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Emma D. Dryden is a children’s editorial & publishing consultant with drydenbks LLC, a company she established 5 years ago today, after 25 years as a publisher and editor with major publishing houses. I had the privilege of working with … Continue reading →

Ghost Hawk
By Susan Cooper
McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8141-1
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

How do we best honor our literary heroes? Particularly those who not only live but continue to produce works of fiction within our lifetimes. Like whole swaths of women and men my age, I grew up on Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series when I was a child. And while I may not have understood everything the books were doing at the time, I liked them sincerely. Admittedly my maturity level made me a bigger sucker for her Boggart series, which was light and fluffy and lovely. When I grew up and became a children’s librarian I dutifully read books of hers like Victory which I enjoyed (and I reread those Dark Is Rising titles to actually get them this time around). All this is to say that I was always a fan. But as a fan, I don’t feel particularly inclined to coddle my heroes. The respect and, yes, awe that I feel for them should never blind me to the quality of their writings, even as they grow older. And while there is nothing about Ghost Hawk, the latest book by Ms. Cooper, that suggests that she is working in anything but her prime, I can say with certainty that if I had read it without knowing the author’s name I would have called you a dirty liar had you told me its true creator. A mismanaged, ultimately confusing work of historical fiction, this is a well-intentioned piece that suffers at the hands of an otherwise great author.

Little Hawk, member of the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Nation, is on the cusp of becoming a man. With only a bow and arrows and his own tomahawk, he sets out to survive the cold winter chill for three moons on his own. This he does after much trial and error, only to return to find his tribe felled by disease. After moving to a new tribe he experiences increased interactions with white settlers, and through them begins to befriend a boy by the name of John. When tragedy strikes, Little Hawk is there to guide John and help him learn unfamiliar ways.

Let me say right now that this is a spoilery review. A review so chock full of spoilers that should you wade in, even up to your ankles, you will soon find yourself facing huge discussions of the end of this book and the surprising plot points. I play fair. I warn you. But if you’re looking to read this book and you wish to remain shocked by its structural intricacies (such as they are) read no further.

To be clear, mine is not the first voice of dissent on this title. As it happens Ghost Hawk was a subject of much contention even before it was even published. Debbie Reese is tribally enrolled at Nambe Pueblo in northern New Mexico and currently works as an assistant professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Reese raised a great many concerns with the text, and her point of view has been examined and argued and contested ever since. Now I will confess to you that this is not my own area of expertise. The likelihood of one name being used over another, or the ways in which someone actually goes about creating a tomahawk are unknown to me. This may be a debate that rages for some time, and I’ve no doubt that it shall. That said, I had my very own personal problems with Cooper’s text. Problems that had less to do with customs like when one gives tobacco to another, and more with the broader scope of the book itself. Take, for example, the Pokanoket tribe of the Wampanoag Nation. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them humorless, but Cooper imbues them with a stately majesty best suited to totems or symbols rather than people. Where is their humor? Where is their humanity? They live and die as representations, not humans. When Little Hawk returns to his village, you feel mildly bad for him but hardly crushed. You didn’t know these people, not really. They didn’t feel enough like people to you. So where’s the outrage? Where’s the anger?

Then there’s the fact that in his ghost form (more on that in a second), Little Hawk is capable of seeing the past and the present but not the future. This awfully convenient narrative technique is unworthy of an author of Cooper’s skill. It is a clunky choice. A more elegant method of introducing information that Little Hawk would not otherwise have would have been welcome. As it is, we’re stuck with an amusingly semi-omnipotent narrator.

These have been my problems with the book, certainly. But if we take another step back and simply look at the plot of the book in its roughest form, problems are immediately apparent. Here, then, is the plot. A Wampanoag boy named Little Hawk grows up and undergoes a trial to prove that he is a man. When he returns he finds his village dead. He grows up. He is killed (thus ends the first part of this book). He then is seen in ghost form by a white child settler named John. John learns the Algonquin language and customs through his friendship with Little Hawk’s ghost. At this point the reader is going to start wondering how John will use this knowledge. Will he be a bridge between communities? Will he use his valuable skills to solve problems no one else can?

