educating alice

Every speaker addressed the topic of opening pages in provocative, engaging, and always thought-provoking ways.

Arthur A. Levine talked about essential knowledge, taking us through his gaining of it via certain opening pages of his life. He talked of being asked what he wanted most. And what Arthur realized he wanted most was to be understood. I’m still thinking about what I want most.

Fellow Newbery Committee members Kathy Isaacs and Martha Parravano and I did a session on the award, focusing on the process and fielding interesting questions.

That evening Pam Munoz Ryan spoke, beginning with a very amusing look at the cultish aspects of CLNE. She then went on to discuss what was most important to her as a writer, quoting from Ray Bradbury about those items that we care most about —enough to whisper and shout about. We went out to a bonfire (evidently a tradition at the Inn at Essex) and did poetry with the wonderful Ashley Bryan and then sang many a CLNE favorite (keeping the spirit of John Langstaff alive and well).

On Saturday Susan Cooper started us with twenty seconds of silence — this, she told us, is what happens at the start of a play —and, at the end. That twenty seconds of silence stayed with us for the rest of the conference. Silence — so important and so scarce these days, especially for children, I think. Susan’s talk was both profound and heart-filled — a wonder.

Next we heard from the energetic and brilliant Janice Harrington. She gave us wisdom and read her own poems and The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar Country, with a presence and style that I will long remember.

The afternoon was incredible. We took a ferry to the New York side of Lake Champlain to visit Steven Kellogg’s studio. That word “studio” barely does justice to that extraordinary space, filled with his collection of folk art, his art, friends’ art, and more. The Rackhams and Sendaks and more on the walls, the rare books and original art for us to see — it was a remarkable time.

This fall Candlewick is publishing Our White House: Looking In Looking Out created by the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance and we were treated to a presentation and reception for the book. Contributors who presented included Katherine Paterson, Susan Cooper, Brian Selznick, Tobin Anderson, Jeannine Atkins, Virginia Euwer Wolff, Steven Kellogg, Gregory Maguire, and Marguerite W. Davol. Probably everyone’s favorite was CLNE regular Lynda Johnson Robb who read her piece “My Room.” (Brian Selznick talked about the difficulty of following her as a speaker! She was that good.)

Here are Deirdre Baker (children’s literature expert and author of Becca at Sea) and Martha Parravano (Horn Book editor and my Newbery bud) enjoying the idyllic location.

That evening we had a brilliant presentation from the one and only Brian Selznick. This was followed by a storytelling session organized by Rita Auerbach that began with Brian narrating Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon complete with soundtrack and sound effects and included many other wonderful storytellers.

The next morning we heard from the one and only Sarah Ellis considering the opening pages of a number of books. She spoke of the “apparatus” in books — in particular she consider the much maligned prologue. Sarah asked us to, “… question the limits of narrative even as we experience it.” A terrific final talk that kept me thinking all the way home.

The event wound to a close with a colloquy. Here are a few random notes of mine from that:

Pam Munoz Ryan reminded us of the Raybury quote, “What [or maybe it was when] are the best things in your life and when you are you going to whisper and shout them?” Ray Bradbury (from Pam Munoz Ryan)

Susan Cooper gave us Priestly’s, “…the icy challenge of the paper.”

Janice Harrington gave a great metaphor of writing openings being like a plane — taking off. That poems and shorter runways may create greater risks of crashing and burning. Susan Cooper then noted that “sometimes a poem just takes off and flies.”

Ginny Wolff gave us poet William Stafford’s, “Writing a poem is like starting a car on ice.”

We were reminded of Brian’s use of the first line from Joyce’s Ulysses. One huge S.

Katherine Paterson noted that, being a Depression era baby, she wastes as little space as possible.

Of course, cult that we are, the conference ended with us joining hands and singing “Wild Mountain Time.”

A very wonderful few days.

I’m sitting in my suite (almost as big as my NYC apartment) at the Inn at Essex enjoying a little quiet time before heading over for breakfast, visiting, and then off to listen to the sure-to-be-profound words of wisdom from the brilliant M. T. Anderson.

The Opening Page is a new yet familiar Children’s Literature New England institute. For twenty years, ending in 2006, these summer institutes were like no other. At the urging of some child_lit friends I began attending in 1999, was a speaker in 2005, a discussion leader 2006, and a fan for life. This one is new because it is at a different time of year, shorter, in a very different venue (previously these were always in educational institutes), less intensive (no huge reading list or formal discussion groups), and smaller. It is familiar in structure (packed with wonderful speakers), singing, and most of all — faces.

