Happy Cybils Day!

Cybils Day? That's January 1, when shortlists in all eleven (eleven!) award categories are announced. And even though I had a hand in making the middle grade science fiction and fantasy shortlist (as one of seven fantastic first round panelists this year), it's not official until I see it on the Cybils website New Year's morning. Now you can see it here, too!

Beswitched by Kate Saunders
Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities by Mike Jung
The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet
The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann

There are actually two Cybils Days (sort of like the Queen's birthdays). The next is February 14, when the award winners are announced. I have no idea what will win in our category, although I do have a favorite from our list. What's yours?

Olive and other Halloween book+costume ideas from Penguin

Welcome to Penguin's Halloween blog tour, which pairs spooky middle grade books with great costume ideas! I love the idea of dressing up as a character from a book, and I know lots of families and schools choose to celebrate Halloween this way, too. Today's (seventh and final) tour stop features the first book of one of my favorite middle grade series (my review), plus a fantastic giveaway! Here's Penguin with the details:

Step into some creepy stories this Halloween and become your favorite middle grade character…from the ghoulish undead to mischievous pirates, the costumes are endless.

The Book: Books of Elsewhere: The Shadows by Jacqueline West

When eleven-year-old Olive moves into a crumbling Victorian mansion with her parents, she knows there's something strange about the house - especially the odd antique paintings covering the walls. And when she puts on a pair of old spectacles, she discovers the strangest thing yet: She can travel inside the paintings, to a spooky world that's full of dark shadows. Add to that three talking cats, who live in the house and seem to be keeping secrets of their own, and Olive soon finds herself confronting a dark and dangerous power that wants to get rid of her by any means necessary. It's up to Olive to save the house from the dark shadows, before the lights go out for good.
The Costume
Halloween is the perfect time to be Olive and travel through paintings and beyond! This costume is great for a school-day costume:
  1. Olive wears a red striped shirt over a long-sleeved white shirt, jeans, and red shoes. Don’t forget her yellow headband!
  2. Find the oldest, biggest glasses you can find. A grandparent might be able to help with this one!
  3. Now comes the fun part! Find a big piece of cardboard and cut out the shape of a BIG picture frame. Make the edges curvy and decorate with markers and paint. 
  4. You’re ready to be Olive! Carry around your new picture frame and wear your glasses for quick escape – but keep an eye out! There are people who might want to make sure your Halloween is full of more tricks than treats….
Find The Books of Elsewhere online at thebooksofelsewhere.com
Purchase The Books of Elsewhere here: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound 
And check out the rest of the blog tour for more great book+costume ideas:

M 10.22 In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz
T 10.23 Gustav Gloom and the People Takers by Adam-Troy Castro
W 10.24 Undead Ed by Rotterly Ghoulstone
Th 10.25 Deadweather and Sunrise:Chronicles of Egg by Geoff Rodkey
F 10.26 The Creature from the 7th Grade by Bob Balaban
M 10.29 Wereworld: Shadow of the Hawk by Curtis Jobling
T 10.30 Books of Elsewhere:The Shadows by Jacqueline West
right here at Books Together
 
[Me again.] And now for the giveaway! Courtesy of Penguin, I'm giving away a set of all seven books featured on the blog tour to one lucky reader (and commenter) on this post. Just leave a comment by midnight Friday, November 2 to enter [deadline extended due to Hurricane Sandy!]. If you'd like, let me know who you're going to be for Halloween, too. Olive, perhaps?

2012 National Hispanic Heritage Month Roundup

Welcome to the second annual roundup of children's and young adult book reviews, interviews, and more celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month. This year's roundup focuses on lists and awards, in hopes of raising awareness of great books by Latin American authors and illustrators--and making it easier for interested readers to find them.

Lee and Low Books is celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month by highlighting some of their many wonderful titles written and illustrated by Latino/a authors and illustrators, including favorite picture books by Pat Mora and Carmen Lomas Garza.

Tu Books, an imprint of Lee and Low, publishes science fiction, fantasy, and mystery books for kids that feature diverse characters and settings. I'm especially excited about Summer of the Mariposas by Guadalupe Garcia McCall, which is described as "a magical Mexican American retelling of The Odyssey." You can read the first three chapters here.

