Librarian Preview: Harper Collins (Fall 2014)

We’re getting into the thick of summer now.  Both the BEA and ALA conferences have come and gone.  Folks are beginning to get a grip on the fall season.  So before we go any further I’m going to provide you with a bit of a sneaky peek at Harper Collins and what all they have ah-brewing for the future.  It’s a rather lovely line-up.  When this preview took place I was at my pregnant-ist.  Muy pregnant.  Back pain, gargantuan girth, the works.  I think I may have given birth two days later, so take that into account if the occasional note here sounds a bit wonky.

The room was lovely and the desserts plentiful.  It was also a very full room so each switch to a table played like a game of musical chairs.  But once we got ourselves in some kind of a working order fun was to be had.

Table 1

First up, a table sporting the irrepressible Balzer & Bray.  Our little sheets also suggested that editor Jordan Brown would be there but alas twas not the case.

Louise Loves Art by Kelly Light

We dove right into this one.  HC is quite charmed by debut author/illustrator Kelly Light.  You could be forgiven for thinking, at a mere glance, that this was illustrated by Tony Fucile.  A fellow former animator, Light was inspired to write this book when her daughter’s art classes at school got cut.  In this book Louise and her little brother Art attempt to create art (lowercase) together.  Louise is fixated on creating a new masterpiece while Art is fixated on impressing his big sister.  And he does get her attention . . . just not in the way she’d prefer.  The cat was my personal favorite in this book.  Wouldn’t mind seeing it star in a book of its own.  Just sayin’.  Look for Louise and Art to crop up in a whole series of I Can Read books in the future, by the way.

Tap to Play by Salina Yoon

After years of wondering at last I have my answer.  Author/illustrator Salina Yoon, who has probably graced more baby and toddler homes than there are stars in the sky, lives in San Diego.  I always wondered where she was!  This book is a marked change of pace for the woman.  It’s sort of Yoon meet Tullet.  Hoping to appeal to a whole generation of young parents that grew up with Q*bert (guilty here), the book follows a little noseless hero by the name of Blip that needs the aid of the reader.  You help him win the game by bouncing, tapping, tickling, etc.  It’ll be paper over board, much like Press Here.  Alongside Richard Byrne’s This Book Just Ate My Dog (seen at a recent Macmillan preview) we’re seeing an uptick in creatively interactive picture books this fall.  I wonder what accounts for that.

Lion, Lion by Miriam Busch, ill. Larry Day

Now this is interesting.  Here you have a book that reminds me not a little of Jerry Pinkney and Julius Lester’s Sam and the Tigers.  In this book a small boy yells for a lion.  Then things take a distinctly Pierre-like turn (consider this foreshadowing for something that comes later in this preview).  It is rather nice to see a small African-American boy on a picture book.  Rare enough, anyway, that it’s notable which, when you think of it, is a problem right there.

I’m Brave by Kate McMullan, ill. Jim McMullan

Alternate Title: How the Heck Have the McMullans Not Written This Yet?  At least that was my first thought when I saw this book.  Considering they’ve covered trains and garbage trucks and even dinos over the years, it took quite a surprising bit of time before firetrucks made their appearance.  Interestingly, this book spends a great deal of time concentrating on some extensively research tools used by firefighters.  Cool!

Creature Keepers and the Hijacked Hydro-Hide by Peter Nelson, ill. Rohitash Rao

They’re baaaaack!  Remember Nelson and Rao?  These two charmers (and they are, if you ever meet them) were behind the lovely but too little lauded Herbert and the Wormhole series a couple years back.  I’m pleased to see that Harper Collins believes in them, though.  In this particular book a boy moves to Florida for the summer.  There, in the swamp behind his grandpa’s house, he finds a group of kids determined to protect some rare creatures like the swamp ape, the Jersey Devil, etc.  Then Nessie goes missing.  It reminded me a bit of the Suzanne Selfors Imaginary Veterinary series.  Sounds like they’d pair well together.

