A Countdown to Halloween - Six days of holiday books: Day Two

For today's Halloween title I have a picture book that leaves the reader wondering if all is what it seems! It has a fabulous ending too.

On a windy Night

Nancy Raines Day

Illustrated by George Bates

Picture Book

For ages 4 to 7

Abrams, 2010, 978-0810939004

It is a windy Halloween night, and a little boy who is dressed up as a skeleton has a big haul of candy in his bag. Now it is time for him to go home, so he off he goes on a winding road under the light of the full moon. After a time, clouds hide the moon, and the dark woods around the little boy start to look more and more creepy. As he moves quickly through the trees, the boy hears a voice that says “Cracklety-clack, bones in a sack. They could be yours – if you look back.” The terrified boy rans on, through a field of dancing skeletons. Will this terrible ordeal ever end?

   With a bone chilling text and thoroughly spooky illustrations that contain all kinds of hidden creepy images, this is the perfect book to read out loud on the days leading up to Halloween.

A Countdown to Halloween - Six days of holiday books: Day One

There are only six more days before it is Halloween, and since I have some Halloweenish books on hand that I think you will enjoy, I have decided to have a six-day count down bookish event.
   I will begin with a book that is not strictly a Halloween title, but it is pertinent nevertheless. It is a book about pumpkins, and since pumpkins are often associated with Halloween, I thought it would be a great way to start my countdown.

The Pumpkin Book

Gail Gibbons

Nonfiction picture book

Ages 4 to 6

Holiday House, 1999, 0-8234-1636-4

   For many of us pumpkins are large orange squashes that we carve into jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. They are turned into pumpkin pies, and we use them to decorate our homes during the harvest season. Most of us don’t realize that these fruit (yes they are a fruit) come in all shapes and sizes. Some varieties are huge, while others are very small indeed.

   You can grow your own pumpkin by planting a pumpkin seed in a prepared patch of ground in the spring. By summer, you should have a large pumpkin vine growing in your garden, and in the fall, it will be time to harvest the pumpkins you have grown. Depending on what kind of pumpkin you have grown, you can cook them, turn them into jack-o-lanterns, or - if you grow a really big pumpkin - you can enter it into a big pumpkin contest.

   This informative nonfiction picture book will be an instant hit with children who look forward to harvesting or buying pumpkins in the fall. It is not only packed with information about pumpkins, but it also gives young readers detailed instructions on how to plant a pumpkin, how to carve one, and how to dry pumpkin seeds. 

Poetry Friday - A review of Poetry Skywriting

For this Poetry Friday, I have a book that presents readers with the story of man and his efforts to fly. On these pages you will see hot air balloons, the first flying machines (some of which were very odd indeed), and powerful planes that look like something one might see in a superhero comic book.

Poetry Skywriting: Poems to Fly

J. Patrick Lewis

Illustrated by Laszlo Kubinyi

Poetry

Ages 6 to 10

The Creative Company, 2010, 978-1-56846-203-5

   For centuries, man has dreamed of flying. There is the story of Icarus who “rose on wings of wax” only to plunge to earth again when the heat of the sun melted his wings. For a while, man had a grand time floating across the sky in hot air balloons. The Montgolfier brothers made a famous twenty-five minute flight above Paris that was witnessed by none other than Benjamin Franklin himself, who was “without his kite!”

  Though the hot air balloons were quite successful, there were still those who wanted to create a flying machine that had wings. Some men created machines with wings that flapped, and they barely left the ground. Then two brothers developed a flying machine that did fly, and on a cold December day, “aviation’s door” was opened.

   For this very special collection of poems, J. Patrick Lewis has written thirteen very different poems about man’s passion for and fascination with flight. With humor and beautiful word imagery, the poet takes us on a journey from Icarus’ unfortunate flight, to the creation of the Nighthawk and the space shuttle. To accompany the poems, Laszlo Kubinyi has created beautiful illustrations that are rich with detail and that have a vintage postcard feel.

   Endnotes at the back of the book provide readers with further information about the thirteen topics covered in the poems. 

Author Eva Ibbotson has died - An obituary

Eva Ibbotson was born Maria Charlotte Michelle Wiesner in Vienna, Austria, in 1925. Her father, Berthold Wiesner, was a physiologist and her mother, Anna Gmeyner, a writer. Her parents separated in 1928 and after remaining in Vienna in a church orphanage she joined her father, a Jew who had left Austria to work in Scotland just before Hitler and the Nazi party came into power.

