Librarian Preview: Harper Collins (Spring 2013)

Oh the previews are here, they’re here, they’re here,
The wonderful previews are here
Time to go out, go out, go out,
Go out and order a . . . . beer?  No, no . . .

From that catchy little tune (working on it) I hope you realize that preview season is upon us yet again.  Time to sit down and hear what is in store for the future.  Will 2013 completely and utterly stop any and all supernatural romances dead in their tracks (which is to say, are vampires finally over?)?  What picture book idea will spontaneously manifest itself at two entirely different publishers without rhyme or reason?  And what, the heckedy heck, is up with fuzzy blue giants?  Why are they so awesome?

Yes.  It’s finally happened.  The pandering.  The blatant self-promotion.  The self-satisfied mugging.  You thought I was insufferable when I wrote my ALA Editions textbooky thing a couple of years ago?  Brother, you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve seen my fiction side in action.

So it is that we begin today’s Harper Collins Preview at the Greenwillow table.  As you may recall, Harper Collins is one of those publishers that allow you to sit at their tables, eat their bagels and muffins, and hear their editors tell you face-to-face about their upcoming season.  Sure, they could do a boring PowerPoint to a big room, thereby saving themselves some sanity, but the fact that they take the time to talk to us in this intimate fashion makes them one of the better previews in town.  It’s the personal touch that counts, y’know?  Plus I’m far more likely to remember a book when the editor has taken my questions about it firsthand than if I’m dozing in a big audience with a bunch of other folks, later desperately trying to remember why one teen novel with a flowy gown on the cover is different from another teen novel with a flowy gown on the cover when it’s time to do my ordering.

In any case, the clock is ticking, there are books to be discussed, so we begin with Greenwillow.

Actually we begin with me.  They didn’t.  I’m just mucking with the order of presentations here because I’m so pleased to announce my pretty little Giant Dance Party picture book.  It comes out on my birthday (April 23rd), and isn’t THAT a lovely present to receive?  Brandon Dorman is the illustrator behind it, and a nicer fella you couldn’t hope to find.  You may know his book covers on everything from Savvy to the more recent Goosebumps novels.  As you can see, the title is self-explanatory.  The tale follows young Lexy, a girl who can cut a rug better than most her age.  That is, if she’s dancing for her parents or herself.  Put her onto a stage and you might as well be staring at a frozen ice pop in the shape of a young girl.  When Lexy decides the answer to her problem is to teach rather than perform, she finds that no one wants to have a kid as her teacher.  No one, that is, except a herd (is that the best term for it?) of benign furry blue giants.  All seems to go well until the day of their recital when Lexy discovers that maybe she’s not the only one with stage fright problems out there.

Don’t let the cute nature of the cover fool you.  Is it cute?  Yeah.  Guilty as charged.  But there are some slammin’ moves to be found inside and, as I may have mentioned in a previous post, this is the first picture book I have encountered that includes krumping.  I kid you not.  Expect me to come up with some kind of video to accompany this soonish.  Suggestions are welcome.  I’m slightly stumped since Dan Santat created the world’s greatest dance-related picture book trailer three years ago for Tammi Sauer’s Chicken Dance.  More to come about this in time.

And there are apparently other books coming out in 2013 as well!  Did you know that?  I was stunned!  For example, they have decided to republish the original picture book edition of Amelia Bedelia for one and all to see.  Not an easy book, mind you, but a full picture book sized title with all the art reproduced full and some in-depth backmatter at the end.  And you know I love me some backmatter.  I guess the success of the young Amelia Bedelia picture book series gave the idea the extra push it needed.  In any case, look for this soon.