This is also a good time of year to start thinking about the Pura Belpre Award, which is presented by ALSC and REFORMA and "recognizes excellence in the areas of literary merit and outstanding illustration in books for children and young adults by authors and illustrators who identify themselves as Latino." The Heartland chapter of REFORMA runs a mock Pura Belpre every year; they haven't put up the list of titles under consideration for the 2013 awards yet, but past years' mock Belpre lists are a great source of titles.

Another useful list comes from the UNM Institute of Latin American and Iberian Studies: its monthly, teacher-oriented book group Vamos a Leer reads and discusses children's literature related to Latin America, with an emphasis on the K-12 classroom. Check out their blog, Vamos a Leer: Teaching Latin America and Literacy, where you'll also find (among other great resources) the Latin American YA Bookshelf.

The 2012 Americas Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature, for work that "authentically and engagingly portray[s] Latin America, the Caribbean or Latinos in the United States," is being presented to Monica Brown and Julie Paschkis for Pablo Neruda: Poet of the People (Henry Holt and Company, 2011) and to Margarita Engle for Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck (also Henry Holt, 2001), this Friday, October 5, at the Library of Congress. Congratulations to Monica (interviewed today by Latina author Meg Medina) and Margarita!

And thank you for reading. If you'd like to contribute to the roundup, please leave a comment with your links or recommendations. ¡Gracias a todos!

Movie Night: Miss Minoes

Milly and I would like to recommend for your viewing pleasure Miss Minoes (2001), a Dutch film based on the children's book Minoes by Annie M.G. Schmidt (published in the United States as Minnie; Milkweed Editions, 1994). I love the premise--a cat turns into a young woman, instead of the other way around as so often happens in fantasy books. And I love Miss Minoes's green fur-lined coat.

But back to the premise. It's a fun one for cat-lovers in particular, as Miss Minoes retains a lot of her feline qualities: she climbs trees, rubs noses, hides under the table, sleeps in a box. She purrs even! There's a plot, too (it involves a shy newspaper reporter), but it's the cat-as-young-woman part that makes me want to track down the book, which is bound to be better than the movie. And to ask about other children's books featuring animals that turn into people (not just anthropomorphic animals, which are a dime a dozen). I know there must be lots.

Cybils Season

The Cybils are the Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards, and this is the fourth year I'll be a first-round panelist in the Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction category. I love being a panelist: our job is to read widely from among the nominated books and, after lots of discussion, come up with a shortlist (that's last year's) of five to seven titles that combine literary merit and kid appeal. Congratulations to this year's Cybils panelists and judges across all categories, but especially those in mg sff: I"m looking forward to a fantastic fall!

Nominations for the Cybils don't open October 1, but I've already started ramping up my reading--with well over 100 mg sff titles nominated each year, it's the only way to come close to reading them all. I have some favorites, and some fall books I'm eagerly anticipating; for now, I'm keeping track of my reading on Goodreads (please look for me over there).

I'll continue posting about all sorts of books here, though!

Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month

September 15 to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month, when the Library of Congress officially recognizes the "histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America." The dates are a little awkward: most of us know that February is African-American History Month, and May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, but Hispanic Heritage Month is half-September and half-October. Maybe it's a metaphor?

Anyway, I'll be celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month(s) here with reviews of children's books by authors and illustrators whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America (see above). One book I'm especially looking forward to writing about in this context is Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match/Marisol McDonald no combina by Monica Brown (illustrated by Sara Palacios; Children's Book Press, 2011). Marisol is actually Peruvian-Scottish-American, mismatched and marvelous.

Just like last year, I'll also be hosting a National Hispanic Heritage Month roundup of reviews, author interviews and more on October 3. I'd love to get lots of participation, so please send me your links or leave them in a comment on this post or on the roundup post in October. Recommendations and requests are also most welcome. ¡Muchas gracias!

Princess Academy of Art

Anticipating the August release of Princess Academy: Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, 2012), I recently read the first Princess Academy, a 2006 Newbery Honor book. I wonder why I hadn't read it before, because it's just the sort of book I like, and probably would have loved as a ten-year-old girl: it has a classic feel and an ordinary-girl heroine in Miri Larendaughter, it's set in a village on a snowy mountaintop--beautifully evoked throughout the book as well as on the original cover, shown here--and there's a boarding school. Where you have to study to be a princess. After learning to read (no one in Mount Eskel knew how before the princess academy), the girls study Danlander History, Commerce, Geography, and Kings and Queens. And then there are the "princess-forming" subjects: Diplomacy (which proves useful on more than occasion), Conversation, and Poise. I want to go to princess academy!

