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The complete title of Adam Gidwitz's new book is, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog.  Set in the 13th century, Gidwitz starts his story in an inn.  The narrator is trying to find all he can about the three children - and dog - that King Louis IX is hunting down.

Various customers tell the stories; first of Gwenforte, a loyal dog who is wrongly killed and then revered; then of Jeanne, a girl who suffers fits and can see the future.  When Jeanne needs her loyal dog the most, Gwenforte comes back from the dead; then of William, a monk-in-training, bigger then anyone in the abbey, dark brown, the son of a Lord and a Saracen woman, and as strong as Samson; and last but not least, Jacob, who knows all about herbs but uses them with miraculous success.  Jacob is a Jew.  Through a tragedy, he loses his home.

The four must all leave their comfortable homes and eventually they come together.  They perform miracles.  They make enemies. They unite in a mission to save thousands of years of wisdom, threatened by bigotry.  They face mortal danger, and very stinky cheese.  Along the way, Gidwitz skillfully plays out legends and superstitions of the times, highlights social injustices and champions open minded thought and the acceptance of all people.  What an adventure!

Teachers and curious readers will want to read Gidwitz's Author's Note.  It explains his research, which parts are based on the things Gidwitz read, which he changed or fabricated and where he got his background material.  There is also an Annotated Bibliography,

When a book strays into my thoughts while I am doing the laundry, or loading the dishwasher, I know it's a darn good book.  Since I feared that Jeanne was actually Joan of Arc, I hesitated to finish this book.  Whether she is, or not, this is a Darn Good Book.  So, read it. 

Also?  The illustrations - oh, sorry, the Illuminations - are awesome.

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I usually begin with a video of myself whenever I’ve a chance, but this week I’m preempting my own face because this video is the coolest thing ever.  By the time I left New York Public Library its Rose Reading Room had already been closed for half a year.  Now you get to see the room in a time lapse video looking cooler than ever.  52,000 books are shelved here in two minutes.  Trust me – you won’t be bored.

This month I hosted one of those fun little interviews I do from time to time on my show Ladybird and Friends. This month the interviewee was Mike Grosso of the new feminist middle grade novel I Am Drums.  He’s great.  The book’s great.  We have fun.  But if you really want to skip to the weird part, be sure to also go to about 28:34.

And just to keep it all in the family, my husband’s book The Secrets of Story is out and available for purchase.  To prep you a bit, Matt’s been creating short interesting videos to highlight some of the ideas in the book.  This one’s about objects.  I’m a fan.  Check it:

You’ve heard of book trailers, surely, but audiobook trailers? This one for Adam Gidwitz’s magnificent The Inquisitor’s Tale will make you a believer. Let’s see more of these in the future!

Meanwhile, over at 100 Scope Notes, Travis Jonker swore that if he ever heard of a children’s book creator on television, he’d watch. Then he heard that Oliver Jeffers was on an Irish talk show called The Late Late Show. So what does he do? He tracks down the Irish video link. That’s dedication, people. That’s chutzpah. And we are the beneficiaries:

N.D. Wilson.  He writes middle grade children’s books.  Good ones too.  Books that get a lot of critical attention.  But apparently that’s not enough for Mr. Wilson. Oh no.  He has to go out and actually write and direct a real as real movie.  It’s called The River Thief and it has a limited national release and is on VOD.  Check out the trailer here if you’re curious:

Fun Fact: The creation of this movie, from concept to end of production, was three weeks. That includes the three days it took to write the script. Here’s a behind the scenes on that, if you’re curious.

Next UP: Not safe for work.  Not really.  But anything that takes the “sexy librarian” stereotype and turns it on its head/tongue is fine by me.

And for the off-topic video, I warn you.  This bad lip-reading will get caught in your head.  This is the earworm to rule all earworms.

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The Inquisitor’s Tale or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog
By Adam Gidwitz
Illuminated by Hatem Aly
Dutton Children’s Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
$17.99
ISBN: 978-0-525-42616-5
Ages 9 and up
On shelves September 27th

God’s hot this year.

To be fair, God has had some fairly strong supporters for quite some time. So if I’m going to clarify that statement a tad, God’s hot in children’s literature this year. Even then, that sentence is pretty vague. Here in America there are loads of Christian book publishers out there, systematically putting out title after title after title each and every year about God, to say nothing of publishers of other religions as well. Their production hasn’t increased hugely in 2016, so why the blanket statement? A final clarification, then: God is hot in children’s books from major non-Christian publishers this year. Ahhhh. That’s better. Indeed, in a year when serious literary consideration is being heaped upon books like John Hendrix’s Miracle Man, in walks Adam Gidwitz and his game changing The Inquisitor’s Tale. Now I have read my fair share of middle grade novels for kids, and I tell you straight out that I have never read a book like this. It’s weird, and unfamiliar, and religious, and irreligious, and more fun than it has any right to be. Quite simply, Gidwitz found himself a holy dog, added in a couple proto-saints, and voila! A book that’s part superhero story, part quixotic holy quest, and part Canterbury Tales with just a whiff of intrusive narration for spice. In short, nothing you’ve encountered in all your livelong days. Bon appétit.