Nope. He’ll grow up and be killed by a different Native American. Good night, everybody!!

I don’t think I’m the only one who read that passage in the book where John dies and came to the unavoidable conclusion that this book didn’t have much in a way of a point. Under normal circumstances, when a character acquires knowledge after a long period of time (not to mention a deeper understanding of another culture) they use it later in the story to the benefit of others. One could argue that John does use the knowledge when he saves Metacom from certain death, but this is not the case. John grabs the child and then is able to communicate with the parents later, but no real outcome is derived from this. Well, then maybe Cooper’s point is that there is no point. Maybe history is just a series of unfortunate events without rhyme or reason. Could be. But why even bother to take the time to build this friendship between a boy and a ghost if you’re just going to throw it away later? I cannot for the life of me figure out what Cooper was doing with this story.

Which brings us to the very end of the book. The moment when Susan Cooper herself decides to walk onto the page. We know from her Author’s Note that Ms. Cooper “built a house on Little Hawk’s island” seven years ago or so. This act served as one of the impetuses for writing this book in the first place. Lots of authors have found similar fonts of inspiration in their adopted homes. What they do not usually do is put themselves into the books as the ultimate Deus Ex Machina. In the case of “Ghost Hawk”, Ms. Cooper introduces Little Hawk to Rachel. She is “a woman, in her middle years. She has dark eyes and hair, and her name is Rachel. She is a painter. She appears to live alone.” Rachel’s purpose in this story is to free Little Hawk from his imprisonment. It is she that figures out what John and Little Hawk himself could not. She solves the mystery of his existence, he goes free, and that’s the end of the book. Above and beyond whether or not it’s kosher to end a book with a white woman swooping in to save the day one has to assume it’s a bit odd when the author places such a clear cut stand-in for themselves on the page. Again, the appearance of Rachel is clunky. I keep using that word but no other fits quite as well. It disrupts the book without need or reason.

Now here’s the kicker. For all that I moan and groan and rend my garments, you never once forget that Cooper is a great author. She knows how to construct a tale. Maybe a bit of judicious editing would not have been out of place (clocking in at 336 pages the removal of 50 or so could only have been to the good) but you’re never in doubt of the fact that the woman knows how to write. Amusingly, I’ve just gone back to my own dog-eared copy to find that I even highlighted some passages. One was a rather interesting description of how the wars with Spain ate up all the trees in England thanks to the efforts of the shipyards. It’s a fun moment, but then it’s a moment when we’ve returned to Cooper’s native land. Moreover, as I read through the book I noticed that the audience it really seems to be aimed towards is adults. Our hero Little Hawk spends very little time young. John himself grows with prodigious speed and then is a grown man seeking his way in the world. Are there many enticements for kids in this story? I think not.

There will be, I just know, a child out there assigned this book to read for school. The teacher will gaze with respect upon the author’s name and the words “Newbery Award-Winning Author of the Dark Is Rising” embedded on the book’s front cover. They may even seek out the reviews that praise it highly. PW called it “well-researched and elegant”, while Booklist gave it a star and said, “this is simply an unforgettable reading experience.” No argument there, but I think we differ slightly on what we deem “unforgettable”. Even Horn Book itself praised it to the skies with the words “powerful” and “memorable”. And so they shall assign this book to their fourth or fifth or sixth graders and it will become a book of required reading for many summers to come. The kids could read instead the expertly penned The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich. They could delve into Helen Frost’s Salt: A Story of Friendship in a Time of War or Tim Tingle’s How I Became A Ghost or Rosanne Parry’s Written in Stone. But no. They will be assigned this and they will reach the ending saying precisely what I myself said: What precisely is the point? The point, it would seem, is that even a strong and talented writer who knows how to make a truly beautiful sentence does, occasionally, fall flat. This is not Cooper’s best effort. It is not even in her top ten. It is, however, historical American history. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on whether or not that trumps its other problems.

