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Well, it’s a little later than it should be, . . . .but the voting is done and the winners have been chosen. Thank you to everyone who voted for the 2014 winners. It was an honor to review each of these books.
To become a Top Book, and in the running for Best Book, a book must receive a 6-star review here at Kid Lit Reviews, released within the 2013 and 2014, and have been reviewed between December 1, 2013 and November 30, 2014. Voting normally occurs in December and the results announced in January. This year the only variation was the actual voting, which took place in March. Hopefully 2015 will be a healthier year and all will go as planned.
So, without any further delay, here are the winners. Congratulations to all.
WINNERS: I can offer you the files for your “stamp,” if you are interested. Otherwise this is more bragging rights than anything. Please email (or use contact form). Once again, congratulations to all the winners!
I have lots of client books coming out in March. It's thrilling - but it also makes it somewhat difficult to blog about all of them without this blog becoming a wall-to-wall advertisement. So instead of doing a post every time one is released, I'm going to post about them in categories. Here, then, are the Picture Books of March 2015. Enjoy!
0 Comments on March New Releases: Picture Books as of 3/2/2015 1:36:00 PM
Mara Rockliff's latest picture book, GINGERBREAD FOR LIBERTY, is the delicious (and true!) story of the baker who helped save the American Revolution.
Christopher Lutwick was a German immigrant and, in the 1770's, a vocal advocate of revolution as well as possibly the most celebrated and popular baker in Philadelphia. When the war broke out, though he was too old for fighting, he was determined to help, and his friend George Washington made him the "baker general" of the army. He also had an even more significant, albeit more secretive role... to talk starving Hessian soldiers working for the British into abandoning the King. And he could do it because he was a former starving Hessian soldier himself.
This remarkable tale shines a light on a little known figure of the Revolution who worked alongside George Washington and the other heroes we all know about. And the scrumptious illustrations by Vincent X Kirsch are the icing on the gingerbread!
"This appealing concoction is a powerful reminder of the good one person can do." -- Kirkus
"A sweet addition to Revolutionary War units." --School Library Journal, starred review
I’m a chick who loves Star Wars. I’m not ashamed of the fact. Feminist icon Princess Leia? I can get behind that (gold bikini or no). So when I saw a galley for that AMAZING Star Wars children’s book coming out with art from the original concept artist Ralph McQuarrie, I was blown away. Here, Tony DiTerlizzi (who did the writing in the book) talks about the film and the art. Geeks unite!
I love that he mentions that moment with the two suns. For me, that was undoubtedly the most iconic scene in the original film. I just loved the realism of it. I am SO reading this to my kids. P.S. For a fun time read the rants about the “Luke, I am your father” line. Or, better yet, don’t.
Now until about a day ago when my niece did it, I didn’t actually know what the Ice Bucket Challenge was. Dav Pilkey takes it on using Flip-o-Rama. Good man.
Ball’s in your court now, CeCe.
I think it’s safe to say that I have never seen an author promote a cinematic adaptation of their award winning book as much as I’ve seen Ms. Lois Lowry talk up the latest film of The Giver. Here she does it again:
How famous is J.K. Rowling? So famous that when she writes an incidental character, NBC News is willing to report on that character getting her own song. According to Salon this is an original song written for Pottermore starring Celestina Warbeck, Molly Weasley’s favorite singer:
And speaking of all things Potter, the thing about learning that there’s a documentary out there called Mudbloods is that you can’t believe you hadn’t seen a film of that name before. It’s an awfully good idea to make a movie about the rise of the real world Quiddich movement. It’s not the first Harry Potter documentary of course but it’s a cute idea. Here’s the trailer:
Man. It would weird to be J.K. Rowling and see this, wouldn’t it? Here’s some additional info.
A little me stuff. I conducted a talk with Mara Rockliff and Eliza Wheeler for Bibliocommons in honor of their latest book The Grudge Keeper. It was recorded, but rather than show our lovely faces the video shows some slides of what we’re discussing. In case you’ve an interest you can take a gander at it. A lot of talking about the process of writing picture books can be found here:
As for the off-topic video, this one’s been making the rounds. It’s one of those videos where you go, “Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Ooooooh!”
Thanks to Steve Bird for the link!