The dog was dead to begin with. A greyhound with a golden muzzle that was martyred in defense of a helpless baby. As various pub goers gather in the year 1242 to catch a glimpse of the king, they start telling stories about this dog that came back from the dead, its vision-prone mistress (a peasant girl named Jeanne), a young monk blessed with inhuman strength (William, son of a lord and a North African woman), and a young Jewish boy with healing capabilities (Jacob). These three very different kids have joined together in the midst of a country in upheaval. Some see them as saints, some as the devil incarnate, and before this tale is told, the King of France himself will seek their very heads. An extensive Author’s Note and Annotated Bibliography appear at the end.

If you are familiar with Mr. Gidwitz’s previous foray into middle grade literature (the Grimm series) then you know he has a penchant for giving the child reader what it wants. Which is to say, blood. Lots of it. In his previous books he took his cue from the Grimm brothers and their blood-soaked tales. Here his focus is squarely on the Middle Ages (he would thank you not to call them “The Dark Ages”), a time period that did not lack for gore. The carnage doesn’t really begin in earnest until William starts (literally) busting heads, and even then the book feels far less sanguine than Gidwitz’s other efforts. I mean, sure, dogs die and folks are burned alive, but that’s pretty tame by Adam’s previous standards. Of course, what he lacks in disembowelments he makes up for with old stand-bys like vomit and farts. Few can match the man’s acuity for disgusting descriptions. He is a master of the explicit and kids just eat that up. Not literally of course. That would be gross. As a side note, he has probably included the word “ass” more times in this book than all the works of J.M. Barrie and Roald Dahl combined. I suspect that if this book is ever challenged in schools or libraries it won’t be for the copious entrails or discussions about God, but rather because at one point the word “ass” (as it refers to a donkey) appears three times in quick, unapologetic succession. And yes, it’s hilarious when it does.

So let’s talk religious persecution, religious fundamentalism, and religious tolerance. As I write this review in 2016 and politicians bandy hate speech about without so much as a blink, I can’t think of a book written for kids more timely than this. Last year I asked a question of my readers: Can a historical children’s book contain protagonists with prejudices consistent with their time period? Mr. Gidwitz seeks to answer that question himself. His three heroes are not shining examples of religious tolerance born of no outside influence. When they escape together they find that they are VERY uncomfortable in one another’s presence. Mind you, I found William far more tolerant of Jacob than I expected (though he does admittedly condemn Judaism once in the text). His dislike of women is an interesting example of someone rejecting some but not all of the childhood lessons he learned as a monk. Yet all three kids fear one another as unknown elements and it takes time and a mutually agreed upon goal to get them from companionship to real friendship.

As I mentioned at the start of this review, religion doesn’t usually get much notice in middle grade books for kids from major publishers these days. And you certainly won’t find discussions about the differences between Christianity and Judaism, as when the knight Marmeluc tries to determine precisely what it is to be Jewish. What I appreciated about this book was how Gidwitz distinguished between the kind of Christianity practiced by the peasants versus the kind practiced by the educated and rich. The peasants have no problem worshipping dogs as saints and even the local priest has a wife that everyone knows he technically isn’t supposed to have. The educated and rich then move to stamp out these localized beliefs which, let’s face it, harken back to the people’s ancestors’ paganism.

Race also comes up a bit, with William’s heritage playing a part now and then, but the real focus is reserved for the history of Christian/Jewish interactions. Indeed, in his wildly extensive Author’s Note at the end, Gidwitz makes note of the fact that race relations in Medieval Europe were very different then than today. Since it preceded the transatlantic slave trade, skin color was rare and contemporary racism remains, “the modern world’s special invention.” There will probably still be objections to the black character having the strength superpower rather than the visions or healing, but he’s also the best educated and intelligent of the three. I don’t think you can ignore that fact.

As for the writing itself, that’s what you’re paying your money for at the end of the day. Gidwitz is on fire here, making medieval history feel fresh and current. For example, when the Jongleur says that some knights are, “rich boys who’ve been to the wars . . . Not proper at all. But still rich,” that’s a character note slid slyly into the storytelling. Other lines pop out at you too. Here are some of my other favorites:

• About that Jongleur, “… he looks like the kind of child who has seen too much of life, who’s seen more than most adults. His eyes are both sharp and dead at the same time. As if he won’t miss anything, because he’s seen it all already.”
• “Jeanne’s mother’s gaze lingered on her daughter another moment, like an innkeeper waiting for the last drop of ale from the barrel tap.”
• “The lord and lady welcomed the knights warmly. Well, the lady did. Lord Bertulf just sat in his chair behind the table, like a stick of butter slowly melting.”
• “Inside her, grand castles of comprehension, models of the world as she had understood it, shivered.”
• And Gidwitz may also be the only author for children who can write a sentence that begins, “But these marginalia contradicted the text…” and get away with it.

