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Normally I don’t advertise author/illustrator contests and challenges but this one has something I like.  Namely, Rube Goldberg machines.  Actually, I also happen to like Lisa Graff.  And I happen to like her new book which I finished yesterday and includes the aforementioned Rube Goldberg thing.  The first to ever appear in a children’s book?  You decide.

Next up, I’ve heard the movie news but if we’re gonna do Hobbit then we’re doggone gonna do Hobbit.  Just maybe not the version you’ll be seeing in theaters soon.

Thanks to Hark! A Vagrant for the link.

Next up, grants plus The Eric Carle Museum plus copious Raul Colon?  There is nothing about this that I do not like.

Thanks to Sandy Soderberg for the link!

Now these days everyone’s talking about nonfiction.  Thanks to the Core Curriculum the subject is hot as hot can be and nonfiction’s been getting a real leg up.  I can’t tell you how many people have recently asked me if I knew any librarians that are specifically knowledgeable in the realm of elementary informational texts.  With that in mind, the interest in quality nonfiction has never been greater.  That’s why it’s nice to see new biographies out there, like the recent Twice As Good by Rich Michelson which tells the tale of William Powell.  But, as LeVar Burton might say, you don’t have to take my word for it.

And since we’re dealing with Easter here, it’s only fair that we end with bunnies.  Bunny bunny bunnies.  It was a toss-up between this, the bunny who eats the flower, and the bunnies in the cups.  In the end, I figured you go with the sure-fire crowd pleaser.

Alicia Alonso: Prima Ballerina
By Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
Illustrated by Raul Colon
Marshall Cavendish
$19.99
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5562-2
Ages 8-11
On shelves now

When I was a kid I took a fair amount of ballet. I liked it. Kept me on my toes (yuk yuk yuk). I retain fond memories of that time in my life, but don’t be fooled. I’m just as likely to groan when I see a children’s biography of a ballerina as anyone. “Not another one!” I’ll kvetch. Never mind that ballerina bios don’t exactly stuff my shelves to overflowing. Never mind that when artists like Raul Colon are involved the end result is going to be magic. Never mind that author Carmen T. Bernier-Grand has attempted to sate my unquenchable thirst for original biographies of people never covered in the children’s sphere before. It was only when my fellow librarians repeated the phrase, “No. Really. It’s incredibly good” to me in about thirty different ways that I finally picked the dang thing and cracked it open. Fun Fact: It’s incredibly good. Who knew? [Aside from all those children's librarians, of course.] From the pen of Ms. Bernier-Grand comes a biography that tells the balanced, nuanced story of a woman pursuing the art form she loves in the face of personal tragedies, political upheavals, and worldwide acclaim/blame.

A child named Alicia Ernestina de la Caridad del Cobre Martinez y del Hoyo dances in her Cuban home. “Like light, / she’s barely aware / of the floor beneath her dancing feet.” Few could suspect at the time that she would grow up to become perhaps the greatest Cuban ballerina in the world. After years of practice she marries at fifteen to a fellow dancer and moves to New York. It’s there that she is discovered, just in time for her retina to detach. But even blinded she dances in her head and when she comes back to the stage her toe shoes are glued to her feet with blood. Back in Cuba she starts a dance company that suffers under the dictator Batista and does better under Castro. When the decision comes to dance for Cuba or the U.S. she stays with her roots, to the admonishment of the exiles. To this day she dances still. A final author’s note, list of ballets she’s performed, awards received, a Chronology, Glossary of terms, Sources, Website, and Notes appear at the end.

Books for children that deal with Cuba make me wish I had been a better student in school. My knowledge of the Cuban Revolution comes in bits and pieces, fits and starts. Recently we’ve seen quite a few titles concerning this moment in history but often I found them strangely black and white. In books like “The Red Umbrella” for example, characters were portrayed as incredibly black and white. When one starts to join with Castro, she becomes evil near instantaneously. Sometimes historical choices and moments have bits of gray in there, though. Part of the reason I liked Alicia Alonso as much as I did had to do with these gray areas. First off, it was one of the few books to speak about Dictator Batista. Next, here you have a woman who chose to stay in Cuba. As the Author’s Note explains, “Alicia had

My husband Matt pairs well with me for a number of reasons.  Amongst them is our mutual inclination to collect things we love.  As such, Matt has systematically been holding onto all his issues of The New Yorker ever since he got his subscription in college.  Over the years these issues have piled up piled up piled up.  I was a Serials Manager before I got my library degree and one of the perks of the job was getting lots of lovely magazine holders. For years these holders graced the tops of our bookshelves and even came along with us when we moved into our current apartment a year ago.  Yet with the arrival of our puir wee bairn, we decided to do the unthinkable.

