Armchair BEA: Dear Marilyn Sachs

I'm writing to thank you for The Truth About Mary Rose (Doubleday, 1973). That's my childhood copy, the 1977 Dell Yearling edition, illustrated by Louis Glanzman. It was one of the few books (maybe even the only one) I read as a child that had a Hispanic or Latina main character--like me, or close enough (I'm Cuban-American). I loved that Mary Rose's dad, an artist, made her rice pudding when he was worried about her being sick, and that she was surrounded by her extended family in New York City, even if they were mostly on her American mother's side. Speaking of Mary Rose's mother (Veronica Ganz, but I hadn't read that book), I also loved that she was a dentist and kept her maiden name at work. But Mary Rose's grandmother, on the other hand, just made me mad (to be fair, she made Mary Rose's mother mad, too). How could she say such mean things about Mary Rose's dad? And why would everyone let her get away with it? Even, especially, Mary Rose herself.

Rereading The Truth About Mary Rose as an adult, which I did last night, I'm more interested in the representation of the Ramirez (Ganz) and Petronski families than I am in the mystery of the first Mary Rose--after all, I already know how it ends. And I want to congratulate Luis Ramirez on his one-man show at MoMA. Very impressive! It almost makes up for having such an awful mother-in-law.

Book Sale Business

I've started to branch out from the biannual Friends Book Sales at Arlington Central Library--this morning I went all the way to Falls Church (a distance of two and a half miles) to check out the American Association of University Women book sale and came home with a small stack of children's books and a couple of hardcovers for my husband and son, too.

I followed my usual book sale protocol, which is to head straight for the middle grade paperbacks. In this case, there wasn't a lot of pre-sorting--all the children's books were mixed up in boxes, fiction, nonfiction, YA, picture books, everything. The pricing scheme wasn't what I was used to, either: all paperbacks (children's and adult) were $2, hardcovers $3. Fortunately, "thin paperbacks" were only a dollar, which is still twice what one pays at the Friends sales. Also fortunately, the cashier agreed with me on the thinness of my paperbacks. One of my hardcovers  (Folk Toys Around the World and How to Make Them by Joan Joseph, 1972) was thin enough to qualify for a discount, too.

One thing I noticed about my new (old) books is the presence and quality of the interior art: black and white line drawings, mostly, by Erik Blegvad (who died earlier this year), N.M. Bodecker, Alan Cober, Margery Gill. Gill's illustrations are among my favorites, and I'm particularly pleased to have picked up a copy of Dawn of Fear by Susan Cooper because of them (here Gill was informed by her own childhood memories of WWII). But I'm reading A Candle in Her Room by Ruth M. Arthur (also illustrated by Gill) first.

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

I had been reading one chapter a night of Jostein Gaarder's The Christmas Mystery (1992; translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Rokkan, 1996) aloud to my daughter this advent. Sadly, we only made it to Day 6. The premise of Gaarder's book is good (if structurally familiar to readers of The Solitaire Mystery or even Sophie's World): Joachim discovers a magic advent calendar (yes! a magic advent calendar is good) in an old bookstore. Behind each door is a picture--and a tightly folded piece of paper telling another story, about Elisabet's journey across Europe and back two thousand years, to Bethlehem at the time of the Nativity.

Eventually Joachim's and Elisabet's stories interwine, but we didn't make it that far--Elisabet's story was a lot less interesting (or more philosophical) than Joachim's. Maybe I'll try again on my own, since I can read a lot faster than I can read aloud, although I am probably less patient than my nine-year-old.

Note: We are reading the English edition, illustrated by Rosemary Wells. The illustrations are not as magical as I would like, and other reviewers agree, preferring Stella East's illustrations in the Norwegian edition pictured here (Aschehoug, 1995). Maybe that would help?

Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir by Tove Jansson

Books I Want is apparently becoming a regular feature here. This week, I'm wanting Tove Jansson's first book for adults, which is actually a collection of stories called Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir. It's been re-released by Sort Of Books in a deluxe edition that includes rare images from the Jansson family archives ("a perfect Christmas gift," says the publisher), such as the one of eight-year-old Tove on the cover. I've not read any of Jansson's adult fiction, but Sculptor's Daughter seems like a good place to start, despite the title. Why do so many books about women identify them as someone else's--usually a man's--daughter or wife? In this case, the sculptor is Jansson's father, Viktor. For the record, her mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jannson, was an illustrator and graphic designer. Also probably just as influential on Tove.

