Eoin Colfer’s Fairies, Fiends and Flatulence!

From the Bank Street Bookstore website:

Saturday, August 2 at 7pm at Bank Street

Eoin Colfer’s Live Show

Artemis Fowl – Fairies, Fiends and Flatulence!

Join hysterically funny and utterly brilliant No. 1 bestselling author, Eoin Colfer, on an adrenaline-fuelled exposé of teenage criminal mastermind, Artemis Fowl. This hilarious one-man show is a must for all Artemis Fowl fans and their families. Think fairy. Think again!

Eoin Colfer will be signing books after the show.

Call for reservations – (212) 678-1654.

I’ll be there as I live literally around the corner. Let me know if you will be too.

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Thurber, Fairy Tales, and Language

My own Thurber love is “The 13 Clocks” (illustrated by Marc Simont; New York Review Children’s Collection: $14.95, all ages), an eccentric children’s story that took apart and lovingly reconstructed the fairy tale long before William Steig wrote “Shrek” or William Goldman penned “The Princess Bride.” For years, I gave away copies of a flimsy Dell/Yearling paperback edition that I had bought in bulk. But now, the New York Review Children’s Collection, publishers of a number of fabulous books that had ignominiously fallen out of print, has reissued “The 13 Clocks” in a beautiful hardcover version. It is, if not identical to, then at least reminiscent of the original 1950 Simon & Schuster edition I have. In his introduction to the new edition, Gaiman, himself a writer for impassioned followers of many stripes, calls it “probably the best book in the world.”

Sonja Bolle lovingly recollects this wonderful, wonderful book in her Los Angeles Times Wordplay column: Thurber’s world of wonders. I took adore this book. I turned it into a play for one of my very first classes (long ago at another school). Thank you, NYR Children’s Collection, for making it available again. ( I also love Thurber’s other fairy tales for children and discuss some of them in my CLNE talk on literary fairy tales.)

Tomi Ungerer

Yes!!!  About time.

Art – Tomi Ungerer – Return of the Renegade Children’s Author – NYTimes.com

Visiting Literary Worlds

The conference will not be solely lecture-based, according to Howard. Instead, participants will take take part in a virtual book discussion, and take field trips into literature-based locations that have been created in Second Life. Participants may find themselves in an Edgar Allen Poe poem, visiting a “secret garden” or learning about gothic literature in an authentically spooky Gothic mansion. “They may even fall down a rabbit hole!” notes Howard. The conference will also feature one or more authors who have used virtual worlds to create, refine or promote their works. The day will conclude with a panel discussion including experts from a number of disciplines, and a social event. (From LISNews)

Sounds like a Jasper Fforde novel, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, I played around a bit with Second Life and was not that impressed; I found it pricey, a memory hog, and even a bit tedious. So I’m not jumping to do this conference. I think I’ll stick with the old-fashioned way of entering such worlds — via my imagination. However, one of you may feel differently; if so, more information is here.