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Stranger Things, I credit you with this finally happening.

Let’s think about doing a Girl With the Silver Eyes film next!  Thanks to Liz Burns for the link.

Now when I heard that Nieman Marcus was offering 36 Caldecott Award winning picture books for $10,000 . . . *checks notes*  I’m sorry.  I typed the wrong number there.  I’ll begin again.

When I heard that Nieman Marcus was offering 36 Caldecott Award winning picture books for $100,000 (that’s better) I was a bit baffled.  Perhaps these would be books that were all signed by their authors and illustrators?  Well, they are first printings, or early editions, yes.  But one can assume that you could purchase 36 such similar titles for far less money.  This is part of Nieman Marcus’s “Fantasy Gifts” collection, and the idea is that they’ll donate $10,000 to their own charity if you buy this collection.

Now the collection of 36 has been curated by Johnnycake Books and E.M. Maurice Books.  Here is the video that accompanies it.  See if you see what I saw.  Click on the image below:

Did you notice the books chosen to appear on this list?  I am a librarian, so my take on curation is going to be different from that of a bookseller.  That said, I have to wonder how many booksellers today would hand a child a stack of Caldecott books that included problematic titles like They Were Strong and Good. This is not to say that I think the book should be removed from library or bookstore shelves or anything like that.  But if you’re looking for books that speak to kids today, then for the love of all that is good and holy switch that book out for something with some contemporary gravitas like Jerry Pinkney’s The Lion and the Mouse.  My two cents.  Thanks to Sharyn November for the link.

Oo!  This is neat.  Matthew Reinhart goes in-depth on pop-up books.

Interesting that he cites Transformers toys as being so influential on him.  Sorry, Autobots.  Thanks to 100 Scope Notes for the link.

This is neat.  Kidlit TV created a livestream of the Bank Street Bookfest this year, and now the full series of events is available in full.  Would that the Newbery/Caldecott/Wilder Award ceremonies were done in the same way.  I dare to dream!

Morning, poppins!

Yesterday, for the first time in a long while, I submitted a Video Sunday for your approval.  Trouble is, I may have failed to mention one of the most fascinating videos out there with a tie-in to books for kids, so I’d like to rectify the situation today.

The title of the article read, ‘Last Week Tonight’: John Oliver Turned a 20-Year-Old Kids’ Book with ‘Startling Parallels’ to Trump into a Bestseller.  Naturally I tried figuring out what book they were talking about but I was coming up short.  Turns out it’s good old The Kid Who Ran for President by Dan Gutman.  That’s a title that is consistently on New York City public school reading lists every single year.  Wouldn’t be surprised a jot if that’s how Last Week Tonight‘s writing staff heard about it (some of them must have kids).  Glad to see it getting a bit of attention here and there. I won’t give away which candidate the “startling parallels” refer to (kidding!).  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

A Gene Luen Yang comic piece for the New York Times simply called Glare of Disdain?  Don’t mind if I do!

Horn Book came out with their 2015-2016 Yearbook Superlatives post once more.  Fun bit.  I wonder if they collect them throughout the year as they do their reading.

Tis the battle of the smarty-pants!  Who did it better?  Adam Rex and Christian Robinson at Horn Book or Jory John and Bob Shea at Kirkus?  The choice is yours (though Christian Robinson probably sweeps the deck with his magnificent “Black people are magic” line).

See how I’m going from a Horn Book post to a Horn Book / Kirkus post to a Kirkus review?  That’s why they pay me the big bucks, folks.  In any case, usually when I post a review on this blog I like to link the books mentioned in the review to Kirkus.  Why?  Because they’re the review journal that has the most free archived older children’s book reviews online.  Generally this is a good plan but once in a while it throws me for a loop.  For example, a reviewer of the original Nate the Great back in 1972 had serious problems with the title.  Your homework for the day is to read the review and then figure out what precisely the “stereotype” the book was faulty of conveying really was.  I’ve read this review about ten times and I’m still baffled.  Any ideas?

So I worked at NYPL for a number of years (11 in total).  Of those, I spent about five or six of them working in close proximity to the original Winnie-the-Pooh toys.  And in all that time I never knew them to look as good as they do right now.  Oo la la!  Goggle at that restored Kanga!  And a Piglet where his skin ISN’T falling off his body?  I don’t even know the guy now.  No word on whether or not the restoration yielded more information on the music box in Pooh’s tummy (or if it’s even still there).  Still, they look great (and appear to have a whole new display area too!).  Thanks to Sharyn November for the link.

Did you know that Cricket Media (which runs Cricket Magazine as well as other periodicals) has a blog?  I tell you this partly because I’m trying to contact someone at their Chicago location and so far my efforts have been for naught.  A little help?

Did you know there was a children’s book award for science fiction?  Yup. “The Golden Duck Awards, which are designed to encourage science fiction literature for children, have been given annually since 1992.”  And as far as I can tell, they may still be going on.  Check out their site here to see for yourself.  You can suggest books from the previous year too, so have at it, peoples.

So I give up.  Slate?  You win.  You do good posts on children’s books.  I was wrong to doubt you.  That post about how your son loves “bad guys” so you read him Tomi Ungerer’s The Three Robbers?  That’s good stuff.  And the piece on how terrible the U.S. is at translating children’s books?  Also excellent.  To say nothing of all the other excellent posts you’ve come up with and researched well.  I doff my cap.  Your pop-up blog is a rousing success.  Well done you.

Question: How often has a documentary been made about a nonfiction children’s picture book about a true subject?  Once at least.