I accompanied Rita Auerbach on the drive from NYC to Essex. While her car’s GPS was very unhappy with our route and kept trying to make us do a U-turn and take her way we stuck to Rita’s husband’s route and arrived as the wine and cheese reception began. Before long directors Barbara Harrison and Gregory Maguire welcomed us with prose and song and so we began.

After dinner we heard the one and only Katherine Paterson. I stupidly did not take notes, but it was (as always) a magnificent and profound talk. I was sitting next to Brian Selznick who did sensibly pull out a notebook and jot down a few notes for himself. I do remember that she began by reading the first few pages of Alan Bennett’s charming The Uncommon Reader, a book she had recommended for the reading list.

More anon.

Wow. What a book. What a story. What an amazing piece of writing.

Now I admit it took me a while to read this one. While I definitely enjoyed sad animal stories as a child, now, with the occasional exception, I avoid them. And so, when I received a gorgeously packaged ARC of Kathi Appelt’s The Underneath, I admired it (as it is handsomely illustrated by David Small) , and then read the flap. “An abandoned calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the lonely howl of a chained-up dog….” Nope. Not for me. Until someone told me it reminded her of Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and his Child which happens to be one of my favorite books. So yesterday, feeling lousy with allergies, a head cold, and a painful hip (can’t run which is misery for me), I pulled out the ARC and read it.

And was immediately and utterly drawn in. I read without pausing till I was done. What a remarkable book. It is an adventure, a story of myth and magic, of sadness, of family — and is very beautifully done indeed. Yes, it is sad. Yes, there are abused animals. Even worse, some dead ones too. But, oh my goodness, is it rich and complex and gorgeous. I would have loved, loved, loved it as a child.

While I can see why someone might compare it to The Mouse and his Child because of the journey aspect of the story, the setting, and the sentiment within (and the illustrations as Small also did an edition of the Hoban book), it seems different to me. Another book this reminded me of was Kate DiCamillo’s The Tale of Despereaux. The darkness, the multiple plot threads (from different points in time) all coming together slowly, the allegorical qualities, the magical elements are in both. But DiCamillo’s like Hoban’s has humor. Be warned that Appelt’s book is deadly serious. Another one I thought of after reading this book was Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. But it truly is a book of its own, strikingly original.

What is it about? Hard to describe. It takes place in a deep Southern bayou — a place full of sentient trees, of intelligent animals, of shapeshifting creatures, a place of misery and mystery, a place of magic and myth. Within this magical yet hyper real place are two twisting and intersecting groups of beings. There is the bad man, an abused dog, a calico cat and her twin kittens. And then there is the other group. The magical and mythical one. The story threads swirl and twist around each other, a mix of the past and the present.

Just writing this makes me get all hyperbolic. Sorry! Suffice it to say I recommend it and look forward to hearing what others think about it.

Adrienne of WATAT and Jules of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast are having a Straight Talk About the Food Chain involving “slightly demented picture books.” Adrienne defines these as “…books that we love and that kids love that make other adults uncomfortable.”

Right up my alley! Years ago I wrote an article for Horn Book, “Pets and Other Fishy Books,” in which I considered child reaction to such wonderfully subversive books. Like Jules and Adrienne, I celebrated Jon Scieszka, Lane Smith, and Molly Leach (designer extraordinaire) for their ground-breaking book, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and went on to consider the mixed child-reactions I’d gotten from their then-latest work, Squids will be Squids. Trying to tease out why one child thought the book was hilarious (never mind what adults thought) and another didn’t I finally concluded:

Scieszka and Smith’s latest collaboration, Squids Will Be Squids, presented a new wrinkle. A send-up of Aesop’s fables, these twisted cautionary tales are all about life for a typical American kid: homework, moms, name-calling, TV, being grounded, science projects, and the like. But rising above the chuckles and requests that I read just one more was Jennifer’s plaintive voice, “I don’t get it. What’s so funny?” Stymied, I wondered, how does one explain funny? Jennifer was not amused by “Elephant and Flea,” one of the fractured fables. She and I were equally frustrated; both of us wanted her to be in on it, to join those of us who already found the book funny. Unsuccessfully, her peers tried to explain the story to her. Earnestly, they told her about the adage “elephants never forget,” pointed out the size difference between Elephant and Flea in the illustration, and referred back to the earlier fable in the book, “Elephant and Mosquito.” Of course it didn’t work. Not only can funny not be explained, but Jennifer had evidently reached her limit for dry humor.