Mind you, Gidwitz paints himself into a pretty little corner fairly early on. To rest this story almost entirely on the telling of tales in a pub, you need someone who doesn’t just know the facts of one moment or the next but who could claim to know our heroes’ interior life. So each teller comes to mention each child’s thoughts and feelings in the course of their tale. The nun in the book bears the brunt of this sin, and rather than just let that go Gidwitz continually has characters saying things like, “I want to know if I’m sitting at a table filled with wizards and mind readers.” I’m not sure if I like the degree to which Gidwitz keeps bringing this objection up, or if it detracts from the reading. What I do know is that he sort of cheats with the nun. She’s the book’s deux ex machina (or, possibly the diaboli ex machina) acting partly as an impossibility and partly as an ode to the author’s love of silver haired librarians and teachers out there with “sparkling eyes, and a knowing smile.”

Since a large portion of the story is taken up with saving books as objects, it fits that this book itself should be outfitted with all the beauties of its kind. If we drill down to the very mechanics of the book, we find ourselves admiring the subtleties of fonts. Every time a tale switches between the present day and the story being told, the font changes as well. But to do it justice, the story has been illuminated (after a fashion) by artist Hatem Aly. I have not had the opportunity to see the bulk of his work on this story. I do feel that the cover illustration of William is insufficiently gargantuan, but that’s the kind of thing they can correct in the paperback edition anyway.

Fairy tales and tales of saints. The two have far more in common than either would like to admit. Seen in that light, Gidwitz’s transition from pure unadulterated Grimm to, say, Lives of the Improbable Saints and Legends of the Improbable Saints is relatively logical. Yet here we have a man who has found a way to tie-in stories about religious figures to the anti-Semitism that is still with us to this day. At the end of his Author’s Note, Gidwitz mentions that as he finished this book, more than one hundred and forty people were killed in Paris by terrorists. He writes of Medieval Europe, “It was a time when people were redefining how they lived with the ‘other,’ with people who were different from them.” The echoes reverberate today. Says Gidwitz, “I can think of nothing sane to say about this except this book.” Sermonizers, take note.

On shelves September 27th.

Like This? Then Try:

• Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz, ill. Robert Byrd
• The Book of Everything by Guus Kuijer
• Crispin, the Cross of Lead by Avi

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I have long followed and respected the work of author Cynthia DeFelice, who over the past 25 years has put together an expansive and impressive body of work. No bells, no whistles, no fancy pyrotechnics. Just one well-crafted book after another. There’s not an ounce of phony in Cynthia; she’s the genuine article, the real magilla. Last November, I was pleased to run into Cynthia at the Rochester Children’s Book Festival. Pressed for time, we chatted easily about this and that, then parted ways. But I wanted more. Thus, this conversation . . . I’m sure you’ll like Cynthia almost as much as her dog does.

Greetings, Cynthia. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule for this conversation. I feel like we have so much to talk about. We first met sometime in the early 90s, back when Frank Hodge, a bookseller in Albany, was putting on his elaborate, gushing children’s book conferences.

It’s nice to be in touch with you again. I’ll always remember those conferences​ with Frank Hodge.  He made me feel validated as a fledgling writer.  He left me a voice mail telling me how much he loved the book Weasel.  I played it over and over and over!   In 1992, the Hodge-Podge Society gave the first ever Hodge-Podge Award to Weasel.  It meant the world to me.  Those were great times for authors, teachers, kids, and for literature.

Frank forced me to read your book — and I loved it. So I’ll always be grateful to Frank for that; it’s important to have those people in your world, the sharers, the ones who press books into your hands and say, “You must read this!”

Well, good for Frank! He is definitely one of those people you’re talking about. His enthusiasm is infectious.

We’ve seen many changes over the past 25 years. For example, a year or two ago I  participated in a New York State reading conference in Albany for educators. The building was abuzz with programs about “Common Core” strategies & applications & assessments & implementation techniques and ZZZZZzzzzz. (Sorry, dozed off for a minute!) Anyway, educators were under tremendous pressure to roll this thing out — even when many sensed disaster. Meanwhile, almost out of habit, organizers invited authors to attend, but they placed us in a darkened corridor in the back. Not next to the Dumpster, but close. At one point I was with Susan Beth Pfeffer, who writes these incredible books, and nobody was paying attention to her. This great writer was sitting there virtually ignored.