One of the stories in this collection, "The Iceberg," is available to read online (The Independent, November 3, 2013), and it is lovely, keenly observed (lived, really) and true to a child's experiences and emotions. The whole collection, in paperback and with a more anonymous cover photograph of a snowy landscape, will be published in the US by William Morrow in January 2014. If you can wait that long.

Almost Betsy-Tacy and Tib Dolls

If only someone at Land of Nod had read the Betsy-Tacy books! The Knit Crowd dolls are almost perfect replicas of Betsy, Tacy, and Tib as they look in Lois Lenski's illustrations for the first four books. Just switch the hair color on the brown and yellow-haired dolls and shorten the braids, and you have Betsy and Tib (the ballet dress is better on Tib anyway). And Tacy's red (orange) ringlets are exactly right. Sadly, all three dolls are sold out til early February, but that just means you have time to reread the books, conveniently reprinted in the The Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace (William Morrow, 2011). I still have my 1970s Harper Trophy editions; judging from their condition, Betsy-Tacy and Tib was my favorite. This image is from Chapter II, Learning to Fly. 

[I am not affiliated with Land of Nod! Although maybe if I had been the dolls, otherwise adorable, would have had the right color hair. I might have to buy the Tacy one anyway. For Milly (ahem).]

The Mystery of Fairy Oak

I am so curious about Fairy Oak. Why haven't the Fairy Oak books--a trilogy, followed by a series of four mysteries, by Italian author Elisabetta Gnone--made it to the United States? They seem to have been widely available in Italian and Spanish (not to mention Basque, Catalan, and Galician--Fairy Oak must be very popular in Spain) since the first book, Il Segretto delle Gemelle, was published in 2005. There's even an English translation (The Twins' Secret) by Alastair McEwen, but it's nearly impossible to find. I know, because I've been looking for it since I saw the Fairy Oak books at the airport in Rome two years ago.

Fortunately, I've been able to find out more about Fairy Oak via the Italian site and, in English, the Fairyoakpedia. The trilogy is the story of twin sisters Vanilla and Lavender Periwinkle, who turn out to be Witches of Light and Dark respectively, and together with their magical friends (I love all the character descriptions) must save Fairy Oak from its old enemy, the Terrible 21st. The world of Fairy Oak might be more interesting than the war, actually: it looks like something Studio Ghibli might have made, only frillier (actually, Gnone worked for Disney). Maybe I will have to locate an Italian edition after all, though that won't help my American nine-year-old. Who would probably love it.

Journey by Aaron Becker

Everything you've read or heard about Aaron Becker's Journey (Candlewick) is true: it's a magical, beautiful book, more than a little reminiscent of Harold and the Purple Crayon, with detailed illustrations done in watercolor and pen and ink. And wordless, like Barbara Lehman's The Red Book (HMH Books for Young Readers, 2004), with which it also has a lot in common: crossing oceans, finding friends.

My favorite spreads are the earlier ones, of a forest hung with fairy lights and Chinese lanterns, and of the glorious loch castle on the cover: I lingered there for a long time. Unfortunately for me, Journey doesn't. Instead, it takes to the air, and I'm not entirely on board with the steampunk airships and samurai soldiers--bad guys, ordered by their emperor to catch and cage a purple, phoenix-like bird. And keep it in a golden pagoda. Hmm.

Anyway, girl frees bird, bird rescues girl (there's a magic carpet of her own making involved), girl meets boy, the end. For now. It's still a magical, beautiful book, only not quite one for me.

You might love it, though. I really wanted to--just look at it!

Horn Book Recommended Fantasy Books

There's a long list of recommended fantasy books on the Horn Book blog today, ranging from picture books and primary to fiction for intermediate and older readers (all published within the last several years). Here are some of my favorites from each category, most of which I meant to review when they first came out!

Picture books
The Boy in the Garden by Allen Say (Houghton Mifflin, 2010). A beautiful garden, a bronze statue, a Japanese folktale come to life. I'm always interested in Allen Say's work, and this is particularly lovely. I couldn't remember having seen any other picture books by Say since this one, but it looks like The Favorite Daughter (Arthur A. Levine) just came out on May 28; maybe I will review that one!

Primary
Earwig and the Witch by Diana Wynne Jones (Greenwillow, 2012). A great introduction to DWJ and a Baba Yaga story to boot. Ordinarily I love Paul Zelinsky's illustrations, too, but these are a little creepy. Maybe that's why we preferred the audio.

