get all 39 Cluesish on you and demand that you go online to continue the plot or anything. And there’s an extra bonus chapter that shows what would have happened if the normal schoolkid had decided NOT to help. I suspect it doesn’t end well. Oh. And the book is anti-advertising. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

Don’t really want to tell you much about it since the image is just so well done. But I should probably mention that it’s by Stuart Gibbs (a screenwriter dude) and is about a boy who lives in the biggest zoo in the world. It’s just your average everyday hippo murder mystery. I definitely want to read this one, whatever the case. Not that I have anything against hippos, you understand.

I like that Courtney Sheinmel. I’ve been a bad little blogger and I’ve failed to review her, but maybe I’ll be able to when it comes to her new book Sincerely: Sincerely, Sophie; Sincerely, Katie. As they said at the preview, Courtney has "a real ear for middle graders".

And at long last here we can find Adorable Pet Book #3. Dogs Don’t Do Ballet.  Can I confess something to you?  Generally speaking I am not a fan of pugs.  Dog breeds come and go but pugs remain ugly.  OH yeah!  I said it!  I know you can pull out the old they’re-so-ugly-they’re-cute excuse (and indeed Dan Yaccarino did quite nicely for himself when he played off of that idea in Unlovable) but I care not.  They ain’t my cup of tea.  You know what else isn’t my cup of tea?  Books where a random animal decides it wants to dance ballet.  There are, generally speaking, 58 billion picture books out there with that plot.  So my question to you today is, how in tarnation is it that I’m loving Dogs Don’t Do Ballet?  It goes against all my natural instincts and yet I’ve totally fallen for this one.  It’s a purchase from S&S UK, and I can’t help but think that with this cover it’s about to sell big big big time.  If an anti-pug/ballet picture book gal like me is charmed, imagine what it’ll do to the heads of folks who actually like dogs.

Periodically I stomp into the center of the nearest road and rant at the sky about how much I hate it that we keep raising boys and girls to believe strange stereotypes (if you haven’t read that recent Shannon Hale piece along much the same lines, do). But really, it all comes down to princesses and pink. Doggone princesses and confounded pink. Can’t we give them something else? Please? Enter Jane Yolen, Heidi Yolen Stemple, and Anne-Sophie Lanquentin in what appears to be a smart little title. Not All Princesses Dress in Pink seeks to feed the craving of little tots who wish to devour all books with the work "princess" on the title, but could also do with a bit of advice along the way.  Subverting the pink, Yolen points out that a gal can be a princess and a couple other things too if she wants to.  You can keep your crown.  Just remember that there are baseball games you can be playing and bike trips you can be taking.

Also in the realm of the why-haven’t-I-seen-this-in-a-picture-book-before, there’s Buzz by Eileen Spinelli, illustrated by Vincent Nguyen.  We’ve probably all heard at one time or another the Snapple cap fact that bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly because their wings are disproportionate to their bodies.  Spinelli takes it one step further with a bee that suddenly loses confidence that it can fly at all after hearing that fact.  Nguyen has a very animation-centric style that I’m deciding whether I like or not (shouldn’t a bumblebee be pudgier?).  Opinion pending.

"She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.  Now she’s living with a plastic spork."  Okay.  Admittedly that’s not the line in the catalog to describe Kieran Scott’s She’s So Dead to Us, but it should be.  Instead that’s how they introduced this YA riches to rags story.  I have respect for the plot, actually.  Quite timely.  In it, a girl’s hedge fund manager dad bankrupts not only his family but also the parents of his daughter’s friends.  Now she’s moving back to town and her old friends aren’t exactly delighted with her anymore.

For a second there I thought that I had spotted a new trend involving people going to national parks.  Certainly there will be a huge spate of them coming out this year, of which Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson is one.  In this book, two kids who don’t know each other go on a road trip together.  It’s told in a lot of ephemera so think of it as Middle School is Worse Than Meatloaf but for the teen set.

One of my favorite gal’s Jenny Han has a new book out!  As part of her Summer trilogy, the sequel to The Summer I Turned Pretty is coming and it’s called It’s Not Summer Without You.  Said her publisher, Jenny has the rare gift of doing books that are both literary and popular at the same time.