I also want to add Princess Academy to the Middle Grade Gallery (where I think about how paintings work in fiction), even though Art isn't one of the subjects the girls have to study. But one winter morning, their tutor Olana shows the girls a painting; like the silver princess dress they've already seen, it's meant to make them work harder at their studies, to remind them of their goal:

Olana removed the cloth and held up a colorful painting much more detailed than the chapel's carved doors. It illustrated a house with a carved wooden door, six glass windows facing front, and a garden of tall trees and bushes bursting with red and yellow flowers.
"This house stands in Asland, the capital, not a long carriage ride from the palace...It will be given to the family of the girl chosen as princess." [87]

And the painting does its job: Miri, for one, spends hours imagining her family inside the house and garden, so different from their mountain home.

At the end of the book, Olana reveals the truth about the painting, and gives it to Miri. Spoiler alert (after seven years, I don't think I'm spoiling anything, but just in case): the house never existed. And Miri doesn't marry the prince (although she is academy princess). It's not until Palace of Stone that she goes to the capital at all. I wonder if she will remember the painting when she gets there?

The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau was a toll collector for the city of Paris when, at the age of 40, he decided to become an artist--a famous artist. Michelle Markel's picture book biography The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau (illustrated by Amanda Hall; Eerdmans, 2012) begins with that surprising decision. Her precise and poignant text balances Rousseau's love of nature and growing confidence in his own work (he was self-taught) with his lifelong desire for critical recognition.

Poor Henri! No sooner does he paint something we might consider a masterpiece(The Sleeping Gypsy, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, and The Dream are referenced in the text or in Hall's illustrations) than the experts say mean things about it: "They say it looks like he closed his eyes and painted with his feet."

But Rousseau keeps painting. Eventually, near the end of his life, younger, more well-known artists befriend him. One of them, Pablo Picasso, even throws a banquet in his honor (that's Picasso with Fernande Olivier on the right; a key at the back of the book identifies the other historical figures in the illustration below).

At last, and over one hundred years later, Rousseau's paintings hang in museums around the world. [There are three on view at the National Gallery; I'm excited to see them after having read the book.]

Amanda Hall's illustrations, rendered in watercolor and acrylics, really capture the feel of Rousseau's work, from the lush foliage and flowers to the faces of people and animals. In an illustrator's note (there's also an author's note, but sadly no sources), Hall writes that she "decided to break the rules of scale and perspective to reflect [Rousseau's] unusual way of seeing the world. For some of the illustrations, I drew directly on his actual paintings, altering them playfully to help tell the story." My favorite example is this image of a tiger literally crawling out of the canvas as Henri paints:

The understated text reads, "Sometimes Henri is so startled by what he paints that he has to open the window to let in some air."

Aside: Kids might be interested to know that the jungle in the computer-animated movie Madagascar was inspired by Rousseau's work. My own kids were also interested to know that I had a cheap print of Sleeping Gypsy in my college dorm room.

It's still my favorite Rousseau.

Welcome to Nonfiction Monday

Welcome to Nonfiction Monday! This week, I'm starting a new series featuring nonfiction about artists, including lots of picture book biographies. First up, a review of The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau by Michelle Markel (illustrated by Amanda Hall; Eerdmans, 2012). Sneak preview: I loved it. That's Hall's illustration of the self-taught Rousseau at the top of this post.

Please leave a comment with a link to your Nonfiction Monday post (and a brief description if you'd like). I'll round up the posts here throughout the day. Thanks for participating in this edition of Nonfiction Monday!

Early birds
Tara at A Teaching Life has a review of A Strange Place to Call Home--all about some animals who call dangerous habitats home.

Laura Salas has a review of Jeanette Winter's The Watcher.

A handful of reviews of The Giant Who Humbugged America by Jim Murphy (Scholastic, 2012), at Ms. Yingling Reads, Shelf-employed, and The Nonfiction Detectives.

Mid-morning
Jennifer at the Jean Little Library reviews a classic Jim Arnosky guide, The Brook Book.

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect is sharing a review of Planting the Wild Garden.

Sue at Archimedes Notebook is interrupting her compost-turning to review Yucky Worms by Vivian French--with lots of hands-on explorations for young naturalists.

Margo at The Fourth Musketeer has a review of the new biography The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne by Catherine Reef. It will be released next month.