Intermediate
I love middle grade, but apart from A Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet (HarperCollins, 2012; how have I not written about Cabinet here? I've already read the sequel, A Box of Gargoyles), I'm not too excited about the books on this list. Sage Blackwood's Jinx is on it, at least.

Older fiction
Perhaps I've aged into this category. I loved everything about Seraphina by Rachel Hartman (Random House, 2012), and there are quite a few others here I also enjoyed. Not to mention one I'm reading right now: A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty (Levine/Scholastic, 2013). Review to follow, really.

Post-Valentine's Day YA

So, I've been reading a little more YA lately--enough to make this list of YA novels that involve both a. kissing, and b. trips to Europe. What's not to love?

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith (Poppy, 2012). Hadley falls in love with Oliver on a flight from New York to London for her father's wedding. Aside (or not): Hadley is understandably upset about her father's remarriage. He was on fellowship at Oxford over a year ago--still married to Hadley's mom--when he fell in love with a much younger woman, whom Hadley has thus far refused to meet. Adult readers must try to overlook this. Anyway, after a cinematic kiss (see cover), Hadley and Oliver lose track of each other at Heathrow, but fate and second chances bring them back together (twice!) over the next 24 hours.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins (Dutton, 2010). Anna is inexplicably reluctant to go to boarding school in Paris, where she will meet a cute French boy (she should know, because her father writes romance novels). This book is like having a whole box of macarons. In Paris.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton, 2012). Hazel and Augustus go to Amsterdam. Before one of them DIES.

Just One Day by Gayle Forman (Dutton). Just one day in Paris with a sexy Dutch guy you just met at an underground performance of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, followed by a year of heartache and a sequel (Willem's side of the story, Just One Year, will be out this fall). Note to future Milly: Don't even think about it.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick (Dial, 2012). Okay, this one is the opposite of Europe: almost everything happens, well, next door. But there is lots of kissing.

Extra Yarn, hold the needles

At last count, Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen (Balzer + Bray, 2012) had received four starred reviews. It's Klassen's second picture book--his first, I Want My Hat Back (Candlewick, 2011), also got a lot of attention and went on to win a well-deserved 2012 Geisel Honor. I'm not so sure about Extra Yarn, although I do love a picture book about knitting. I think Mars is a great name for a dog, too.

But back to the knitting. There's only one illustration in the whole book of Annabelle actually knitting something (it happens to be a sweater for a pickup truck, but that's another issue). And I'm pretty sure that the needles aren't supposed to be pointing up like that.

Does it matter, though? After all, the book is about a box that holds a never-ending supply of yarn of every color: Annabelle can probably knit it however she wants. And knitters as well as critics seem to love the book anyway. Maybe you are supposed to hold the needles that way, at least in picture books! Just don't try it at home.

My Havana for Nonfiction Monday

My Havana: Memories of a Cuban Boyhood by Rosemary Wells with Secundino Fernandez (illustrated by Peter Ferguson; Candlewick, 2010) encompasses the decade of my own parents' childhoods, and the city young Dino describes in it is almost as familiar to me as if I remembered it myself:

Until I [Dino] am six years old, in 1954, my world is sweet. "We live in a city built by angels," Papi says. There is no cold in Havana, only sunshine and warm rain. The city's avenues are lined with arcades of coral stone archways, ancient doors, and window frames....

The architecture of the colonial capital fascinates Dino (he grows up to be an architect), and he fills his sketchbooks with drawings of buildings, windows and doorways. As if taken from Dino's sketchbook, pencil drawings of architectural details are overlaid on a view of the rooftops in this wordless double-page spread:

Peter Ferguson's painterly illustrations, done in oil with spot art in pencil, capture a city suffused with golden light: very different from both Madrid, where Dino lives with his maternal grandparents from 1954-56, and New York City, where he and his family settle in 1959 after Castro comes to power in Cuba. They're an integral part of this relatively short (65 pages), yet surprisingly rich book.

Rosemary Wells was inspired to write My Havana after hearing an interview with Secundino Fernandez in which he described his intense homesickness for Havana, and his attempt to alleviate it by building a cardboard model of the city on the floor of his bedroom in New York (that episode makes it into the book, too). It's a beautiful and evocative example of the power of place in childhood memory, and one for which I am especially grateful.

A note on politics: The text of My Havana touches on the repressive Franco regime in Spain as well as on the Batista dictatorship and the Cuban revolution under Castro. I only wish the author's note had not.