The Zoo at the Edge of the World by Eric Kahn Gale

For half a second there I got confused and thought that this was part of the Brian Chick Secret Zoo series (same publisher, after all).  But this is entirely different and by the same guy who did that awesome Bully Book last year.  In this story our hero is the son of a famous explorer turned curator of a zoo at the edge of the world.  The boy suffers from a severe stutter so no one really knows him except his dad and the animals in the zoo.  When it turns out that there’s a jaguar in the zoo that the boy can communicate with, things get interesting.  I was reminded of a nonfiction picture book out this year called A Boy and A Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz, ill. Catia Chien that also concerns a kid with a stutter and a jaguar.  I love funny connections like that.

Guys Read: True Stories, edited by Jon Scieszka

I love any cover done by Brian Floca, but if I had to change this one I’d probably turn old George Washington there into a grinning Jon Scieszka.  Am I crazy?  Of all the Guys Read books out there I confess that this is the one I want to read the most.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First off, this 5th book in the series is entirely nonfiction.  Second, the content is from folks like Steve Sheinkin, Candace Fleming and Nathan Hale.  Nathan Hale!!!  Want want want.

Meet the Dullards by Sara Pennypacker, ill. Daniel Salmieri

There are about five or six books hidden in this preview that are coming out, not in the fall of 2014 at all, but early 2015!!!  This is the first.  Slated for release around April 2015 (wowzah!) I was surprised to see that Daniel Salmieri is creating books now with folks other than Adam Rubin.  This book was described as “The Stupids with boring people” which may be my favorite catchline of the day.  The book, without saying too much too early, shows the subversive ways in which the kids in this family declare that being boring is not for them.  Best line: “Please. No exclamation marks in front of the children.”

Table 2

With a ring-a-ding-ding we move on to our next table.  And here we find the stylings of Rosemary Brosnan (not there that day, alas), Karen Chaplin, Margaret Anastas, and Nancy Inteli.  Onward!

The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel: Volumes 1 & 2 by Neil Gaiman, ill. P. Craig Russell and others

Yea verily do I salivate over these.  I was intrigued to see them split the original book in twain.  Guess they didn’t want too high a page count in the end.  In any case, the first GN covers chapters 1-5 and the second covers the rest.  #1 is slated to release in the summer and #2 in the fall.  Now it looks at first like P. Craig Russell, the guy who illustrated the Coraline graphic novel, has done this one as well.  In truth, however, each chapter in these books is illustrated by a different artist.  This solves the problem of many a book-to-comic adaptation (Wrinkle in Time, City of Ember, the aforementioned Coraline, etc.) where the art fails to capture any real originality beyond the source material.  Want to see this, I do I do!

Writer to Writer by Gail Carson Levine

Years ago, best beloved, Gail Carson Levine wrote a little book called Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly.  It came out around 2006 or so and was purchased by systems in need of writing advice from Newbery Honor winners.  Now she’s back, baby, and her latest book is a writer how-to.  Filled with exercises and advice, some of it culled from her blog, its publication will come out at the same time as the newly repackaged (and aforementioned) Writing Magic.  Apparently Writer to Writer is slated for early 2015 so don’t go digging about for it quite yet.  Special Note: Gail is currently working on her MFA in poetry which, for those of us who were fans of her Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems is good news.

Eighth Day by Dianne K. Salerni

Ah HA!  One I’ve actually read!  Not sure if this one was out yet when they presented it but it certainly is now.  I think when I initially saw this book I assumed that it was science fiction.  It certainly presents itself that way at the start, but soon you get clear on where it’s truly headed.  A sort of Percy Jackson meets King Arthur tale, in this story a boy discovers that for some people, when they reach the right age, there’s an extra day wedged in between Wednesday and Thursday.  Salerni has taught 5th grade for over twenty years so she knows how to keep a kid’s interest.  With it’s Arthurian roots it reminded me a bit of that Adam Rex series (Breakfast of Champions is the most recent).  Though it stands entirely on its own, another one is slated to be released next year.  FYI!