Jeanne at True Tales & a Cherry on Top features Play Ball, Jackie by Stephen Krensky.

Noontime
Shirley of SimplyScience reviews Animals: A Visual Encyclopedia from DK.

Abby the Librarian has a review of Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers.

Roberta's cat reviewed Minette's Feast by Susanna Reich and gave it four paws at Wrapped in Foil.

Holly has a fun book called Poopendous! by Artie Bennett at Bookscoops this week.

Tammy of Apples with Many Seeds is looking at Popville today.

Evening edition
Bookends is reviewing Jim Murphy's Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure.

All About the Books with Janet Squires features Space, Stars, and the Beginning of Time: What the Hubble Telescope Saw by Elaine Scott.

Self-identified science geek Wendie Old features a newspaper article about the people who drive the Mars Rover, Curiosity, at Wendie's Wanderings today.

At Booktalking, Anastasia Suen is reading The Everything Guide to Study Skills: Strategies, tips, and tools you need to succeed in school! by Cynthia C. Muchnick.

Fairies and changelings

I'm currently reading (among other things) Some Kind of Fairy Tale, a grownup fantasy by British author Graham Joyce (Doubleday, 2012). It's not a changeling story, at least not so far, but a kidnapped-by-the-fairies one, in which teenaged Tara Martin disappears into a dense forest known as the Outwoods, only to return twenty years--or is it six months?--later.

Forests are my favorite magical places (castles or old houses are a close second), and Tara's description of the forest on the day she disappeared is especially evocative:


After a while I found a rock covered in brilliant green moss and orange lichen. I sat among the bluebells and put my head back on the mossy pillow of the rock.

The bluebells made such a pool that the earth had become like water, and all the trees and bushes seemed to have grown out of the water. And the sky above seemed to have fallen down on to the earth floor, and I didn't know if the sky was earth or the earth was water. [42]

Then a man on a pretty white horse appears, and you know that boundaries are going to be crossed. As it turns out (I'm on page 132), they are crossed in ways I'm not so interested in reading about. Instead I'm rereading my favorite Zilpha Keatley Snyder book, The Changeling (Atheneum, 1970): "I am a princess from the Land of the Green Sky," Ivy said. "I have discovered the Doorway to Space."

The Changeling isn't a fantasy book, although Snyder did eventually write the Green-Sky Trilogy (beginning with Below the Root; Atheneum, 1978) based on the Tree People game that Martha and Ivy play in Bent Oaks Grove. But Ivy herself is such a magical character, I almost believed that she was a changeling. And that I was, too.

[Why, why is The Changeling out-of-print? I'm adding it to my list of books to reprint when I start my own small press.]

Martin de Porres, the rose in the desert

I wish I knew what drew Gary D. Schmidt, better known for realistic middle grade fiction such as The Wednesday Wars (a 2008 Newbery Honor book) and Okay for Now (2011), to the story of Martin de Porres, the first black saint in the Americas (actually, Schmidt tells us, Martin was the son of an African mother and a Spanish nobleman, born in Lima and educated by his father in Ecuador). The author's note at the back of Martin de Porres: The Rose in the Desert (illustrated by David Diaz; Clarion, 2012) is no help.

Schmidt's text, however, emphasizes Martin's humility and service to the poor as well as his love of animals (the note does tell us that Martin is patron saint of, among other things, social justice, public education, and animal shelters). And David Diaz illuminates Martin's story with his distinctive mixed-media illustrations, in what the Horn Book calls "Latin American hues [?] of red, turquoise, gold, and brown."

My favorite image is more subdued: It's night. Martin, in his black-and white Dominican habit, carries a basket of bread. He has a brown dog at his heels. Two silvery angels guide his way.

Listen to Origami Yoda, you should

Not the finger puppet that counsels students at McQuarrie Middle School (although you could do worse than follow his advice), but the audio of Tom Angleberger's The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (Recorded Books, 2011; Amulet, 2010). We listened to Origami Yoda (and its sequel, Darth Paper Strikes Back, which is even better) while on vacation last week and highly recommend it to everyone who loves Star Wars and has ever been (or will ever be) in middle school.

Origami Yoda has some of our favorite audio features--namely multiple narrators, only one of which we didn't like, and an episodic plot (we were mostly making short trips in the car). Bonus: it's funny. And for a couple of hours, the kids only argued over who got to read The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee first when we got home (I won).