Moo, Moo, Brown Cow for Poetry Friday

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep is probably my favorite nursery rhyme--I sang both my children to sleep for years with Raffi's extended version, Cluck, Cluck Red Hen (Milly still likes to hear it at bedtime).  In Raffi's version, the singer asks a hen for eggs, a cow for milk, and a bee for honey. Here's the exchange with the cow:

Moo, moo, brown cow, have you milk for me?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, sweet as it can be.
Churn it into butter or make it into cheese.
Freeze it into ice cream or drink it if you please.

The little boy in Phyllis Gershator's new picture book Moo, Moo, Brown Cow (illustrated by Giselle Potter; Random House, 2011) does the same sort of thing (he also asks a gray goose for down, but otherwise the animals are the same); however, Gershator's narrative is more purposeful: the little boy is looking for a blanket for his bed, a pillow for his head, and a sweet and simple bedtime snack of bread and honey with a glass of milk.  Here's his exchange with the cow for comparison:

Moo, moo, brown cow, have you any milk?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, smooth as silk.
Does milk make me sleepy before I go to bed?
Yes, sir, yes, sir, the brown cow said.

It's also a little more difficult to sing (lines 3 and 4 of each stanza especially), but even I was able to manage it. The reward comes in the closing stanzas, when animals and boy alike go to bed ("in the hive... / in the barn... / in the coop... / in the shed").  Giselle Potter's final illustration shows him tucked in bed with his own collection of farm animals (there's even a bee mobile), dreaming of jumping over the moon.

Potter's palette could have been inspired by the classic colors of old-fashioned milk paint, which lends her work here a folksy farm feel. My favorite illustration is this one of the black sheep knitting the boy's blanket out of a ball of his or her own curly wool:

Bonus points for showing the sheep holding the needles correctly; how many times have you seen them pointing up in picture books?

Books that Cook: The Runaway Wok

[Books that Cook: A very occasional feature in which the Books Together Test Kitchen (that would be me and my kids) prepares a recipe from the back of a picture book.]

The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale by Ying Chang Compestine (illustrated by Sebastia Serra; Dutton, 2011) doesn't overflow with rice (more's the pity, because the Festive Stir-Fried Rice recipe we tried was really good)--it's based on a traditional Danish folktale, The Talking Pot, instead. I found the economics (not to mention the ethics) of The Runaway Wok a little problematic, actually: the wok steals from the selfish, rich Li family to give to the poor, generous Zhang family. The Zhangs share the wealth with all the poor people of Beijing at a New Year's feast. And then they open up a wok shop!

Ying Chang Compestine, who has written a number of cookbooks as well as children's books, includes an informative Author's Note about the Chinese New Year. She says, "The most significant dish for children is the festive stir-fried rice, cooked in a wok. The various ingredients in this dish represent harmony and happiness. Parents urge their children to eat it so they will get along in the coming year." We'll see.

Notes from the Test Kitchen

• This recipe works best with day-old rice. We used brown rice to make it extra-healthy. 
• Feel free to make substitutions, like cubed fresh mango (instead of dried cranberries) and cashews. Delicious! I just hope it doesn't void the "harmony and happiness" clause.

BEA and back again

I made it to BEA and back in one day and lived to tell about it! Here's my BEA story: I took the 7:25 train from DC on Thursday morning--it wasn't even the high-speed train and I still got to Penn Station by 10:45. I love the train. I can read on it, for one thing, which I can't do on a bus or in the car. And it's nice to look out the window from time to time.  All those little towns!

Anyway, I walked to the Javits Center, checked my empty suitcase (I packed the bare minimum for what was meant to be overnight stay--more about that later) and wandered around the exhibit floor, where I made several very nice contacts and got a poster signed for Milly by Peter Brown and an "I went to BEA and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" t-shirt for myself.

No, that's not exactly true. But people have remarked that books (ARCs or otherwise) were in short supply at BEA this year, and that was definitely the case on Thursday. I was a little disappointed, but in the end I came home with a few coveted titles (thank you, Susan Kusel, for Wonderstruck!) and the promise of more to come in the mail. I love the mail just as much as the train.  All those fat envelopes!

This might be a good time to mention the difference between BEA and ALA's annual meetings, which I attended last year when they were held right here in DC. In my experience, ALA was more collegial (and I'm not even a librarian); there was a sense of common purpose. BEA was more competitive and businesslike, as in business was being conducted right in the booths and everyone seemed to be in a hurry to close up shop by 3. Fortunately I knew what to expect and came prepared with a mission statement and a stack of cute business cards.

