The Spotted Dog Last Seen

This will be a review (and giveaway!) of The Spotted Dog Last Seen by Jessica Scott Kerrin (Groundwood, 2013), but first, an anecdote: When we moved to Ann Arbor as newlywed graduate students, my husband and I lived in a tiny apartment at Observatory Lodge. The Lodge was a lovely old Tudor-style building, herringbone brick and half-timbered, with slate roofs and faulty wiring. It was also adjacent to the old Forest Hill Cemetery, and I sometimes walked through it on the way home. I never lingered long, though, and knowing more about cemeteries now I wish I could.

Derek is somewhat less excited about reporting for cemetery duty (his Grade 6 community service project) at Twillingate, or at the old stone library (a converted church) across the street where the cemetery brigade gives lessons in reading weathered marble, the meaning of gravestone carvings, how to take rubbings, etc. I find this sort of thing fascinating (eventually Derek and his friends Pascal and Merrilee do, too); and I wouldn't be surprised if young readers of The Spotted Dog Last Seen will want to explore the local cemetery themselves. If not, there is also a secret code, contained in mystery novels borrowed from the old library, and a time capsule in a school locker. This last holds clues that connect various people to the accidental death of Derek's friend seven years before--and may help Derek put his memories of that day to rest.

Warning: sad things happen. Someone dies (in addition to Derek's friend). But there is a satisfying resolution, for Derek and for the reader, who can piece together the clues along with him. There is also a supporting (and supportive) cast of characters to lighten the mood a bit, although The Spotted Dog Last Seen is still a somewhat serious and thought-provoking book, perfect for fall reading.

And just in time, I have a copy of The Spotted Dog Last Seen to give away! Please leave a comment and let me know if you think you (or a young reader you know) might like it, and I'll be happy to send it to you--with my recommendation, and thanks to Groundwood Books!

Kibuishi's Harry Potter Covers

What do you think of the new Harry Potter covers by Kazu Kibuishi, writer and artist of the graphic novel series AMULET? Now that all of the cover images have been released (they will be on trade paperbacks in September), it's easier to see what they have in common, and how they compare to the iconic American covers by Mary GrandPre. Kibuishi's covers--my favorite is still the first, for Sorceror's Stone, but I also like The Prisoner of Azkaban--tend to look more like full shots rather close-ups, and they're all outside. The back covers are indoors and, appropriately enough, of Harry's back--as he's looking into the Mirror of Erised, for example, or a cabinet full of boggarts. I like the image of Hogwarts made by the spines of all seven books in the box set, too: Kibuishi designed the whole package.

It's my understanding that the new editions will retain GrandPre's chapter art (also known as "decorations"), which is good news for people like me who love black-and-white illustrations in children's books and wish more of the newer ones had them.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Watchers in the Shadows

I'm waiting on not one but two books titled The Watcher in the Shadows this spring. The Watcher in the Shadows by Chris Moriarty, which comes out May 28 from Harcourt Children's Books, is the sequel to The Inquisitor's Apprentice (2011), an alternate--magical--history set in early-twentieth century New York City. I liked The Inquisitor's Apprentice lots (we shortlisted it for the Cybils that year), especially the representation of immigrant Jewish culture, and the line illustrations by Mark Edward Geyer: it was sort of like a fantasy/boy version of All-of-a-Kind family. Which is to say, not at all like All-of-a-Kind family, but with line illustrations.

The other Watcher in the Shadows is by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, who is probably more familiar as the author of the bestselling adult novel The Shadow of the Wind (trans. by Lucia Graves; Penguin, 2004) and its sequels. This is more of a gothic middle grade or YA, the third in a thematic trilogy originally published in the 1990s, in Spanish. It's set in a toymaker's mansion on the coast of Normandy in the 1930s: of course I'm going to read it. I read the first, The Prince of Mist (Little, Brown BFYR, 2010), in a cottage on the coast of Maine, as close to on location as it is possible to be this side of the Atlantic. The Watcher in the Shadows comes out June 18, so I will probably have to read it on the Metro.

The Mystery of the Fool and the Vanisher

It's as difficult to pin down The Mystery of the Fool and the Vanisher by David and Ruth Ellwand (Candlewick, 2008) as one imagines it would be to photograph a fairy (Cottingley fairies aside). Which is precisely what nineteenth-century photographer Isaac Wilde attempted to do while on an archaeological dig of a Neolithic flint mine somewhere in the English Downs. Wilde's account, transcribed from wax phonograph sound recordings, is documented here alongside photographs of the contents of a wooden box discovered by David Ellwand while walking on the Downs (in the footsteps, incidentally, of none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle); and framed by Ellwand's personal journal with additional notes from his photographic notebook.

