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Top o’ the Tuesday to you, gentle readers!  After a delightful Memorial Day Weekend of doing very little (aside from watching somewhat strangely high statistics for my dinky little Saturday review) I am now working my final week at NYPL before the imminent arrival of a brand new Baby Bird.  So let’s pack in the news items while we may, eh?

First off, big time thanks to everyone who showed up for the BEA Kidlit Drink Night.  We raised excellent money for Reading is Fundamental and Rasco from RIF provided her own sweet thanks as well.  Y’all are sweet and good and I appreciate you thoroughly.

And now the sad news.  I’m sure that some of you may have heard that librarian, blogger, and 2012 debut author Bridget Zinn died of colon cancer at the age of 33.  Tributes to her have been springing up all over the web and Liz at Tea Cozy has created a very impressive rundown on all the best Zinn links.  I was sorry not to have known her better.

• I mentioned everything in my Day of Dialog rundown except the new books coming out.  Until I get around to typing that up, why don’t you head on over to the PW post BEA 2011: A Bountiful Fall for Children’s Books.  I’ve read some of those books, but a lot are unfamiliar to me.  Get a glimpse of what the publishers think will be big (warning: may differ wildly from what librarians think will be big).

• I just can’t stop mentioning Candyland these days.  One minute I’m talking about the Candyland movie.  The next I’m insisting that you head over to The Scop where Jonathan Auxier talks up his favorite board game of all time: The Settlers of Catan. Sounds a bit like Risk except, as Jonathan says, “Risk is Candy Land in wingtips and a smoking jacket — a game of luck pretending to be a game of skill.”  I’m just amazed that no one’s done a Risk movie yet.  I mean, come on!  We’re already shooting most of our films in New Zealand/Australia anyway.  Clearly that’s where you’d have to set it.

• Sounds pretty standard at first.  The online children’s book magazine Books for Keeps puts out a piece called Ten of the Best Dystopian Novels.  You probably are, like myself, expecting them to cover the usual.  Your Eva.  Your Z for Zachariah.  So it was with great pleasure that I noticed the #1 was The Wolves of Willoughby Chase.  Wait . . . oh!  Dystopian.  Not post-apocalyptic.  The other choices are just as fascinating (I always liked The Wind Singer).

• Saying that there is go
  10 Comments on Fusenews: Back to work, everybody!, last added: 6/1/2011
  Display Comments
  Jonathan Auxier said, on 5/30/2011 10:00:00 PM
  

  On the YA vs MG issue: I would say that YA books seem to be a “hotter” market right now in terms of film rights and multi-book deals. (maybe I’m wrong about this — any YA authors care to clue me in?) However, I would agree that MG books might enjoy a cultural edge insofar as they get to be more directly connected to the larger tradition of Children’s Literature. Given the ages of their protagonists, books like TREASURE ISLAND or ANNE OF GREEN GABLES should probably be called YA … and yet the MG crowd claims them.

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 5/31/2011 4:47:00 AM
  

  Yep. That’s a much clearer and concise way of saying what I was attempting. Cheers, Jonathan.

  Elizabeth Fama said, on 5/31/2011 5:13:00 AM
  

  Regarding your hits: as far as I can tell, your blog stats don’t include all the people who read you through their google reader (like me). My g-reader says you have 586 google subscribers.

  Have a comfortable, happy, healthy maternity leave, Betsy!

  Donna McKinnon said, on 5/31/2011 7:07:00 AM
  

  Wow. Thank you so much for the wonderful comments, and the great article (as always.) A pretty awesome way to start a Tuesday morning! All the best, Donna

  Brooke Shirts said, on 5/31/2011 9:46:00 AM
  

  Didn’t Anne Carroll Moore [sp?] write a column called The Third Owl? Ah-ha.

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 5/31/2011 11:11:00 AM
  

  And it’s Brooke for the win!!!

  Carl in Charlotte said, on 5/31/2011 12:24:00 PM
  

  I was glad to see that the stand-alone article mentioned Charlotte’s Imaginon, which I worked at for four years.

  Jennifer Schultz said, on 5/31/2011 1:22:00 PM
  

  Other stand-alone children’s libraries include the Children’s Resource Center located in New Orleans and one of the New Orleans Public Library branches. It’s also a Carnegie library, I believe.

  There’s also the Saucier Children’s Library (Saucier, MS), a branch of the Harrison County (MS) Public Library (located in the Biloxi area).

  Jennifer Schultz said, on 5/31/2011 1:31:00 PM
  

  Speaking of NOPL and Harrison County libraries…these libraries are still in recovery from Hurricane Katrina (6 year anniversary).