To your point about finding fabulous authors being ignored at conferences, I hear you. It can be a very humbling experience. I find that teachers aren’t nearly as knowledgeable about books and authors as they were 10-25 years ago, and not as interested. They aren’t encouraged in that direction, and they don’t feel they have the time for what is considered to be non-essential to the goal of making sure their kids pass the tests. Thankfully, there are exceptions! You and I both still hear from kids and teachers for whom books are vital, important, and exhilarating.

But, yes, I agree with you completely that literature is being shoved to the side. Teachers tell me they have to sneak in reading aloud when no one is watching or listening.

When I was invited to speak at a dinner, along with Adam Gidwitz and the great Joe Bruchac, I felt compelled to put in a good word for  . . . story. You know, remind everybody that books matter. In today’s misguided rush for “informational units of text,” I worry that test-driven education is pushing literature to the side. The powers that be can’t easily measure the value of a book — it’s impossible to reduce to bubble tests — so their solution is to ignore fiction completely. Sorry for the rant, but I’m so frustrated with the direction of education today.

Well, it’s hard not to rant. It’s disconcerting to think how we’ve swung so far from those heady days of “Whole Language” to today’s “Common Core” curriculum — about as far apart as two approaches can be. I think the best approach lies somewhere in the vast middle ground between the two, and teachers need to be trusted to use methods as varied as the kids they work with every day.

You’ve always been extremely well-reviewed. Readers love your books.  And yet in this day of series and website-supported titles, where everything seems to be high-concept, it feels like the stand-alone middle grade novel is an endangered species.

I have been lucky with reviews.  But, sadly, I think traditional review sources are becoming increasingly irrelevant, as blogs and websites and personal media platforms take over. That’s not good news for me because I am simply not interested in self-promotion.  Can’t do it.  Don’t want to do it.  I just want to write the best books I can and let them speak for themselves.  I know it’s old-school, but there it is.  You said that a stand-alone middle grade novel is becoming an endangered species amid all the series and “high concept” books out there, and I think you’re right.  But when that stand-alone book somehow finds its niche audience, when kids and teachers somehow discover it and embrace it as theirs . . . , well, it’s a beautiful damn thing, and it’s enough to keep me writing, for now.

For now?!

Well, my husband is 9 years older than I am and recently retired, and there are a lot of things we still need to do!

Like what?

We have a farm property we are improving by digging a pond, and by planting trees and foliage to benefit wildlife. We stocked it with fish, and enjoy watching it attract turtles, frogs, toads, dragonflies, birds and animals of all sorts. So we like to spend a lot of time there, camping out. We love to travel, and are headed next on a self-driving tour of Iceland. We also have four terrific grandchildren we like to spend time with. I could go on and on with the bucket list…

By the way, I agree about the blogs. I think we are seeing a lot more opinion — more reaction — but less deep critical thought. It’s fine and useful for a neighbor to tell you they hated or loved a movie, but it’s not the same as a professional film critic providing an informed, and hopefully insightful, critique. Yet somehow today it’s all conflated. 

Well, there is a similar phenomenon with self-published books. I’m not a total snob about it, and there are plenty of good books that didn’t go through the process of being accepted by and edited by a professional at an established publishing house. But I’ll repeat that everyone needs an editor. And I’m often amazed at the brazenness of people spouting off in various social media platforms, often without being fully grounded in the subject they are pontificating about. But, hey, maybe I’m just getting to be an old fart.

Yeah, I don’t Tweet either. We’re being left in the dust! My observation is that the “kidlitosphere” is comprised 90% of women. Of course, many of those bloggers are passionate, smart, generous women who genuinely want to see boys reading. But I always think of a favorite line written by one of my heroes, Charlotte Zolotow, where a boy imagines his father telling his mother, “You never were a boy. You don’t know.”

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I don’t think it’s an ideal thing that the blogging world — which has become such an important source of information about books — is overwhelmingly female. Of course, the situation is not at all their fault. 

That’s why it’s so great that there are writers out there like you, Bruce Coville, Tedd Arnold, Jon Scieska, Neil Gaiman, Jack Gantos –- who not only write books boys like, but are out there in schools demonstrating that REAL MEN read and write! I don’t know what we can do about the gender gap other than to be aware of it and to write the best books we can, books that both boys and girls will devour.

Tell me about Wild Life. Once again, you are mining the world of adventure — a boy, a dog, and a gun.

I never got as much mail from kids, teachers, grandparents and other caregivers as I did after that book came out. In our hyper-politically correct world, GUNS = EVIL. You can’t talk about them in school. So where does that leave a kid who spends his or her weekend hunting, who studies nature in order to be part of it, who hunts respectfully, with care, who is enmeshed in family history and tradition, who through hunting feels part of the full complexity of life?

I had to keep silencing the censors in my head telling me I couldn’t put a gun in an 11 year old kid’s hands, unless it was a matter of survival in a book set back in “the olden days.”