Other Reviews:

• Heavy Medal

Other Critiques:

• American Indians in Children’s Literature (Part One)
• American Indians in Children’s Literature (Part Two)

Goblin Secrets
By William Alexander
Margaret K. McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-442434523
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

I think it is time to declare the birth of the clockwork children’s novel. If you have been watching the literary trends over the last decade or so, you will note that amongst adults there has been a real rise in interest in a form of pop culture labeled “Steampunk”. The general understanding is that as the 21st century grows increasingly reliant on electronics, there is a newfound interest in books/movies/video games/costumes (etc.) that incorporate steam, gears, and other accoutrements of the visual mechanical past. This is, I should note, almost exclusively an adult fascination. I have never encountered a single child who walked up to a reference desk and asked, “Do you have any more Steampunk?” That said, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work as a genre. The trouble comes when an author tries to shoehorn a Steampunk story into a fantasy mold. The best writers know that if you’re going to incorporate odd mechanical details, the best thing to do is to set up your own odd mechanical internal logic. I think that’s probably what I like best about William Alexander’s “Goblin Secrets”. It’s not the first story I’ve read about a boy joining a troupe of traveling performers. And it’s not the first middle grade Steampunk adventure I’ve come across. Yet there’s something definitely one-of-a-kind going on in this book. An originality that you only find once in a pure blue moon. And that’s worth reading, you betcha.

Rownie’s life hasn’t been worth much since the disappearance of his older brother Rowan. Living with “grandmother”, an old witch named Graba who holds a Fagan-like power over the orphans in her sway, Rownie runs various errands until one day he finds that goblins have come to his city of Zombay. They are conducting theatrical performances, an act forbidden to humans, so it’s as much a surprise to Rownie as to anyone when he joins their little troupe. Rownie is also still determined to track Rowan down, but that may mean using extraordinary means to escape from Graba’s all-knowing, all-seeing ways.

It’s little wonder that the book was nominated for a National Book Award when you take into account the writing. In terms of description, the book has a wonderful and well-developed sense of place. At one point this is what you read, “All roads to the docks ran downhill. They wound and switchbacked across a steep ravine wall, with Southside above and the River below. Some of these streets were so steep narrow that they had to be climbed rather than walked on. Stairs had been cut into the stone or built with driftwood logs lashed together over the precarious slope.” With a minimal amount of words you get a clear sense of the location, its look, its feel, its dangers, and perhaps its beauties as well.

The details found within this strange Steampunk world are delicious, and that is in the book’s favor. You hear about “small and cunning devices that did useless things beautifully.” From gears in mechanical glass eyes to the fact that a river is something that can be bargained with, there’s an internal logic at work here that is consistent, even if Alexander is going to leave the learning of these rules up to the reader with minimal help. For example, there is the small matter of hearts and their removal. To take out a heart is not a death sentence for a person, but it can leave them somewhat zombiefied (the city’s name “Zombay” could just be a coincidence or could not, depending on how you want to look at it). And goblins aren’t born but are changed humans. Why are they changed and for what reason? That’s a story for another day, but you’re willing to wait for an answer (if answer there ever is).

