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Facebook just told me that it's Winnie-the-Pooh's 90th birthday today.  It's not.  The book, Winnie-the-Pooh, was 90 years old in October.  (Wikipedia gives the date of Milne's first children's story about The Bear of Little Brain as 1924.  History!  It's a puzzle.) The Queen (Elizabeth II) turned 90 in April.  Coincidence?  Hmmmm.

Still, since the Winnie-the-Pooh books count in my Top Five All Time Favorite Books Written for Young People, I jump at a chance to praise them again.

Click here, for an interview with the author of a new Winnie-the-Pooh picture book, Winnie-the-Pooh and the Royal Birthday by Jane Riordan.  I am grateful that the illustrator, Mark Burgess, tried hard to mimic Ernest H. Shepard's iconic artwork - and not the cutesy cartoons of the Disney studio.  (This is a Disney book.)

I love the book, Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear by Lindsay Mattick.  So, here's another chance to plug THAT book. 

90 years of Winnie and Piglet and Owl and Rabbit (and Eeyore who is the embodiment of a parenthetical remark) - it's hard for me to imagine an English-speaking world without them!

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My Dad turns 90 in a couple of weeks.  That's 9 - 0.  10 x 9.  Lots of months, even more weeks, slews and slews of days and we won't even THINK about how many minutes he has lived.

We are throwing him a party on February 16th at 2 pm at his home parish's hall.  I can't wait.  It will be so much fun. 

Here's my Dad when he was a young man.

I wonder if he ever imagined what his life would hold.    He served as a medic, here in the States, married, had nine children, took in a couple of wonderful Cuban teens, built his own business, served as a deacon in the Church, saved someone's life when he was 84 or 85!  He helped everyone he met.  He is awesome, irascible, stubborn and incredibly kind.

Love you, Dad!

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Ack!  Winnie the Pooh is 90 years old, today!  Wow.  That's original fluff-brained Pooh, not cute-i-fied ad nauseam Disney Winnie.  When it comes to Pooh and Christopher Robin and Piglet, I am a Milne/Shepard ONLY fan.   I especially dislike what Disney did to Eeyore, who has been my favorite character since I reached adulthood.

Winnie and his friend, Piglet, live in a glass display case in the New York Public Library, now.  These toys are the original stuffed animals on which A. A. Milne based his stories.  Rabbit, Rabbit's Friends and Relations and Owl are based on actual animals.  Everyone else was a member fo Christopher Robin's bedroom menagerie.  Except the Heffalump.  I'm not sure where the Heffalump came from.

To mark this august occasion, Christopher Robin's estate allowed the first-ever "authorized" sequel to The House at Pooh Corner to be published in 2009.  Return to the 100 Acre Wood by David Benedictus introduced a new wild character and brought back all of the old favorites.  I still like the old stories, the ones I and my son grew up with, best of all.

Don't forget the Jack Gantos giveaway has another week to go.   (Yeah, I just linked to my own blog in my blog!)

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From the Long March to the massive, glittering spectacle of the Beijing Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony in 2008, what a long, strange journey it has been for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On July 1, the party celebrated its 90th birthday, marking the occasion with everything from a splashy, star-studded cinematic tribute to the party’s early years to a “praise concert” staged by two of the country’s officially sanctioned Christian groups.

By Jeffrey Wasserstrom

The party’s nine-decade existence has provided plenty of grist for both critics and apologists to debate its legacy. On the one hand, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday’s sensationalistic bestseller Mao: The Unknown Story, paints the party’s founding father as a demonic figure whose rule was brutal and disastrous for China. In the words of the authors, Mao’s sole accomplishment was bringing “unprecedented misery” to “the whole of China.”

On the opposite extreme, the self-aggrandizing accounts of the party’s history that are being promulgated in China right now portray its leaders as unstinting paragons of virtue. This is the impression given not only by the CCP’s commemorative film — which presents Mao as an idealistic young patriot in love — but also by the hagiographic accounts offered in the country’s newspapers. These articles refer to the party as a “powerful spiritual force” that has never stopped “achieving new victories” for the nation.

The truth is somewhere between Chang and Halliday’s spine-tingling horror story and the fairy tale endorsed by the party. With that in mind, what follows are five pairs of the Chinese Communist Party’s interrelated triumphs and tragedies. This list is not intended to deliver a final verdict on the party’s 90 years of existence, but to remind us that, while its failures have been very bad indeed, its accomplishments illustrate why some in China will sincerely wish the party a happy birthday.

Early in its history, the CCP played an important role in anti-imperialist mass struggles that galvanized the Chinese population. During the May 30 Movement of 1925, for example, it helped to bring thousands of protesters to the streets to decry the mistreatment of Chinese workers in Japanese mills, and it spearheaded major boycotts of Japanese goods when that country began making military incursions into north China in the 1930s.

Later, the Red Army contributed greatly to the 1945 rout of Japanese invaders, earning a reputation as determined and selfless guerrilla fighters and beginning the process of finally ending what the party refers to as China’s “century of humiliation.”