I was amazed and immensely gratified to learn that a lot of kids found themselves and their interests represented in Erik’s story. I didn’t write it with an agenda in mind. I simply wrote it based on the experiences I’ve had when my husband and I take our bird dog on her yearly Dream Vacation to North Dakota to hunt pheasants.

Ha! I love that your dog has a Dream Vacation.

I get so much joy from watching her do what she was born and bred to do. I cherish our days out on those wide open prairies, and have learned to see the subtle and varied beauty of the landscape. I was just hoping to write a rip-roaring good story that incorporated all that wonderful stuff. Our hunting experiences have nothing whatsoever to do with “gun violence” of the sort you hear about on TV. It’s been interesting to hear from kids who really get that.

Yeah, I enjoy meeting those kids, often out in the western end of New York State. One of my readers from the North Country sent me this photo. Isn’t she great?

Oh, man, I love that! We can’t forget those kids are out there.

What’s next, Cynthia? Any new books on the horizon?

Possibly, just possibly, a sequel to Fort. But that’s all I will say, even if you use enhanced interrogation techniques.

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We do not waterboard here at Jamespreller dot com, and I resent the implication! Those are merely bath toys that happen to be . . . nevermind!

According to the rules of the interwebs, I see that we’ve gone way beyond the approved length of standard posts. Likely there’s no one left reading. It’s just us. So I’ll end here with a big thank you, Cynthia, for putting up with me. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation. I hope I’ll see you again in Rochester at the 19th Annual Children’s Book Festival. 

 

 

 

 

 

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The heart of Young Adult Fiction descended into picturesque Charleston, SC on November 7, 2014 as 60 Young Adult authors, including 37 New York Times bestsellers, joined together for the 4th Annual Charleston Young Adult Book Festival (“YALLFest”).

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I confess that I’ve never played video games with Adam Gidwitz, but on the occasions when Adam has joined my family for board games while visiting Austin, he’s shown himself to be a fun, vigorous competitor. I figured he’d be a good author to include in the Games & Books & Q&A series.

Adam is the author of the fairy tale-inspired (to put it lightly), occasionally a smidge gruesome (to employ a bit of understatement) middle-grade trilogy consisting of A Tale Dark & Grimm, In a Glass Grimmly, and The Grimm Conclusion (all published by Dutton).

His upcoming books include a retelling of The Empire Strikes Back, part of a series that will also feature previous interviewee Tom Angleberger‘s take on Return of the Jedi. Before we get into talking about video games, here’s a little more information on their Star Wars books.

But enough about Star Wars. (I’m kidding. There’s no such thing.) Let’s talk about video games.

CB: What do you remember about the first video game you ever played?

AG: Is this question just an excuse to gauge your interviewees’ age? I know it is. I find it offensive and embarrassing. What if I said the first computer game I played was Halo? You’d think I was 14. Or Dr. Babbage’s Automated Loom-Game? You’d think I was 200.

In truth, the first game I played was Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, for the original Nintendo. I remember a friend of mine, Chip Martucci (isn’t that a great name for a kid in a nostalgic memory?) had the first Nintendo of anyone I knew. It was the freshest thing on the market. I coveted it, and coveted my time playing it. I would sleep over at his house, and wake up at 5 a.m., and just lie there, starving, waiting for him to wake up and praying he would want to play Nintendo.

I had a problem.

CB: What games did you play the most when you were a kid? What did you love about them?

AG: The game I have been devoted to since it appeared was Sid Meier’s Civilization, as well as its many retreads and spin-offs. I had the original game on its seven floppy discs. When I want to update the most recent iteration (Civ V, for those counting at home) with an expansion pack, I can download it wirelessly. Despite the fact that one hundredth of the expansion pack couldn’t have fit on those floppies. How far we’ve come. All so I can conquer the world again and again and again.

CB: What role do games play in your life today?

AG: Honestly, I try to limit my gameplay these days, as I have an obsessive personality ONLY in regards to games (of all types). Whenever you try to close Civ, it says, “Are you sure?” And you can choose “Exit Game” or “Just one more turn…” Oh, if only it was “one more turn.” I literally threw my Civ III and IV discs down the trash chutes at college because I was not working — only to buy them again. And again throw them down the chutes. Sadly, if I threw the wi-fi router down the trash chute, I would not be able to participate in interviews like this.

So these days, I try to channel my desire for world domination and epic battles into my fiction. Adults often bemoan those parts of my books. But kids, especially gamers, get it. If I can make a kid feel like I did playing those games, if I can transform “One more turn…” into “One more page…,” I will have done a good thing.

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I expect to continue this series through the October publication of my book Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! A Gamer’s Alphabet. If there’s anyone in the gamer or kidlit camp that you’d love to see me feature in upcoming posts in this series, please drop me a line or tweet at me or just leave a message in the comments.