Goodnight, Already! by Jory John, ill. Benji Davies

That Benji Davies, man.  He’s having a bit of a banner year.  First we learn at the Macmillan preview that he has the lovely The Storm Whale coming out, and then this.  You’re not in Bizzy Bear territory anymore, man (though we haven’t strayed too far since he’s still doing bears, it seems).  This book lets Davies stretch his style a little alongside the author of the book All My Friends Are Dead.  Remember that book?  Here it is in a viral photo that’s been making the rounds lately:

Get it?  Anyway, this book is a bit different.  In it an overzealous duck annoys to no end an exasperated bear who just wants to tuck in for a good night’s rest.  The cover alone will sell it wherever it goes.  I was reminded too of A Splendid Friend Indeed by Suzanne Bloom.  Granted, in that case it’s a white goose rather than a white duck, but the similarities remain.

Aw, Nuts! by Rob McClurkan

Well I’ll be hornswaggled!  Looks like Connie Hsu was right when she said at the recent Little Brown preview that “Nuts are the new legume.”  Granted she was talking about The Nuts: Bedtime at the Nut House by Eric Litwin, illustrated by Scott Magoon, but the odds were good that there’d be at least one other nut related book this season and here it is!  Bringing to mind that little squirrelly character in the Ice Age movies (albeit with better footwear), this is an interactive picture book.  The “Aw, Nuts!” refrain is meant to be yelled by the audience.  And yes, by looking at the art you’d be correct in assuming that Mr. McClurkan is yet another refugee from the animation world.  This book also marks, to my mind, another trend for 2015.  Squirrels!  Clearly Flora and Ulysses is to be credited (I joke, but barely).

Our Solar System by Seymour Simon

The initial excitement of the television show Cosmos has worn off a tad, but that doesn’t mean its popularity has ebbed and waned.  What better time then to update this Simon classic?  Goodbye, Pluto!  Consider yourself excised from the record.  And happily, we learn that this will be the first in Mr. Simon’s reprinted series plus we’ll be seeing four all new titles as well.  Woot!

Harlem Renaissance Party by Faith Ringgold

Remember when I did that post the other day on authors and illustrators who walk away from making any more children’s books?  Well if I hadn’t already known about this book I might have included Faith Ringgold on that list.  Her Tar Beach is a NYC classic as far as we’re concerned, and if you go to The ABC of It exhibit at NYPL (still going on!) you’ll see that a whole wall has been dedicated to her.  Now we learn that in February of 2015 we’re going to get a picture book glimpse at the Harlem Renaissance.  Good news for me!  I purchase for Harlem libraries!  The hero of the book is Lonnie, a kid who has appeared in other Ringgold titles as well.  In this book he goes back in time to meet some luminaries like the usual suspects as well as Marcus Garvey (and where is HIS picture book bio, I might ask?). There’s a glossary and a bibliography as well as a further reading section.  Backmatter!  Love it!

Table 3

Lemme see, lemme see.  Now we’re at a table of Jen Klonsky, Alyson Day, and Kristen Pettit.  A very YA table, which is a genre I don’t tend to write up, but that isn’t to say there weren’t a couple that caught my eye.  For example . . .

Positive by Paige Rawl

I think I’ve had this vague sense that ever since they invented the HIV cocktail all the prejudice surrounding AIDS just magically dissipated into the ether.  Not exactly.  This YA memoir is the story of Paige, a kid who was born HIV positive but who, thanks to the aforementioned cocktail, has never been sick.  So really it wasn’t an issue until, at a middle school lock-in, she tried to comfort a friend by confiding her own illness.  Big mistake.  Next thing she knew she was being called “PAIDS” and each and every adult around her failed to stop the bullying.  At one point she took fifteen sleeping pills and when she survived she found a new sense of purpose.  Paige lobbied her state congress to make school administrators track bullying and make a plan when it happens.  Written in a very close first person p.o.v. Paige has since gone on things like The Today Show to talk about what happened.  There is also a Resources section in the back for kids going through similar struggles.