All of this fails to capture the creepy gorgeousness of The Mystery of the Fool and the Vanisher, recommended to me by Zoe of Playing by the Book (via Myra of Gathering Books; thanks to you both!) because of my interest in manipulated photography and photographic processes--many of which (bromide, gold-toned albumen, gelatin silver, etc.) are represented in this book. According to the copyright page, however, the photographs were made "with necromancy and magic." And I'm inclined to believe it.

[All the more so because the book's website has disappeared. How long ago was 2008 in Internet years? You'll just have to take my word for it, or track down a copy for yourself (it's currently available for a bargain price on Amazon). Apart from the photographs, the artifacts are fascinating: my favorite are the spectacles with the lenses removed and replaced with holed flint stones. Or the mussel shell suit of armor.]

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

at MundieKids

T 10.23 Gustav Gloom and the People Takers by Adam-Troy Castro

at Green Bean Teen Queen

W 10.24 Undead Ed by Rotterly Ghoulstone

at Charlotte’s Library

Th 10.25 Deadweather and Sunrise:Chronicles of Egg by Geoff Rodkey

at Shelf Elf

F 10.26 The Creature from the 7th Grade by Bob Balaban

at Bookalicious

M 10.29 Wereworld: Shadow of the Hawk by Curtis Jobling

at Book Chic

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?

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?

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.]

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).

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!

Dragon Castle

After all was said and done, I was honored to write the text to accompany Dragon Castle by Joseph Bruchac (Dial) on this year's list of Cybils finalists in Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Writing these little paeans to literary achievement and kid appeal is tricky; they have to be concise (mine is 111 words, not counting the exclamation) yet convincing, and above all, they have to make you want to read the book. Which I hope you do.

By the head of the dragon! It’s a good thing Prince Rashko, the sensible second son, is around to defend the royal family’s ancestral castle when Baron Temny and his army of invaders move in, because he’s not going to get much help from his parents (called away to the Silver Lands) or his brother (bewitched by the beautiful Princess Poteshenie). Drawing on Slovakian proverbs and folklore, Bruchac alternates—and eventually intertwines—Rashko’s story with that of the hero Pavol, also depicted in a mysterious tapestry that hangs on the castle walls. The result is high fantasy laced with history and humor, action and adventure, as Rashko and the reader alike uncover the secrets of Dragon Castle.

I like to think I'm getting better at writing these (this is the third year I've been a first-round Cybils panelist; I wrote the blurbs for Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve (Scholastic) in 2010 and Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins) in 2009), but there's always more to say. I'm still sorry I wasn't able to work the giant, telepathic wolves into the final copy.

I would love to know, though: Would you read Dragon Castle? Why or why not? Because, ahem, you should.

Spellbound

Spellbound, the second volume of The Books of Elsewhere by Jacqueline West (Dial, 2011) picks up right where The Shadows left off, with eleven-year-old Olive stuck outside the magical paintings in the McMartin house, and what's worse, her friend Morton stuck inside them. The cats (especially Horatio) are reluctant to help Olive--in fact, they're actively discouraging her. But when her new neighbor Rutherford suggests she look for the McMartins' spellbook, Olive is somehow inexorably drawn to it (that's it in the painting on the cover). Can she use the spellbook to help Morton escape Elsewhere, or is it using her to help the McMartins do the same?

I loved The Shadows, which won a Cybil award last year; and Spellbound might be even better, in that there is more of everything to love and some new things besides.  Olive continues to explore the old stone Victorian on Linden Street (which West says looks almost exactly like the LeDuc House in Hastings, MN): the library, the attic, the basement (sorry, Leopold!), and the garden, as well as some previously undiscovered paintings.

Spellbound also introduces a new character in the gallant yet rumpled Rutherford, and revisits Morton, whose plight is increasingly poignant (spoiler alert: he's still stuck inside his painting). Olive herself does some devastating things while under the spell of the spellbook--even the cats abandon her at one point--but ultimately faces up to Annabel McMartin and the mysterious Mrs. Nivens. Not for the last time, though: now Olive is more determined than ever to rescue Morton...and Annabel is on the loose.

I read an ARC of Spellbound (thank you, Penguin!) with cover art and fantastic black-and-white interior illustrations by Poly Bernatene, who also did the illustrations for The Shadows. I wish all my favorite middle grade novels had illustrations as perfect for them as these, actually--they add so much atmosphere. Spellbound will be out in hardcover on July 12, and I'm already looking forward to Volume 3.

A note about the author: When asked what paintings she might sneak into if she got her hands on Olive's glasses, Jacqueline West said she'd have to go with Salvador Dali's, "because they would be such amazing worlds to explore. I imagine everything would feel rubbery and slick, sort of like Silly Putty or fried eggs." I would pick Vermeer, because of the order and light.  What about you?