Speaking of the younger version of AB (Amelia Bedelia), the new title coming out in the spring with be Amelia Bedelia’s First Library Card.  Otherwise known as the picture book hundreds of children’s librarians will be using for first-time library users visiting their branches.  In a new twist, they’ve also noticed that those early chapter book Fancy Nancy books have been doing rather nicely.  As a result, you can expect some early chapter books of young AB as well.  It makes me think that if these also sell a whole world of possibilities opens up.  What if they did longer Nate the Great or Cam Jansen books?  What if they made an Amelia Bedelia middle grade novel?  Or teen!  Lord knows I’d pay good money for an Amelia Bedelia supernatural romance novel.  A penny to anyone who gives me a serviceable plot to go with it.

Shadow boxes.  There is nothing cooler on this globe than shadow boxes.  I’m sure there are art students in colleges across the country that would agree.  Yet for the most part you don’t see them used in children’s books all that often.  Sometimes here and there, but it’s not consistent.  In Stardines Swim High Across the Sky we definitely see some in action.  A kind of follow up to Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant by Jack Prelutsky, illustrated by Carin Berger, this is yet another wordplay rich book of poems by Mr. P.  The particular draw, however, is how Ms. Berger chose to do the art.  But why describe the style when I can simply show you?

Caldecotty!  Best of all, you’ll get to see a display of this art at ALA in Chicago this coming June.

This next book is a bit of a riddle: How do you resist a tiptoeing bear?  Answer: Why bother?  Anything big that tries to be small and quiet is instant picture book gold.  In Tiptoe Joe by Ginger Foglesong Gibson (illustrated by Laura Rankin) a bear in sneakers highs himself hence on sneaky sneakered feet.  The book’s  a simple cumulative tale with readaloud potential.  Put it on your preschool readaloud radar then.

Harper Collins is the publisher that seeks out self-published authors of picture books more often than other publishers I’ve seen.  And since old Pete the Cat has paid off very very well for them indeed (catchy songs are ALWAYS a plus) it seems natural that they’d take everything a step further and look into self-published apps/ebooks that convert to the picture book format.  That was what I mistakenly thought was the case with Axel the Truck: Beach Race by J.D. Riley, and illustrated by MY illustrator Brandon Dorman.  As it turns out, HC originally published this online and are only now putting it out in a print form to boot.  I don’t know much about the world of easy to read ebooks.  Something to research in my spare time, eh?

All I will do for Penny and Her Marble by Kevin Henkes is write down some of the descriptive direct quotes the editors tossed about when describing the easy book.  Ahem.

“The great American novel in I Can Read form.”

“Gut-wrenching.”

There you have it, folks.  Need more be said?

Now it’s cover art comparison time!!!

Of the two I think I prefer Jeff Baron’s upcoming I Represent Sean Rosen.  And not just because of the Christoph Neimann art either.  The kid just seems more appealing.  Basically, this is just your average story about a kid hitting it big.  Like The Toothpaste Millionaire but without the business angle.  You see, Sean Rosen is a kid with a great idea, but he’s not gonna tell you what it is because clearly you’d steal it.  Whatever it is, it’ll change the entertainment industry.  Sean decides to sell the idea to Hollywood instead but runs into the problem of not having an agent.  The solution?  Meet fake agent Dan Welsh (one trip to the fridge will tell you where Sean got that name).  Author Baron’s a playwright himself, so he’s been working up some “podcasts” of Sean’s.  Podcasts/YouTube videos.  Here’s the first.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ThiGXR8fkM&feature=embed

Anna Was Here by Jane Kurtz is a PK middle grade novel.  Those of you in the know will be aware that PK = Preacher’s Kid.  And frankly, I don’t see a lot of those.  We see a lot more army brats in a given year than preacher kids.  Wonder why that is?  In this case, the story is about Anna’s move from Colorado to Kansas (I was this close to writing Cansas).  Even more interesting is the fact that the book discusses without fanfare a family where the Bible is just a regular part of the day to day.  Apparently not in a strident way or anything either.  Just a way of life.  We’ll check it out.

