How to use this Page

-

Middle school and high school students can connect a wide range of popular middle-grade and YA authors at the Second Annual Teen Reader Con on Saturday, October 17th, in Albany.

It will be a day-long celebration of teens and literacy designed to inspire and share a love of reading and writing — and it’s all free, sponsored by Capital Region BOCES. The event will run from 9:00 to 4:00 at the University at Albany Downtown Campus.

Featured authors:

* Jennifer Armstrong

* SA Bodeen

* Eric Devine

* Helen Frost

* David Levithan

* Jackie Morse Kessler

* James Preller

* Eliot Schrefer

* Todd Strasser

              

It’s a pretty spectacular list, filled with accomplished, popular writers (and me). I’m bummed out that I will be giving three presentations, because what I really want to do is sit in the audience to listen to and learn from some of my friends (SA Bodeen, Todd Strasser), while making new discoveries.

Each author will sign books in addition to giving several presentations throughout the day. They work us like dogs at this thing. This is a very cool, inspiring event for readers 11 and up, and a really worthwhile way for teenagers to spend the day or just a few hours.

I’m honored to be invited.

Advanced registration is encouraged, but not required. Go here for that.

 

Add a Comment

To follow on from my review of Penny & Jelly: The School Show last Friday, I am very happy to have the author, Maria Gianferrari on the blog today to share about the inspiration for her debut picture book and offer … Continue reading →

Add a Comment

Happy First Day of Spring!!!

Pay no attention to the fact that it's freezing cold and snowing!

SPRING is officially HERE!

We should definitely celebrate with spring-colored cake!  Help yourselves :)

Lemon Cake with Lavender Icing - pretty AND delicious :)

In celebration of spring and getting outdoors, I have such a beautiful, beautiful book to share with you!  I hope you'll love it as much as I do!

Step Gently Out
Written By: Helen Frost
Photography By: Rick Lieder
Candlewick, March 2012, Fiction

Themes/Topics: nature, insects, taking time to look closely, poetry

Suitable For: ages 2-7

Opening: "Step gently out,/ be still, and watch a single blade of grass."

Brief Synopsis: (From the Booklist starred review) "Nature’s miracles are often small and hard to capture, but in a syncopated harmony of text and image, Frost and Lieder manage to depict tiny moments as seen through a bugs-eye-view of the world... Moving from day to night, the poem makes for a soothing bedtime lullaby that includes a reminder to children about the book’s small creatures: "In song and dance / and stillness, / they share the world / with you.""

Links To Resources: the back of the book includes lots of information on all the insects pictured - a resource all in itself.  In addition, here are some Insect Coloring Pages.  Try taking some photographs of your own.  Try writing a short poem about an insect.

Why I Like This Book:  I am always in favor of books that encourage kids to go outside and look closely at the real world around them, really observe it, think about it, be part of it.  I'm not an insect lover per se :), but this book is amazingly beautiful.  I cannot stress enough how absolutely exquisite the photography is.  Such detail!  I wish I could share every page, but that would probably be frowned upon :)  Here's one more little sample:


It's breathtaking, isn't it? and I think kids and adults alike will thoroughly enjoy looking at it, especially in combination with the poetic text which is as gorgeous in it's imagery as the photography is.  This book is a feast for eyes and ears and hearts!

For the complete list of books with resources, please visit Perfect Picture Books.

PPBF bloggers please be sure to leave your post-specific link in the list below so we can all come visit you!   And now everyone go out and enjoy Spring!  Just, if you live in my neck of the woods, put on your jacket... your hat... your snow boots... your scarf... your mittens... and then go frolic :)

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! :)

Add a Comment

Step Gently Out
By Helen Frost
Photographs by Rick Lieder
Candlewick Press
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5601-0
Ages 3-8
On shelves now

I have lots of little soapboxes scattered around my home that I like to pounce on in idle moments. Big soapboxes. Little soapboxes. Anyone who knows me is forced to hear me expound from one of them at least once daily. It’s rare that I get to shove two of them together, though. Usually they represent separate entities that don’t overlap. Picking up the remarkably gorgeous work that is Helen Frost and Rick Lieder’s Step Gently Out, however, allows me to stack one soapbox on top of another. That may make them a little more difficult to balance on, but with practice I’ll have it down pat. From that perch I can then cry to the heavens above, “Why is there no poetry award for children’s books given out by the American Library Association?” while also bemoaning, “Why has a work of photography never won a Caldecott Award?” Yes, Step Gently Out appears to be a double threat. Poetry meets photography in a single undulating poem. And if my soapbox seems strange, it will make all the more sense when you learn that the pair behind the book includes the remarkable poet Helen Frost and photographer extraordinaire Rick Lieder. Put them both together and you’d be a fool to overlook this book for any reason whatsoever.

