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By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 7/26/2012
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I began a blogging conversation with Melissa Firman of The Betty and Boo Chronicles so long ago that I can't remember the first prompt, the earliest words. Melissa and I share many things—proximity (at least until a transfer took her west), friends, a love for our children, a love for books—and the first time I actually met Melissa was on a bitter cold night, when she came to a talk I was giving about the impact of place on my work. She came bearing books, my own. She has built, over time, an embarrassingly generous Beth Kephart library. Even as she does so many things, for so many others, and even as she keeps her Facebook friends abreast of the special people in her life.
And so Melissa's
words today, about Small Damages, are the words of one who has read an oeuvre with great care. They are the words of someone who has carefully, patiently watched my work evolve over time. Reading Melissa's blog post was, to me, akin to reading a scholarly piece. I learned so much and became so absorbed in Melissa's thinking that it wasn't until the end that I remembered that she was writing about me. This post was so exceptional that my publicist, Jessica Shoffel, sent an email earlier:
Making sure you saw this one.I share Melissa's words at the end of a day of many emotions. We honored our
George Shaw this morning at a beautiful service in which grandchildren read, a son eloquently remembered, and family and friends and neighbors knit tight. How proud George is, looking down, on his gigantic community. His son referred to George as an extraordinary ordinary man. My own son, sitting near me in the pews, said later that that is the best kind of man.
After the service and lunch I came home to read
Handling the Truth one last time, for it is bound for copyediting soon. I'll never quite forget the note Lauren Marino, my Gotham editor, wrote last night to tell me that we are entering the book's next phase. Having just sat here today and read all 61,000 words through again, I hope it is all right to say here that I am so at peace with
Truth.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 7/24/2012
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I wanted to find a pair of cowgirl boots for my friend Caroline Leavitt, to thank her for making room for me on her roost today, but the best I could do was this sign, photographed in Nashville four years ago, which sat (you'll have to believe me) right near a cowboy/cowgirl boot store. Why I didn't think to photograph the boots themselves is beyond me. What is not beyond me, at this moment, is gratitude. For Caroline's friendship. For her own talent. For conversations we have had in public and in private as we both journey through this writing life. I don't even know how Caroline got an early copy of
Small Damages, but she had one. She's in the midst of writing a brand new book, and she made time to read it. Then she asked me excellent questions, the kind of questions one who knows another well can ask.
I answered them all here.Among the things we discussed is how much I love Philomel, and how I made my way to this great place to begin with. I extract a small fraction of our conversation below, but hope you will visit Leavittville for more.
Philomel is exquisite. At Philomel I have a home. There I have never felt like a fringe writer, a secondary writer, a marginal, will-she-please-fit-a-category, we’ll-get-to-you-when-we-get-to-you writer. Michael Green, Philomel’s president, is a most generous person, and correspondent. Tamra—beautiful, intelligent, thoughtful, embracing—approached the editing of this book, the design of its cover, and the preparation of it for the world with the greatest care, and in the process we became great friends. Jessica Shoffel, a wildly wonderful and innovative publicist, wrote me a note I’ll never forget after she read the book and her devotion to getting the word out has been unflagging, sensational. The sales team got in touch a long time ago and has stayed in touch. And on and on.
But no, I never knew I would shine. I don’t think of myself as a diamond or a star. I never think in those terms. I just keep writing my heart out. And when you are collaborating with a house like Philomel, when you are given room, when your questions are answered, when you are given a chance, there are possibilities.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 7/19/2012
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The most important thing about this day is that it marks my son's twenty-third birthday. He came into the world after thirty-six hours of labor. He had a full head of thick, black hair. He reached for my husband's finger and squeezed it tight. The next day, we drove him to my mother's house in a beat-up Ford Mustang—his hat still on despite the July heat.
There's no accounting for a mother's love. There's no math that will contain it. The baby became a boy became a kid became a man—so bright, so inventive, so funny, so adventuresome, so thoughtful, and with a raft of terrific friends, and with a future that seems (thanks to some recent interviews) so close and within reach, and with a talent for loving.
That boy traveled to Spain with me and my husband, several times, to visit my brother-in-law. We together met characters like an old man named Luis, and like a count who raised Spain's prized fighting bulls. We traveled out to a broad cortijo, watched the gypsies dance, sat front row at flamenco shows. We ate paella at midnight on the streets, tapas in tiny bars. We went in and out of bull rings and up cathedral towers and in between the narrow spaces of Seville. We watched the nuns flutter by. We saw children playing on rooftops. And when I started to write a novel with all of this as the backdrop, this son of mine listened to me read out loud—this passage or that at the kitchen table. He steered the ship with his spare comments and would not let me give up in the face of grave disappointments. He said, "Believe in yourself."