She was educated at Dartington Hall School; attended Bedford College, London, graduating in 1945; Cambridge University from 1946–47; and the University of Durham, from which she graduated with a diploma in education in 1965.

Ibbotson had intended to be a physiologist, but was put off by the amount of animal testing that she would have to do. Instead, she married and raised a family, returning to school to become a teacher in the 1960s.

            Ibbotson began writing with the television drama Linda Came Today, in 1965. Ten years later, in 1975, she published her first novel, The Great Ghost Rescue.

Ibbotson has written numerous books including The Secret of Platform 13, The Star of Kazan, Journey to the River Sea, Which Witch?, Island of the Aunts, and Dial-a-Ghost. She won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Journey to the River Sea, and has been a runner up for many of major awards for British children's literature. The books are imaginative and humorous, and most of them feature magical creatures and places, despite the fact that she disliked thinking about the supernatural, and created the characters because she wanted to decrease her readers' fear of such things. Some of the books, particularly Journey to the River Sea, also reflect Ibbotson's love of nature. Ibbotson wrote this book in honor of her husband (who had died just before she wrote it), a former naturalist. The book had been in her head for years before she actually wrote it. Ibbotson said she dislikes "financial greed and a lust for power" and often creates antagonists in her books who have these characteristics.

Her love of Austria is evident in works such as The Star of Kazan, A Song For Summer and Magic Flutes / The Reluctant Heiress. These books, set primarily in the Austrian countryside, display the author's love for nature and all things natural.

             Ibbotson's non-children's books have been classified both as Young Adult titles and as romances. In an interview, she referred to them as books for adults. Several of these books have been published in other languages with different titles.

            Eva Ibbotson died in her home in Newcastle, England on October 20^th, 2010. Her last book, The Ogre Of Oglefort, was shortlisted for the 2010 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

The National Book Award Finalists for Young People's Literature 2010

The National Book Award finalists for young people's literature for 2010 have been announced. They are:

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown & Co.)

Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird (Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group)

Laura McNeal, Dark Water (Alfred A. Knopf)

Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown (Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer (Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Young People's Literature Finalists Walter Dean Myers and Rita Williams-Garcia have both been Finalists in the category in previous years, the former in 1999 and 2005, and the latter just last year. The other three Finalists are Paolo Bacigalupi, a Nebula and Hugo Award nominee for his adult science-fiction writing (Ship Breaker is his first book for young readers); former attorney Kathryn Erskine for her second book for young adults; and Laura McNeal, a former teacher who co-authored her three previous books with her husband.

The judges for this category were: Laban Carrick Hill, Kelly Link,Tor Seidler, Hope Anita Smith, Sara Zarr

The winner of the award will be announced on November 17th at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City. You can find more information about the finalists on the National Book Foundation website 

What it is like to start a new book - A letter from Roxie Munro

Last week I asked children's book author and illustrator, Roxie Munro, to tell me what it is like for her to start a new project. I know from personal experience that facing a blank page can be rather off-putting, to say the least. If the first sentence for a picture book is in my head already then I am alright, but if there is nothing there, then I stumble around trying to find a way to get that blank page to become less blank. I suddenly find a million and one little jobs that need to be done, and I start tidying things that really don't need tidying!

This is what Roxie had to say about her 'getting started' process:

Dear Through the Looking Glass:

I’ve been asked to write about how it feels to start a new project, in my case, a new nonfiction picture book about bugs, kind of a follow-up to “Hatch!” (out from Marshall Cavendish in Feb 2011). The new book is due in April 2011, and will be out spring 2012.

Well, as Hemingway once said, when asked how to write a novel, “First you clean the refrigerator.” In other words, even the most disciplined writer procrastinates. Maybe that’s why one is given deadlines and financial incentives.

But in my case, I kind of do first clean …that is, my studio. I really do a thorough job, because as my project - be it a series of oil paintings for a show or a book - progresses, my studio gets messier and messier, with uncleaned brushes and dirty palettes, stacks of notes and books and drawings, boxes from supplies shipped, etc.

I have already spent a couple of months this summer working on the proposal, sketches and dummy, so have done quite a bit of research, and bought books or checked them out (renewed several times) from the NYPL Science Library. But until I get the okay, and then the contract, it isn’t officially a project. So, got and signed contract, and spent a week wrapping up a couple other small jobs. Gave myself a starting date.  On that day, I actually did start - cleaning the studio that is.