“Step gently out,” the book urges us. “… be still, and watch a single blade of grade.” As we follow the words and instructions we are brought in close to a wide array of common backyard insects. An ant lifts its head from the center of a yellow flower and is “bathed in golden light.” A spider weaves webs soaked in droplets and we hear that “they’re splashed with morning dew”. By the end we begin to understand them better and the text closes with “In song and dance and stillness, they share the world with you.” A final two-page spread at the end identifies all the insects shown in the book and gives some facts about their lives.

Reading through the book a couple times I couldn’t help but wonder if the photos came first or the poem. Did Ms. Frost see Lieder’s work and construct just the right poem to accompany the images? After all, there are specific mentions of many of the bugs you’ll find in the photographs. Or did Mr. Lieder read Ms. Frost’s poem and then set out to find the right insects required to carry her vision? Or (a third idea just came to me) was this a case of an already existing poem and already existing photographs coming together by a clever editor, seeming to fit from the start? I simply do not know.

For parents wishing to instill in their children a sense of Zen, often they’ll turn to something like Jon J. Muth’s Zen Shorts and the like. A worthy choice, but if what you are trying to do is to give your kids a sense of communion with nature on its most basic and essential level, Step Gently Out is the bett

Add a Comment

STEP GENTLY OUT

Poem by Helen Frost

Photographs by Rick Lieder

Candlewick, 2012

Category: Nonfiction picture book (but truly for all ages)

It was the title that grabbed me first. Step Gently Out. There is an ethic in those words, and they have deep meaning for me. When the book was finally in my hands, though, it was the ant on the cover that pulled me in. He is not rendered in paints as I’d thought when I’d seen the book online, but photographed. Captured atop a slender leaf, antennae waving, stepping gently. Completely enchanting.

Would you believe that things got better from there?

Helen Frost’s text is charming, and I can tell you from personal experience that it holds up to repeated readings. Rick Lieder’s breathtaking images lend a hand, inspiring closer looks at blades of grass and silken threads both inside the book and, of course, out.

I find myself reading this one over and again. I’m in love.  I think that every child on the planet should have a copy. I plan to start with the half-dozen kids who know me as Auntie Loree …

Add a Comment

On October 29th, Helen Frost traveled to the Central Library in downtown Indianapolis to accept the The Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award in the Regional category. This award seeks to recognize the contributions of Indiana authors to the literary landscape in Indiana and across the nation.

In recognition of her entire body of work, Helen received $7,500, and in addition, the Glick Foundation made a $2,500 donation to a library of her choice. Helen named the Children's and Young Adult departments of the Allen County Public Library to be so honored. Helen is the author of Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones, The Braid, Spinning Through the Universe, and Keesha’s House, a 2004 Printz Honor Book. Her most recent title, Hidden, was released this past May.

Here is Helen's response to the award ceremony:

At my table at the awards banquet, I’m surrounded by friends and family, and we relax in the light of the white floating candle on our table. The conversation is gentle, easy, quietly celebratory.

When my name is called, I step up onto the stage to receive the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, one of three that will be given on this elegant evening. I look out at the banquet hall, holding in my hand a small paper with my notes of people to thank, a few remarks on what this means to me, maybe a small joke.

But the podium is dark. I can’t read my notes, and I am dazzled, as the lights of all the candles shine up at me from the round white tables in this room which is not usually a banquet hall, it is a library--the old, beautifully modernized, Central Indianapolis Library. The moment has such deep presence: the presence of these three hundred people who have come together out of a shared love of books, who write books and read them and care deeply about them. And there’s the surrounding presence of the books on the library shelves, and all the people who have written and read them, all the librarians who have helped make connections between writers and readers.

I am surprised to discover that I am completely at ease among all these friends, known and unknown. I have no anxiety about saying the wrong thing, or forgetting to say the right thing. I find word

Add a Comment

Saturday I got to spend the day immersed in children's literature at Simmons College's Children's Literature Summer Institute.

So much fun.

I got a chance to listen to and chat with lots of talented folks, including David Small, Jack Gantos, and my Freak Sister, (a little inside joke) the sweet, smart and talented Jo Knowles.

One highlight for me was finally meeting my friend, the uber-talented, smart, kind, friendly, lovely, author Helen Frost.

Here we are looking a little blurry. We are much sharper than this.

Add a Comment

Hidden
By Helen Frost
Frances Foster Books (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-374-38221-6
Ages 10 and up
On shelves now.

If poems had been introduced to me as a child as puzzles, maybe I would have taken to them a little more. A poem is a kind of puzzle, isn’t it? Depending on the kind of poem you have to make the syllables and words conform to a preexisting format. Unless it’s free verse, of course. Then all bets are off. That’s what you do when you’re writing a poem, but can reading one be an act of puzzle-solving as well? Earlier this year I reviewed Bob Raczka’s Lemonade: and Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word which required the reader’s eyes to leap around the page, piecing together the words. Hidden by Helen Frost requires relatively less work to read, but the reader willing to seek out the messages hidden (ho ho) in some of the poems will be amply rewarded. The result is that “Hidden” manages to be both a book of poetry and a wholly original story of two girls bound together by a singular, accidental crime.