  NOPL has exciting plans for their reimaged and reconstructed libraries: http://www.nutrias.org/~nopl/recovery/recovery.htm

  Harrison County is also closing their temporary library in preparation for their new Biloxi library: http://www.harrison.lib.ms.us/

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 6/1/2011 5:19:00 PM
  

  How did I not think of Captain Sweeto until now? I shall hang my head in shame. Delicious gumdrop flavored shame.

  Add a Comment

Me . . . Jane
By Patrick McDonnell
Little Brown and Company
$15.99
ISBN: 978-0-316004546-9
Ages 4-8
On shelves April 5^th

Pity the picture book biographer. Theirs is not an easy lot. Seems to me that if you want to introduce a six-year-old to a famous person there are two ways of going about it. The first way is the David Adler method. He’s the fellow behind all those “A Picture Book of” books. Adler’s specialty is synthesizing a person into 32 or 40 odd pages. Along the way he has to boil down a human life into as pure and simple a telling as possible. Sometimes this method works well, and sometimes it doesn’t, but it used to be the only way of creating children’s biographies. Then there’s method #2: You take your subject and select just a moment from their life. Which is to say, you give them breadth and depth and meaning, then do the whole summary of who they actually were in the Endnotes. The advantage to this method is that you can actually explain a concept to a kid, by making the biographical subject into a kind of literary character. Biographies of famous people that limit their focus almost entirely to their subjects’ childhoods are actually kind of rare. Famous people do not necessarily arise out of interesting, cheerful childhoods, after all. So really, one of the many things that I admire about Patrick McDonnell’s first foray into non-fiction is that his subject, Jane Goodall, presents him with early years that were practically custom made to be relayed. The result, Me . . . Jane is the rare picture book biography that manages to please biography fans, fiction fans, and chimpanzee fans (albeit, stuffed) alike.

Young Jane noticed things. Outdoorsy things. With her stuffed chimp Jubilee at her side, there were lots of mysteries to notice too. Jane was the type to climb tall trees on sunny days, or to hide in the chicken coop to uncover the source of eggs. When she read her Tarzan she’d want to be in Africa with all the animals just like him. And when she got older, her dreams really did come true. Backmatter include a short section “About Jane Goodall” and a “A Message from Jane” herself.

Odds are that McDonnell’s a familiar name on the comics page of your local newspaper. Known primarily as the man behind the MUTTS comic strip, I think it’s fair to say that McDonnell wasn’t the obvious person to write this book. I say that, even though I’m aware that animal rights are his passion. We’re talking about a guy that’s a member of the Humane Society’s board of directors and who has used MUTTS as a way of drawing attention to everything from The Wildlife Land Trust to New Jersey’s animal population control fund. However, I have seen his previous picture books. They have names like Just Like Heaven and Hug Time and for my desiccated, not to say sardonic, heart and soul they do nothing for me. Animal cuteness is not one of my weaknesses. So when I discovered that McDonnell was tackling a real person and a real life I approached the idea with more than a mite bit of trepidation. Jane Goodall, let’s face it, would be easy to cutesy up (all the more so when you learn about her life). Though it was his idea in the first place, was McDonnell the right guy to tell her tale? Answer: Yup. This isn’t to say that I wouldn’t like to see her life de

Art & Max
By David Wiesner
Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-618-75663-6
Ages 4-8
On shelves October 4, 2010

Illustrators of children’s books are easier to deal with if you can lump them into little boxes. Multicultural family stories that tug at the heartstrings? That’s the Patricia Polacco box. Cute kids in period clothes frolicking with goats? Yup, that’s Tasha Tudor. So my problem with David Wiesner is that he throws my entire system off. Though his style is recognizable in each and every one of his books (Freefall, Sector 7, etc.) his storylines zigzag around the globe. One minute he has a book about frogs that unexpectedly take flight. The next it’s a wordless tale about a boy who finds a fantastical camera from beneath the sea. He remains an unpredictable force. You literally never know what he will do next. When Art & Max was first discussed, folks had a very difficult time figuring out what it was about. There are lizards? And painting? As always, Wiesner considers his reader first, then creates a story that will be both fun to read and visually stimulating. Consider this your Example A.

Art, a horned lizard with an artist’s temperament, is doing a bit of portraiture in his desert environment when along bounces happy-go-lucky Max. Max wants to paint just like Art, and the grumpy elder agrees grudgingly, informing the little guy, “Just don’t get in the way.” When Max asks what he should paint, Art suggests himself. Unfortunately for him, Max takes this advice a little too literally and Max finds himself covered in oils, turned into pastels, and eventually nothing more than a mere outline of his former self. By the end, however, he has come around to Max’s exuberance and the two decide to paint. Max makes a portrait. Art throws paints at a cactus.