I don't think there would be a
Small Damages without this guy, and that brings us to birthday number two.
Small Damages, a book that has always been dedicated to my son, is being launched today. That it is a book, that it has come this far, is all thanks to the extremely extraordinary Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo of Philomel. That it has been welcomed into this world is all thanks to the generosity of readers and bloggers and reviewers and interviewers, whose goodness is unfathomable and restorative and redeeming and proof that maybe a girl can write and write and write and not be especially famous, but keep writing, and then have a moment in time like this one.
An unforgettable moment in time.
To all of you, and to my agent Amy Rennert, who has been there through all fourteen books, thick and thin (and so much thin), thank you.
Cake is now being served for all.
The icing is here, in these words from the great (truly great)
Pam van Hylckama of Bookalicious.org and in this kindness from the ever-kind and supportive
Serena Agusto-Cox.
From Pam:
It is not often that a book that makes you lose your breath. You read novel that makes you want t
The dignity of Ruta Sepetys is telegraphed from afar. It's in the books she writes—the international sensation
Between Shades of Gray and now (coming in February 2013)
Out of the Easy. It's plain as day in her interviews, her commentary, her
web site, her broadcast segments. And if you ever have the chance to meet her (and I'm lucky; I briefly have), it's all right there in her face. Ruta isn't a writer simply and only because she wants to be a writer. She's a writer because she has something to say.
She's a writer, too, who knows the value of deep research—the liberating and liberalizing ways that rooting around in both personal and world history, in the files of the Soviet secret police and the murky streets of the historic French Quarter, in old maps and and the catalogs of Smith College, in the workings of all kinds of watches will, when pondered long enough, when tacked and quilted, generate story. Research, particularly historic research, can be hard to master and harder to contain. Ruta makes it look easy. What she knows never trumps the many things that she imagines.
I spent today lying in a steamy east-coast house, circa 2012, reading Ruta's delectable new circa 1950s New Orleans novel. Often I forgot just where I actually was as I slid into the dream, drifted in and out of the old bookstore (and the chatter, always smart, about books), had a good old walkabout in the brothel (equal parts gaudy and opulent), and fell in with
Easy's seventeen-year-old heroine, Josie. Josie has found her way despite her mother's poor profession, witless selfishness, and fancy for bad men. She's a spitfire, an I'll-do-it-myself-er, a girl walking around with a pile of lies but without a dent in her actual morality. She's the favorite of the wily, big-hearted madam known as Willie. She's loved by two boys—Patrick, her co-worker at the bookstore, and Jesse, a beautiful boy with a mysterious past—not to mention a whole lot of poor souls who make her tattered life rich. Josie's mother's on the lam and Josie's in trouble, and there will be murder, mayhem, lies, sacrifice, and choices before this story is through. There'll be a whole lot of color and New Orleans twang, a rip-roaring cast, and, always, Ruta's intelligent sense of humor, not to mention instructions from Dickens.
Easy, which is a Tamra Tuller book, which is to say a Philomel book, which is to say the product of a remarkable book family headed by Michael Green, sounds spectacularly like then (the details are so right, their webbing-in so clever), but it resonates for now. It's going to generate a whole lot of book love when it debuts next winter.
A long time ago I drew the conclusion that I was luckier than any girl had the right to be.
Today, proof absolute with these heart-expanding words from
Family Circle Executive Editor Darcy Jacobs. She uses them to recommend
Small Damages to her associate editor, Celia, in the August issue of the magazine. Darcy's goodness to me is unparalleled. I don't have the words.
A million thanks to Jessica Shoffel at Philomel, who does her job so exquisitely well, and to Tamra Tuller, who chose to read my book when it arrived at the old slush pile two years ago. What an adventure we have had since then.
Kephart is a linguistic Midas—everything she puts to paper is golden, including this gem.
I joined Twitter just a short while ago—an experiment, really, an act of curiosity. It has taken me some time to find my rhythms there, to locate the heart of the community. The hearts, I should say, of the many communities.