Exposition. It can be a death knoll in a book for kids. Done well it sucks the reader into an alternate world the like of which they may never have seen before. Done poorly they fall asleep three pages in and you’ve lost them forever. And done not at all? That’s a risk but done right it pays off in fine dividends. “Goblin Secrets” takes place in Zombay, a fact you find out five pages in. It’s a city that contains magic, a fact you find out on page three. There are goblins in this world (page twelve) but they didn’t start out as goblins (page . . . um . . .). Facts are doled out at a deliberate but unexpected pace in this book. There are no long paragraphs of explanation that tell you where you are and what to expect. It’s only by reading the story thoroughly that you learn that theater is forbidden, Rownie’s brother is missing, Graba is relentless (but not the only villain in the story), and masks are the book’s overriding theme. In the interest of brevity Alexander manages to avoid exposition with something resembling long years of practice. Little wonder that he’s published in multiple magazines and anthologies on the adult fantasy (not that kind) side of things. Many is the adult writer who switches to writing for children that dumbs down the narrative, giving too little respect to the young audience. I think Mr. Alexander’s gift here is that he respects his younger readers enough to grant them enough intelligence to follow along.

Alexander makes his own rules with this book, and not rules I’ve necessarily seen before. With that in mind, with as weird a setting as you have here, it can be a relief to run across characters you like and identify with. They act as little touchstones in a mad, crazy world. Rownie is particularly sympathetic right from the get-go. He has a missed beloved older brother, an independence that’s appealing, but he’s not a jerk or anything. Nor is he a walking blank slate that more interesting characters can use to their own ends. Rather, Rownie is the kind of character who keeps trying to talk himself into bravery. He does it when performing and he does it on his own (“Rownie tried to summon up the feeling that he was haunting the Southside Rail Station and that other sorts of haunting things should be afraid of him…”). That’s why Alexander’s use of masks and theater is so effective. If you have a protagonist who just needs a little push to reach his potential, what better way than through performance? On the flipside, the bad guys are nice, if perhaps a little two-dimensional. Graba is nothing so much as a clockwork Baba Yaga, mechanical chicken legs and all. By extension the Mayor is a good power hungry villain, if stock and staid. There is no big bad in this book quite worthy of the good folks they face down. Graba comes close, but she’s just your typical witch when all is said and done. A little gearish. A little creaky. But typically witchy, through and through.

By turns beautiful and original, it’s a testament to Alexander’s skills that the book clocks in at a mere 200-some odd pages. Usually worlds of this sort end up in books with five hundred or six hundred pages. The end result is that when a kid is looking for a good fantasy in a new world, they are inclined to be scared off by the thick tomes gathering dust on library shelves and instead will find friends in old classics like The Black Cauldron or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Add to that list William Alexander’s latest then. A smart piece of writing that conjures up a new world using a new method.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• The Clockwork Three by Matthew Kirby

• The Nine Pound Hammer by John Claude Bemis

• Foundling (The Monster Blood Tattoo) by D.M. Cornish

Last Line: “His fingers twitched and his mouth watered, but he waited for his supper to cool.”

Notes on the Cover: The unfortunate hardcover will happily be replaced with a far more kid-friendly paperback.  As you can see, the previous incarnation showed a Frankenstein’s monster-esque goblin juggling.  Alas the shot made it look as if the lit torch in hand was impaling him.  It was a bit of odd CGI.  The new cover is a traditional illustration and show Rownie hiding from his possessed former bunkmates.  If I were to go with a good cover seen I might go with fighting the possessed masks, but I suspect they wanted to avoid the goblins entirely with this particular jacket.

Other Blog Reviews:

• A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
• The Book Smugglers
• Fantasy Matters
• Book Nut
• Heavy Medal
• Becky’s Book Reviews

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus

Interviews:

• The Enchanted Inkpot
• Nerdy Book Club

Misc:

• Good news for fans.  The sequel, Ghoulish Song, is already scheduled to be released next year.  Happiness all around.

• Make one of the masks from the book.