The thing I forget about Mr. Wiesner is that he always has the child reader in mind. Sure, he may break down the fourth wall in The Three Pigs, but he’s still having fun with the kids reading the book when he does so. That said, a friend of mine suggested that Art & Max differed from The Three Pigs in this way. She was concerned that Art & Max wasn’t kid-friendly enough. She said it deals with characters coming to terms with the fact that they themselves are drawn, but not in a way that k

Dust Devil
By Anne Isaacs
Illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky
Schwartz & Wade (an imprint of Random House)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-375-86722-4
Ages 5-10
On shelves September 14, 2010

If Pippi Longstocking is a redhead known for her casual legwear, Angelica Longrider (or just “Angel” for short) would have to be considered her blatantly barefoot ginger-headed equivalent. When the Anne Isaacs Caldecott Honor winning picture book Swamp Angel took the stage back in 1994 it was cause for celebration. Here you had an honest-to-goodness new tall tale with a vernacular smart enough to match the pictures, and vice versa. The pairing of Anne Isaacs with Caldecott winner Paul O. Zelinsky was inspired. I was a big fan, yet for some reason I never considered that the book might garner a sequel. Clearly it was ripe for it, but Isaacs and Zelinsky pursued other projects and the thought was all but forgotten. Until now. After 16 years the dynamic duo is back. She’s a wordsmith. He likes to kill himself by painting on wood. Clearly, Dust Devil was meant to be.

Having found Tennessee a bit too cramped to suit her, giantess and all around decent gal Angelica Longrider (“Swamp Angel” to some) has headed further into the country to set up shop in Montana. It takes a little settling in, but she’s happy enough and even manages to tame a wild dust storm into a steed worthy of her skills. Good thing too, since that nasty Backward Bart and his band of no goodniks are terrorizing the countryside, robbing good people of their pennies. If she could wrestle a bear into submission, Angel certainly can handle a couple of toughs. But it’ll take smarts as well as skills to put these nasty bandits away. Good thing she’s got her horse.

The first thing you need to know about Anne Isaacs is the fact that her books, all her books, ache to be read aloud. It doesn’t matter if you’re perusing Pancakes for Supper or The Ghosts of Luckless Gulch. Now sometimes they’re a bit too long for storytimes (much to my chagrin) but for one-on-one reading they’re the tops. I mean, there are certain sentences that just beg you to try them on your tongue. Sentences like, “The barn began to shake, the ground to quake, the windows to break, the animals to wake, and everyone’s ears to ache!” Fear not, this isn’t a rhyming text. There are just certain sections where it’s the right thing to do.

While you’re rolling her sentences around in your mouth, there are also Zelinsky’s images to contend with. Painting on cedar and aspen veneer, Zelinsky is meticulous about his process. The result is a book that is rather achingly beautiful. Even if you don’t take to his style, you have to respect the process. The size of the images combined with the tiniest of brush

Yep!  I’ve determined that midway through June is the perfect time to start toting various Newbery/Caldecott predictions.  This time last year I listed When You Reach Me, The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, and The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate amongst my winners.  Let us all hope I’ve such good luck this year as well.

Newbery Predictions (Summer Edition!):

My Top Newbery Award Pick:

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia -
No real surprise there.  I’ve been toting this book since I read it back in February.  The title has absolutely everything going for it. A strong family story, an unconventional setting, and a historical topic that hasn’t really been covered much at all in children’s literature. Williams-Garcia has always been a top notch writer, but with this book she has finally produced something young enough to grab the attention of a Newbery committee. As far as I can tell, this book should at least be able to nab an Honor.  I hope for more, but Newbery committees do love to break my heart.

My Top Newbery Honor Picks:

Keeper by Kathi Appelt – It’s a strong choice and is considered widely to be more accessible than her previous novel The Underneath.  And even with all the debate surrounding it that book still won a Newbery Honor!  Again, this is a story about family (a popular theme this year) and mothers. It has a great deal of heart too, which may push it over the edge.  I wouldn’t mind seeing it do very well indeed.

The Water Seeker by Kimberly Willis Holt – Entirely based on heresay and conjecture.  I haven’t read it myself.  I simply hear good things.  Consider it to be on my To Be Read list.

The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz – It was pointed out to me after the last set of predictions that fairy books don’t win big medals.  They might be right.  We’ve already a serious mermaid title going for the gold this year.  Can we handle both fairies and mermaids in a single category?  I’d like to think so since Schlitz’s book takes a topic that is usually brushed over by lesser authors and makes it into something wild and classic.  But I can also see the Newbery committee dismissing it as . . well . . as too much fun.  It happens.

The Boneshaker by Kate Milford – In any given year you’ll usually find a debut author/wild card.  This book has both.  I consider it a serious Honor contender.  The shades of Ray Bradbury in it don’t overwhelm the text.  It’s creepy and delightful and the writing itself is superb.  I am much taken with this book.

The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan – A Hispanic-American has never won a Newbery Award proper, you know.  Could this be the first time it happens?  Maybe so.  I liked the book, though I know folks who found it too “writerly” to sink their teeth into