One of my all-time favorite of this genre is Chris Raschka’s Arlene Sardine. It predates by many years, the similar Tadpole’s Promise mentioned by Jules. In the article, I describe my students’ being stymied by the book, but later groups have totally gotten it and found it roll-on-the-floor-hilarious. (Anyone who got to see Chris do his puppet show of this book was fortunate indeed.)

Another favorite (from my childhood) is the often misunderstood Struwwelpeter. It was both funny and weird to me. I always show it to my class when we reach this part in Alice in Wonderland:

It was all very well to say `Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. `No, I’ll look first,’ she said, `and see whether it’s marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.

I was personally most taken by Paulinchen who burned to death after playing with matches (as I was phobic about fire myself) and could tease my little sister relentlessly with poor Conrad’s story (involving thumbs and a tailor, if you don’t know it).

Finally, what about The Cat in the Hat? I guess it isn’t really a picture book, but it sure is pretty darn demented nonetheless!

Recently I was at a lovely lunch for the launch of David Macaulay’s forthcoming book, The Way We Work. It was pretty amazing to be there as the company was august, including GalleyCat which is where I sto-borrowed–took the above image. You can read their report and more on the two covers here.

It was interesting to return to my 4th graders who were pretty fuzzy as to who this David Macaulay was. A few of them knew The New Way Things Work and had fun pointing out the woolly mammoths sprinkled throughout.

I then pulled out my copy of Black and White and read it to them, delighting and confounding them. We talked about his Motel of the Mysteries which many of them had come across during their archaeology unit the year before.

I’m such a fan! Years ago I used his wonderful books, City, Cathedral, and Castle in my teaching of Rome and the Middle Ages. (My kids “built” a Roman city using Macaulay’s as a guide). And I’ve got to find Unbuilding to read to my class. It is a witty fantasy about the UNbuilding of the Empire State Building. The man absolutely deserves his MacArthur.

This isn’t the first time I’ve taken care of the kids while my husband has been away for extended periods of time, but it’s our longest deployment yet. (We have been lucky — other military families have endured multiple 12-to-19-month deployment cycles since the Iraq war began.) Our Pacific Northwest town has a significant military population, and most of the people I have met here are women whose husbands are also service members. Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a relentless schedule keeps many of the squadrons away from home. So we military moms talk often about ways to help our kids cope with their dads’ long absences. We trade names of psychologists. We exchange tips that may ease our kids’ nightmares, regressions and depression. But what I wanted, more than any of those things, was a book.

Kids’ books on deployment are becoming more prevalent as the war drags on; these stories, often self-published or from small publishing houses, try to explain to the 2-to-5-year-old set why Dad must help children overseas instead of staying home to play with them. I have always found comfort in literature, in the power of a shared experience to bring consolation during difficult times. So I prompted other military moms for authors’ names. I haunted the aisles of local shops and spent hours online. I borrowed other families’ deployment-related books and lent out my own. I amassed quite a children’s library — a heartbreak hotel of titles I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The books I found are well-meaning, almost painfully sincere in their effort to address a child’s fears and feelings. They end in joyful homecomings.

But talking to a kid about deployment is like talking to a kid about God: Every parent has his or her own approach. And I couldn’t find one single children’s book on deployment that I could read without cringing.

In  Salon, Alison Buckholz movingly relates her efforts to find a book to help her children cope with their father’s deployment to Iraq.

Emily Gravett’s Wolves is on a shelf in my classroom along with a number of other snarky books about fairytale-like wolves. Ones like The Big Bad Wolf and Me and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Those latter two have relatively happy endings while Gravett’s is a bit different (although she does provide an alternative one for squeamish types). All this is just to say there is an interesting profile of her today in the Independent.

From PW: “The 2008 Hans Christian Andersen Awards, announced March 31 at the Bologna Book Fair, went to Swiss author Jürg Schubiger and Italian illustrator Robert Innocenti. The awards are given every two years to a living author and illustrator whose complete works have made an important contribution to children’s literature. They are the highest international distinction given to creators of children’s books.”

The Press Release

2008 Hans Christian Andersen Award Jury

2008 Nominees

Everyone’s favorite little sister, Ramona Quimby, is about to confront a very modern issue in her latest book — and her publisher couldn’t be happier.

“Ramona ‘the Pest’ Quimby has entertained generations of young readers with her charming adventures,” declared publisher Russell Leaf. “But today’s kids yearn for something a little more edgy than Ramona locking Henry Huggins in his clubhouse or misunderstanding the words of the national anthem.”