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Jessica Lee is a teacher librarian at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, California. She has also been an English teacher, a public librarian, and a waitress, but her favorite terrible-teen job was selling snacks at Six Flags Magic Mountain. She is the mom of two boys who are also students at her school, fully integrating the work-life experience.

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I have a sister.  Did you know that?  Tis true.  She’s not a librarian and her interest in children’s literature pretty much begins and ends with me, which is probably why she hasn’t come up before.  One thing she is?  Crafty.  Crafty as all get out.  And the kicker is that she’s just started this new blog called The How To, How Hard, and How Much to Your Creative Products.  Here’s how she describes it:

What if there was a blog out there that took Pinterest ideas and showed people how to do it, how much time it took, how much money was spent, and had a level of expertise (1-5). Maybe even sell the final product. Is this something people would read? Has it already been done? How could I rope guys into doing it (other than if it involved mustaches and bacon)? I’ve never blogged before but I feel like it might be helpful, especially since the holiday season is quickly approaching. People could even send me recommendations and I could do those as well.

And make it she has.  Amongst other things she has a wide range of Halloween ideas including spider cookies, 5 minute ideas, and my personal favorite, the cleaver cupcakes.  In fact, if you could just repin those cupcakes onto your Pinterest boards she’d be mighty grateful (there’s a contest she’s entering them into).  But of special interest to the blog (aside from outright nepotism) was her recent posting on literary jewelry where she turned a book of mine into a bracelet.  Nicely done, l’il sis.

• I attended the Society of Illustrators event the other day (did you know the place is free on Tuesdays?!) and the New York Times Best Illustrated results are on the cusp of an announcement soon.  Both lists are chosen by artists as well as librarian types, and so one could consider them the form with which artists are allowed to voice their opinions about the best of the year (just as the National Book Awards are how authors talk about writing).  Still, there are those that have disliked the Caldecott from the outset because it is decided not by artists but librarians.  Robin Smith recently dug up a 1999 interview with Barry Moser voicing just such a concern.  A hot little discussion then emerged in the Horn Book comments.  Go!  See!

• Brian Biggs + Jon Scieszka + 6 way auction = interesting.

• I think a fair number of us have seen Business Insider’s Most Famous Book Set in Every State map by this point, but I’d just like to mention that what pleases me the most about it is the fact that they included children’s books as well as adult.  Six children’s and one YA novel by my count.

• Let’s Talk About Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants, and Misogyny.  So says author Lynn Messina.  Interesting title, no?

• And since we’re on an interesting title kick, let’s throw out another one.  True or False? Multicultural Books Don’t Sell.  We’ve all heard that argument before.  Now an actual honest-to-god bookseller tackles the question.  You may normally know Elizabeth Bluemle from the ShelfTalker blog at PW, but here she’s guest talking at Lee & Low.  Cleverly, she specifies whether or not we are talking about how they don’t sell to kids or how they don’t sell to adults.  Without giving anything away, let me just say that her experiences mirror my own in the library.

In other press release news, I am shocked and appalled that I wasn’t aware of this until now.  I mean, I knew that Kate Beaton, the genius behind Hark, A Vagrant, was working on children’s books.  What I did not know was how close to fruition my dream of shelving her in my children’s sections truly was.  The Wired blog Underwire, of all places, was the one with the scoop when they interviewed Ms. Beaton.  She discusses the book, which contains her most famous creation (the fat pony) and a princess.  Says she about princesses in general, “. . . for little girls historically [princesses] are the only people like them who had any power at all. It’s not just oh, princes and dresses. It’s also, here’s a person with agency. Is she just someone who wants a pretty dress and prince? Or is she a warrior living in a battle kingdom? I think it just depends on how you depict what a princess is.”  I think we know the direction Ms. Beaton will go in.  And I waaaant it.  Thanks to Seth Fishman for the link.

• As slogans go, this might be one of my favorites: “Kill time. Make history”.  How do you mean?  Well, NYPL is looking for a few good bored folks. Say they, “The New York Public Library is training computers how to recognize building shapes and other information from old city maps. Help us clean up the data so that it can be used in research, teaching and civic hacking.”  Sometimes I just love my workplace.

• Me stuff time.  Or rather, stuff I’m doing around and about the world that you might like to attend.  You see, on November 6th I’ll be interviewing legendary graphic novelist Paul Pope at 4pm at the Mulberry Street library branch here in NYC.  If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Pope’s name, all you really need to know is that he’s a three time Eisner Award winning artist who wrote the recent GN Battling Boy and whose work is currently on display at the Society of Illustrators on their second floor (which just means I get to tell you again that you can get in for free on Tuesdays).  This event will also be free.  If you’ve ever wondered what the “Mick Jagger of graphic novels” would look like, you’ll find out soon enough.