Goblin Secrets
By William Alexander
Margaret K. McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$16.99
ISBN: 978-1-442434523
Ages 9-12
On shelves now

I think it is time to declare the birth of the clockwork children’s novel. If you have been watching the literary trends over the last decade or so, you will note that amongst adults there has been a real rise in interest in a form of pop culture labeled “Steampunk”. The general understanding is that as the 21st century grows increasingly reliant on electronics, there is a newfound interest in books/movies/video games/costumes (etc.) that incorporate steam, gears, and other accoutrements of the visual mechanical past. This is, I should note, almost exclusively an adult fascination. I have never encountered a single child who walked up to a reference desk and asked, “Do you have any more Steampunk?” That said, there’s no reason it shouldn’t work as a genre. The trouble comes when an author tries to shoehorn a Steampunk story into a fantasy mold. The best writers know that if you’re going to incorporate odd mechanical details, the best thing to do is to set up your own odd mechanical internal logic. I think that’s probably what I like best about William Alexander’s “Goblin Secrets”. It’s not the first story I’ve read about a boy joining a troupe of traveling performers. And it’s not the first middle grade Steampunk adventure I’ve come across. Yet there’s something definitely one-of-a-kind going on in this book. An originality that you only find once in a pure blue moon. And that’s worth reading, you betcha.

Rownie’s life hasn’t been worth much since the disappearance of his older brother Rowan. Living with “grandmother”, an old witch named Graba who holds a Fagan-like power over the orphans in her sway, Rownie runs various errands until one day he finds that goblins have come to his city of Zombay. They are conducting theatrical performances, an act forbidden to humans, so it’s as much a surprise to Rownie as to anyone when he joins their little troupe. Rownie is also still determined to track Rowan down, but that may mean using extraordinary means to escape from Graba’s all-knowing, all-seeing ways.

It’s little wonder that the book was nominated for a National Book Award when you take into account the writing. In terms of description, the book has a wonderful and well-developed sense of place. At one point this is what you read, “All roads to the docks ran downhill. They wound and switchbacked across a steep ravine wall, with Southside above and the River below. Some of these streets were so steep narrow that they had to be climbed rather than walked on. Stairs had been cut into the stone or built with driftwood logs lashed together over the precarious slope.” With a minimal amount of words you get a clear sense of the location, its look, its feel, its dangers, and perhaps its beauties as well.

The details found within this strange Steampunk world are delicious, and that is in the book’s favor. You hear about “small and cunning devices that did useless things beautifully.” From gears in mechanical glass eyes to the fact that a river is something that can be bargained with, there’s an internal logic at work here that is consistent, even if Alexander is going to leave the learning of these rules up to the reader with minimal help. For example, there is the small matter of hearts and their removal. To take out a heart is not a death sentence for a person, but it can leave them somewhat zombiefied (the city’s name “Zombay” could just be a coincidence or could not, depending on how you want to look at it). And goblins aren’t born but are changed humans. Why are they changed and for what reason? That’s a story for another day, but you’re willing to wait for an answer (if answer there ever is).

Exposition. It can be a death knoll in a book for kids. Done well it sucks the reader into an alternate world the like of which they may never have seen before. Done poorly they fall asleep three pages in and you’ve lost them forever. And done not at all? That’s a risk but done right it pays off in fine dividends. “Goblin Secrets” takes place in Zombay, a fact you find out five pages in. It’s a city that contains magic, a fact you find out on page three. There are goblins in this world (page twelve) but they didn’t start out as goblins (page . . . um . . .). Facts are doled out at a deliberate but unexpected pace in this book. There are no long paragraphs of explanation that tell you where you are and what to expect. It’s only by reading the story thoroughly that you learn that theater is forbidden, Rownie’s brother is missing, Graba is relentless (but not the only villain in the story), and masks are the book’s overriding theme. In the interest of brevity Alexander manages to avoid exposition with something resembling long years of practice. Little wonder that he’s published in multiple magazines and anthologies on the adult fantasy (not that kind) side of things. Many is the adult writer who switches to writing for children that dumbs down the narrative, giving too little respect to the young audience. I think Mr. Alexander’s gift here is that he respects his younger readers enough to grant them enough intelligence to follow along.