But it is because of Twitter that I now know a certain Heather, who loved the same books I loved as a teen (
To Kill a Mockingbird and
The Great Gatsby) and who now has a beautiful virtual book world called
The Flyleaf Review: The Thoughts of a Devoted Reader. It is there that I find my book today,
Small Damages, which Heather apparently gained in an Arc swap with her friend, Jen. I was a new name to Heather. She wasn't sure about the storyline, but she gave
Small Damages a try. She has written a most exquisite, thoughtful, lengthy review, and I hope that you will look for the whole of it
here.
It would be impossible to choose a favorite few lines from the review, for I have many. I am honored, for one thing, by Heather's comparison of my work to the work of Gayle Forman. I was equally taken back (in a very good way) by this comparison, below:
You guys, I am big fan of romance in books. All kinds. I like the big, in-your-face romance of some books, but I also can appreciate the soft, quiet, less obtrusive romance like the one written in Small Damages. It is a completely different kind of animal, but no less breathtaking, heart pounding or effective. In many ways I was reminded of the love story between Puck and Sean in Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races. And if you have my review of that book, you know that I LOVE the romance between those two.
So many thanks, Heather!
In the heat of the summer, after a night of hail and thunder clashes, a white package arrives on my stoop. It's a book that I've been longing for—an early copy of
Out of the Easy by the tremendously talented, radiantly successful, and I-know-it-for-a-fact-good-hearted Ruta Sepetys.
This book will, I'm sure, be as beloved as Ruta's first, the
New York Times bestselling, multiple-award winning, translated-into-every-conceivable-language
Between Shades of Gray. I just have a feeling, and besides, this is a Tamra Tuller Philomel book. We know that that's a formula that works.
I'm all done with my complicated sentences. I'm going to spend the weekend reading this book. I'll let you know how great it is, so that you can look for it eagerly in February 2013, when it officially debuts.
Yesterday I sent dear Tamra Tuller of Philomel the revised Berlin novel. A few days before, HANDLING THE TRUTH went off to Lauren Marino at Gotham, and the week prior to that DR. RADWAY'S SARSAPARILLA RESOLVENT was emailed to its publisher, a package made complete by my husband's eleven illustrations.
It has been, in other words, a heady time—my thoughts, in overlapping intervals, inside a certain German city, circa 1983, inside a century's worth of 100 memoirs, and inside 1871 Philadelphia and the cacophony of Baldwin Locomotive Works.
But it was my office that was really showing the heat.
That space is so much neater now. It's dusted and Windexed and vacuumed, too. It's a place for starting over in, and that is what I'll be doing over the next many weeks. I'll be back at work on corporate projects. I'll be doing some teaching, some reviewing, some author interviewing, some essay writing. I'll be reading some 20 new books and celebrating them here, on my blog, with the world.
And I'll be launching SMALL DAMAGES.
It will be an untangling time. It will be awhile, I suspect, before I begin to dream about any new books.
At the BEA yesterday, I met with
people I love. People I respect. People whose integrity teaches me, whose books and blogs instruct me,
whose hearts are true. There are so many people like that.
But I also saw, in my travels, so much that unnerved, worried, further sickened me that I in fact fled the building early, hoping (futilely) to catch an early train home. Books as commerce. Self promotion as a form of public humiliation. Personal needs on flagrant display.
I lost my rudder. I felt overcome, and sad.
For example:
The man in the skin-tight devil suit, riding that escalator up and down, pimping a book with sheltered eyes, a slightly embarrassed impishness within his reddishness. And what was it for? I saw him three times; I still don't know what his skin-tightness advertised.
The long lines of people eager for free copies of books by authors whose on-stage conversations were sparsely attended. Why should a free book trump an interesting, human conversation? Why should product—the material thing that can be taken home—always rule? Have we no time to give to the people who made the things we want?
The bare-chested (utterly bare chested) woman patrolling the streets just outside the Javits Convention Center—a black hat on her blonde head, a thin oily mustache drawn onto her lip. Was this part of authorial self promotion, too? Is this what we are coming to? If it is, I have penned my last book.
(Note: my dear sister-in-law, Donna, has cleared this one up. It was not, apparently a BEA stunt. It says something, though, that I assumed it was: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1047897717/topless-new-york-exhibit-calendar-and-book)The surge of aspiring writers toward established authors, the questions, the requests. The audience members wanting blurbs for their own books, wanting agent representation, wanting introductions to editors.
Please. So many requests. Such insistence. Should it be like this?
The perfect strangers who saw, on my badge, that I was at the BEA not as an author but as a reporter for
Publishing Perspectives. Suddenly I, too, was a perceived bridge—a person to be entrusted with self-published novels and raw manuscripts. Please take my book, review my book, help me with my book, I was asked, more than once—questions that made me feel powerless, and raw.