This next little guy might look familiar . . .

Why mention him again (I brought him up when discussing Lion, Lion earlier)?  Because I was very pleased to discover that all the books in The Nutshell Library, from Alligators All Around to Chicken Soup With Rice to One Was Johnny and, of course, Pierre will be rereleased as board books this month!  Too long overdue, this move.  In celebration I present a video in which the animated Pierre is set to Amanda Palmer’s rendition of the song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWnuGcI8QwU&feature=embed

Watch Out Hollywood! by Maria T. Lennon

Here’s a fun fact you might not know: Author Maria T. Lennon lives across the street from the Houdini mansion in L.A.  If that were me or you it might do something seriously wacky to our brains.  In her case, she simply worked it into the plot of her latest Middle Child book.  In this book our heroine Charlie Cooper is back.  Her father is working on the Houdini house and when Charlie saves a friend from the house’s tunnels she inadvertently becomes famous.  No surprise, it goes to her head.

The Keepers: The Box and the Dragonfly by Ted Sanders

Love that cover.  Ain’t it a beauty?  Well, what we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the first in a four book series.  It stars an average boy who one day spots a very strange sign.  Which is to say, it has his name on it.  Literally.  Soon he meets a secret society and gets sucked into the world of Keepers vs. Makers.  All the magic in this book is based on real physics so that it’s all potentially possible.  You know what that means, don’t you?  Common Core!!  I ain’t kidding.

DING!

Table 4

Now we come to my publishing imprint (remember?).  Greenwillow Books and seated here are Virginia Duncan and Martha Mihalick.  And to begin . . .

Cabinet of Curiosities: 36 Tales Brief and Sinister ill. Alexander Jansson

Ah yes!  So I see a lot of middle grade fantasy in a given year and sometimes it’s a good idea to leave that stuff up to the professionals.  And by professionals I mean librarian Stephanie Whelan who has a very keen sense of what fantasy is good, what is bad, and what is particularly noteworthy.  I always trust Stephanie’s opinions in these matters (and so can you if you visit her blog Views from the Tesseract which recently had a great post about the 1982 book Clone Catcher) and she’s read this book and deems it great.  So I’m in.  You should be too.  Coming out simultaneously in both hardcover and paperback, the four authors Stefan Bachmann Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand, and Emma Trevayne, met online and started a blog together.  They would then write short stories on different themes (love, cake, fairies, etc.) while their editors edited their longer stuff.  Calling themselves The Curators of Curiosities, this is their collaboration.

Circle, Square, Moose by Kelly Bingham, ill. Paul O. Zelinksy

Interestingly enough this was the only picture book being discussed on the Greenwillow fall list.  A sequel to Z is for Moose, it returns to the dynamic duo of moose and zebra and covers shapes for the first time.  One interesting question that came out of all of this: Are there any squares in nature?  Your answers are appreciated.  There was some talk of there being another book trailer for this book, but I haven’t been able to find it.  In lieu of that, here’s that AMAZING trailer for the previous book Z is for Moose. Because of this trailer I now cannot read these books without the voice of Brian Floca standing in for the zebra.

The Turtle of Oman by Naomi Shihab Nye

Remember Ms. Nye?  In terms of her novels for kids she was last seen writing the excellent Habibi.  That was published in the last century, however.  The time has clearly come for a new book.  With that in mind, here is the story of a boy who is slated to move from Muscat, Oman to Ann Arbor, MI (yay, Michigan!).  The catch?  He does NOT want to go.  In a form of protest he refuses to pack his suitcase, so the book focuses on his mother attempting to persuade him to do so.  It’s all about the suitcase, baby.  I like a lot of things about this book, but mostly I really like that the experience of moving is universal.  No kid wants to do it, doesn’t matter where you live.

