Poetry Friday – The Collected Works of Susan Ramsey

Poetry Friday – The Collected Works of Susan Ramsey

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Lip Service

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Duke Ellington

And oh, it does take energy
and stubbornness, ‘cause if you laugh, you lose.
My cousin warning “You don’t pull in that lip

a little bird is gonna come along
and do something on it.”
The hero of The Thirteen Clocks

stumbling in a dungeon,
in the dark, steps on “ something
made entirely of lip.” Terri says

her husband used to be a better kisser
back when he still played trumpet.
Nora Ephron says that once you’re married

the kissing stops. Nina’s lover
said in awe, “I bet you could smoke
a cigarette with that.” Steve knew.

After she left
he put his lips together
and blew.

Post Stardust Haze

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There was no new news yesterday.

Not true, but easier than confessing that in the midst of our Summer Reading Party planning madness and a quickie viewing of Stardust last night (the thumbs have turned decidedly upward on that one) I’ve been lazyish.  Here are a couple trifles in the meantime.

  • The Wizard of Oz is up for a new theatrical interpretation all thanks to one Todd McFarlane. No, it isn’t good news.  Here’s a lovely quote found in Variety. " ‘… Dorothy as some bondage queen isn’t something I want to do,’ Olson told Daily Variety. ‘The appealing thing about the Baum books to me is how wildly imaginative they are. There are crazy characters from amazing places. I want this to be ‘Harry Potter’ dark, not ‘Seven’ dark’." That reassuring note aside, check out the picture that Leila Roy was brave enough to put on her website regarding the action figures this movie will be based on.  Looks like my bleeding eyeballs are back.
  • There’s a new The True Meaning of Smekday website up and running just in time for its release.  Goodies include a lovely training video, animation of how Boovs run (no word yet on how they saunter), a selection from the book, and more.  Fun and mandatory, to paraphrase another.
  • Gail Gauthier is having a book give away contest in tandem with the upcoming school season.  This is a smart idea.  Back to school books practically sell/borrow as well as those of the holiday persuasion.
  • And now some fun with numbers.  One in four of us (by "us" I mean "American type persons") didn’t crack a book this year. Year. Year year year year year. Hello, wall! Would you like me to bang my head against you with a kind of superhuman fervor? Don’t mind if I do!

 

Review of the Day: A Crooked Kind of Perfect (Part One)

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Humor is just so hard in children’s books. You either crash too hard on the adult side of the equation (see: The Manny Files) or you end up going too far the other direction and end up ridiculously scatological (see: Out of Patience). The balance has to be perfect and, if you want your book to be memorable, also work in some real emotion, heart, and (God help us all) learning. Because this mix is so difficult, you rarely end up with a book quite as pleasant as Linda Urban’s "A Crooked Kind of Perfect". First of all, it wins the 2007 Most Appropriate Title Award. Second, it has a firm grasp on hitting just the right tone. In a relatively blah year of realistic girl fiction, Urban’s book is a cut above the rest.

Zoe has dreams you know. Dreams of owning a gorgeous piano, all shiny and black. Of performing before vast adoring audiences. Of being a prodigy and admired by people like her classically inclined mother. So what does she get instead? An organ. A Perfectone D-60 if you want to be precise. And it’s not as if her school life is much of an improvement either. Her former best friend Emma Dent has informed her that Joella Tinstella is now her best friend right now, and to top it all off that bully Wheeler Diggs has somehow managed to ingratiate himself into her family. So when Zoe enters the Perform-O-Rama competition for organs she doesn’t expect much. Fortunately for her, she finds that people can surprise you when you least expect them to. Sometimes for the bad, but also sometimes for the good.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly certain that we haven’t come up with a name for children’s novels with short short chapters. You know the kind I mean. They look like verse novels at first, but a quick perusal shows that the author hasn’t broken up the action into strategically separated tiny sentences. I think the author chose this method because she prefers to keep things sharp and sweet. Her storyline works best when she can leap from thought to memory to current event. Some parents like to pooh-pooh those children’s books that eschew length for sure-footed pacing. I’ll admit right here and now that due to its format "A Crooked Kind of Perfect" really does make for an enjoyably quick book. You might want to consider handing it to those kids who like to read but are turned off by long wordy novels.