Books are—or they can be—beautiful things. They take years, patience, perseverance. They are born of hope or courage, love or need, faith in stories and storytelling. Book expos should be celebrations of the book, in the end, and of the people who make them. I lost sight of that, for long parts of yesterday. I found myself trapped in something more carnivalesque, more pressing and too bruising.
I'm not naive. I'm not new to the BEA. But something happened yesterday. Some small hollow something went
click.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 5/31/2012
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If I am too exhausted to state with any inch of eloquence how grateful I am for today—for being included in a well-run, truly substantive, inviting conference, for sitting on a panel among greats, for meeting, at long last, the delightful Jenny Brown, for spying on Roger Sutton's socks, for a chance to hurry through a loved city's streets, for an excuse to visit the extraordinarily wonderful Tamra Tuller, Michael Green, Jessica Shoffel, and Jill Santopolo, for the opportunity to meet the funny and fun and winning Lauren Marino—if I am too exhausted, might I at least share these two images of a conference I won't forget?
Thank you, Ed Nawotka and Dennis Abrams of
Publishing Perspectives for making this day what it was. For making me a part of it.
So happy to share our beloved Beth Kephart's latest book trailer for Small Damages. It will be available in July. Look at this beautiful cover!
Okay, listen in...Congratulations, Beth!
Small Damages
by Beth Kephart
Philomel, 2012
The thing about these starred reviews is that you don't know who to thank. I want desperately to thank the kind souls at Kirkus who had this to say about SMALL DAMAGES. I am blessed. From Kirkus.
A young woman is forced into unexpected territory when she is packed off to a vividly imagined, shimmering Spanish countryside in order to conceal an unexpected pregnancy.
Provided by her mother with only the barest of details about a couple that wishes to adopt her baby, Kenzie finds herself an unofficial apprentice in the kitchen of the home of a successful bull breeder connected to the prospective adoptive parents˜ a world away from where the talented filmmaker expected to be following her high school graduation. In an introspective first-person narration, Kenzie's story effortlessly unfolds. Her initially strained relationship with terse Estela, the marvelous chef charged with her safekeeping, eventually melts into a mutual trust. Readers will sympathize deeply with Kenzie‚s emptiness over her father's death, which led the way to a loving but uncommitted relationship with her baby's father, a longtime friend. Parallel to Estela's history is a tale set against Franco's rule, which poignantly serves to help Kenzie sort through her numbed confusion. Characters are never simple in this gorgeous landscape so masterfully described by National Book Awardˆfinalist Kephart; fully engaging in their lives˜touched as they are by gypsies and bullfighters and the tragedy of war˜will require an audience that is willing to be swept up by unfettered romanticism.
Lovely and unusual˜at once epic and intimate. (Fiction. 13 & up)
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 5/24/2012
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... featuring the words of authors I love, the kindness of bloggers, my photographs of southern Spain, and my husband's deliberately rough Spanish guitar, for that is the kind of guitar my gypsy characters play.
It would mean so much to me if you shared this trailer with others.
A few weeks ago, my friend Susan Campbell Bartoletti (click here to read about how much I love Susan) asked if I might reflect on subtext in dialogue in video format for her Penn State students. Today, I'm posting my response here—thoughts on what makes dialogue tick. Susan asked that I read from own work, and so I did—choosing a passage from YOU ARE MY ONLY as well as one from SMALL DAMAGES. This constitutes my first reading of SMALL DAMAGES, which will be released in July, and which just received a starred PW review.
As much research as I do for all of my books, I try to steer clear of any art (pure art, pure story) that might influence my storytelling until my own book is settled into place. With my Berlin novel now in the compassionate hands of Tamra Tuller at Philomel, I feel less constrained, more able to watch or read work set in the same zones of time and place. Last night, at my friend Annika's urging, I watched "The Lives of Others," a film that had been on my radar screen for quite some time.
The film is, as Annika had promised, compelling and necessary—an intense, provocative, ultimately beautiful look at the compressed lives of artists in Stasi-dominated East Berlin, beginning in 1984. Heroes and anti-heroes abound. The loveliness of the film, the heartbreaking part, is how rarely the characters conform to stereotype.
The beautiful, wise, wonderful, and ever-dear Tamra Tuller just called with the news. SMALL DAMAGES has received a star from Publishers Weekly.
When you have a house this fantastic behind you, when you have a Tamra Tuller in your corner, you desperately don't want to let anyone down.