Nuts to You by Lynne Rae Perkins

“Incredible Journey with squirrels.”  Need I say more?  That was how the latest Perkins title was described to me.  With art on every spread, this definitely struck me as yet another Flora and Ulysses companion novel.  It has has some darkness.  When a squirrel is picked up by a hawk his companions see this and think they see him get away.  With that in mind they set out to find him.  Said Greenwillow, it’s a book about storytelling and stories . . . and trees.

A New Darkness by Joseph Delaney

It’s not just a new darkness for Delaney.  It’s a new cover look altogether.  Fans of Delaney’s Spook’s Apprentice series will be pleased to see that in this book Tom Ward is now 17 and his own spook.  The tale is told with two perspectives, his own and that of a 15-year-old 7th daughter of a 7th daughter who wants to be his apprentice.  The book stands on its own so you need not have read the previous books in the series to understand it.  It’s also part of a three book arc.  Naturally I wanted to know when the movie of the first Tom Ward book was coming out.  The date?  February 6, 2015.  Woohoo!

Poisoned Apples by Christine Happermann

I saw this at a Greenwillow event about half a year ago and I was very struck by its loveliness.  I then promptly forgot its title and for months afterwards was at events involving photography in children’s literature trying as hard as I could to recall it.  So, in a way, it’s a massive relief to see it finally coming out.  A book of poetry, this is punctuated with eerie photographs very much in the vein of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.  However, while I thought originally it had a single photographer, apparently it instead has photos from a range of up and coming artists.  Like the Graveyard Book graphic novels, it’s not afraid to include more than one creative person within its pages.

Red by Michael Hall

Okay.  I know this is coming out in February 2015.  My head is aware of this fact, but my heart wants it now now now now now!!  On the surface it may look like it was inspired by The Day the Crayons Quit.  Not by half.  If anything, this is a story about how appearances can be deceiving.  A blue crayon is accidentally packaged in a red wrapper.  So everyone insists that it draw red things, and yet it just can’t, not even after Scarlet tries to give it a pep talk.  They say it’s a tale about coming to terms with you really are, and it is.  But in another way this is the first picture book I’ve seen that would be perfect to hand to anyone who has come out as transgender.  The metaphor is effortless.  And there’s a final line in this book that’ll knock your socks off.  Cannot WAIT for this to be released!

DING!

Table 5

Table 5, and it’s great to be alive.  Here we find ourselves in the company of Erica Sussman, Alex Arnold, and Katie Ginell with Tara Weikum now relocated to Hawaii.  Nice work if you can get it, Tara!  Additionally we saw Anica Rissi and Katie Bignell of Katherine Tegen Books.

Endgame: The Calling by James Frey

Not the kind of book I usually cover in these round-ups but this Frey/Johnson-Shelton collaboration has an odd little twist.  Remember Masquerade by Kit Williams?  No?  Hmmm.. Well how about The Clock Without a Face by Mac Barnett?  In both cases these were books with real world treasure hunts attached.  Moves of this sort are awfully gutsy on the author/publisher’s part.  The understanding is that the riddle of the book is so difficult that only a very small segment of the population is going to have the willingness (and brains) to solve all the clues. And though adults tend to be the ones solving the puzzles, the books are almost always published for children.  Now, for the first time that I know of, someone is doing the same thing on the YA side.  In each book in the Endgame series there is a different puzzle to be solved and a different prize to be found.  Don’t ask me to clarify since that’s all I really know.  That and the fact that the final puzzles will only appear in the final copies of these books and NOT in the galleys.  Clever ducks.

The Scavengers by Michael Perry

Tara Weikum, the editor who I may have mentioned is now all about Hawaii, grew up in a very small town.  As an adult she read author Michael Perry’s Visiting Tom (I think) about that very thing.  So when Perry reached out to her about writing for kids, she was game.  In this dystopian middle grade we’re hearing folks compare it to City of Ember.  The environment has been destroyed and most people are living inside giant bubbles.  Not our heroine Maggie (who has renamed herself Ford Falcon).  She and her family live outside the bubble.  Then things take a distinctly Mad Max turn.  Blurbs are in from Wendy Mass, Leslie Connor, and Katherine Applegate.  Oh, and my librarians really like it.  I’m hearing it may be one of the best science fiction books for kids for the year.  FYI.