• Also going on in NYC, they have transferred Allegra Kent’s Ballerina Swan to the stage for kids.  Makes perfect sense when you put it that way.

• This is utterly delightful.  Recently Picture Book Month’s Education Consultant Marcie Colleen contacted me with this awesome PDF entitled Picture Book Month Teacher’s Guide: Why Picture Books Belong in Our Classrooms.  It was so useful, in fact, that I tapped her for an upcoming Children’s Literary Salon about the Core Curriculum.  More about that later, though . . .

• My reaction to finding out that Henry Selick was going to direct Adam Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm was simple.  The best possible person is doing the best possible thing and is making everyone happy in the process.  My sole concern?  Selick’s going live action on this.  What was the last live action film he directed?  Monkeybone, you say?  Ruh-roh.  Thanks to PW Children’s Bookshelf for the link.

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I won’t be blogging for the next 7-10 days, but I’m confident the world will keep spinning. But don’t think that I’ll be relaxing, people. I’m actually going on a book tour, my first ever, and I’ll be talking up the new SCARY TALES series.

Check out this schedule:

Monday, 10/21: Flying to San Francisco, staying in Petaluma. I’m having dinner with educators and young readers, arranged by the kind folks at Cooperfield’s.

Tuesday, 10/22: Visiting the Old Adobe Charter School, Liberty School, and McDowell School for presentations to about 550 students. Swinging by Cooperfield’s to sign books. Then driving to San Francisco for the night.

Wednesday, 10/23: Thanks to Books Inc, I’ll be visiting at the San Francisco Day School and Brandeis Hillel Day School. Flying to Los Angeles.

Thursday, 10/24: In a day arranged by Miss Nelson’s Book Store, visiting at Telesis Academy and Shelyn Elementary. Flying to Chicago.

Friday, 10/25: Thanks to Anderson’s book store, I’ll be visiting with students at Builta and Churchill Schools, and later that night should enjoy a fun-filled Halloween celebration at Anderson’s, book signing, and free dental.

Saturday, 10/26: Flying to Austin, where I’ll be attending a cocktail party and then heading off to a cemetery for a literary walk with R.L. Stine to scare readers silly.

Sunday, 10/27: Flying home.

Monday, 10/28: The New York State Reading Association Conference in Albany, NY, for a luncheon, then a panel discussion with Ann Burg, and a brief dinner presentation along with Joe Bruchac and Adam Gidwitz.

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I think it fitting that I follow up the last Video Sunday bit of teacher enthusiasm with this subsequent sneaky teacher taping.  “We’re just smelling books, Mr. Lewis.”  That would be Mike Lewis and though they acknowledge him at the start, it’s pretty clear they don’t know he’s taping until much later on.  This should give heart to anyone worried about the fate of the paper book.  Big big thanks to Mike Lewis for this video.

So happy Sunday to you, one and all.  It’s not Banned Books Week, or Banned Books Month, or even the Year of the Banned Book, but even still this video was so nicely put together that I figured it deserved to be shown at a time of year that wasn’t designated “banned”. And naturally I liked that so many of the books read here were children’s as well as adult.

Well written too, come to think of it.  It was created by Bookmans, a kind of used bookstore/everything else in Tucson, Mesa, Phoenix, and Flagstaff.  Thanks to Ben Collinsworth for the link.

Now for fun personal stuff.  As you may know I’m writing a book with Jules from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  Certainly finding videos of me on the web is easy enough but finding videos of Jules can be a bit tricky.  Fortunately as part of their We Believe in Picture Books campaign, Candlewick has been soliciting and posting videos from folks of all stripes.  I’m sure you’ve been following the various videos they’ve posted.  Here we find my co-writer in the flesh talking about all things picture bookish:

Then the book trailers cometh.  And this next one for Chronicle Books just sort of cements them as my favorite book trailer publisher.  It’s for this year’s Project Jackalope from the Senior Producer of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Emily Ecton.

Not that Candlewick does a bad job.  This one showed during SLJ’s Day of Dialog with slightly different music.  It’s Jon Klassen sequel to I Want My Hat Back called (appropriately enough) This is Not My Hat.  Gorgeous trailer.

And heck, Penguin too.  I mean, tell me this trailer doesn’t make you want to go out and rip the book from the arms of young people so that you can read it yourself.

Not sure if this one counts as a book trailer.  Is it a trailer if they read the whole thing?  Basically, I figure that if you read anything in that magnificent accent you are allowed to read as much of it as you like.  This book’s a pip but I can’t imagine it would be half as interesting to hear from an American mouth.  We just don’t pronounce the word “kennel” correctly, do we?

Thanks to Lisa Abid for the link!

And finally, when the tough can’t find any off-topic videos, the tough go to BB-Blog and plunder what they find there.  It’s a Caketrope (a zoetrope cake) in a Burton style.  Yum!