I am breathing easier. Thank you, Publishers Weekly.
Small DamagesBeth Kephart. Philomel, $17.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-25748-3
As Kenzie’s senior year of high school begins, her beloved father dies suddenly. Her mother’s coping mechanisms—pack his things, start a business, join Match .com—push Kenzie closer to her friend Kevin, and by spring, she’s pregnant. Kenzie’s mother’s response (which feels more 1896 than 1996, when the story is set) is to arrange for Kenzie to move to a bull farm in southern Spain, where she’ll work until the baby is born and given up for adoption. The wrinkle in this soulless plan is that Kenzie is conflicted; her story is written as a tender, honest letter to her unborn child. Kenzie arrives in Spain sullen and resentful—she’s chopping onions with Estela, the farm’s cook, while her friends are at the Jersey Shore—and the distance brings her predicament into sharp relief. Estela is a better mother than her biological one; Esteban, the teen in charge of horses, a more standup guy than Yale-bound Kevin. This beautifully written “summer of transformation” story will have readers feeling as torn about Kenzie’s choice as she is. Ages 14–up. Agent: Amy Rennert, the Amy Rennert Agency. (July)
I had a weekend of goodness—friendship, books, and sun, a crowd of azaleas on a woodsy path, the film "Kolya," (oh!), the book
Inside Out & Back Again (breathtaking), simple meals that turned out just fine, the weeds gone from (most) of the front garden.
Enough for anyone. Enough for me. But this morning the overwhelming goodness continues, as I discover the ineffable generosity of Ed Goldberg, who read
Small Damages one day after he received it, and wrote these
stunning words the following day on
Two Heads Together, the blog that he writes with his
Susan.
Ed, you have buoyed me from the very start of my young adult writing career. I am and will always be so grateful.
Let's just say that it's been quite a time in these parts. I leave the house for teaching and other appointments at 10 AM, say, return at 11 PM, say, and have 20 hours of client work due by 10:30 the next morning. I'm lousy at math, but even I know that the numbers aren't properly crunching.
But we keep on keeping on (do we have a choice?). Today I chose to wash my exhausted face, peel my eyes open with fresh mascara, and meet a new client at an utterly atypical client-esque location, Chanticleer—that glorious garden tended by glorious gardeners. I had my little camera with me. I took a few furtive shots. I was made (miraculously) alive again.
When I returned to my desk later this evening, I had an email from Philomel's Jessica Shoffel, who was forwarding a most beautiful
blog review of SMALL DAMAGES. The blog is called Book Loving Mommy. The five-star review touches my heart. It closes with these words:
This book was written beautifully and I really didn't want it to end. You will pick it up and become so involved and wrapped up in Kenzie's life and her relationships with Estela and Esteban. You will feel what Kenzie feels and understand her confusion about the choice she must make. This is definitely a book I am going to buy when it comes out in stores!
Huge thanks, then, to Jessica and Book Loving Mommy for brightening my day.
I don't need to say much more than this: the Berlin novel is complete. There will, of course, be more things to do, as the story settles. There is always more to do with books. But the biggest part, the by-far hardest part, is done, as I say in this brief video. It has been a blessed and emotional journey.
Happy birthday week, dear Tamra Tuller. This one's for you.
I returned from Penn—boarded the late train home—and walked beneath a clouding sky. It had been a long day, rich, spent in the company of students, and though I ached in my heart and my head (last week is our last class; how hard it will be to say goodbye), I hurried toward the package that I knew was waiting for me.
Isn't it beautiful, the exquisite Tamra Tuller had written in her note.
Yes, Tamra. Because of you and Philomel, it is.
Small Damages, then, which was so kindly
reviewed last week by the one and only Amy Riley,
who has a knack for sensing turning points and celebrating them.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 4/15/2012
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The ocean is behind me as I type; the day has come in. I have been up since an early hour, at work again on Berlin. I arrived here anxious, late Tuesday night: Could I find my way to the end of this complex novel? Could I honor Tamra Tuller, who invited me to write this book for her—her faith a gift like none other? Many themes would have to find their way home. Two storytelling voices would have to hold their own. Tensions couldn't lag. Research (oh, so much uncountable research) could never be confused with plot. And don't forget love, which lies at this story's heart. Don't forget what it is to love, and to wait. Don't crowd that small big thing out with all that is Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, Little Istanbul and Stasi paranoia, bratwurst vendors and David Bowie.