Sports, or even military, metaphors occur to me - I’m “in the trenches”; “getting to first base”; even, “shifting into first gear.” Because it is a slow warming up. You feel guilty that you’re not plowing ahead full steam. But, knowing oneself, that accelerates toward the end of the book. And not necessarily because of deadline pressure, but because of momentum - you’re then in 3rd and 4th gear, warmed up, in the “flow.” I start dreaming about the subjects in the book - colors, images, patterns - about the dinosaurs, the birds, the bugs.

For me, images come first, the writing second.  So, although I do make notes about the text all along, only after the sketches are okayed, and the art well on its way, do I write, shape and refine the text.

The hardest part is now, beginning - creating the approach, solving visual problems, research.  I do rough, and then increasingly detailed, sketches. Each page may have 3 or four stages. Midway through I show them to the editor and art director, and make whatever changes we decide upon. Usually there are few, because I spend a lot of time on the final detailed pencil sketches.  The EASIEST (and most fun) part is actually executing the paintings in ink and colored inks. Although I often have to go through another round of more detailed research to find out everything about the subject (angle of hind toe on a particular bird, exactly where color may shift in the tail feathers), the major conceptual and artistic decisions have been made in the earlier sketches.  There’s still plenty of unknown left though - each painting must “sing” - be elegant, beautiful, informative, fun, and one hopes, a little surprising.

Then, I get serious about writing. Research mostly done, everything gets rewritten/edited by me, and my writer husband Bo, many times before I send the first draft to my editor.  She does her thing - queries, grammar, more explanation, info we can cut - and then I get it back. We usually go back and forth at least half a dozen times. Then the copy editor gets it and that too takes several passes between me, the editor and the copyeditor. Same with design - the art director sends a preliminary concept, which I weigh in on, and that continues for a month or two.  BTW, the cover comes last, although sometimes they need it halfway through for the catalog.

Then, as with most nonfiction, we send art and text to an expert, well known in the field, to vet it. I rarely have to make changes, but do them now, with the editor’s input.

So - all of this is ahead of you, when you sit down on designated day one, to start a book. No wonder we sometimes find many other things to do - answering e-mail, checking Facebook, paying bills, dash to the gym, writing this piece - before we actually sit down and attack it!

Thank you so much Roxie. It is always a pleasure to have you as a guest on Through the Looking Glass. To find out more about Roxie and her splendiferous books take a look at her website. 

Poetry Friday - A review of A Curious Collection of Cats

Suma checking her email

My office is in my home, which makes my commute very short, and which also makes it possible for me to bring my pets to work. In fact, they complain loudly if I try to lock them out. There are three dog beds on the floor, and and the dogs are quite happy to spend much of the day in here with me. The cats like to sit on my desk so that they can watch the birds through the window. They also like to steal my pens and pencils, swat at the cursor on my computer screens, climb into my book baskets, sleep on top of the printer, and try to bite the paper when the printer or scanner is doing its thing. They drive me crazy, and at the same time I love having them around. That's cats for you. For this poetry Friday I have a book of cat poems that I think cat lovers will greatly enjoy. 

A curious collection of cats

Betsy Franco

Illustrations by Michael Wertz

Poetry

For ages 9 to 12

Tricycle Press, 2009, 978-1-58246-248-6

   Unlike dogs, cats are “quirky.” You never quite know what a cat is going to do next. In this delightful book of concrete poems, Betsy Franco explores the ways of cats in verse, cleverly presenting each poem to create word pictures. In all we get to meet thirty-four cats who have all kinds of adventures.

   There is Scooter, who desperately wants to catch a squirrel. Carefully Scooter stalks his “prey,” but when he is just inches from the “bold and toothy” squirrel, Scooter considers what the animal with the big tail might do to him. Perhaps a little discretion is in order!

   Then there is Q-tip and Rosie. Rosie the dog likes to carry Q-tip around in her mouth. There is no “cause for alarm” though. Rosie is very gentle and Q-tip doesn’t mind. When the cat gets fed up, he “swats” Rosie on the nose and the dog lets him go.

  Don’t forget Dharma. She’s a cat who knows her yoga. Not only can she do a beautiful arching cat pose, but she also manages the “doggy tilt” to perfection.

   This unique title beautifully combines verse, word art, and illustrations to give young readers a singular journey into a world of feline-centric poetry. Cat lovers of all ages will cherish this delightful book. 

A letter from Sneed Collard - An author who has created a publishing company

A few weeks ago I read an article about an author who decided to create his own publishing business. It is getting harder than ever to break into children's publishing, so Sneed Collard took the next step. I asked him to tell me a little about his journey. This is his story.