Yes.  We ripped off all their covers.

Well, most anyway.  We have the complete run of New Yorker text on CD-ROM anyway, and anything published after the CD-ROM’s release would be online anyway.  Thus does the internet discourage hoarding.

In the meantime, we now are the proud owners of only three boxes worth of New Yorker covers.  They’re very fun to look at.  I once had the desire to wallpaper my bathroom in such covers, but that dream will have to wait (as much as I love New York apartments and all . . .).  For now, it’s just fun to flip through the covers themselves and, in flipping, I discovered something.  Sure, I knew that the overlap between illustrators of children’s books and illustrators of New Yorkers was frequent.  I just didn’t know how frequent it was.  Here then is a quickie encapsulation of some of the folks I discovered in the course of my cover removal.

Istan Banyai

Zoom and Re-Zoom continue to circulate heavily in my library, all thanks to Banyai.  I had a patron the other day ask if we had anything else that was similar but aside from Barbara Lehman all I could think of was Wiesner’s Flotsam.  Banyai is well known in a different way for New Yorker covers, including this controversial one.  As I recall, a bit of a kerfuffle happened when it was published back in the day.

Harry Bliss

Author and illustrator of many many picture books, it’s little wonder that the Art Editor of The New Yorker, Ms. Francoise Mouly, managed to get the man to do a TOON Book (Luke on the Loose) as well.  And when it comes to his covers, this is the one I always think of first.

This year is the 15th anniversary for El día de los niños/El día de los libros! Happy birthday to this wonderful celebration of children and books from all linguistic and cultural backgrounds!

There are lots of celebrations going on and one I’m particularly excited about is the Pura Belpré Celebración at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans this June.  Organizers tell us that they’re going to celebrate it as a Quinceañera with a traditional promenade.  It’s going to be fabulous – we only hope we can sneak away from our booth long enough to participate!

For your collections, here are some Spanish and bilingual books to consider for your Día celebrations:

• Ada, Alma Flor and F. Isabel Campoy  ¡MUU, MOO!: Rimas de animales/Animal Nursery Rhymes. Illus. Vivi Escriva. 2010
• Ada, Alma Flor and F. Isabel Campoy TEN LITTLE PUPPIES/Diez Perritos.  Illus. Ulises Wensell. 2011
• Brown, Monica SIDE BY SIDE/Lado a lado.  Illus. Joe Cepeda. 2010
• Dorros, Arthur  MAMA AND ME.  Illus. Rudy Gutierrez. 2011
• Dorros, Arthur  RADIO MAN/Don radio. 1997 (paperback)
• Guy, Ginger Foglesong  BRAVO! Illus. Rene King Moreno. 2010
• Guy, Ginger Foglesong  MY GRANDMA/Mi abuelita.  Illus. Vivi Escriva. 2007
• Lacamara, Laura  FLOATING ON MAMA’S SONG/Flotando en la canción de mamá. Illus. Yuyi Morales. 2010
• Martinez, Rueben  ONCE UPON A TIME/Habia una vez: Traditional Latin American Tales/Cuentos tradicionales latinoamericanos.  Illus. Raul Colon. 2010
• Mora, Pat  BOOK FIESTA! Illus. Rafael Lopez.  2009
• Mora, Pat WIGGLING POCKETS/Los bolsillos saltarines.  Illus. Maribel Suarez. 2009
• Reiser, Lynn  Tortillas and Lullabies/Tortillas y cancioncitas. Illus. Corazones Valientes. 2008

This list is by no means exhaustive (many of these authors and illustrators are prolific with rich and beautiful books in their backlist), but hopefully it’ll help get you started.

And make sure to check out the Día website – there’s a wealth of information about hosting your own Día event, events going