The Lonely Book

I'm pretty sure that the lonely book on the cover of Kate Bernheimer's The Lonely Book (illustrated by Chris Sheban; Schwartz and Wade, 2012) would actually have been published by Floris Books:

It was a green with a yellow ribbon inside to mark its pages. On the cover was a picture of a girl in the forest under a toadstool.

Maybe Elsa Beskow wrote it?

Floris, a small publishing company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, publishes a lot of international picture books and nostalgic classics in translation; in addition to Swedish author Beskow, their list includes picture books by Astrid Lindgren (also Swedish) and Sybille von Olffers. Floris books are beautifully made, too: ours don't have ribbon markers, but they do have bookcloth bindings.

Bernheimer's The Lonely Book (published by Schwartz and Wade; an imprint I also like, but for different reasons) has a nostalgic feel of its own. It's about loving a library book and later, rediscovering it (at the library book sale, no less). I think we can all relate.

Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon's children's books

Peggy Bacon was an American artist and printmaker who also wrote and illustrated a lot of charming children's books--one of which, The Ghost of Opalina (Little, Brown, 1967), is reviewed today at Charlotte's Library. I was curious about Bacon and delighted to discover that she's the subject of an exhibition, Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon, now showing at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art (I haven't seen it yet; the photograph is by Michael Barnes, from a Virtual tour of the exhibition on Peggy's Facebook page).

The exhibition focuses on Bacon's connections to people in the art world, but I wonder if we could do the same thing for children's books? Bacon herself illustrated books by everyone from Lloyd Alexander (My Five Tigers: The cats in my life; Thomas Y. Crowell, 1956) to Betsy Byars (Rama the Gypsy Cat; Viking, 1966--I still have my childhood copy of this one, fortunately). She seems to have been the go-to illustrator for cats in the 1950s and 60s, and a fascinating person besides. More Peggy Bacon, please!

The ballad of Long Lankin, for Poetry Friday

Debut author Lindsey Barraclough's YA novel Long Lankin was inspired by the eponymous old English ballad (Roud Folk Song Index 6) in which Long Lankin, aided and abetted by a nursemaid, murders a lady and her infant son--by pricking him all over with a pin (shiver):

"Where's the heir of this house?" said Long Lankin. / "He's asleep in his cradle," said the false nurse to him.
"We'll prick him, we'll prick him all over with a pin, / And that'll make my lady to come down to him."

The baby's cries bring his mother, and she dies in Long Lankin's arms.

Barraclough sets her retelling of the ballad in postwar England: Sisters Cora and Mimi are sent from London to stay with their great-aunt Ida in the coastal village of Bryers Guerdon, but Auntie Ida, stern and secretly terrified, doesn't want them there. Of course, Cora and Mimi disregard her warnings (Ida doesn't even want them in the great big house alone) and go straight to the forbidden church and graveyard. Don't they know they're in a gothic horror story? Sigh. Poor Mimi.

Minette's Feast is here today!

I'm happy to be hosting a stop on the blog tour for Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat by Susanna Reich; illustrated by Amy Bates (Abrams, 2011), about Julia's first cat--and kitchen--in Paris. It's truly a delicious book (much preferred to mouse and bird)! Today, I'm sharing a conversation with Amy Bates about her lovely, lively and atmospheric illustrations for Minette's Feast.

Anamaria: I was delighted by the illustration of Minette as the iconic Steinlen cat on the dedication page of Minette's Feast!

Amy: I am so glad that you caught the Steinlen reference. There are actually two references; the second is the composite of images where Minette is pouncing and chewing and gnawing on the bone toward the end of the book. Steinlen was known for a sort of syndicated comic that he published in the newspapers or magazines. They always featured a sort of mischievous or curious cat that comes to a bad end. They are pretty hysterical. I love his drawings of cats and I felt like Julia Child herself would also approve the reference.

Are there are any other references to French art in your illustrations?

The cover I hoped would evoke a sort of Alphonse Mucha advertisement. (Usually he painted half-clad nubile women and I like  to think that Julia would have been tickled to be substituted for one of them).  [I think she would have!]

I suppose there is a little seasoning of a lot of different artists in there. Just like seasoning a soup.

Minette's Feast is beautifully researched (Susanna notes, for example, that none of the dialogue is invented). How did you research the characters and especially the Parisian settings--Julia and Paul's apartment, their neighborhood--that are such an important part of this book?