Sugar and Ice

Thank you to Kate Messner for sending me a signed (in metallic blue ink, no less!) copy of her latest middle grade novel, Sugar and Ice (Walker & Company, 2010). Kate's first novel, The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z. (2009) won the E.B. White Read Aloud Award for Older Readers, and Sugar and Ice shares that book's warm narrative voice and its variety of interwoven topics and themes.  Gianna Z. and Claire Boucher are also similarly realistic, well-rounded heroines. But when Claire accepts a scholarship to train with elite figure skaters in Lake Placid, her life--and her skating--tilt a bit off balance.

I've heard this book described as "Mean Girls on ice," and Claire definitely encounters some of those. There's so much more to Sugar and Ice than mean girls, though: Claire has to deal with her own fears and anxieties about skating competitively (or not), as well as her relationships with Russian coach Andrei Groshev and the other skaters, both friends and rivals, training with her at Lake Placid.  Not to mention everything that's going on--with or without her--back home in Mojimuk Falls.

I especially love the way Sugar and Ice encompasses more than the world of competitive figure skating (which is fascinating in itself, especially if figure skating is your favorite winter Olympic sport). Claire's family's maple farm, her friend Natalie's beekeeping hobby, a school project about Fibonacci numbers all coexist with skating in Claire's life.  Pair Sugar and Ice with a nonfiction book about any one of those topics for a rich (and sweet) reading experience. Thanks, Kate!

Black Radishes and Pink Rabbits

There is a moment early in Black Radishes by Susan Lynn Meyer (Delacorte, 2010) when 11-year-old Gustave Becker has to pack his things prior to leaving Paris for the small town of Saint-Georges in advance of the Nazi occupation.  Aside from his clothes, he is allowed to bring only a few books and toys.  He chooses the books easily--his Boy Scout Manual and two favorites, The Three Musketeers and Around the World in Eighty Days--but the toys prove more difficult:

[H]ow could he choose only one?  Gustave picked up his new sailboat and ran a finger over its shiny blue and white paint.  Uncle David had given him and Jean-Paul each a sailboat last summer to sail in the fountains in the parks.  Saint-Georges was near a river, so a boat would be good to have.  But then he saw Monkey, partly hidden under his train set on the bed, and his heart tightened.  He had almost forgotten him.  Monkey's head tilted slightly to one side.  A gold post in his ear and the bright black, beady eyes looking out from his face gave him a mischievous air.

At this point I almost shouted, "Gustave, take Monkey!"  I didn't want him to make the same mistake that Anna does in Judith Kerr's When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (1971); packing, instead of the titular rabbit who had been "her companion ever since she could remember," a newly acquired woolly dog.  Fortunately (spoiler alert), he doesn't, and Monkey goes on to play an important role in the book's climactic scene at the border between occupied and free France.

Black Radishes is a beautifully crafted, impeccably researched novel (and a 2011 Sydney Taylor Honor Award Winner for Older Readers).  Debut author Meyer, an English professor at Wellesley, was inspired by her father's experience in WWII France, although she makes clear (in an informative author's note as well as an interview at BookPage, January 2011) that she's writing historical fiction; and I think Black Radishes is all the stronger for that.  Meyer is also working on a companion novel, tentatively titled Green and Unripe Fruit, which follows Gustave after he and his family emigrate to America in 1942.

And just in case you don't know what black radishes (which also figure in that climactic scene) look like, here they are.

  

Heart of a Samurai

This book was already on my to-read list when it was recognized with a Newbery Honor last month. I had picked it up from the new book display at the library (the same new book display from which I picked up and then put back the eventual Newbery winner, Moon over Manifest.  I'm still waiting for that book) on the strength of the gorgeous cover art by Jillian Tamaki; and the jacket copy, which promised "An action-packed historical novel set on the high seas!" Not to mention samurai. Which is a little misleading; the actual book is more complicated than that.

Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus (Amulet, 2010) is a fictionalized account of the life of Nakahama (John) Manjiro, who is believed to be the first Japanese person to set foot in America.  A poor fisherman's son, Manjiro was shipwrecked off the coast of Japan in 1841 and rescued by an American whaling ship.  The captain of the ship brought Manjiro home with him to New England, where he studied for several years before making his way back to Japan.  In keeping with Japan's isolationist policies at the time, Manjiro was immediately taken into custody; but he was later released, reunited with his mother, and given the rank of samurai.  His diplomatic work eventually helped open Japan to the world.

Heart of a Samurai encompasses Manjiro's entire journey; the central section of the book is concerned with his time in America. On a farm. Manjiro himself is very likable character: thoughtful, observant, optimistic, and funny; and the book is at its best when it stays close to his thoughts and observations about the differences, practical and philosophical, between Japan and America; and to his realizations about them both.