Alexander makes his own rules with this book, and not rules I’ve necessarily seen before. With that in mind, with as weird a setting as you have here, it can be a relief to run across characters you like and identify with. They act as little touchstones in a mad, crazy world. Rownie is particularly sympathetic right from the get-go. He has a missed beloved older brother, an independence that’s appealing, but he’s not a jerk or anything. Nor is he a walking blank slate that more interesting characters can use to their own ends. Rather, Rownie is the kind of character who keeps trying to talk himself into bravery. He does it when performing and he does it on his own (“Rownie tried to summon up the feeling that he was haunting the Southside Rail Station and that other sorts of haunting things should be afraid of him…”). That’s why Alexander’s use of masks and theater is so effective. If you have a protagonist who just needs a little push to reach his potential, what better way than through performance? On the flipside, the bad guys are nice, if perhaps a little two-dimensional. Graba is nothing so much as a clockwork Baba Yaga, mechanical chicken legs and all. By extension the Mayor is a good power hungry villain, if stock and staid. There is no big bad in this book quite worthy of the good folks they face down. Graba comes close, but she’s just your typical witch when all is said and done. A little gearish. A little creaky. But typically witchy, through and through.

By turns beautiful and original, it’s a testament to Alexander’s skills that the book clocks in at a mere 200-some odd pages. Usually worlds of this sort end up in books with five hundred or six hundred pages. The end result is that when a kid is looking for a good fantasy in a new world, they are inclined to be scared off by the thick tomes gathering dust on library shelves and instead will find friends in old classics like The Black Cauldron or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Add to that list William Alexander’s latest then. A smart piece of writing that conjures up a new world using a new method.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

Like This? Then Try:

• The Clockwork Three by Matthew Kirby

• The Nine Pound Hammer by John Claude Bemis

• Foundling (The Monster Blood Tattoo) by D.M. Cornish

Last Line: “His fingers twitched and his mouth watered, but he waited for his supper to cool.”

Notes on the Cover: The unfortunate hardcover will happily be replaced with a far more kid-friendly paperback.  As you can see, the previous incarnation showed a Frankenstein’s monster-esque goblin juggling.  Alas the shot made it look as if the lit torch in hand was impaling him.  It was a bit of odd CGI.  The new cover is a traditional illustration and show Rownie hiding from his possessed former bunkmates.  If I were to go with a good cover seen I might go with fighting the possessed masks, but I suspect they wanted to avoid the goblins entirely with this particular jacket.

Other Blog Reviews:

• A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy
• The Book Smugglers
• Fantasy Matters
• Book Nut
• Heavy Medal
• Becky’s Book Reviews

Professional Reviews:

• A star from Kirkus

Interviews:

• The Enchanted Inkpot
• Nerdy Book Club

Misc:

• Good news for fans.  The sequel, Ghoulish Song, is already scheduled to be released next year.  Happiness all around.

• Make one of the masks from the book.

Little Chicken’s Big Day
By Katie Davis and Jerry Davis
Margaret K. McElderry Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster)
$14.99
ISBN: 978-1-4424-1401-3
Ages 4-8
On shelves now.

Are there any picture book catchphrases that have entered the cultural lexicon? I’m serious in asking this, but I’m a poor judge of what everyone knows. When you spend your days reading lines like “He was a big FAT caterpillar” aloud and then find yourself working those phrases into your everyday speech, you’re not exactly the best average consumer. Still, even I know that when you look at the great picture book classics, they may be great books but you don’t hear words or phrases from them showing up in late night talk show opening monologues or anything. Leno isn’t throwing out a “Let me drive the bus!” reference and Conan isn’t bringing up Madeline’s line to the tiger in the zoo. The closest I can come up with might be Goodnight Moon and its lulling lines. If a comedian starts saying, “Good night” in a variety in different ways, folks know what they mean. Otherwise, there’s not much. Maybe Little Chicken’s Big Day will change all that. Because when it comes to memorable lines, I suspect Katie and Jerry Davis are going to go down in history for inspiring a whole generation of kids to chirp cheerily to their parents, “I hear you clucking, Big Chicken”.