New series, new series!  Now this preview happened pre-Sandy, but you just know that had it happened afterwards this next book would have had an evident tie-in.  The Lightning Catcher by Anne Cameron (all similarities to The Lightning Thief title-wise or the lightning bolt letters on all the American Harry Potter book jackets are strictly coincidental, you betcha, uh-huh, uh-huh) is the first in a four book series.  In this debut young Angus is whisked to The Exploritorium for Violent Storms.  Turns out his parents are two of the world’s greatest living lightning catchers, keeping the world safe from wild weather.  When the parents are kidnapped, that’s when the rubber meets the road.  It follows in a definite trend of weather-related middle grade novels like Eye of the Storm by Kate Messner and The Storm Makers by Jennifer E. Smith, but to name but a few.

I’ll be eschewing most of the YA stuff today, as per usual, but I will say that I’m thrilled to see the eleventh book in The Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney is due to come out.  Slither is the first book in the series to be told from the p.o.v. of one of the creatures.  Fans will be happy to hear that Grimalkin is in it but sad to hear that Tom is not.  FYI: The movie is definitely slated to come out in October of 2013!  It’s called Seventh Son and will star folks like Julianne Moore (Mother Malkin!), Jeff Bridges (when he isn’t working on The Giver, apparently), and Ben Barnes a.k.a. Hot Prince Caspian as Tom Ward.

DING!

That’s enough from Table Four.  Onward to Table Five with big time folks like Barbara Lalicki, Rosemary Brosnan, Tara Weikum, and Erica Sussman.  I see that at this point in my notes I’ve turn philosophical, writing stuff like “In many ways previews break down to a variety of people telling you all kinds of stories.”  Oh aye?

First up, the book Adam Rex was tweeting about long ago when it was first arranged.  His first collaboration with Neil Gaiman.  Chu’s Day follows a sneezy little panda and the havoc he creates thanks to an itchy nose and distracted parental units.  Apparently it was inspired by a trip to China, and indeed if you see an F&G or final copy of this book you will encounter a jacket photo of Gaiman with a panda on his lap.  Rex, insofar as I can tell, has never done pandas much before.  But back in early 2011 he did a series of posts where he drew different types of pandas (seen here and here and here and here).  Now you know why.

You can read the real reason Gaiman wrote the book here (long story short, he’s trying to get printed in mainland China for once). And there is, naturally, a book trailer.  As Rex says of it, “Fun fact–Gaiman wasn’t available to make this video, so I played him wearing a Neilsuit a la the British ‘pantomime’ tradition.”

I’m sure the process was very much like the old Black Books skit.  Dylan Moran even looks like Gaiman (though Rex, happily, has few similarities to Manny).

You know, go to enough of these previews and you begin to get a sense of which editors you really trust.  The ones that crank out books you can’t get enough of.  Rosemary Brosnan fits that category.  Often I’ll compliment someone at HC for a book and then find it’s one of hers.  You may know her best from editing Rita Williams-Garcia’s marvelous, miraculous One Crazy Summer.  Well, hold onto your hats, ladies and gentlemen.  The sequel, P.S. Be Eleven, is due out this May.  As Rosemary said, she can’t stop smiling about it.  And, she pointed out, she signed Rita up for it long before the first book won those four shiny shiny medals that now grace its cover.  Kudos to Ms. Rita, it’s more than a little daunting to follow-up any book that got as much attention as her first did with a sequel of any type.  In this book anyway Delphine is tall, dad is betrothed, there are crushes, Panthers, and a 6th Grade dance.  The jacket, as you can see, matches the art of the paperback edition of the first book.  And yes, folks.  Number three is in the works.

You’ve gotta kind of respect a middle grade novel that begins with the heroines convinced that they’ve just watched their guidance counselor killing someone only to find that she was merely making pickled beets.  Sophie and Grace have their own spy club in The Wig in the Window by Kristen Kittshcer but beets or no beets there is indeed something sinister going on.  The sequel is already slated with the title Tiara on the Terrace.