The CCP sometimes exaggerates its role in defeating imperialism and downplays the complementary activities of other groups, but it still has a patriotic and nationalistic record that is a source of pride for many Chinese.

But don’t forget: The CCP’s fear-mongering over foreign threats.

Time and time again, the party has used the bogeymen of international conspiracies and foreign influence to justify harsh acts of repression. In the 1950s and 1960s, people were persecuted as “capitalist roaders” due to having relatives in the West. When CCP leader Deng Xiaoping tried to defend China’s violent crackdown that curtailed the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest

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What kinds of historical echoes sound loudest in today’s China? And which past leaders deserve the most credit — and blame — for setting the country on its current trajectory? These are timely questions as the Chinese Communist Party celebrates it’s 90th birthday today. For in China, as elsewhere, milestone moments are fitting times for backward glances and often accompanied by symbolic gestures that invite scrutiny.

By Jeffrey Wasserstrom

What kinds of historical echoes sound loudest in today’s China? And which past leaders deserve the most credit — and blame — for setting the country on its current trajectory?

These are timely questions as the Chinese Communist Party geared up for its 90th birthday celebration on July 1. For in China, as elsewhere, milestone moments are fitting times for backward glances and often accompanied by symbolic gestures that invite scrutiny.

One thing is obvious: Mao Zedong (1893-1976), though long gone, has hardly been forgotten in the West or East. Nor should he be, in light of the indelible stamp he has left on China.

He certainly remains omnipresent at commemorative moments. Two years ago, for example, the massive celebratory parade held to mark the 60th birthday of the People’s Republic (the sort that during his lifetime would have passed right before him as he waved to the crowd) unfolded directly in front of the giant portrait of Mao that faces Tiananmen Square. And this year, an actor playing Mao is one of the stars of The Beginning of the Great Revival, the big-budget and officially sponsored cinematic spectacle devoted to the Communist Party’s early years that is playing in theaters across China (and drawing lots of viewers, albeit in some cases ones pressured into seeing it rather than choosing to go on their own).

The continuing influence of Mao is also attested to in many books that stress the degree to which — for good or for ill — he set China on its current path. One of the most sophisticated works of this sort to date, published by Harvard University earlier this year and co-edited by political scientists Sebastian Heilmann and Elizabeth J. Perry, is Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China. It argues that even the party’s tendency to reinvent itself periodically and continually try new strategies can be seen as a legacy of its best-known leader. For Mao was nothing if not experimental in his tinkering with orthodox Marxist approaches to everything from rural insurrections (he thought them much more valuable than did Karl Marx) to state-supported mass movements.

While Heilmann and Perry’s book makes a strong case for emphasizing Mao’s legacy, a forthcoming work from the same publishing house, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, offers a compelling brief for thinking that the Great Helmsman’s most famous successor. Though short in stature, Deng, too, casts a very long shadow.

In this impressive and exhaustively researched biography of Deng (1904-1997), which is due out in September and focuses mainly on the leader’s final decades, sociologist Ezra Vogel reminds readers that it was under this pragmatic politician’s watch that the party made three moves that helped it ou

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I haven't updated my journal lately because things have just been so busy. I've been building a mailing list for my publisher to send out some additional ARCs, working on my secret school visit project, writing an article for our state SCBWI's newsletter The Prairie Wind (http://www.scbwi-illinois.org/PrairieWind/), and getting my teenager back to school. It's hard to believe he is a junior. And the most recent thing I did was celebrate my mother's 90th birthday!

I can only write this here because I know my mother will never see it. My mother never tells her age.

I can never understand why my mother has always been so secretive about disclosing her age. If I make it to 90, you had better believe that I am going to tell everyone how old I am and really celebrate it. 

My mother no way looks 90. My son didn't take a lot of shots at her party, but if you could see her whole face you would know it's true. Happy Birthday, Mom!




Trivia alert--My mother shares her September 4th birthday with another favorite subject of mine--Daniel Burnham.

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In this episode, a very nice audio comment from illustrator Andy J. Smith, member of PictureBookArtists.org, and two Listener Submitted Reviews: Good Night - the long way to bed reviewed by Romanian illustrator Livia Coloji of the Creative Cup Illustrators Group One Potato, Two Potato reviewed by Jillian Curtis, author of The Little Prince and his Magic Wand Many thanks to Livia, Andy and Jillian for participating in JOMB and to those of you who have sent us feedback via email and have spread the JOMB word in your own circles. We really appreciate your support. Listeners who submit reviews before May 30, 2007 will be entered in a draw to win an autographed copy of The Call to Shakabaz. If you would like to share your thoughts on a favourite children’s book, please send your review (five-minutes or less) as an MP3 file in email to [email protected], phone it in to our listener feedback line (206-350-6487), leave a two-minute MyChingo, or send your text review in email. Tags:childrens books, giveaways, Good Night the long way to bed, one potato two potato, Podcastchildrens books, giveaways, Good Night the long way to bed, one potato two potato, Podcast

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