It’s early in the morning and it’s time for Little Chicken to get dressed, wash his face, and get ready for the day. Each time his mother tells him these things he comes back with a prompt, “I hear you cluckin’, Big Chicken.” Then it’s off to have some fun. Yet while following his mother Little Chicken gets pretty distracted. A lovely butterfly catches his eye and next thing he knows he’s alone. Fortunately, mama’s not far away calling his name, to which he replies (all together now) “I hear you cluckin’, Big Chicken.” Then home and bed and when her baby whispers, “I love you, Mama” it meets a gentle “I hear you cluckin’, Little Chicken.”

The given story behind the book’s creation is that co-author Jerry Davis worked or knew a fellow employee who, when asked to do anything by his boss, would reply “I hear you cluckin’, Big Chicken.” It really was a natural fit for the picture book format, though of course the tone is entirely different. In the original format it was a snarky line. Here it does have a bit of cheek to it at first, but as it goes each version of it has a different meaning. Cheeky first. Bothered next. Overjoyed the third time. Loving at last. On a personal level I appreciated the fact that they removed the “g” in the word “clucking” too. The story itself is really just there to hang on the already existing phrase. We’ve loads of stories for kids about getting separated from a parent and finding them again, but they kind of blur together a

A couple of weeks ago Sally wrote a Books at Bedtime post about Mitsumasa Anno‘s Animals, which sent me back to my collection of his books. Among them, I have another book with a very similar title: The Animals – a book of selected poems by Michio Mado, who is perhaps Japan’s best know poet for children. The poems here have been translated by the Empress Michiko of Japan, and are beautifully presented on gold pages, Japanese on the left, English on the right, with a frieze of animals created my Anno running along the bottom.

Each poem breathes from its double-page spread, and gives the reader thinking space. The book was published by Margaret K. McElderry, who died recently – and it is a testimony to the wonderful work she did in unerringly bringing beautiful picture books into being.

My copy of The Animals was once a library book and one of its previous young readers felt passionately enough about one of the poems to draw around its title on the Contents page very carefully with a felt tip pen. So that is the poem I will share with you today.

Butterflies

Butterflies close their wings
When they go to sleep.
They are so small,
In nobody’s way.
Yet they fold themselves
In half
Modestly…

And this lovely one, “A Dog Walks”, about trying to work out how a dog moves its legs when its walking:

How about tying
On each leg a bell,
Each with a different sound?

ChiRin
KoRon
KaRan
PoRon

Then shallI know?

I wonder?

This week’s Poetry Friday is hosted by Sara Lewis Holmes at Read Write Believe – head on over.

Lotso hotso news today, folks.  I hardly know where to begin.  Let’s start with the big news that the illustrious editor Margaret K. McElderry passed away recently.  I had mentioned The McElderry Book of Greek Myths in my Valentine’s Day post earlier this week.  Maybe she was on my mind.  In any case, there’s a great New York Times piece from 1997 on her.  I’m fond of it, not least because Eden Ross Lispon mentions four books McElderry edited right off the bat and they are ”The Borrowers”, ”Ginger Pye”, ”The Dark Is Rising”, and ”The Changeover.”  The Changevoer!!  The book I keep hoping will be reprinted soon so as to leap on the Twilight train while there’s still time!  In any case, I was unaware that Ms. McElderry worked in my own children’s room for years.  Good to know.  Fellow librarian and novelist Sara Ryan offers her own remembrance of Ms. McElderry and The New York Times wrote up one as well.  Dunno that they needed to include the idea that We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is “un-P.C.”  Um . . . maybe if you’re Stephen Colbert, but what precisely is “un-P.C.” about that book again?  It’s not like Oxenbury depicted the kids packing heat, after all.