2 Comments on Video Sunday: “Luke, I Am Your Father” (in a manner of speaking), last added: 8/24/2014
If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that the phrase, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk” was invented with the intention of comforting a two or three-year-old. Small children, one learns, are capable of great waves of hurt at the smallest, silliest things. You want to really know why the picture book Pete the Cat is the massive success it is? Because at its heart it’s about letting go of peripheral annoyances in everyday life. Children lack perspective. And when kids get a little older, they may still need some reminding on this front. Grudges and imagined slights abound for a certain kind of kid on a regular day-to-day basis. So while I wouldn’t necessarily say that there was an outright need for a book like The Grudge Keeper, by the same token it has a message in it that it couldn’t hurt a kid to hear. That and the fact that it’s a rather charmingly illustrated and written little beastie make it one of my understated favorites of the year.
You would think that a town where no one keeps a grudge would be the happiest place on earth. But for all that Old Cornelius, the Grudge Keeper, does a good job of cataloging every tiff and squabble in his home, the denizens of Bonnyripple just keep on finding more reasons to complain. Every day they load the old man down with their petty squabbles until the inevitable happens. One day a horrid wind comes along and manages to blow the old man’s home apart. Grudges are strewn everywhere, and only by digging through them to rescue Old Cornelius to the townspeople begin to see how utterly ridiculous some of their problems really are. Grudges disappear. Fences are mended. And by the end, Bonnyripple learns that life’s too short to hold onto your grudges OR to give them to someone else to hold onto. Sometimes you’ve just gotta let ‘em go.
Author Rockliff dandles language like a toy. Her thesaurus must be positively exhausted after all the different connotations of the word “grudge”. In this book we hear about ruffled feathers, petty snits, tiffs, huffs, insults, umbrages, squabbles, dust-ups, imbroglios (my personal favorite), offenses, complaints, accusations, quibbles, low blows, high dudgeon, left-handed compliments, and pique. It’s not just the words, though. It’s how Rockliff integrates them into the text. The book has all the trappings of a folktale without actually being one. You’d be forgiven, then, for forgetting that it isn’t a classic tale handed down from mother to child for generations. From that first sentence (“No one in the town of Bonnyripple ever kept a grudge. No one, that is, except Old Cornelius, the Grudge Keeper”) to the last, the book has a delightful tone and a complete, satisfying structure.
It wasn’t that I was necessarily unaware of artist Eliza Wheeler. I’d seen her nice work on Miss Maple’s Seeds and it was entirely charming. For this book, Wheeler pulls out her usual roster of dip pens, Indian ink, and watercolor. The book itself is painted in a soft green/gold glow, like the pages have a slightly yellowed tinge to them. Wheeler also does a darn good job of distinguishing amongst the characters. Read the book twice and suddenly you get a sense of their personalities. Read it a third time and you even begin to get a sense of the layout of the village itself. No small feat. And I don’t know if author Mara Rockliff necessarily envisioned that her goat and cat would have narratives of their own, but that’s what Wheeler gave them. Besides, you’d have to have a pretty cold heart not to love a goat in a top hat. All he needs is a monocle and he’d be the talk of the town.
Folktales will always have a place in the realm of children’s literature. They remain the number one most efficient way to dole out lessons to the kiddies without sounding like you’re trying to teach them something. But new folktales are always welcome and that’s precisely what The Grudge Keeper really is. Timely in its telling, Rockliff and Wheeler together manage to make a book that feels simultaneously fresh and classic all in one go. Beautifully rendered and written, there’s nothing begrudging in my praise of this work. If you want something that could be read by countless generations of kids thanks to its classic feel, this little title has your number. Sublime.
“No one in the town of Bonnyripple ever kept a grudge. No one, that is, except old Cornelius the Grudge Keeper. Ruffled feathers, petty snits, minor tiffs, and major huffs, insults, umbrage, squabbles, dust-ups, and imbroglios—the Grudge Keeper received them all, large and small, tucking each one carefully away in his ramshackle cottage. But when a storm flings the people together and their grudges to the wind, will the Grudge Keeper be out of a job?”
Opening
“No one in the town of Bonnyripple ever kept a grudge. No one, that is, except old Cornelius the Grudge Keeper.”
The Story
The citizens of Bonnyripple do not hold grudges. Nope, not one grudge. Anyone new to town would wonder how everyone kept from holding a grudge. They all had Cornelius. Elvira ran a grudge up to Cornelius against the darned goat—the one that supped on her prize zinnias—and Cornelius has held that grudge for her ever since. All the townsfolk run their grudges up to Cornelius and then go about their happy lives. Poor Cornelius was so inundated with grudges his house could find little room for more, yet more came.