Now that everyone thinks that Steampunk is going to be the next big middle grade / YA trend (in spite of the fact that the genre has sold only modestly with no #1 smash hit) I was on the edge of my seat waiting for a steampunk novel to show its face at the preview.  It took a while, but at long last they introduced Worldshaker by Richard Harland.  It’s very much in the tradition of The Giver / Below the Root / City of Ember / The Windsinger / etc. where a kid is given a new job in a futuristic society and then discovers it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  Can we get a name for this genre, by the way?  One thing I quite liked about the book was that it mimics the events that led to the French Revolution, only in an entirely new setting.  It also features moving cities much as one would find in Philip Reeve’s Hungry City Chronicles (which the book is curiously not compared to in the catalog).  Interesting stuff.

On a very different note, Caron Lee Cohen and the exquisitely talented Sergio Ruzzier have a remarkably simply picture book coming out in time for Halloween called Broom, Zoom.  It’s a bolder graphic style that Ruzzier usually uses, and the wordplay is simple in just the right ways.  A little witch and a monster decide they both want a broom.  The witch says "I want the broom."  The monster counters with "I need the broom."  A solution eventually comes about, but I like how the book distinguishes between wants and needs.

We got a goody bag at this preview and into that bag I would sometimes dive if the descriptions harped too frequently on teen fare.  While snuffling about, I discovered they’d given us all galleys of the new D.J. MacHale picture book The Monster Princess.  I’m not a huge Pendragon fan myself (that’s the MG series he writes) but I was quite taken with illustrator Alexandra Boiger’s pictures.  Apparently she’s done While Mama Had a Quick Little Chat by Amy Reichert and Doctor All-Knowing by Doris Orgel.  I will now have to seek these books out since the gal has a style I am very much taken with.  Very much taken with indeed.

Whole lotta dead kids in jacket titles these days.  If it’s not Emily Horner’s A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend then it’s Dear Anjali: I Hate That You’re Dead by Melissa Glenn Haber (not the actual subtitle, but it’s on the jacket so I’m granting it temporary subtitle rights).  Dear Anjali at first glance looked a tiny bit like Looking for Bapu by Anjali Banerjee (you see my confusion?), but the story is quite different.  In this book a girl’s best friend dies and then the boy the two of them both had a crush on starts to become her friend.  Which, in turn, makes the living girl feel guilty.  It’s middle grade so hand it to the kids who like dead friend titles.  They’re out there.  Trust me.

They brought it back!  They brought it back!

You have to understand that as a teen I didn’t read all that much teen fare since the pickings could be kind of slim.  One writer did I love back in the day was Christopher Pike, though.  And Remember Me, ironically enough, was the only one I ever remembered.  Years later I can tell you the plot (though I’m a bit sketchy on who the actual culprit in the mystery is).  I loved ghost stories as a kid.  This one was one of my favorites.  Go, Pike!

Kiss It by Erin Downing was described to us in this way: "This is the empowering story of a girl who wants some and gets some and likes it."  Sold!

La de dah.  No surprises here.  Except possibly when you learn its original publication date.  Oh say, 1942 or so.  Well packaged, folks.  I wouldn’t have had a clue from the plot description or the cover (or the fact that the author’s name was Maureen and there are a lot of Maureens writing YA today) had you not told me.

Poor, Little Simon.  Always at the end of the previews when the librarians are just itching to get back to their reference desks.  It’s not that they don’t do great books.  But their audience is so young and board booky that it can be hard to pay attention.  They were clever to lead off with the artist Romero Britto’s new book My Alphabet Playbook then.  Aside from the name cache (if you’ve seen a painted cow in your town, he’s the man behind those) there is the fact that the title is bright, catchy, and colorful.  They called him "a slightly more accessible Jeff Koons" but I think he’s a good pairing for kids with a Todd Parr bent.

Aside from that, I like the girl on the cover of Jean McElroy’s It’s Harvest Time!  I like her because she sports the same hairstyle I myself had as a child from age 2 to about 10.  Nicely done, oh one namer photographer Tilde.

And that’s that!  Another preview down and even more books to see.  It’s going to be a very interesting year, I think . . .

Best Meets: "Gilmore Girls meets The Wizard of Oz." – Ruby’s Slippers by Tricia Rayburn.