Come Or I’ll Bake Your Pop In a Pie

Come Or I’ll Bake Your Pop In a Pie

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Oh, admit it. You’d have a lot of fun coming out to see a band this Friday, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you? Well the bands of New York are definitely feeling good about finding their inspiration in children’s literature these days. Check out the notice I received just yesterday:

Friday, June 15, the BEATRIX POTTERS, featuring drumming sensation John Adamo, will start peeling the skins off the potatoes at 6:30 p.m. then mean ol’ Mr McGREGOR will drop a rabbit in the pot at 8 p.m. to finish off the rock’n’roll stew . . . and as always, there’s no cover!!!

Friday, June 15
6:30 pm
Otto’s Shrunken Head
538 East 14th Street, between Avenues A & B
(a mere block-and-a-half east of the 1st Avenue L stop)

Yeah, it’s the Lower East Side. I know, I know. Who even lives there? But I know my Mr. McGregor. Great band. It’s made up of Random House editors. No lie. Can’t vouch for the Potters, of course, but anyone who plays with the McGregorites has gotta be good. FYI you New York party hounds.

I Was Told There Would Be No Math

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I’ve noticed a veritable plethora of books this year dealing with, of all ungodly subjects, math. It seemed innocent enough in The Puzzling World of Winston Breen. And I was willing to shut my eyes to it in The Lemonade War. But about the time I ran across a fictional work with a plot hinging on algebra (Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra by Wendy Lichtman) I began to suspect that I was losing my mind. Math and fiction? Why the world’s gone all higglety-pigglety on us! Up is down! Right is wrong! Math is fun!

But how could I be so short sighted? After all, when a Mr. Mark Dominus decided to make an economic analysis of a book on his blog, what did he pick? Why A Bargain for Frances, of course of course. After a bit of particular captivating probing into the depths of trade and "backsies" (as it were), Dominus sums it up thusly:

Good children’s literature does reward a close reading, and like good adult literature, reveals additional depths on multiple readings. It seems to me that books for small children are more insipid than they used to be, but that could just be fuddy-duddyism, or it could be selection bias: I no longer remember the ones I loved as a child that would now seem insipid precisely because they would now seem insipid.

But the ability to produce good literature at any level is rare, so it is probably just that there only a few great writers in every generation can do it. Russell Hoban was one of the best here.

Thanks to Oz and Ends (not to mention the child_lit listserv) for the link.

48-Hour Book Challenge Recap

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(drumroll please)

Midwestern Lodestar, Finding Wonderland, and Readers’ Rants. As the creator of this challenge so eloquently put it herself:

The winner of the most books read (and highest page count) is Midwestern Lodestar, with a stunning 20 books, 5,433 pages, and 29 ½ hours. The winner of last year’s challenge takes home the crown again. The winner of the most time spent is Finding Wonderland/Readers’ Rants, with an amazing 32 hours spent reading and blogging, 15 books read, and 3,688 pages. I didn’t even see this one coming, so what a great surprise.

Well done readers one and all. Please to check out Mother Reader’s synopsis for further info on the matter. I bowed out this year but next year y’all might have to hold onto your seats as I buckle down and do some heavy duty reading n’ lifting. After all, I don’t have children. A distinct advantage in this contest, I would wager.

Review of the Day: Reaching for Sun

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Try this sometime. Read a book, put it down, and then wait a couple months. Let the distinct memories of the title ebb away. Your first impressions are tamed. Your fervor (of either the positive or negative variety) softens a bit. This method of reviewing is a way of separating the wheat from the chaff. If a book sticks with you for a certain period of time, it must be worth remembering. "Reaching for Sun" is worth remembering. A very

gentle, warm, and welcoming book it feels like nothing so much as a gently scented bath. First time novelist Tracie Vaughn Zimmer tries her hand on a preliminary verse novel technique and, for the most part, pulls it off with aplomb. A title of the sweeter variety.

Josie loves so much. The woods behind her home. Her Gran and her mother. Nature itself. What she doesn’t love is having to attend special education classes for her cerebral palsy. She’s also not too fond of the fact that she doesn’t have a real friend to hang out with. That is, before she meets Jordan. The only son of a busy businessman, Jordan sees the extraordinary that resides within Josie. Yet before too long Josie’s life gets extremely difficult. Her mother’s making her attend classes at the clinic that she simply does not want to attend. She fights with Jordan and she starts skipping clinic only to have her Gran collapse ill at home. Life can be cruel and life can be beautiful and Josie sees equal parts of either side.

The verse novel still has to justify its own existence with every book that uses its style. When you pick up a work of fiction written in verse you have to ask yourself, "Would this title be stronger or weaker if it were just straight prose?" Zimmer’s advantage is that Josie lives a life that’s best suited for poetry. The very world around her sings. To hear her say, "I’m the wisteria vine growing up the arbor of this odd family, reaching for sun," would sound trite or forced if the book weren’t verse. Instead, it’s just lovely. This isn’t a case where the author wrote some sentences and then randomly chopped them up into lines. It’s a book that flows to its own internal rhythm.