Research was tricky for this book. I have to say that I didn't go to Paris to research, but for all future books that involve Paris I am absolutely demanding a research trip out of it! Susanna did an absolutely beautiful job, I love this book! [I do, too!] I read My Life in France [Julia's memoir] for some detail. And I asked Susanna as well as a friend of mine who is a chef for help (in trying to figure out more information about the meat at the end, our best informed guess based on Julia's account was that it was a joint of venison).

I definitely looked at all the published images that it was possible to find of Julia Child in Paris. Some in her memoirs, some in old magazine articles. I watched her shows, looking at the way she moved, etc. to get a feel for her gesture and person.

I pieced together her kitchen with those old photos the best that I could (though I couldn't find a complete 360 degree view). The building is part of the French Department of Defense, or the Department of Defense runs up right behind so it is actually quite difficult to find information about the building itself, other than the outside from the front. Even an aerial photo would have been helpful, but I did the best with the information I had.       

As for the neighborhood, well, some of that is real. Les Deux Magots is a famous landmark as well as a place that Julia Child talked about eating at. I think she mentioned that sometimes Colette was there too! I took French for 6 years and my high school teacher was real stickler for Paris geography, so I guess I know the layout and feel of the city just from having loved it and studied it.

Actually, I made this book while living in Japan. I am taller than average at 5'9" (not nearly Julia's height) but I definitely understood what it felt like springing into a new culture without speaking the language and sticking out like a sore thumb. The market scene is a page out of my own life.  Little kids aren't one bit afraid of being curious and the little kids that lived in my neighborhood loved to watch us, and ask questions. That is why I put the little girl in this book.

Your illustrations of Minette licking a paw, weaving between Julia's ankles, or (my favorite) pouncing on a Brussels sprout capture her personality as well as the body language of cats everywhere. Do you have a cat of your own, or did you use other models for Minette?

Sadly, I am allergic to cats, although I think they are the most fascinating animals. I love their skeletal structure. But I don't own a cat. I used a friend's cat a little bit, but some of those poses are just too hard to catch. I made them up.

Julia's kitchen in France (like the one in Cambridge, which you can now see at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC) features an amazing array of utensils and gadgetry! Do you also like to cook?

I love that D.C. has her kitchen on display. Everyone should go see it at the American History museum. I love cooking!  Although with three small kids, my husband and I usually don't get too fancy. I will not say the words "Macaroni and Cheese" lest I be judged. But I love good food. All kinds from all places.

What's your favorite kitchen gadget?

I love cooking gadgets and art gadgets. My favorite kitchen gadgets are my knives- which must be SHARP. I hate dull knives.

Finally, what are you working on now (or what's forthcoming)?

I have a book coming out in September called That's What I'd Do written by singer-songwriter Jewel. It is an endearing lullaby and I love how the whole thing turned out. It is full of Mama-baby love, so it is close to my heart! Also I just finished a picture book, Peter Pan, which is coming out later this year, too.

Congratulations, Amy, and thank you for sharing your research and inspiration!

[Be sure to visit the blog tour every day through Tuesday, May 8, and enter to win a free, signed copy of Minette's Feast by emailing Susanna with the subject line "Minette's Feast giveaway." One entry per person, please. Winners will be selected at random on May 31. Thanks for reading!]

Horn Book Highlights, May/June 2012

Here's a list of the books I added to my hold list after reading the reviews in the current issue of the Horn Book (I left out the ones I already read). A first step toward reviewing some of them here!

Lady Hahn and Her Seven Friends by Yumi Heo (Ottaviano/Holt). Lady Hahn is a seamstress, and her seven friends are her sewing tools personifed. The tiny women argue among themselves about who is the most important, but of course, they all are. The appeal for me is the subject (textiles!) and Heo's colorful oil-and-pencil illustrations of Korean traditional dress.

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore (Dial). I loved Cashore's Graceling, but didn't seek out Fire, the companion novel--I wasn't interested in the character of Fire, impossibly beautiful, able to control men's minds, etc. But Bitterblue I remember as a child in Graceling, and now she's the young queen of a troubled country. Charlotte of Charlotte's Library liked Bitterblue, too (and she's giving away two copies! I hope I win, because the hold list is already very long).

The Year of the Book by Andrea Cheng (Houghton). Cheng writes realistic fiction with multicultural characters and themes for elementary to middle grade readers. Only One Year (Lee and Low, 2010) is my favorite of her books. This one is narrated by Chinese-American fourth-grader Anna Wang, who always has her head stuck in a book. I can relate, then and now.