Dear Through the Looking Glass:


Seventeen months ago, I took my family to eastern Montana during a school visit trip to Miles City. Thanks to my sponsors there, I was able to time my visit for the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale. The trip not only led to my newest book, but to my own publishing company, Bucking Horse Books.

As any writer knows these days, it’s gotten almost impossible to sell a book to an established publisher—especially for terms that are even remotely reasonable to the author. Even though I had published 55 books with more than a dozen different publishers, I was getting very discouraged by the shrinking opportunities to publish quality children’s books. Most publishers these days just aren’t interested in anything without crass commercial appeal. Witness the virus-like spread of celebrity children’s books and series about vampires.

Still, I couldn’t resist writing about the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale. The Sale began in 1951 as a way for local ranchers to get rid of “spoiled” horses that wouldn’t do any work. A couple of enterprising cowboys thought “Hey, why don’t we invite rodeo producers up to Miles City and auction off our unruly stock for rodeos?” Sixty years later, the Sale has evolved into a four-day celebration of Western life, matched only by the Calgary Stampede and Cheyenne Roundup.

Even as I was writing the book, however, I thought “No other publisher is going to buy this. They just won’t understand how popular rodeo actually is and how many people cherish small-town existence.” I was right. After getting 15 rejections, I decided “Okay, this is a message.” Instead of continuing to butt my head against the eastern publishing wall, I hired a brilliant designer here in Missoula, Montana and struck a deal with a local publisher to distribute my new company. Six months later, we launched Bucking Horse Books with our first title, The World Famous Miles City Bucking Horse Sale.

The book not only documents the Bucking Horse Sale, but traces the history of rodeo and of eastern Montana frontier life—all illustrated with more than sixty photos, most of which I took myself. You may be wondering, though, if my experiment as a publisher is working? Well, it’s still early, but already The World Famous Miles City Bucking Horse Sale has received more publicity than any of my 55 other books. Part of that, of course, has to do with the fact that an established author got fed up with big publishing and decided to break out on his own. I like to think, though, that readers are also fed up with the commercial books being forced down their throats. All across the country, writers are still writing books and stories that reflect the real values and experiences of real people. I like to think that the success of The World Famous Miles City Bucking Horse Sale will encourage even the big publishers to re-evaluate and improve the quality of what they offer today’s younger generation.

Sneed B. Collard III has written many popular fiction and nonfiction children’s books including Animal Dads, Pocket Babies and Other Amazing Marsupials, Teeth, and the YA thriller Double Eagle. In 2006, he received the prestigious Washington Post-Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award for his body of work. To learn more about him and Bucking Horse Books, check out www.buckinghorsebooks.com.

The Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life Campaign

Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life. is a global literacy campaign launched as part of Scholastic's 90th anniversary celebration that underscores the importance of reading to better prepare children who will need strong literacy skills to survive and succeed in the 21st century. Scholastic is asking EVERYONE, our partners, publishers, educators, business leaders, nonprofits, parents, caregivers and students -- to work together to bring reading and deeper understanding to all children around the globe. The Reading Bill of Rights, the foundation of the campaign, includes eight "beliefs" that affirm every child's right to read and what that means in the 21st century... from access to books and great stories to the ability to analyze, interpret and understand information in the digital age.


Here is what we believe about reading in the second decade of the 21st century. 
We call this The Reading Bill of Rights:

WE BELIEVE that literacy – the ability to read, write and understand – is the birthright of every child in the world as well as the pathway to succeed in school and to realize a complete life. Young people need to read nonfiction for information to understand their world, and literature for imagination to understand themselves.

WE BELIEVE that the massive amounts of digital information and images now transmitted daily make it even more important for a young person to know how to analyze, interpret and understand information, to separate fact from opinion, and to have deep respect for logical thinking.

WE BELIEVE that literature and drama, whether on printed pages, screens, on stage or film, help young people experience the great stories of emotion and action, leading to a deeper understanding of what it means to be truly human. Without this literacy heritage, life lacks meaning, coherence and soul.

WE BELIEVE every child has a right to a “textual lineage” – a reading and writing autobiography which shows that who you are is in part developed through the stories and information you’ve experienced. This textual lineage will enable all young people to have a reading and writing identity which helps them understand who they are and how they can make their lives better. In short, “You Are What You Read.”

WE BELIEVE every child should have access to books, magazines, newspapers, computers, e-readers, and text on phones. Whatever way you read, you will need to figure out what the facts are or what the story tells you. No matter how and where you get access to ideas, you will need the skills of reading to understand yourself and your world.