Charlotte of Charlotte's Library and Pam of MotherReader had graciously agreed to share their hotel room with me Thursday night, and I met them and several other kidlit bloggers (Alex of The Children's War and Susan of Wizards Wireless among them) for a thankfully very collegial lunch.  Afterwards, Pam led the way back onto the exhibit floor (see How to Work an Event Like a MotherReader for some excellent tips), where things were already starting to wind down. Note to self: If you attend BEA next year, try getting there on Monday.

Here's where I went off the rails, so to speak.  The plan was to meet up with Charlotte and Pam (who had another event to attend) at our hotel a couple of hours after the exhibits closed, and then go to Kidlit Drink Night at a nearby bar.  But it was hot and crowded and New York City, and as I walked back to Penn Station to catch an uptown train to the Met, I caught sight of the Vamoose bus to Rosslyn.  Next thing I knew I had traded in my Friday morning ticket and was on that bus. It was 4:30.

I had to make a couple of sheepish phone calls (thank you for understanding, Charlotte and Pam!), but it was definitely the right decision for me. I was even able to read a little of Wonderstruck on the bus. Best of all, supper was waiting for me when I got home...and it was still hot.

April and Esme, Tooth Fairies

My kids had already lost a lot of teeth (Leo, almost all of them) before April and Esme, Tooth Fairies by Bob Graham (Candlewick, 2010) came out last fall, but til then I hadn't found a tooth fairy book I really liked.  The search is over. This one arrived just in time for Milly, thankfully, and we both love it.  Graham's fairies (you might remember them from Jethro Byrd, Fairy Child; Candlewick, 2002) aren't the sparkly sort; more like ordinary kids with wings, they live with their fairy parents in a little house by a tree stump, just off of the M42.  This is the story of their first "tooth visit," and I especially like the way it connects, for readers, the experience of losing a tooth with other childhood rites of passage; the sense of accomplishment that kids feel, as well as their parents' mixture of pride and concern for them.

You can see more of Bob Graham's ink and watercolor illustrations, full page and panels, for April and Esme in "Two Unforgettable Picture Book Heroines from 2010" at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (I like it when they follow the trail of toys up to the little boy's bedroom).  Unfortunately, there aren't any of the interior of the fairies' house, the bathroom of which features a tub made out of a creamer.  Graham's work is whimsical but not overly sweet; look closely at the cover image here and you'll see that the fairies are wearing mismatched clothes, the wildflowers are common weeds, and the grass is littered with popsicle sticks and pull tabs.  Yet there's even a little sparkle, too.

[And now for something completely different!  Well, there's a Tooth Fairy in it.  Silverlicious (HarperCollins, 2010) is the latest in Victoria Kann's popular picture book series.  Pinkalicious is increasingly sour about the loss of her sweet tooth until Toothetina delivers an Important Message along with three silver coins.  Could they be sweet silverlicious chocolate?  Digital collage illustrations.  Compare and contrast!]

notable Notables

Thanks goodness for the ALA Notables list--it's a great consolation when favorite titles find a home there.  I do wish the Notables didn't have to include all of the other ALA award winners and honor books; it seems redundant.  Fortunately, they also include books by international authors and illustrators (which are not eligible for the Newbery or Caldecott), so April and Esme, Tooth Fairies by Bob Graham (Candlewick) is on the list, as well as The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood (illustrated by Renata Liwska; Houghton Mifflin), and, in the Older Readers category, Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve (Scholastic).

Other notable Notables I haven't mentioned elsewhere (there were lots in my Caldecott Hopefuls post!): Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Hyperion); and Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josee Masse (Dutton).

Which of these should I review first?  (Yes, I'm still reviewing 2010 titles.  It's a copyright date, not an expiration date!)

Arcimboldo and The Tale of Despereaux

I skipped lunch the other day to watch the exhibition film for Arcimboldo, 1526-1593: Nature and Fantasy, currently on view at the National Gallery, which references the character of Boldo in the animated feature The Tale of Despereaux.  That's Boldo in the image above, a character composed entirely of fruits and vegetables, pots and pans--distinctly resembling the composite heads painted by his namesake, the Renaissance artist Arcimboldo.