Sylvester loves to prank his schoolmaster. One day he plucked the man’s toupee right off his baldhead. The schoolmaster took great offense to this . . . but he never held a grudge against Sylvester, no matter how many times Sylvester pranked the man. A huge storm came in with gusty winds strong enough to knock Minnie’s fresh-made lemon pie off the windowsill, where it had sat cooling off. That pie landed right on top of Elvira’s cat, surely bringing home a mess.
The moment the winds died down and the sun once again shined upon the people of Bonnyripple, Elvira walked up to Cornelius, ready with her grudge. If she had looked behind herself, she would have seen everyone from town with grudges for Cornelius to store. When the townsfolk made it to Cornelius’s house, they could not believe the sight. Poor Cornelius lay buried beneath a huge pile of decades-old grudges and no way out. Can they get Cornelius out from under the weight of all those grudges before it bears down upon him?
Review
The ending to The Grudge Keeper not only satisfies a wonderful story, it teaches a lesson in civility. The people of Bonnyripple did not like holding a grudge, but a grudge unsatisfied will always be a grudge. Therefore, they gave the grudge to someone else to handle—Cornelius. Eventually, those grudges landed everywhere, thanks to a storm, but Cornelius was nowhere. What the townspeople did next would change the entire atmosphere of Bonnyripple.
Younger children, without help from an adult, may not understand this picture book. At age four, kids do not know what a grudge is even if they have heard the word. They do understand how to apologize and to forgive. By age six or seven, kids understand what holding a grudge means and may hold one or two themselves. If only the people of Bonnyripple had known how to say, “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you.”
Reading The Grudge Keeper was easy, without a tongue tie-up from start to finished, no matter how hard the word or the wind swirled around Bonnyripple. The writing uses word play and humor, even in the naming of characters. I love the way the author describes action.
“Laundry fluttered on the line. Lily Belle’s best flowered bonnet skipped away. Big Otto captured it and brought it back, but Lily Belle just grumbled that the petals were all out of place.”
The illustrations seem perfect for the story, as if both text and illustrations were completed side-by-side. With its sophisticated look, parents will appreciate The Grudge Keeper as much as, if not more than, their children. Kids will love the oft-comical illustrations.
Every wrong is a grudge to the townsfolk and you can see this in their eyes and in their postures. How do you settle a grudge? No revenge is needed, only a simple and heartfelt apology and forgiveness. Will the people of Bonnyripple ever understand this? If they do—or don’t—what will they and their town become?
Ahoy! I've been a bit off the grid for a couple of weeks because I was traveling for the Bologna Book Fair and a mini-Vacay (followed immediately by being ridiculously ill - Boo!) -- but I'm pretty much back at my desk, at least MOST of my brain present now. And so I can bring you the latest from the New Release files:
Cornelius the Grudge Keeper is a little old man who collects all the peeves, snits, huffs and imbroglios the people of his village stir up against one another. He stores them all in the nooks and crannies of his crooked cottage, until one day . . . . well, I'll let you read about it yourself. Suffice to say, this picture book is funny, whimsical, and has the look and feel of a modern classic. The heightened language makes it a total delight to read aloud and the beautiful images are worth taking the time to pore over.
I call the GRUDGE KEEPER "The Little Picture Book that Could." It had a long, long path to publication. How long? Let's put it this way, it was originally submitted to publishers before I was even an agent. It sold in Summer of 2010, which I remember distinctly because I negotiated the contract in the passenger seat of my car, driving through Nebraska on a road-trip move from SF to NY. We finally got lucky enough to get the PERFECT illustrator in another ABLA client, Eliza Wheeler, in 2012 (which was JUST before her picture book MISS MAPLE'S SEEDS debut'ed on the NYT bestseller list and she rocketed to fame with the illustrations to Holly Black's Newbery Honor book DOLL BONES -- so great timing, Peachtree!) -- and now, here we are, at long last, I can brag about it to the world!
Tra la! It’s May! The lusty month of May! The time that . . . . what?
It’s March?
Seriously? Forget it then. I’m going back in my hidey-hole. Call me when it’s May. But before I go, here’s a swath of delicious Fusenews. Good for what ails ye.
First off, a gem. I got the following email from buddy and Top 100 Polls guru Eric Carpenter: “So this weekend while working on a project on Weston Woods for one of my school library media courses (yes, I’m getting a library degree!!!) I came across Gene Deitch’s blog/website. http://genedeitchcredits.com. Not sure if you’d seen this but if not take a look, just understand it might be a long, long look.”