Listen, Slowly by Thanhha Lai

Before I say anything else about this book I should reiterate that the cover art shown here is by no means final.  Just FYI.  Now it is mighty exciting to see that Ms. Lai, last seen winning a Newbery Honor for Inside Out and Back Again, has a second novel on the horizon.  Slated to release in March 2015, this book is written in prose and set in Orange County.  There, a girl lives with her Vietnamese parents and grandmother.  When she finds out that she’s stuck visiting Vietnam with said family she’s less than thrilled.  Apparently her grandfather was lost in the Vietnam War years ago and her grandma is determined to go back and find him.  So basically we have a contemporary Vietnamese middle grade.  Score!

TodHunter Moon, Book One: Pathfinder by Angie Sage

Behold!  It’s a spinoff series to Sage’s Septimus Heap books.  Set seven years after the original, this trilogy is meant to please old fans and new.  Alice TodHunter Moon is a fisher who discovers her own magic when she goes to the castle.  Folks who know the series will know what that means.  And yes.  Septimus is in the book.

The Swap by Megan Shull

I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of Mary Rodgers, author of that classic work of children’s fiction (and multiple Disney adaptation) Freaky Friday.  Mary sort of pioneered the switching bodies genre in children’s books, so hat tip to her.  Her influence continues long and strong with books like this one here.  In it, a mean girl switches bodies with the most popular boy in school.  Wowzah!  You don’t usually get to see boy/girl swap books.  Scieszka himself provides the cover blurb here, as you can see.  That says something.

Balance Keepers #1: The Fires of Calderon by Lindsay Cummings

An epic fantasy middle grade trilogy with a cover that bring back happy memories of my mother’s old 1970s/80s fantasy novel paperbacks?  Don’t mind if I do!  Selling this one as “Journey to the Center of the Earth for the Percy Jackson generation”, the book is by YA author Lindsay Cummings of The Murder Complex n’ such.  In this book a boy follows a map into the forest and then under the forest.  His job?  To keep the balance between the below and the above.  If he fails fires will destroy New York City.  So, y’know.  No pressure.  And lest you think this book is YA as well, it’s meant to hit squarely into the 8-12 age range.

Clariel by Garth Nix

Oh man.  This brings me back.  When I was in library school I decided I needed to read all the important YA novels as well as children’s (this was before I decided to specialize solely in the kiddo area).  On my list of must reads?  Sabriel by Garth Nix.  A great book, and one that has its fans, most certainly.  The Abhorsen trilogy is well regarded but we haven’t seen a book in the series in a long long time. Now Nix is back (he never really went away) with a prequel to Sabriel.  He’s about to make some librarians out there very very happy.

And that’s all she wrote, folks.  Except we simply cannot forget about the “meets” as I call them. In some ways, they’re the best part of any preview.  Here are the ones I caught this time around!

Best Meets:

• “The Breakfast Club with a body count” – Get Even by Gretchen McNeil (shouldn’t that be The Breakfast Club meets Heathers then?)

• “Graceling meets The Selection” – The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

• “The Great Gatsby meets Looking for Alaska” – Even in Paradise by Chelsey Philpot

• “Downton Abbey meets Cassandra Clare” – Illusions of Fate by Kiersten White (the book sounds like Rose for the YA set)

• “The Breakfast Club set in a grocery store” – Top Ten Clues You’re Clueless by Liz Czukas (or, alternatively, maybe The Breakfast Club meets Empire Records)

Many thanks to Patty Rosati and & Co. for the invite, the tasty treats, and the books!

Filed under: Librarian Previews