I’m off shortly to ALA in Chicago where I will be seeing many friends from the publishing world — authors, illustrators, editors, marketers, publicity folks, agents, librarians, academics, reviewers, educators, teachers, bloggers, booksellers, and book lovers of all stripes. Can’t wait to see them all and do some socializing, gossiping, hear about and see new and forthcoming books, and otherwise have a grand time.

In addition to all the socializing and networking, I also plan to:

• Stop by the Mo Willems reading at the Art Institute’s “Picture Perfect: Caldecott Award Books: 2006-2009) exhibit on Friday afternoon, 3-5.
• Wander the exhibits on Saturday morning. (This is perhaps my favorite thing to do — see what is coming down the pike for all of us.  I’m also on the look-out for next year’s Battle of the Kids’ Books contenders.)
• Meet up with some fellow child_litters for lunch on Saturday at the convention center food court (thanks to Cheryl Klein for organizing this).
• Hopefully make it to the Saturday 1:30 session, “Books and Blogs: Made for Each Other?”
• Sit in on the Notables meetings (their discussion list is available here) at various times.
• Also on Saturday, at 3:30, get to the session, “Mixing it Up: The Process of Bringing International Children’s Books to the US” with Cheryl and others.
• On Sunday at 1:30, go to The Pura Belpré Celebración; I’ve never been before and hear it is wonderful!
• Be at the Newbery Caldecott Wilder Banquet on Sunday.  I went to my first one of these in 2002 when my dear friend Roxanne Feldman was on the committee that honored Linda Sue Park with the Newbery Medal for A Single Shard.  She arranged for me to sit at the FSG table where I had a blast with Jack Gantos.  Since then I’ve gone yearly and it has been wonderful each time.  Last year was, of course, particularly special because it was when I was on the Newbery Committee and we got to see one of the best banquet speeches to date by our winner, Laura Amy Schlitz.  Neil Gaiman is an amazing speaker (and, as this blog’s readers well know, I was a huge advocate for his book winning), but I’m dubious that even he can beat Laura’s mesmerizing presentation of  last year. Still he is NEIL GAIMAN, arguably the biggest celeb to win this award (biggest outside this world of children’s books, I mean), a great guy, and a wonderful storyteller in his own right — so I’m sure it is going to be one hell of a night.  I cannot wait!
• Listen to Melba Beals on Monday morning.
• Attend the presentation of the Batchelder, Carnegie, Geisel, and Sibert Awards later on Monday morning.

Sadly I am returning to NYC on Monday afternoon so cannot attend the Odyssey Award Presentation and Reception, the Printz Award Program, the Coretta Scott King Award celebrations (really, really sorry I can’t do these — I’ve gone to the amazing breakfast several times and this year there are more events to celebrate 40 years of the award), and too many other cool looking activities.

The latest to give his list of summer reading books for kids is Nicholas Kristof, op-ed columnist for the New York Times.  In “The Best Kid Books Ever” Kristof writes:

In educating myself this spring about education, I was aghast to learn that American children drop in I.Q. each summer vacation — because they aren’t in school or exercising their brains.

This is less true of middle-class students whose parents drag them off to summer classes or make them read books. But poor kids fall two months behind in reading level each summer break, and that accounts for much of the difference in learning trajectory between rich and poor students.

Like so many similar well-intentioned pieces, this column bugged me.  Not only are the books Kristof recommends unlikely to end up in the hands of one of those “poor kids” this summer, even if they were in their hands, they might not speak to them at all.  The suggestions pouring in from his readers seem equally myopic— I see next to none considering what the actual reality is for those at-risk children.

If Krisof is so concerned about those “poor kids,” I wish he’d devote a column to them rather than listing books that he and his middle-class kids liked  — why are these “poor kids” not reading? What programs for them are working? Why? And what books are they liking?   What books (or other media, for that matter) are helping them keep those I.Q. points from bleeding away. (For that matter, check out Walter Kirn’s “Life, Liberty, and the Persuit of Aptitude” for another perspective on testing),  Rather than producing yet another list of books for us children’s book lovers to carp over, I’d like to see someone instead really examine those children who are struggling in school, what happens to them over the summer, and why.

For those unhappy with Newsweek’s choice of Jenna Bush to weigh in on essential books for kids, a great antidote is today’s Telegraph piece, “Summer Reading for Children: Adventures to enchanting worlds.” Some terrific suggestions from Geraldine McCaughrean, Philip Reeve, Neil Gaiman, Anne Fine, among other British writers for children.

Here’s Rebecca!

Your mother was a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid with Dick Clark. Did she practice every evening like Miranda’s mom?
I don’t remember her practicing—and there was also a different outcome.

She didn’t win?
No, she didn’t. But we did get consolation prizes, and one of them was a case of Panel Magic.

From Upper West Side Story: An Interview with Rebecca Stead

***

Here’s KT!

Do you remember what you read for that first discussion group?

Oh, I do. Actually, it’s really kind of a funny story. Nowadays one of CCBC’s discussion guidelines is that you can only make positive comments first. If you have things that kept you from appreciating a book, you have to wait until everyone has had a chance to say what they appreciated. But back then, when I went to my first discussion, I didn’t say anything about the first book they discussed—which I absolutely loved—because right away they just started ripping it to shreds.