WE BELIEVE that reading widely and reading fluently will give children the reading stamina to deal with more challenging texts they will meet in college, at work and in everyday life. And every child should be able to choose and own the books they want to read, for that choice builds literacy confidence – the ability to read, write and speak about what they know, what they feel, and who they are.

WE BELIEVE that every child has the right to a great teacher who will help them learn to read and love to read. Children need teachers who provide intentional, focused instruction to give young people the skills to read and interpret information or understand great stories they will encounter throughout life.

WE BELIEVE that in the 21st century, the ability to read is necessary not only to succeed but to survive—for the ability to understand information and the power of stories is the key to a life of purpose and meaning.

Blog Book Tour - Thumb Love by Elise Primavera - Includes A BOOK GIVEAWAY!

When I was a little girl, I was a complete thumb addict. I sucked by thumb wherever I went. It made me feel safe to suck my thumb, and gave me comfort. Giving it up was very very hard. For this reason I was happy to join a blog book tour about Elise Primavera's new book, Thumb Love. This is what Elise Primavera has to say about this title:

      When I first came to my editor with the idea for THUMB LOVE she told me the story of how she made a device out of Play-Doh (the dreaded thumb guard) to put on her sister’s thumb to get her to quit.

     It got me to thinking that this business of quitting the thumb is something that everyone has either gone through or helped someone through. It’s a universal theme! It also got me to thinking about bad habits in general. I started wondering if I had replaced one bad habit as a kid only to pick up another as an adult. Is sucking you thumb at five or six any different from my little problem of eating an entire bag of Kettle Corn in one sitting? To this day I can’t bring a bag (chips), a box (cookies) or a carton (ice cream) into my house without eating the contents within 24 hours.

      If it’s that’s hard for me as an adult to lay off the Chex Mix it’s got to be murder for a five year old to quit their thumb. So I got the idea of my little girl character, Lulu, to come up with a twelve-step program to kick the habit. Being a former thumb sucker myself I had a lot of memories to draw from. I remember declaring that I had stopped only to hide behind the sofa a few hours later to be with my thumb. I remember being so glad that my cousin Judy still sucked her thumb—and then going over to her house for a sleepover and the horror of hearing her say, “Are you still doing that? I stopped doing that ages ago!”

     I’ve written many picture books over the years. Some are difficult to write and have to be put away and then looked at a few years later. THUMB LOVE was not one of those. It was tremendous fun to write and came straight from my own thumb loving younger self.

     As I write there’s not a chip or M&M anywhere in my house right now—you could say I’ve gone cold turkey. But I’m starting to feel anxious and, and, don’t tell anyone—but I might have to go back to loving my thumb.

Here is my review of this sweet picture book:

Thumb Love

Elise Primavera

Picture Book

Ages 5 to 7

Random House, 2010, 978-0-375-84481-2

   Lulu is a little girl who has a close relationship with her thumb. Yes, I did say her thumb. You see, Lulu loves to suck her thumb. It is there for her wherever she is, and it is available whatever she is doing (if she does not need both hands that is.) Lulu even sucks her thumb at her birthday party, which is when her grandmother asks her a dreadful question: “Don’t you think you’re too old for that thumb?”

    It is around this time that the snickering begins. Other kids start to laugh at Lulu because she is still sucking her thumb. Even Lulu’s cousin Lili, who has always sucked her thumb, laughs at Lulu. Apparently, Lili stopped sucking her thumb “ages ago.” Will Lulu ever be able to end her relationship with her thumb?

   In this amusing picture book, Elise Primavera follows one little girl’s struggles as she comes to terms with the fact that she cannot suck her thumb for the rest of her life. In addition to Lulu’s story, there is also a section of the book that is all about Lulu’s difficult twelve-step journey to quit her thumb addiction. Lulu offers readers tips, tricks, and encouragement to other thumb suckers, and she reminds them “If you fail…try again!”

BOOK GIVEAWAY! If you would like a copy of this book please drop me a line. The publisher is giving me three copies to giveaway.

Please visit the other sites on this Blog Book Tour:

October 11^th – Booking Mama                             http://bookingmama.blogspot.com/

October 12^th – Through the Looking Glass            http://lookingglassreview.blogspot.com/

October 13^th – Random Acts of Reading               http://randomactsofreading.wordpress.com/

October 14^th – Two Writing Teachers                    http://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com

October 15^th – Where the Best Books Are            http://wherethebestbooksare.blogspot.com

October 16^th – The Book Faerie                           http://www.bkfaerie.blogspot.com

October 17^th – Picture Book Review                     http://picturebookreview.com/

October 18^th – Mundie Moms                              http://mundiekids.blogspot.com/