Eric couldn’t have been more right. Gene’s a fascinating fellow and he’s quick to recount his Weston Woods days working with Maurice Sendak, with Morton Schindel, with Jules Feiffer, or with E.B. White! And that’s not even counting all the good stuff you’ll find if you go here. Eric, buddy, I owe you yet again.
So I told myself that I wouldn’t read any reviews of my own book Giant Dance Party (due out 4/23). I figured that was a pretty safe promise to keep. I mean, I review books myself. Why invite trouble by reading other folks? And that noble intention lasted me all of *checks watch* 45 seconds before I caved. Not much is out yet, but I can say with certainty that 8-year-old Jacob at City Book Review liked the book. He is a man of fine and discriminating taste. Well played, young Jacob.
A special congrats to Mara Rockliff for winning the 2013 Golden Kite Award for her truly awesome Me and Momma and Big John for Picture Book Text. Why I do so rightly believe I made that one of my 100 Magnificent Books of 2012, did I not? Yup. Surely did.
In other Me Stuff, this past Saturday I hosted a Children’s Literary Salon in the main branch of NYPL. The topic was Diversity and the State of the Children’s Book and featured panelists Zetta Elliott, Connie Hsu, and Sofia Quintero. It was also, to put it precisely, a hit. We’ll have the audio up soon, I hope, but in the meantime Lucine Kasbarian has reported over at We Love Children’s Books. Thanks, Lucine!
One of the many advantages of joining The Niblings (four numerical children’s literary blogs joined in bringing you only the best in children’s literary news and entertainment) is that I now have a way of actually keeping up with my fellow bloggers. Trust me when I say that I’m ashamed of how rarely I read the best folks out there. But now, thanks to the handy dandy Facebok page, I got to see the 100 Scope Notes Newbery Medal Infographic. I dare say I’m a better person for it too.
To be frank, I probably would have also have missed the recent 2013 Ezra Jack Keats Award winners too! Back in the day these awards were given in New York Public Library. Now they’ve moved to south where the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi makes the announcements. And the winners?
The 2013 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award Winner Is:
And the Acme Powder Company strikes again. This may be your favorite link of the day, I’ll wager. Recently Robin Rosenthal of Pen & Oink took a trip to what may well be the world’s most adorable shared studio of children’s book illustrators. Good looking too, if we’re going to be honest about it. Hear them in their own words and get a glimpse into what an artist’s studio space ACTUALLY looks like. Hint: Lots o’ creepy Victorian photographs. Once you’ve finished with that you can then head on over to Sergio Ruzzier’s new and updated website.
Aw, what the heck. You know I don’t usually like to do anything with YA stuff, but a friend of mine asked me to mention this and I don’t see the harm. There’s a rather sweet little Delirium Fandom offer going on right now. Prove you’ve pre-ordered Lauren Oliver’s Requiem and you can get a nifty little signed bookplate. Aww.
Did you know that there was a conference out there dedicated SOLELY to children’s nonfiction? Learn something new every day, eh? Here’s the deets:
It’s a time of re-invention, re-education, and revolution in children’s publishing. There are important developments that teachers, students, writers, and illustrators want to know about. A faculty of publishers, authors, illustrators, digital designers, and educators will inform and inspire at the 21st Century Children’s Nonfiction Conference at the State University of New York at New Paltz on June 14-16.
Topics will range from “Nonfiction and the Common Core Standards” to “Creating E-books and Apps.” The weekend will offer intensives, workshops, one-to one consultations and critiques, an illustrators’ showcase, book fair, meals, and a reception at SUNY’s beautiful Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. Full details are at www.childrensNFconference.com.
Gene Deitch does have some crazy stories about other people, but don’t let that distract you from the greatness of his own work. Terr’ble Thompson comics have been collected into a book and are the most best!
Mara said, on 3/5/2013 8:02:00 AM
Thanks for the shout-out! I totally want that wallpaper for my living room ceiling.
Melanie Hope Greenberg said, on 3/7/2013 3:34:00 AM
Best Picture Book
Best Middle Grade Novel
Best Nonfiction Book
Best Poetry Book
Best Holiday Book
WINNERS: I can offer you the files for your “stamp,” if you are interested. Otherwise this is more bragging rights than anything. Please email (or use contact form). Once again, congratulations to all the winners!
Add a Comment
Love your NY Times review today! Favorite line: “If a chicken can rush to a conclusion, a chicken will rush to a conclusion.”
Oh good! I never know when these things are published. Thanks for spotting it!