Oh, no!

I was really embarrassed. I’d written a fan letter to the author, and I just thought it was the most amazing book. But I didn’t say anything. Then when I went back the next month, the same thing happened. They just started ripping to shreds a book I had really loved. But that time I spoke up and said, “You know, I really like this book, and I want to tell you what I liked about it.” And I felt vindicated, because it went on to be a Newbery Honor Book that year.

What was the name of the book?

A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle.

From KT the Magnificent: An Interview with Kathleen T. Horning

Okay, I’ve held off writing about The Ask and the Answer, as it isn’t out till September. But it is, I assure you Ness fans, fantastic. I think it may even be better than The Knife of Never Letting Go if that is possible. (Here’s my review of that book if you are interested.)  But now we’ve got something else to develop the Chaos Walking story even further. It is “The New World”, a short story Ness wrote for the UK Booktrust that is available starting today on their website.  It is wonderful too — bringing out more of Viola’s backstory to great effect.   I think, though, what I like the most is that it tells us more about Viola herself.  Superb stuff.

Katherine Sturtevant’s A True and Faithful Narrative was one of  my favorite books of 2006 so I am delighted to see that The Brothers Story is coming out this fall.  Here’s the description from her website.

The Brothers Story is set in the Great Frost of 1683-84, and tells the story of twin teenaged boys, Kit and Christy, who have grown up in poverty in their Essex village. Because Christy has been “simple” from birth, Kit has literally been his brother’s keeper. But the hardships that come to their Essex village with the frost bring Kit to frustration and despair. He abandons Christy and makes his way to London, seeking to better himself. There he finds much to take his mind from thoughts of all he has left behind: a master who paints pictures, a sharp-tongued serving maid, and a frost fair upon the frozen Thames. When the time comes that he can no longer evade the problem of his brother, Kit must make a choice between returning to poverty-stricken village life or seizing a lucky chance to advance himself–unless he can find a third way. The novel includes much authentic detail, including a frank portrayal of teen sexuality during this period.

A slow fade-in on my life.

So begins Nova Ren Suma’s Dani Noir, a gem of a first novel.  Thirteen-year-old Dani lives in a small New York State town where, it seems, nothing much happens. She’s become addicted to the old movies shown at the local Little Art movie theater, in particular, those of the noir sort — The Third Man, Double Indemnity, Notorious, etc.  Now I’m a big fan of old movies, but a kid today?  Well, I was convinced immediately.  A completely contemporary kid (with a crappy un-noirish pink cell phone ), Dani has for a number of very real reasons become fixated on these old films.  And what a voice! Fresh, noirish as only a thirteen-year-old could be, I was quickly and completely drawn in.

Surrounded by a cast of well-rendered and often-but-not-always sympathetic characters, Dani is coping with life during a torpid summer, having been hit by a number of painful personal setbacks involving family and friends. As a result she becomes over-focused on film noir and, in particular, Rita Hayworth.  Nova Ren Suma does an impressive job having Dani tell bits and pieces of her favorite films as they parallel, clarify, confuse, or otherwise bring out elements in her  story.

This delightful book came out of the blue for me. I knew nothing about it when a publicist contacted me through this blog and asked me if I wanted a copy. The description intrigued me so I said sure and am very glad I did.  A completely charming book, Dani Noir is due out this fall; keep an eye out for it.

Fever Crumb is a prequel to the series. Here London is still stuck to the ground, though it is already being menaced by a coalition of wandering, northern tribes called the Movement. Fever Crumb herself is a foundling who has been brought up in the rarified and ultra-rational atmosphere of the Order of Engineers, who live and work inside the head of a colossal ruined statue – an image that mashes “Ozymandias” with Planet of the Apes. When she is sent out to work on an archaeological dig, her composure and reason are tested, first by the madness of the city itself, and next by the emotional wounds she opens as she uncovers the mystery of her own parentage.

Review: Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve | Books | The Guardian

via Maude Newton

Most great stories of adventure, from The Hobbit to Seven Pillars of Wisdom, come furnished with a map. That’s because every story of adventure is in part the story of a landscape, of the interrelationship between human beings (or Hobbits, as the case may be) and topography. Every adventure story is conceivable only with reference to the particular set of geographical features that in each case sets the course, literally, of the tale. But I think there is another, deeper reason for the reliable presence of maps in the pages, or on the endpapers, of an adventure story, whether that story is imaginatively or factually true. We have this idea of armchair traveling, of the reader who seeks in the pages of a ripping yarn or a memoir of polar exploration the kind of heroism and danger, in unknown, half-legendary lands, that he or she could never hope to find in life.

This is a mistaken notion, in my view. People read stories of adventure—and write them—because they have themselves been adventurers. Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity. For the most part the young adventurer sets forth equipped only with the fragmentary map—marked here there be tygers and mean kid with air rifle—that he or she has been able to construct out of a patchwork of personal misfortune, bedtime reading, and the accumulated local lore of the neighborhood children.

Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood – The New York Review of Books