Here’s some more exciting reissue news, particular for those of you looking to get some summer reading paperbacks on your shelves.  All the Ramona Quimby books are about to be repackaged with interior and exterior art by one Jacqueline Rogers.  Eight titles in all, they’re coming out simultaneously in hardcover and paperback just in time for Ms. Cleary’s 97th birthday.  And if these catch on they may do the same with other Cleary titles too.  An excellent idea.  High time we had some new art.

I was surprisingly taken with Ms. Tui T. Sutherland’s novel this year.  I don’t know if you read Ms. Sutherland’s Wings of Fire which Scholastic put out, but for a talking dragon novel it wasn’t too shabby.  Now she’s got a book out with HC called The Menagerie which she wrote with one Kari Sutherland.  In it a boy moves a small Iowa town and, once there, finds a griffin cub under his bed.  Turns out there’s a magical menagerie in the town, and the boy must find the other griffins and uncover a big time mystery.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai will indeed be out in paperback this January (I’ve already ordered my copies) and as we speak she is working on a second book.  Meanwhile Molly Moon and the Monster Music, the sixth and final Moon title, by Georgia Byng is out this March, and should be well-timed with that MM movie in the works.

DING!

Now a flip around and a walk to Table 1.  Here we have the good mistress Alessandra Balzer and sweet mistress Donna Bray.  And Jordan Brown, of course.  He’s not mistress of anything.

Mo Willems is back, baby!  Not that he really went away but while his Elephant & Piggie books have been consistently primo, his picture books have merely been amusing.  All that may change with the publication of That is NOT a Good Idea! In it, Willems stretches himself a little further.  Becomes a bit more subversive and strange, but in a thoroughly good way.  Channeling himself some Hilaire Belloc we have a silent film inspired presentation.  Fox (or is it a wolf?) meets chicken.  Chicken meets fox/wolf.  Romance and possibly dinner (eek!) ensue.  And all the while you’ve this steadily increasing Greek Chorus of chicks pooh-poohing the characters’ decisions.  I’m thinking big time readaloud potential on this one.  Can’t wait to see the final product.

Bob Shea returns as well with Cheetah Can’t Lose.  In it an overly self-confident, not to mention obnoxious, cheetah finds himself at odds when he crosses two adorable little kittens.  Hilarity, not to mention Shea’s copyright customary sympathy for bullied bullies, ensues.

Just the other day I went and reviewed one Michelle Markel’s remarkable picture book bio called The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau.  Well the woman is keeping busy, now coming out with Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909.  Aside from the cool nonfiction picture book subject matter (Yiddish Clara went on to lead the longest walkout of women workers in American history) the illustrations are by none other than Melissa Sweet.  And Ms. Sweet, aside from winning a Caldecott Honor for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, won a Sibert last year for the fantastic Balloons Over Broadway.  In this book she’s worked in time cards and sewing into her art.  I can’t help but wonder if with the rise in interest in strikes (the folks in Wisconsin and Chicago come to mind) we’ll be seeing more of these union-centric titles in the coming years.  It just makes sense.

“This is our Core toe book, I like to say.”  As a mom of a toddler I admit that I now view with great interest any and all picture books that adapt nursery rhymes and simple songs into a written and illustrated format.  And quite frankly This Little Piggy by Tim Harrington fits the bill.  It starts with the usual five and their mildly disturbing desire for things like road beef and then goes onto the second foot as well.  Why on earth have I never heard of anyone doing that before?  The other foot!  It’s obvious when you say it.  By the way, as more toes get involved they seem to have a lot more occupations to work with.  In some cases they’re selling hotdogs (what IS it with the meat and these hungry piggies?).  And in the vein of the aforementioned Pete the Cat there will be an accompanying song with this online.  Clever piggies.  Of course, I should probably mention that Tim Harrington is the lead singer of Les Savy Fav and you can see what he looks like here.  Sort of a pseudo-celebrity.  I tell ya, man.  Eventually everyone comes to my world.  Eventually.