Writing here has meant rewriting here, taking things apart. It has required long walks and a settling in above the old laptop at 3 AM or 4 each day; I was here, after all, to write. I had better make use of the days. Clients await me. The final projects of my beloved Penn students. Reviews. A contest or two to judge. A son's graduation. Interviews.
Small Damages. If I couldn't do it here, I wouldn't do it at all. I felt the pressure immensely.
This morning, at this hour, the book isn't done. It is, however, intimately understood and my anxiety is gone. There will be a storm here later today; in the gray dawn outside the waves are churning. I will always be grateful to Beach Haven for letting me breathe, for restoring my own faith in me. And I will always be grateful to my husband, too, who gave me room to work, who heard me, weeks and weeks ago, when I said, "I'd give anything for just a few, spare writing days."
I was not at home, not with my normal machines, not even with my book of email addresses.
I was just here. Being.
And then a message came through on my phone from Serena Agusto-Cox. She wondered if I had seen My Friend Amy's blog today. She thought that if I hadn't, I should pay a visit.
I waited until my husband was done with the ancient laptop we had brought along for this short journey. It crunched and crunched (it takes its time) before the screen filled with
Amy's words. My eyes blurred. My throat caught. It took some time for me to read them.
Because.
Because Amy is kinder and dearer to me than I can say. And her review is more than a review. Review isn't even the word. Her review is a gift.
Yes. This week is magic.
Thank you, Amy. For always being there. For being the first. For making me lucky.
We looked for birds and found this pond. We hurried to the bay at sunset. I stood on the balcony on the cusp of dawn, looking for dolphins and blues.
In the mornings I write Berlin for Tamra. It comes slow, but it comes. Perhaps I don't want to say goodbye to these characters. Perhaps I am dwelling longer than I should. I am in the homestretch now, but I won't rush it. I can't. You don't hurry your way toward story.
In the meantime, I am blessed by a certain Jessica Shoffel of Philomel, who is doing so much to ease the path of
Small Damages into the world, and getting remarkable results. I am blessed, too, by my agent Amy Rennert. She knows why.
The word, this week, is magic.
In previous posts on the Penguin Preview (found here and here) I failed to mention how the day began. To be blunt, it started with me ignoring the obvious. This is not a strange thing. My parents once bought a piano for our home when I was a kid and it took me somewhere around two to three days to notice it was there (in my defense, it was not a big piano). Two days ago my husband replaced one of our posters and I could have merrily walked past it, I’m sure, for a week. In this particular case it involved the Penguin board room. For a long time it has been in a state of delightful disarray. You see years and years ago they hosted a fantastic Truck Town release party for Jon Scieszka, David Shannon, Loren Long, etc. wherein all the guys wore matching jumpsuits and the room was converted into a kind of truck repair shop. Along one back wall was the front end of a semi (as I remember it). I’ve just done some digging in my files and located the post where I wrote about it here. How six years do fly.
In any case, that truck continued to exist in the board room until pretty much now. When I walked into the board room this time I not only managed to not notice that it was gone (forgivable) but to also miss that the walls looked like the image at the top of this post.
Credit Jon Anderson with this. Apparently it was his life goal to locate every last Simon & Schuster award winner on the children’s side of things and to frame their be-medaled jackets. And not only has he included all the Caldecotts and Newberys (no easy feat when you consider how publishers have a tendency to eat one another over the decades) but he threw in the Coretta Scott King Awards, the Printz Awards, and even a Nebula or two. It was delightful. Lots of fun to look over.
Enough of that. On to Viking!
Viking
This year I have carefully been keeping track of all the books that Kirkus stars. This is partially because Kirkus doesn’t star all that many things and partly because I like their taste. When I get a chance I go out, locate the starred books and read them through. One such starred item will be hitting bookstores this May and goes by the name of Heroes of the Surf by Elisa Carbone (illustrated by Nancy Carpenter). Based on a true story, this work of picture book fiction follows a true incident from May 1882 when a steamship ran aground in New Jersey. The folks were rescued by sailors who came through terrible waves and weather to save them. Sharyn November called this one “the happy Titanic” because it’s one of the rare seaside disasters where everyone was saved. Ms. Carbone was the author of the middle grade historical fiction novel
6 Comments on Librarian Preview: Penguin Books for Young Readers – Viking, Philomel and Puffin, last added: 4/13/2012
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Wonderful day in many ways....
Oh, my goodness ... this is really too much.
Oh my goodness ... this is really too much. So glad you liked the review. :)
Peace is a wonderful thing. So happy to read this. (Heading to Melissa's blog now.)