Plus it’s funny. I could give you five hundred examples from this book. I could also give you just one reason and leave it at that. One Reason: There is a chapter about the Fireside Scouts entitled, "I Don’t Need No Stinking Badges". Oh, how about two? There’s an organ teacher who swears by saying things like, "Handel’s Cousin Hannah". One more, one more. When a girl at the organ competition plays "Getting’ Jiggy Wit It" you STILL have overly competitive parents saying things like "I’d hardly call that jiggy" and "That girl could never have handled the original composition." Last one, I swear. When Zoe is given all the different Perfectone D-60 songbooks, she sees they all have names like "Hits of the Sixties" and "Hits of the Nineties". Naturally she wonders why there aren’t any "Hits of the Eighties". She is informed that there weren’t any. Fine. That’s more than just one reason. In fact, I had to actively not mention some of the other moments in this book that are amusing in and of themselves and, when taken as a whole, add up to one heckuva funny middle grade novel. You should be proud of me.

Urban makes some interesting choices in this book. Zoe’s father is never out-and-out diagnosed as OCD or anything along those lines. You know he’s seriously uncomfortable around people he doesn’t know. That he fears leaving the house. That he can’t deal with a lot of things that other parents could. There’s a moment, of course, when it mentions that Zoe and her family are watching, "the detective on TV get all weirded out about being in a crowded elevator." Those of you familiar with "Monk" might see how it applies to Zoe’s family. Few kids will, though. I’m fond of books that don’t go about slapping labels on every neurosis and character quirk you find. Zoe’s dad is just her dad. He has problems with people and crowds and shopping and traveling out of the house, but he’s also a really good father. The book makes that much perfectly clear.

FYI: You know you’re old when you run across the main character in a children’s book complaining that the songs she can play on her organ existed before she was born. Songs like "Seasons in the Sun" (fine), "Who Put the Bomp (In the Bomp-Bomp-Bomp)" (fine), and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (SOB!).

(CONTINUED IN PART TWO)

Review of the Day: A Crooked Kind of Perfect (Part Two)

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(CONTINUED FROM PART ONE)

If the book has a problem it probably concerns the lack of dramatic tension. For example, one day Wheeler’s mildly pissed about something and yet the next time Zoe sees him she says, "I thought you might not come back here ever." It’s a rather extreme sentence considering the two of them never ever really fight. There is some tension regarding Zoe’s parents and their presence in her life, so that may make up for the lack of problems elsewhere in the book. Yet as a former resident of Southwestern Michigan, I’d have enjoyed a little more clarification as to the location of this book. The competition is in somewhere called Birch Valley? Aw, make it Kalamazoo. You could totally have a competition there.

Tiny nibbles of complaints aside, it’s a swell read. Characters are crystal clear and their motivations make perfect sense. Urban wields the infinitely difficult first person narrative with aplomb. And, all that aside, it’s about a kid who plays the organ. That’s just a good high-concept idea right there. One of the more pleasant first-time novelist surprises of the year.

Notes On the Cover: To be honest, I wasn’t going to pick up this book when I first saw it.  It’s a cute cover, no question, but the image of the socks makes it look like a very boring book.  One involving boys and self-awareness and what it means to no longer be daddy’s little girl, etc. etc. etc.  Those books are fine and all but there are tons of them out there every year and they all blend together after a while.  And the socks are definitely accurate to the book.  You might even say they were important to the plot.  But if it hadn’t been for the flap copy on the back, I never would have even considered this as a Must Read.  On the other hand, you just can’t put a wheezy old organ on a cover all by itself, right?  My solution would be to show these same legs crossed on top of an organ in a kind of devil-may-care attitude.  Girls’ feet have been showing up on book covers a lot this year, y’know.  So while I may not think this was the best way to sell the book, ten’ll get you one it attracts just the right kind of child reader.  Harcourt, I’m giving you a pass.

Blog Reviews: So Misguided

Misc:

  • Win a signed copy of the book (to say nothing of Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits) by participating in Ms. Urban’s sock-related contest.  Act fast, though.  All entries must be in by September 1st.
  • An interview with Ms. Urban can be found here.