“Little Women with wings featuring Tinkerbell’s little sister.”  I keep beginning these write-ups with quotes but c’mon.  Can you blame me?  And I admit that though I love Julia Denos (the illustrator on these books) I wasn’t really sold until I saw the author.  The new Fairy Bell Sisters series may be more of the fairy same, but the author is Margaret McNamara a.k.a. former Harper Collins editor Brenda Bowen.  Donna Bray then whipped out her history chops by quoting the great long dead editor Ursula Nordstrom.  “If I can resist a book, I resist it.”  Ooo.  Well played, madam.  Ratchet it all up another notch and we were told that these books echo classics and act as gateway drugs to books like The Secret Garden and Little Woman AND they’re great readalouds to boot.  Geez o’ petes.  If you’re gonna sell librarians on a new fairy series, you may as well pull out all the stops, eh?

Jarrett Krosoczka is convinced that this little blog o’ mine (I’m gonna let it shine) was the first place to debut the cover of his upcoming Platypus Police Squad series opener The Frog Who Croaked.  I told him I just lifted it wholesale from Barnes & Nobles.  Okay, so there are a lot of reasons to love what’s going on here.  I think it’s fair to say that you guys are just as sick of the nursery rhymes-meet-noir detective novel style books as I am.  Sometimes I feel like we see one a year.  There’s just too much faux noir out there.  I’m sick of it.  But buddy cop children’s books?  Dude . . . I can’t think of any.  So it is that we get “Frog and Tad meets Law & Order” (I usually leave all the “meets” until the end of this post, but this one I could resist including here).  In his first full-length novel Krosoczka presents a heavily illustrated tale of a hotshot rookie and a grizzled old timer as they fight crime.  Said his editors, “It marries his love of buddy cop films with his love of platypuses”.  Sold.  There will be four books in the series altogether and please note that the hotshot rookie on the cover is pulling a boomerang out of his black leather jacket.  Suh-weet.

My notes at this point read “Jenny Lee – writes for Shake It Up”.  But I don’t know what that means so I Google it.  Ah ha.  Shake It Up.  A television series that has so far run from 2010 to 2012 on the Disney Channel and is about the following: “Two Chicago teens attempt to realize their dream of becoming professional dancers by landing spots on a popular local show.”  Gotcha.  Well, in any case we see a couple television writers crossing over to make children’s books but they tend to write for adult fare like The Daily Show.  Elvis and the Underdogs was sold as marrying literary quality with fun.  Fair enough.  Benji, our hero, is a sickly kid whose best friend is a male nurse.  Naturally, he’s bullied quite a bit and in the course of things gets himself a therapy dog.  A 200-pound Newfoundland of a therapy dog named Elvis with the personality of Fraiser Crane (he was supposed to go to the President of the United States, thank you very much).  So there’s that and a mystery as well.  Oh, and the dog talks.  I think you had me at Fraiser Crane, anyway, though.

As titles go, my favorite this season (from Harper Collins anyway since I still think Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made is mildly brilliant) has gotta be The Girl from Felony Bay.  Now THAT gets a person’s attention!  Written by J.E. Thompson and set in rural South Carolina (so hand it to fans of Three Times Lucky) the book was described as “Carl Hiaasen rummaging through Margaret Mitchell’s closet”.  In this book a dad is framed so our heroine and her buddy have to go through some serious Southern heritage to clear his name.

Editor Jordan Brown could sell you flaming cheese in Hell.  The man is just that good.  So good, in fact, that I have to put my guard up when he starts talking because otherwise this preview will turn from a sane and sober What’s Coming Out Next Year into a wild free-for-all encapsulation of Jordan Brown’s Greatest Hits.  In this particular case we hit upon Kevin Emerson (The Lost Code)’s The Fellowship for Alien Detection.  As Brown tells it, this middle grade novel is sci-fi for non-sci-fi readers.  In this book two kids travel about with some folks who investigate possible alien sightings.  Brown called it a Men in Black type book that will please many a Joss Whedon fan.