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Howdy-do, folks.  Today I am off to the Yonkers Library to participate in a Charles Dickens panel with some experts in the field.  Why me?  I don’t precisely know but I’m honored to be asked.  Plus the train ride will allow me to read my new Lemony Snicket book (this would be the children’s literature equivalent of bold as you please name dropping).

Onward!

First up, some nepotism, uncut.  The resident husband has a tendency to be brilliant (not that I’m biased or anything).  Recent evidence of this can be found on editor Cheryl Klein’s podcast Narrative Breakdown – Creative Writing, Screenwriting,Young Adult Lit, TV shows and More.  With partner-in-crime James Monohan, the two of them have a habit of talking about writing in all its many forms.  Mr. Bird appears on the episode called “Scene Construction 1 > Character Expectations and Tactics” on 9/8/12 which was described as, “what may be our most ambitious episode yet.”  In related news, Mr. Bird has restarted his blog Cockeyed Caravan in all its wild advisory glory.  I just like this picture he came up with when talking about the roles individuals play in teams:

• Wow.  This post outlining how creating a book trailer meets Common Core Standards is fantastic.  Many thanks indeed to Joyce Valenza for the link!

• And now your daily Jarrett Krosoczka links.  As per usual.  Jarrett’s been a busy man recently, making him a pleasure to link to.  If he isn’t daring our nation’s boys to read books starring girls then he’s creating the ultimate author mix and match or sneaking some well-known librarian into his Lunch Lady series.  I hold out hope that I was the inspiration for the photographer.  I can totally make my neck do that thing in the first panel.

• Travis calls it a little harmless spitballing about the Newbery.  Using the recent Goodreads thread on Newbery potential winners he speculates on the up-and-comers (reminding me in the process that my fall prediction list should come out soon).  It ties in nicely to Monica Edinger’s recent Educating Alice post Thoughts on Newbery: The Problem with Popularity Contests too.

• In case you weren’t aware of it, the Onion A.V. Club has decided that young adult literature is interesting enough to highlight on occasion (articles equating it with chick lit and meritless copyright suits notwithstanding).  In the series YA Why? they split their time evenly between new hot titles and older fare.  Stay for the new stuff but eschew the looks back in time.  Odds are whatever title you see there, the Fine Lines column by Lizzie Skurnick did it better.

• “…the critic is someone who, when his knowledge, operated on by his taste in the presence of some new example of the genre he’s interested in…hungers to make sense of that new thing, to analyze it, interpret it, make it mean something.”  Flatterer.  As an aspiring book critic of children’s fare, I was much taken with the Darryl Campbell Millions article Is This Book Bad, Or Is It Just Me? The Anatomy of Book Reviews which seeks to not only summarize in brief the spats and spits in the adult literary criticism world (a fine and fancy recap if ever there was one) then goes so far as to define the four classical elements of literary appraisal (“Reaction. Summary. Aesthetic and historical appraisal”).  This one is your required reading of the day.  Many thanks to Marjorie Ingall (who will be part of the literary criticism panel at this year’s KidLitCon) for the link.

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Oh good.

Now we have a rallying cry. Bonus.  Thanks to Maureen Johnson for the link.

Travis at 100 Scope Notes recently discovered the author video cache to beat all author video caches.  As he puts it”I challenge you to a good ol’ fashioned game of ‘I Bet I Can Find a Video Interview of An Author You Like’.”  Apparently Reading Rockets has done everything in its power to videotape many of the major power players out there.  Your Selznicks.  Your McKissacks.  Your Yolens.  There’s a Website and a YouTube channel so take your pick!  Talk about a useful resource.

Of course, if you want to save yourself some time and trouble you can just watch this trailer for The Chronicles of Harris Burdick.  But make sure you watch it until the end.

I could live a long and happy life in the belief that Chris Van Allsburg was some kind of a criminal mastermind.  Yup.

Do all the classic children’s authors also know how to draw?  I only ask because it keeps coming up.  Tolkien drew.  J.K. Rowling can draw.  Now apparently Philip Pullman does too.  Extraordinary.

A couple thoughts on this next one.

A: Check out those guns on Katie Davis!  Wowza!

B: Yes, folks, we all know that Tuck Everlasting didn’t win a Newbery. It’s okay.

C: When I start a band I am totally calling it Weirdly Supple Crystal Ball.

Book trailer time! This one comes to us courtesy of Jonathan Auxier.  He’s even gone so far as to write a post about the Five Things I Learned from Making My Own Book Trailer.  The piece is fascinating in and of itself.  The final product?  I’d say it’s worth it.

Sort of reminds me of last year’s Adam Gidwitz 6 Comments on Video Sunday: Weirdly supple crystal balls, last added: 9/12/2011