It’s a Cold Lonely Summer

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Well, perhaps not lonely.  But cold?  You betcha.  It’s positively autumnal which, let’s be frank, is the best possible weather.  Unfortunately it’s also rainy in the Big Apple these days.  Spirits being slightly dampened, let us see what the daily round-up can provide.
  • Someday I may move to L.A. (a very great possibility).  It’s just one of those things.  If and when it happens, I’ll have to make a trip to The Library Bar.  Though, the New Yorkers amongst us will note its physical similarities to Union Hall.
  • The Book Inscription Project was discovered via bookshelves of doom. It’s a fun site, but could seriously use some work on its Archives. You can’t look at them and know which books are available.  I was hoping to pull up some children’s literature, but there’s no way to search for it.  The site desperately needs more inscriptions too.  If you happen to run across some fine ones, do let them know.
  • Kelly on Big A little a had a just magnificent response to a recent fuddy duddy Guardian article. You can complain about a lot of things in this world, but saying that old dinosaur titles are better than new ones seems a bit counter intuitive. I mean, if author Peter Bradshaw really wants blood and guts back in his dino books he should check out Sabuda’s Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs. How many other children’s titles can you name where lifting and closing a flap means showing a dinosaur tearing the muscles out of its victim over and over again?
  • I write the occasional negative book review now and again. Keeps the palate fresh, I say. Looks like I’ll have to watch my step a little more closely, though. As MediaBistro recently discovered, there’s nothing quite like getting a big fat libel suit because of a blog review you wrote. I’m not particularly scared by this tactic. The blogger in question, one PZ Myers, is undoubtedly getting sued because his firm has lots of moolah (as Finding Wonderland so cleverly pointed out). My blog does indeed appear on the SLJ website, but as far as I can tell no author has ever sued SLJ for a bad review. Doubt they’d go about starting with me. Still… Note to self: Do not recommend bad books to be used in clown colleges.
  • Wow. I’ve grown so used to adult authors traipsing about pretending they can write children’s fiction just as well as their grown up stuff (I love you Isabel Allende, but for the love of all that is good and holy please stop) that I never considered how it would be the other way around. I mean, Mo Willems put out You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When It Monsoons, but that’s not really the same thing is it? Far more shocking, and I have to credit Alison Morris at ShelfTalker for finding this, is when a children’s author goes whole hog and writes for adults. Check this out:

Amazing, no? From Fancy Nancy to a mystery. J.K. Rowling may not be writing a detective novel, but that doesn’t mean that other children’s authors haven’t the option in their back pockets.
  • Coraline takes center stage as Subterranean Press is releasing a special edition version of the book. Preorder the book and get a chance to win a creepy puppet. Woo-hoo! I love creepy puppets. And take a load of THAT cover!
 


Eh? Eh? Thanks to BookMoot for the link. By the way, how can I get my hands on the soundtrack of the Coraline musical as penned by Magnetic Fields kidlit-friendly fellow Stephin Merritt?

More Schtoof

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If I were smart I’d save these for a day when I’m busy.  But I can’t help it!  Look at even MORE cool stuff I found!

  • This will perhaps be of the most interest to school librarians.  Know a teacher? Then check out the Chris Van Allsburg Writing Contest.  Any classes in grades 2-8 can participate.  You just write stories to accompany the pictures in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and win fabulous prizes as a result.  Contest ends January 15, 2008.  Personally, I think the grandest grand prize would be to have Mr. Van Allsburg visit the winning class, but having his full autographed library ain’t too shabby neither.
  • Haven’t done an Animals That Need Their Own Picture Books entry in a while. I’ve decided to name this little guy Clarence. Clarence, take a bow. Thanks once more to BB-Blog (who I may not forgive for showing me this beauty pageant retouching horror).
  • And finally, those of you currently living in Delaware will get a chance for a little kidlit fun of your own soon.  Here’s the official press release:

On September 15, the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Winterthur, Del., will unveil its "K Is for Kids" exhibition, an alphabetical exploration of the museum’s collection of American antiques and decorative arts. A rhymed verse will accompany an object from the Winterthur archives for each letter of the alphabet, and a number of early primers, hornbooks and other alphabet-related objects will be on display as well. The museum will host special events throughout the course of the show; next April, children’s book author Jane Yolen (How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?), who has been named honorary ambassador for the exhibition, will be on hand for a weekend’s worth of events. "K Is for Kids" will be on view through July 13, 2008.

Sounds good to me.