Read the rest at: Collecting Children’s Books: A Disturbing Article from Today’s Newspaper

I am delighted to announce the 2008 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts. This list of thirty books, selected by a committee of the Children’s Literature Assembly of NCTE, will be presented at the 2008 NCTE and the 2009 IRA conventions as well as featured in the Fall 2008 Journal of Children’s Literature and the March 2009 Language Arts.

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The charge of the seven-member national committee is to select thirty titles each year that best exemplify the criteria established for the Notables Award. Books considered for this annual list are works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry written for children, grades K-8. The books must meet one or more of the following criteria:

1. deal explicitly with language, such as plays on words, word origins, or the history of language;
2. demonstrate uniqueness in the use of language or style;
3. invite child response or participation.

In addition, books are to:

4. have an appealing format;
5. be of enduring quality;
6. meet generally accepted criteria of quality for the genre in which they are written.

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Without further ado, here they are! (The committee members’ names are listed at the end.)

2008 Notable Children’s Books in the Language Arts

Poetry and Drama

Dillons, Leo and Diane. (2007). Jazz on a Saturday Night. New York: Blue Sky Press/Scholastic.

Forman, Ruth. (2007). Young Cornrows Callin Out the Moon. Illustrations by Cbabi Bayoc. San Francisco, CA: Children’s Book Press.

Neri, G. (2007). Chess Rumble. Illustrations by Jesse Joshua Watson. New York: Lee & Low.

Park, Linda Sue. (2007). Tap Dancing on the Roof: Sijo Poems. Illustrations by Istvan Banyai. New York: Clarion/Houghton Mifflin.

Schlitz, Laura Amy. (2007). Good Masters, Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick.

Historical and Realistic Fiction

Compestine, Ying Chang. (2007). Revolution is Not a Dinner Party. New York: Henry Holt.

Ellsworth, Loretta. (2007). In Search of Mockingbird. New York: Henry Holt.

Gifford, Peggy. (2007). Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Stuart Little. Photographs by Valorie Fisher. New York: Schwartz & Wade/Random House.

Murphy, Pat. (2007). The Wild Girls. New York: Viking/Penguin.

Schmidt, Gary D. (2007). The Wednesday Wars. New York: Clarion/Houghton Mifflin.

Selznick, Brian. (2007). The Invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic.

Sheth, Kashmira. (2007). Keeping Corner. New York: Hyperion.

Woodson, Jacqueline. (2007). Feathers. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Penguin.

Fantasy/Folklore

Fleischman, Paul. (2007). Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella. Illustrated by Julie Paschkis. New York: Henry Holt.

Higgins, F.E. (2007). The Black Book of Secrets. New York: Feiwel and Friends/Holtzbrinck.

Varon, Sara. (2007). Robot Dreams. New York: First Second/Holtzbrinck.

Information/Biography/Autobiography/Memoir

Bausum, Ann. (2007). Muckrakers. Washington, DC: National Geographic.

Fletcher, Ralph. (2007). How to Write Your Life Story. New York: Collins/Harper Collins.

Marcus, Leonard S. (2007). Pass it Down: Five Picture-Book Families Make Their Mark. New York: Walker/Holtzbrinck.

Sis, Peter. (2007). The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Sullivan, George. (2007). Helen Keller: Her Life in Pictures. New York: Scholastic.

Picture Books

Baretta, Gene. (2007). Dear Deer: A Book of Homophones. New York: Henry Holt.

Gravett, Emily. (2007). Orange Pear Apple Bear. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Harrington, Janice N. (2007). The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County. Illustrations by Shelley Jackson. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Judge, Lita. (2007). One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II. New York: Hyperion.

Lee, S. (2007). The Zoo. La Jolla, CA: Kane/Miller.

Messinger, Carla and Katz, Susan. (2007). When the Shadbush Blooms. Illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden. Berkeley, CA: Tricycle.

Tan, Shaun. (2007). The Arrival. New York: Scholastic.

Watt, Mélanie. (2007). Chester. Toronto, ON: Kids Can.

Wild, Margaret. (2007). Woolvs in the Sitee. Illustrated by Anne Spudvilas. Honesdale, PA: Front Street/Boyds Mills Press.

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2008 Committee: Deanna Day, Chair, Monica Edinger Past Chair
Pat Austin, Sharon Levin, Janelle Mathis, Jonda McNair, Kathy Short, Edward Sullivan