With The Laura Line I am very pleased to see the return of Crystal Allen.  Her debut with How Lamar’s Bad Prank Won a Bubba Sized Trophy was an excellent middle grade a year or two ago (I recall reading it on a plane and having a flight attendant grill me about what it was about).  Allen is one of the very few authors out there writing about contemporary middle grade African-American kids.  In this particular book our overweight protagonist is convinced that she is about to be humiliated.  Her teacher has just organized a field trip to the slave shack that sits on her property.  I don’t know much more about it, but you can bet that this will be one of the first books I read for next year when I get my hands on it.

Sidekicked by John David Anderson was described as “A mash-up of what you’d get if you asked Louis Sachar to write an Avengers novel.”  Which, naturally I now want to do.  In lieu of that plan, this book is about a kid who develops super powers but ends up being super sensitive as a result.  It’s a clever idea.  We’ll see how the final product tackles this not-often-seen metaphor.

There would be lots of ways to sell Director Chris Columbus as a co-author on a book like House of Secrets.  The smartest way for this particular book?  Goonies.  Yeah, break out the Goonies connection (he wrote the screenplay) because secretly that’s what every children’s librarian secretly wishes they could find in a book.  Alongside co-writer Ned Vizzini (no stranger to the movie world himself what with his It’s Kind of a Funny Story hitting the big screen a year or so ago) House of Secrets is the first of a three book series that promises a new installment every spring.  It follows the Walker family and its three kids consisting of an eldest boy and two younger girls.  Sorta like The Emerald Atlas, I guess.  When their surgeon dad moves them into a creepy house in San Francisco, they discover that they are part of a secret legacy.  Add in some giants, witches and skeleton pirates and you have, what they were calling, “An American Cornelia Funke”.

Finally, one of the cleverest sequel titles I’ve seen.  Did you like The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom?  Me too.  I just keep meaning to review that puppy.  Well, hopefully I’ll be able to do so before I read The Hero’s Guide to Storming the Castle, due out in April.  Can I just praise that title a little more?  I mean, how smart is it to reference The Princess Bride like that?  Very smart.  The book series would certainly be enjoyed by Princess Bride fans, that’s for certain, so by invoking the name you do yourself many favors.  Plus, from what I can tell the cover sports all four princes.  I remember the kids really were upset that only two princes made the front cover of the first book with the other two princes on the back.  This time, all four.  Awesome.

DING!

Next table, Table #2.  With the honorable Katherine Tegen, Maria Modugno and Molly O’Neill presiding.

First up.

Yep.  All I really need to say about that.  It’s Nelson Mandela by Kadir Nelson and editor Katherine Tegen had the idea for the book four years ago when it was Mandela’s 90th birthday.  Now it’ll be out in time for his 95th.  Considering that he and the aforementioned Beverly Cleary are both celebrating their 90-something birthdays with HC books, those crazy kids should have a joint birthday party.  (Now imagining what the guest list for a Beverly Cleary/Nelson Mandela birthday party might consist of.)

Katheryn Fitzmaurice returns with the middle grade novel Destiny, Rewritten.  In it, a girl named after Emily Dickinson hides a secret desire.  Though her mom would love her to be a poet, what she REALLY wants to do is become a romance novelist.  Um . . . that is awesome.  She then goes in pursuit of a lost book and finds ways to stand up for herself.  The book is set during Poetry Month, which is clever, and includes a series of one-sided letters written by Emily to Danielle Steele.  The good Harper Collins folks did send a copy to Ms. Steele to let her know about this book but as of this preview had not heard back.  Pity.  It’d be a helluva blurb.

Big news here!  At long last the Septimus Heap saga is reaching its end in a grand finale with Fyre!  Every single character of significance will make an appearance in this last book, clocking in at 544 pages if Amazon is to be believed, 750 pages if the preview is.  Can’t say which one is true, but it’ll be complete, you can bet on that!