Unfortunately, I couldn't remember a character named Boldo in Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Award-winning novel The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread (illustrated by Timothy Basil Ering with no apparent debt to Arcimboldo; Scholastic, 2003) and was forced to reread it.  In vain, as it turns out: Boldo (a sort of soup genie) was created for the movie version of the book (which I also watched this weekend). The animation, by London-based Framestore, employs a palette and lighting drawn from the Dutch Masters; and the movie also spotlights two portraits, one of the deceased Queen and another of Princess Pea.  Altogether I prefer the movie.  You can watch a video podcast (of the exhibition film, that is! It's narrated by Isabella Rossellini) here, or better yet, at the National Gallery til January 9, 2011.

[Here's Arcimboldo's Vertumnus (c. 1591, on loan from Skokloster Castle in Sweden) for comparison to Boldo.  Note especially the apple cheeks!]

Emily's Quest

The portrait of Elisabeth Bas featured in August's Middle Grade Gallery hangs by the fireplace in the Disappointed House, as furnished by Emily Starr and Dean Priest during their ill-fated engagement in Emily's Quest by L.M. Montgomery.  This is the third and final book in the Emily series, which isn't nearly as beloved as Montgomery's Anne series (or so I am forced to conclude, since no one guessed.  Members of the Emily Starr Fan Club, please leave a comment).

I didn't love Emily either, but I still like to reread the chapter of Emily's Quest dedicated to making over the Disappointed House (it's Chapter 9), inside and out.  Montgomery describes everything, from the wallpaper in the living-room ("shadowy grey with snowy pine branches over it") to Emily's great-grandmother's wedding china (willow-ware) to the brass chessy-cat door knocker on the front porch door.  And of course, the pictures:  Lady Giovanna, Mona Lisa...and Elisabeth Bas.

Spoiler alert:  Emily breaks off her engagement to Dean when she realizes that she still loves Teddy, and the Disappointed House is boarded up again.  But years later, Dean gives the deed to the house and all it contains to Emily as a wedding gift.  I can't imagine Emily and Teddy actually living there among Dean's things, but it's always been my House of Dreams.

Does anyone else remember the Disappointed House? Or, for that matter, Anne's House of Dreams (perhaps my favorite of the Anne books)?  Which would you prefer?

Despicable Me and Sleepy Kittens

The best part of the movie Despicable Me, for my money anyway, is when Gru reads a bedtime story to Margo, Edith, and Agnes, the three little girls he's adopted to help him infiltrate his nemesis Vector's lair.  The book he reads--at Agnes's insistence--is called Sleepy Kittens; it's a novelty book featuring three kitten finger puppets who drink their milk, brush their fur, you get the idea.  Gru is disgusted: "This is garbage!  You like this?"  (Of course they do.)  I think he even suggests that a two-year-old could have written it.  I'm sure a lot of parents have thought they could do better when it comes to their kids' books, too.  It's harder than it looks.

Anyway, the smart merchandising folks at Universal published Sleepy Kittens as a movie tie-in, finger puppets and all.  Apparently the actual book is not as good as the one in the movie, in a sort of meta-reversal of people's usual complaints, but it's a clever idea nonetheless.

[And one that the people who made Michael Clayton missed out on completely.  My post on the middle-grade fantasy novel featured in that movie, Realm+Conquest, consistently gets more hits than anything else I've written here, and despite the fact that Realm+Conquest is not a real book, people continue to ask me where they can get it.  Someone please write that book already!]

Back to Despicable Me.  Later in the movie, Gru reads the girls a book he's written just for them, The Lonely Unicorn.  He should probably stick to his day job, but the girls love it.  (Of course they do.)  Have you seen the movie?  Did you?

KidsPost Summer Book Club 2010

The tenth annual KidsPost Summer Book Club reading list came out today.  This year, the focus is on new books by "rock star" authors (last year it was nonfiction).  The first three books on the list are Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid; Ann M. Martin's prequel to The Baby-Sitters Club series, The Summer Before; and Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer by John Grisham.  Not really my kind of list!  But there's probably something on there for everyone, and for me that something might be Chasing Orion by Kathryn Lasky (Candlewick).  KidsPost describes it thusly:  "The author of the "Guardians of Ga'hoole" series writes a story set in Indiana in the 1950s."

Not a particularly compelling description, is it?  Maybe the publisher can do better:  When a beautiful teen with polio enters their lives, a girl and her older brother find themselves drawn into a web of lies.  The polio epidemic?  Why didn't you say so, KidsPost?  It's on the hold list.