Saw this next one on the old listservs and figured it might be of use to someone:

I just wanted to pass along an opportunity that I’m hoping that you’ll hope promote for ALSC. Every year, we give away four $600 stipends for ALSC members to attend Annual for the first time. Applications are open now and are being accepted up to October 1, 2016. For 2017, Penguin Random House is including one ticket for each winner to the Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder Banquet. Here is some more information.

Daily Image:

Because I just cannot stop with the Stranger Things.  This one came via my friend Marci.  Look closely enough and you’ll see Will hiding in the Upside Down.

Thanks to Marci Morimoto for the link.

It’s a booklist kind of week.

Like many children of the 80s I’ve been just delighted by the Netflix 8-part horror fest Stranger Things.  I may not get most of the Stephen King and John Carpenter references but the E.T., Aliens, and Akira stuff hits home hard.  For work I decided to put up a Stranger Things recommended book display for adult type folks.  When I looked online I could only find about two or three such lists already in existence.  Odd.  But of course, then I started thinking about children’s books.  Creeeeeepy children’s books.

When I was a kid, lots of children saw Gremlins, Nightmare on Elm Street, and any number of other horror films.  Kids today would get a huge kick out of Stranger Things if they managed to see it.  So for those kids who like their books a little eerie, a little creepy, and chock full of monsters and evil scientists, here’s a Stranger Things reading list.  Hold onto it for Halloween if you so choose.  Just don’t read it if you don’t want things spoiled for you.  I may give a couple things away.

Stranger Things Booklist

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

Seems appropriate to start with this one.  There’s something creepy in the forests stealing the children.  Enterprising kids have to outsmart an otherworldly being.  Plants and nature play a big part in everything.  And it has this nice off-putting vibe to it as well.  It would make excellent children’s horror film, if it came to that.

The Inn Between by Marina Cohen

Have you read this one yet?  It came out in March and was advertised as “The Shining meets Hotel California” which is one of the more enticing blurbs I’ve come across in a long time.  I finished it recently and was quite taken with it.  Like Stranger Things, family members disappear unexpectedly and other family members’ voices are heard without being seen.  Add in the monster in the basement (monsters?) and you’ve got yourself a VERY misleadingly cutesy cover for what turns out to be a good frightening read.  Think of it as Wait Till Helen Comes for the 21st century.

Zombie Baseball Beatdown by Paolo Bacigalupi

Grab this one if the thing you liked about Stranger Things was the group of boys uncovering an insidious plot created by evil (local) scientists.  Granted, there are more zombie cows in this book than there were in Stranger Things, but there are also good jump-out-of-your-seat scare moments too.

The Flinkwater Factor by Pete Hautman

Of course, when I remembered the evil scientists in Bacigalupi’s books, that naturally led to a reminder about the evil scientists in Hautman’s.  And as an extra added bonus, Hautman’s book has someone of superior abilities escaping from the scientists’ lab.  In this case it’s a dog, not a girl, but it probably says a lot more words in one page than El does in the whole series.

The Nest by Kenneth Oppel

The monster of this piece is a bit more talkative (not to mention seductive) than the monster of Stranger Things. But we’ve got creepy messages through telephones, blurred lines between fantasy and reality, and that horrific moment when you open a door in your house and discover a horror show waiting just for you.

Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar

Again with the crazy local scientists.  This one’s effective at making you want to wash your hands repeatedly as you read it.  It also reminds me of that moment when Eleven finds out what happened to Barb.  The fuzzy mud here would be right at home in that setting.

The Cabinet of Curiosities by Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand, Emma Trevayne

Your kids may never sleep again.  Lots of similarities in these stories with some of the Stranger Things tales.  People getting sucked into plants.  People getting trapped in other dimensions.  And worse.

The Time of the Fireflies by Kimberly Griffiths Little

What is it with books about girls always getting cutesy covers, even when the content is on the darker side?  Since this is more of a time travel book, it doesn’t have that many similarities to Stranger Things . . . except at the beginning with the disconnected phones that ring and the creepy messages spoken on the other end.  *shiver*

Dreamwood by Heather Mackey

I was trying to find a bad guy equivalent to the tentacled plantlike THING that haunts Stranger Things.  Not the monster, but the more insidious system the monster feeds.  I considered The Lie Tree, but that doesn’t quite do it.  That’s when I remembered Dreamwood and its hellish forest landscape.  Oh yeah.  Try getting to sleep after reading some of these passages.  It’ll definitely curb your desire to hug a tree.

Wake Up Missing by Kate Messner

None of the scientists in these other books really did it for me in terms of the coy friendliness of “Papa”.  That is, until I met the scientists in Messner’s book.  It’s all happy happy joy joy until you start to dig a little deeper and see what’s really going on.  Nature plays a big part in this one too.

The Mostly True Story of Jack by Kelly Barnhill

I really enjoyed this one when it came out. Very mysterious. Very eerie.  You have a house that isn’t all that it seems, something trying to escape, creepy plants (always with the creepy plants), and a big bad villain.  Oh.  And children go missing.  That’s important.

The Lost Boy by Greg Ruth

A boy goes missing in a small town.  Plants are out of control in the woods.  Your greatest enemy might be yourself (or is that more of a Season Two plotline for Stranger Things, do you think?).  Kids have to face down terrifying monsters to uncover the truth.  Oh yeah.  This graphic novel is right at home on this list.

What would you add?  Extra bonus points if the book you recommend was published between 1980-89.