This isn’t Zimmer’s first book either, you know. She wrote a poetry title called, Sketches From a Spy Tree so her poetry credentials are well and truly in order. As for those amongst you curious as to whether or not Josie’s cerebral palsy is treated with the proper amount of attention, Ms. Zimmer also happened to teach high school students with autism and middle school children with developmental and learning disabilities (as this title’s bookflap explains). I, personally, have never had any contact with anyone with cerebral palsy, so maybe I’m not the best person to judge. Still, if you wanted to find books on a disability that was treated with the utmost respect, I cannot see that Zimmer does anything but impress.

It doesn’t hurt things any that the language in "Reaching for Sun" is distinctly pleasurable too. The "poem" called "holiday buffet", for example, shows off the author’s low key style. "On Christmas Eve / we buy up the gala apples / with thumbprint bruises, / oranges, scaly and puckered, / even bananas spotted like / Granny’s hands." And when Josie meets Jordan for the first time the books says that her voice is like "new chalk". Later, Gran defends the raucous brightly colored energy of her home and says that though she sold most of her land she didn’t sell the family’s imagination. Be that as it may, Josie wonders of that imagination, "if we could bleach it – just a bit." And when Jordan comes out wearing his swim trunks, "his shoulders look like the nub / of new growth on a tree. / In my swimsuit I feel exposed – / a seedling in a late frost." Good stuff.

It has a first book feel to it, of course. That’s not necessarily a criticism. It’s just that sometimes you read a book and it offers you hints of greater things to come. "Reaching for Sun" does that. It’s not a flashy book. It won’t parade itself about demanding attention and respect. But the emotions in this title are raw, the characters real, and the situations interesting. A fine example of the verse novel and bound to be a book report favorite.

Notes on the Cover: Beautiful, sure, but aren’t we cheating a little bit here, Bloomsbury?  It’s a striking image and I bet a whole heckuva lot of girls will clamor to pick it up.  That said, Josie has a couple physical defects that this picture is gently obscuring.  One of her shoulders, for example, is particularly high.  Note that the shoulder in this picture is nearly cut out of the shot.  Clever but a little sad.  You can’t put a physically disabled girl on the cover of her own book?  Guess not.

Other Blog Reviews By: Mother Reader, Wordy Girls, OMS Book Blog, and BCCLS Mock Awards.
See Also: Tracie Vaughn Zimmer’s Blog Tour

The Plot Thickens

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Dear Diary,

Day One:

In the jungles of School Library Journal’s website our first day passed without incident.  Granted, there were some truly frightening incidents but my faithful IT guides got us through the worst of it in one piece.  I’ve already lost some dear friends along the way, I’m afraid.  Colonel Blogroll was the first to go.  Next went the brave Lady Sitemeter and her valet/lover/ballboy Technorati Jr.  And certainly we’ve seen no sign thus far of the elusive RSS Feed we came to find but I have faith that our quarry will be in our midst any day now.  For now, the rains have come.  I must leave you again.

Day Two:

The RSS Feed mocks me.  It has not appeared and I can’t imagine how much longer we can continue without it.  Sometimes at night when my dreams come again I can almost hear it snickering in the dark.  Mocking me.  We thought we were out of the worst of it, but certain factors have come to our attention.  A particularly vexing ad banner has been shadowing us for a day now.  It’s difficult to sleep knowing that that beast follows our every move.  Indeed, my guide has mentioned nothing of its presence, but I can feel its hot sticky breath on the back of my neck wherever it is I may go.  My companions have also drawn my attention to my appearance.  "What’s wrong with your neck?," they ask.  I feign ignorance, but there’s no denying that my neck looks odd these days.  Photographs taken of me (particularly photographs of the head shot variety) appear to show either my chin resting on an odd brassy hand or my neck swollen to great glandular proportions.  How do I tell people that in such photos I am, in fact, resting my head on the statue of a duck?  Perhaps something must be done.  Tonight, we feast upon some supportive comments and in the morning, the RSS Feed will be closer still.  I must teach myself patience and continue the hunt.

. . . . diary trails off here . . .

Sometimes You Just Can’t Steal A Fellow Blogger’s Post

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Particularly when they’re better at reporting on something than you are.  Flee me and go read the Big A little a piece on England’s brand spanking new British Children’s Laureate.  I can’t imagine a person in the world who’d be displeased that the winner is (dum dum da dum!) Michael Rosen.  His Sad Book is a masterpiece while his We’re Going on a Bear Hunt saved my life during Preschool Story Time yesterday.  Talk about range, eh?

Why am I sad that I can’t post pictures on this site quite yet?  Because you can bet your sweet bippy I would have begun this post with the photograph found at the bottom of his website.  Scroll down until you see it and then tell me that wouldn’t have killed.