New illustrator alert!  When shopping for a new artist of picture books, it can be a good idea to hand them a classic text and see what they do with it.  So when newbie Mike Austin was given The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown, the results were a fresh new approach.  Now he does a helluva monster.  Now you probably already know Mike from over at Blue Apple Books where he’s done work on A Present for Milo and other stuff.  Monsters Love Colors is his first Harper Collins title.  One has to wonder if there will be an app for it as well someday.  Who knows?

If you think 123 Versus ABC looks very Adam Rex you’re not alone.  As far as I can tell, that’s a good thing.  We need more Rexian art out there.  Plus, let’s face it, this is a remarkably good idea for a children’s book.  Written and illustrated by Mike Boldt, this eyebrow-rific title shows what happens when numbers go to war with letters.  “They’re refrigerator magnets come to life.”  Note to self: Buy refrigerator magnets for child.  Those things are awesome.

See, the thing about Fancy Nancy is that she’s ain’t half bad.  As a librarian you always have this instinctual gut-reaction when you see one of her books.  Your innards want to say they’re just cheap pinkness meant to lure in unsuspecting little girls.  But the doggone things have substance, and that kills me.  They are written well and the art is lovely each and every time (at least, if it’s Robin Preiss Glasser actually doing it).  The newest FN title is Fancy Nancy: Fanciest Doll in the Universe.  When Nancy’s younger sister puts a permanent ink tattoo on her fancy doll’s previously fancy tummy it is not a happy household.  Yet when the time comes for Nancy to pick her doll out of an identical line-up, guess who doesn’t have any difficulty?  Sounds like it would make a perfect companion to Barbara McClintock’s Dahlia.  Love that book.  There is also a new addition to the Fancy Nancy early chapter book series, Nancy Clancy, Secret Admirer.

DING!

One final table to go and it sports Anne Hoppe and Phoebe Yeh.

Now first and foremost, here’s a book that I could have easily have passed over had I but thought it was that most unfortunate of literary genres, the eco-thriller.  Something about the very term screams “didacticism” to me.  Fortunately, Jinx by Sage Blackwood has been read by a couple folks I trust and though you could conceivably slap that moniker on it, it’s so much more.  The first in a trilogy, the book is recommended to fans of Angie Sage, though Anne said the writing adhered more to Diana Wynne Jones.  She also said it had “The best first chapter of anything I’ve published.”  All I care is that it sounds like a good companion to The Mostly True Story of Jack, has a villain called The Bonemaster, and contains were-chipmunks.  Honest-to-god were-chipmunks.  Love.

From the author who brought you The Princess Curse a year or two ago comes Merrie Haskell’s next standalone middle grade title Handbook for Dragon Slayers.  According to her editors, Haskell’s strength lies in her ability to conjure up complex girls coming of age and determining what their role in society will be.  Noted.

At this point Phoebe Yeh mentioned that 2012 was a hard year for great authors.  We lost two, Maurice Sendak and Jean Craighead George, almost simultaneously.  As such, we’re seeing some of their books coming back into print where once they were gone from our shelves.  In terms of Maurice two books of his are due this spring.  One is a reprint and one a new title never seen before.  The older book is the Caldecott Honor winner The Moon Jumpers.  Apparently the art for this was still available so they re-separated it and reshot it to get the full effects.  Sendak even signed off on the proofs before his death.

The other title is Sendak’s last book (or perhaps penultimate if that nose book ever comes out from Scholastic) and one of his most personal.  Called My Brother’s Book, it focuses on Sendak’s older and much beloved brother.  Tapping into the man’s deep and abiding love of Blake, this is being marketed as an adult title but is recommended to those high school teachers who do work with Shakespeare as well.  There are, I should note, more than a few Shakespearean references inside.

The Jean Craighead George book is a new picture book by the name of A Special Gift for Grammy.  George was apparently in the middle of two picture books when she died.