Ghost Knight by Cornelia Funke; illustrated by Andrea Offermann (Little, Brown). I am not always a Funke fan, but this sentence from the review is impossible to resist: "Funke's consummate way with setting, well-interpreted in Offermann's looming illustrations, brings the medieval English town (and all of its ghosts) to life, from the sprawling boarding school campus to the echoes-of-the-past cathedral and eerie cemetery grounds; a side jaunt to Stonehenge even adds some levity." We (almost) went to Salisbury when we were in England last winter, even! Maybe next time.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Hyperion). I already started this YA novel about two young women, spy and pilot, during World War II (thank you, Hyperion and NetGalley!). The first part is the spy's confession; the second, the pilot's accident report. So far, so compelling--technical detail about airplanes (the author is a pilot herself) aside. This one got a starred review. I look forward to following up with my own.

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.

Hans My Hedgehog

Welcome to Day 5 of the Hans My Hedgehog blog tour, celebrating the publication of Kate Coombs's retelling of the Grimm brothers' tale (illustrated by John Nickle; Atheneum, 2012). I'm delighted to be hosting Hans today for several reasons: I'm particularly fond of folk and fairy tale retellings, which I've written about before; and I can't resist wee Hans holding his fiddle, as seen on the cover of his book.

Kate is the author of The Secret-Keeper, an original fairy tale (paintings by Heather M. Solomon; Atheneum, 2006), and two middle grade fantasy novels, The Runaway Princess (FSG, 2006) and The Runaway Dragon (FSG, 2009). She also blogs at Book Aunt ("Because OTHER people give you clothes and video games for your birthday!"), and I always look forward to her reviews as well as her thorough, thoughtful comparisons of folk and fairy tale retellings.

Hans, she writes in Retellings Beautiful and Beastly, is a close cousin of the Beast in that other, more famous story. He's half a hedgehog, cursed before birth by his father's wish for a son. In the Grimms' version of the tale, Hans's father and mother reject their prickly baby (his mother won't even nurse him); but here, Hans is loved, albeit still lonely. Aside from the cover image, this is perhaps my favorite illustration in the book: I love the way his parents gaze at baby Hans in wonder (as all new parents do, of course!), although his mother still looks slightly stunned.

Kate makes other changes to the original (see the Author's Note), but this one seems fundamental to sharing Hans My Hedgehog with your own prickly little people. And I hope you do. Congratulations, Kate and Hans!

[A final, favorite detail: "The palace seamstress made them clothes for the wedding, and of course she sewed a velvet suit for Hans, though he struggled to fit it over his quills."]

Can We Save the Tiger?

Most of us, if asked, would want to save the tiger.  Just look at the one on the cover of Can We Save the Tiger? by Martin Jenkins; illustrated by Vicky White (Candlewick, 2011): it's beautiful. But the real beauty of Can We Save the Tiger? (apart from White's illustrations, which I'll talk about later) is that it makes us want to save things like partula snails, and vultures. As Jenkins writes, "Ugly things can be endangered, too."

The text of Can We Save the Tiger? is, like its title, both conversational and direct. Jenkins doesn't pull any punches: we won't ever see a live dodo, kids. "And then there are all those other species that are still around, but just barely." Case studies of tigers, snails, and vultures explain the various reasons why; they're accompanied by examples of other animals that are threatened for similar reasons (because they're running out of room, affected by predators introduced by people, or otherwise accidentally endangered by human actions or disease).  There are hopeful notes ("Sometimes, though, we have managed to do the right thing in time"), but no easy answers.

Jenkins's text is perfectly paired with White's evocative and beautiful illustrations, done predominantly in pencil with touches of oil paint. White earned a master's degree in natural history illustration from the Royal College of Art, in London; her animals (and one orchid, on the Index page) are precisely rendered, standing out against an expansive backdrop of creamy, oversized pages. Often they seem to look right at you, as does the tiger on the cover.

Can We Save the Tiger? is a gorgeous book, but above all, I appreciate its respect for the intelligence and concern of its young readers and listeners. Who just might be inspired to find out how they can help save the vulture.

[I don't think Can We Save the Tiger? is eligible for the Caldecott (White would have to be an American citizen or resident), but I was happy to see it listed among the Best Books of 2011 in the Horn Book Fanfare. Do you have any Caldecott Hopefuls from among last year's nonfiction picture books?]