When you go to a new summer camp you usually have to deal with not knowing anyone. That’s not Darra’s problem though. Her problem is that she does know someone and, worse, that person knows her too. Years and years ago Darra’s father accidentally kidnapped a young girl by the name of Wren Abbot. He didn’t mean to, of course. He was carjacking, unaware that Wren was hidden in the back of the car, frightened out of her mind. Years later Darra, who once helped Wren, runs into the girl that, she is convinced, led the cops back to her home and got her dad arrested. Now they have no idea how to act around one another, and in the midst of the usual tween summer camp dramas they need to return to the past to clarify what happened and to figure out if they both can recover from the experience.

I’ve been a fan of Frost’s for years. Lots of authors write verse novels (stories written in free verse) and most of them are little more than just a series of sentences broken up without much reason except to pad out the pages. Frost is never like that. When she writes a verse novel she commits. Her books are written in various forms for a reason. In The Braid she created an intricate braid-like form of poetry that twisted and turned on itself. In Diamond Willow her poems were diamond shaped with special messages hidden inside. Hidden take a different tactic. Wren’s voice is straight up free verse, while Darra’s requires a little more work. As Frost puts it, “The last words of the long lines, when read down the right side of the page, give further insight into her story.” Well when I read that I had to flip the book back to the beginning to see if it was true or not. Sure as shooting, each and every one of Darra’s sections yields a new side of her story. The words behind her words, you might say. The experience of discovering this is akin to a small treasure hunt. When pitching this book to kids, make sure you play up this aspect. Some children will immediately decode the m

Add a Comment

Display Comments Add a Comment

How awesomely appropriate is it that the first day of National Poetry Month falls on a Friday, which is a day that we celebrate poetry every week?

In honor of National Poetry Month, I'm planning on having a poetry post EVERY DAY (that includes weekends!) So I'll either share a poem or review a novel written in verse, like I try to do every Friday. And I'm not the only blogger doing something special to celebrate! Check out this loooooooooooooooooooooooong list of all the ways we're adding more poetry into our lives this month!

Let's get started with a review of a verse novel by my hands-down favorite verse-novel author.

The Braid Helen Frost

Letters

Holding almost a weightless warmth
(or chill) letters pass from one hand
to another, shifting borders
between the unknown and the known.
Such minute detail: a cricket
chirping by the dam and midnight;
a cracked blue plate. Someone sitting
at a table writing, absorbed in thought.



In 1850, at the end of the Highland Clearances, the MacKinnon family is evicted from their home on the island of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides. The oldest child, Sarah, elects to stay behind with her grandmother on a neighboring island. The night before they leave, Sarah braids her hair together with her sister Jeannie's. She then cuts off the braid and takes half with her, leaving the other half for her sister. The book then follows their respective stories-- Sarah's as she makes life in the small village and falls in love and Jeannine's as she and her family make the dangerous crossing and arrive in Cape Brenton, which is starving itself and has no place for strangers.

As with all of Helen Frost's verse novels, this one is expertly crafted. It alternates narrative poems told from each sister with shorter praise poems. The narrative poems read like prose, but when you read the author's note in the end, you discover that each line has the same number of syllables as the speaker's age and that the last words of each line are used for the first words of each line of the next narrative poem, braiding them together. At the same time, the praise poems braid the last line with the following first line. Like her other books, I saved the author's note until the end (sometimes knowing too much about how she crafted her work can be a plot spoiler!) and then went back and reread the story with the craft in mind. I love how her work is always so meticulously crafted but that it never, ever, ever, ever interferes with the story she's telling.

That said, while I love the story, overall this one didn't do as much for me as Frost's other work. That's not to say it's not brilliant and awesome, but just that Frost has a really high bar set for herself and this one wasn't my favorite of hers. The interspersal of the praise poems, which aren't part of the plot, broke the flow up a bit.

But, how can you not love lines like this? (From one of Sarah's narrative poems)

In love they say, as if love is a place you enter--as if we
slice open time and find a wh

4 Comments on Poetry Friday: The Braid, last added: 4/2/2011

Display Comments

Jeannine Atkins said, on 4/1/2011 7:13:00 AM

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on The Braid. I share your Helen Frost love, though never managed your discipline of reading the verse before reading the notes. Maybe I'll try to hold off on the next one!

Amy LV said, on 4/1/2011 11:53:00 AM

That braid image is a poem in itself. Verse novels are so interesting - I need to read more of them! Thank you for the inspiration! A.

Mary Lee said, on 4/2/2011 8:18:00 AM

Thank you for reminding me that I still haven't read this one of Frost's. Just went to the library website and put a copy on reserve!

susanwrites said, on 4/2/2011 10:08:00 AM

I'm with you, this is one of my favorite verse novels too. Oooh, a whole month of verse novels. I can't wait!

Add a Comment