Next up, one of the best pushed and marketed books I’ve seen in a while.  When KidLitCon was held at NYPL this year there was a moment when I saw a young man really talking up and pushing copies of this next title at my attendees.  I’m not certain if that young man was a Harper employee or author Eric Kahn Gale himself but whoever it was it got my attention.  Right off the bat we were told that this is a controversial little sucker because it’s a book that in the course of its story outlines how one goes about becoming the perfect bully.  In this tale a kid who is bullied decides to handle the situation on his own.  Told through both journal entries and the aforementioned bullying rules, the book taps into some serious black humor.  They mentioned Jack Gantos as a possible comparison.  Apparently Gale wrote the book after meeting with some of the bullies of his own youth only to find they’d grown up to become nice and decent people.  I like to call that The Facebook Effect.  It’s the moment when a person who made your life a misery in school Facebook friends you.  We talked about this a bit in a recent Children’s Literary Salon at NYPL.  Good stuff.  In any case they’re going all out for this book, giving it a 3/4 jacket (something they haven’t done for a title since Walter Dean Myers and Monster).

Next up, a guy who was in the same screenwriting program at Columbia as my husband.  I don’t know Mr. Soman Chainani myself but Matt tells me that he was a very nice guy and did often speak about this book of his being published with Harper.  The School for Good and Evil sounds like nothing so much as Wicked with a twist (and less Oz).  Two best friends are kidnapped and sent to different schools.  One is a school for evil and the other for good.  Thing is, they sort of get the wrong schools.  At least that’s what I gathered from the cover.  Still a little unclear but it looks fun.

Now here we have a book that will make for an excellent nonfiction companion to Simon & Schuster’s Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle.  Alex Ko: From Iowa to Broadway, My Billy Elliot Story is one of those stand up and cheer books, but good for kids with Broadway dreams.  Raised in Iowa with a dad that didn’t want him to have a life on the stage (then died of cancer), Alex had his chance to live his dream thanks to older siblings who were willing to do extra jobs to help him out.  And as luck would have it he really did have a chance to become Billy Elliot on Broadway.  Then, on the first night of his performance, he hurt himself and needed therapy to recover.  Happily he returned and all was well and these days he performs with the New York City Ballet.

Here’s a tip to publishers: Want me to want a book instantly?  Do as How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids by Thomas C. Foster did.  All you need to do really is get Kate Beaton, the woman behind the wonderful Hark, A Vagrant webcomic, to do the jacket.  I will buy anything she touches.  Seriously.  Love love love love this.

I eventually got almost all the references, even the Lord of the Flies one, but the lion still stumps me a little. Suggestions on that one are welcome.  Best I could come up with was Pyramus and Thisbe.

Not entirely certain how a Zits illustrated novel by syndicated cartoonist Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman could be YA (they’re suggesting ages 13 and up?!?).  Pity since if it were middle grade (like the actual comic strip) you could add it to the trend of syndicated cartoonists writing books for kids in 2012 (The Odd Squad and Timmy Failure respectively).  Maybe there’s some sex and stuff in it?  The mind boggles.

That, as they say, is it.  Except . . . .

On with the Meets!!!

Best Meets

“The Natural History Museum meets Tim Burton” – Not sure if someone said this or I made it up myself (I suspect the former) but that’s a description of Carin Berger’s work on Stardines Swim High Across the Sky by Jack Prelutsky

“Storm Chasers meets The Mysterious Benedict Society” – The Lightning Catcher by Anne Cameron

“The Artist meets Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” – That Is NOT a Good Idea! by Mo Willems

“Life is Beautiful meets The Walking Dead” – That’s actually my description of it, but I don’t think I’m too far off.  That’s for The End Games by T. Michael Martin

“13 Reasons Why meets Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” – Wild Awake by Hilary Smith

“Ender’s Game meets Hogwarts in space” – Vortex by S.J. Kincaid

“Roald Dahl meets Lemony Snicket meets Gregory Maguire” – The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Filed under: Librarian Previews