• In other news the Cybils Awards (the only awards awarded by bloggers) for children’s and YA literature were announced this week.  The Cybils strive to balance great writing with child-friendliness.  With those in mind I think their selections were top notch.  You can see all the winners here.  This year none of the books I nominated made the final cut, but I see that frequent commenter on this blog Eric Carpenter got TWO of his books on there!  Well played, Eric.  Well played indeed.

• I like it when my favorite folks end up linking to one another.  I couldn’t have been more shocked, though, with a recent posting by Kate Beaton.  She was writing a comic about Ada Lovelace (and where is the children’s biography on the fact that the first computer programmer was a woman, by the way?) and then mentioned in her notes that there were some Jules Verne illustrations out there that were “definitely worth a look”.  I love me my Verne, and lo and behold who did Kate link to but none other than Ward Jenkins, he of this season’s Chicks Run Wild (by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen).  Ward speaks of Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented the Future by Franz Born, illustrated by Peter P. Plasencia circa 1964.  Worth your time.

• Carbon dating jackets with headless girls and cupcakes.  The book that proves that kids will buy a hardcover to infinity if they like it (and no, it’s not Wimpy Kid).
  10 Comments on Fusenews: “Compare and contrast Goodnight Moon with The Sun Also Rises”, last added: 2/18/2011
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  Shannon Knowlton said, on 2/16/2011 9:38:00 PM
  

  Thank you, Betsy, for contributing to the latest StorySnoops blog post!

  jules said, on 2/17/2011 5:46:00 AM
  

  My husband, in his mind, named our second daughter for Ada Lovelace. In my mind, we got it from the novel Cold Mountain. Oh well, at least she’ll have two stories to tell.

  And, yes, she needs a biography. Lovelace, not my daughter.

  Dennis said, on 2/17/2011 9:46:00 AM
  

  thank you! as a long-time, hardcore fan of The Changeover, where do I sign up for that campaign?

  Nathan Hale said, on 2/17/2011 9:50:00 AM
  

  I remember entering the Margaret K. McElderry Picture Book Contest year after year in the 90’s. The winning book would get a publishing contract. I can’t seem to find much info on it now, but it kept me submitting stories.

  Jonathan Auxier said, on 2/17/2011 2:57:00 PM
  

  LOVE the Verne illustrations — thanks for putting them on my radar! Also, thanks for the mention of the mentor post (fitting, really, as the whole thing was sparked by your FACTOTUM review.)

  Denis Guignier said, on 2/18/2011 6:54:00 AM
  

  video witch doctor

  Denis Guignier said, on 2/18/2011 7:02:00 AM
  

  video witch doctor

  video witch doctor

  Ruth McNally Barshaw said, on 2/18/2011 1:06:00 PM
  

  Nathan — I entered that contest, too! (in its last year, 2002) I didn’t win the contest, but I won bigger: working on my entry gave me both an appreciation for kids’ books and also a new career. I wish I’d thought to thank Margaret herself. Thanks for another juicy post, Fuse.

  Joanne Fritz said, on 2/18/2011 5:48:00 PM
  

  Betsy, that’s a lot to digest. Thanks for all the great links! I already read COLLECTING CHILDREN’S BOOKS and PW CHILDREN’S BOOKSHELF, but I hadn’t seen the others.

  Unfortunately, when I tried to click on your link to Audrey Wood’s new blog, I got a 404 error.

  Elizabeth Bird said, on 2/18/2011 6:55:00 PM
  

  Blast. I shall correct immediately. Thanks for the heads up!

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Among those passing from us, two dear souls especially make me grieve. First is Margaret K. McElderry. At 98, she has left us. Her contribution to children's literature endures through her imprint. I'm honored to bear her name on my books.



Secondly, I miss Brian Jacques! With his family in the Northwest, we were able to see him speak in all his glorious voices to readers dressed with passion as his characters. What a heart he had! You might touch it in each of his books.



We send our love to the families and friends of Margaret and Brian. We will miss them both!