As I was reading, some incidents and characters struck me as more "fictionalized" than "historical."  And as it turns out, these were precisely the ones that Preus, in her Historical Notes, acknowledges having invented "to provide conflict and advance the story as well as to acknowledge the prejudice and ill will that Manjiro faced."  I wish Heart of a Samurai had been either more fictionalized or less; as it is, it's an uneasy balance--probably not unlike Manjiro's own.

[See also Pam at Mother Reader's take on Heart of a Samurai during her Newbery Discussion Week.]

I, Juan de Pareja and Grandma's Gift

The portrait of Juan de Pareja in last week's Middle Grade Gallery was painted by Diego Vezquez in Rome, 1650.  Congratulations to Jennifer of Jean Little Library for correctly identifying the source of the descriptions, Elizabeth Borton de Trevino's 1966 Newbery Award-winning novel, I, Juan de Pareja (this gorgeous edition is from Square Fish, 2008; the tagline on the cover reads "The story of a great painter and the slave he helped become an artist").  Apparently, the portrait was such a startling likeness of Pareja that when he himself unveiled it to prospective patrons of Velazquez (in a nice bit of theater which also appears in the book, as quoted below), they didn't know whether to speak to him or the portrait:

Then I said, "I understand that you are interested in portraiture, and I thought you might like to look at this one, your honor."

I flung back the cover and set up the portrait by my side. I had taken care to dress in the same clothes and also to wear the white collar, and I could hear the Duke gasp.

"By Bacchus!" he shouted.  "That is a portrait!"

I think the tagline gets it backward, but the story is indeed as much about Velazquez, who is portrayed as thoughtful and reserved, a true friend to slave and king alike; as it is about Juan.  There are cameo appearances by other artists of the day as well, including Rubens and Murillo (and a visit to the workshop of a sculptor of religious images, Gil Medina); as a historical novel it gives a good sense of seventeenth-century Spain.  One of my favorite Newbery books.

The portrait of Juan de Pareja also plays an important part in this year's Pura Belpre Illustrator Award-winning book, Grandma's Gift by Eric Velasquez (presumably no relation; Walker, 2010), in which a boy and his grandmother visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see it.  I haven't read this book yet, but it's on the hold list.

Finally, it's proven difficult to pin down Pareja's expression in just one word!  It looks like I'm going to have to settle for complicated.

Turtle in Paradise

We read, or rather listened to, Jennifer L. Holm's Turtle in Paradise (Random House, 2010) under the best possible circumstances--while driving to the Keys (that would be Paradise) during last year's summer vacation--so I have fond memories of it and was very happy (if also a little surprised) to see it get a Newbery Honor.  Turtle in Paradise is in some ways a typical Newbery pick, at least this year: it's historical fiction; it's about a girl (that would be Turtle); she's sent away to live with relatives in a new and unfamiliar place.  That describes three of the five Newbery books this year (including the winner).  Narrow the historical part down to the Great Depression and you still have two (including this one and the winner).

Which is not to say that Turtle isn't a worthy pick: I happen to know a carful of people who liked it lots!  I checked it out of the library and reread it as soon as we got home even, and my only complaint was that the ending felt a little rushed (I was afraid I might have drifted off and missed something, actually).  But it was always funny, sour and sweet like a Key West cut-up, a great summer read or read-aloud.

Like Penny from Heaven and Our Only May Amelia, Holm's other Newbery Honor books, Turtle in Paradise was inspired by family history; and the Author's Note includes family photographs (I love these) as well as a testimonial to the effectiveness of a certain diaper-rash formula--Holm uses it on her own babies' bungies.

[In other news for fans of Jennifer Holm, a sequel to Our Only May Amelia at last!  The Trouble with May Amelia (Atheneum) will be out in April.]

My ALA Awards reaction post

Surprise! I didn't watch the webcast (being somewhere over the North Atlantic at the time), so I can't confirm whether or not someone actually jumped out from behind a couch to announce the winner of this year's Newbery Medal, debut author Clare Vanderpool for Moon over Manifest (Delacorte), but he or she may as well have. I haven't even read it yet!  The Caldecott Medal likewise went to debut illustrator Erin Stead for A Sick Day for Amos McGee (written by her husband, Philip Christian Stead; Roaring Brook). I haven't read that one either! They're both on my hold list now, though.  Congratulations all around!

 
More reactions and reviews to come!  It's good to be home.

2011 Newbery Hopefuls

My Newbery Hopefuls tend to have more hope than my Caldecotts, but this year, who knows?  I'm very deliberately leaving off a few books which may be strong contenders but were most definitely Not For Me.  These, I loved.

• A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner (I might love this one best).
• Alchemy and Meggy Swann (Ye toads and vipers! I'm still in London, after all).
• The Dreamer by Pam Munoz  Ryan (Maybe it will win the Belpre, too).
• One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (See my story here).
• Only One Year by Andrea Cheng (For younger readers).
• Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Reviewed here).
• The Shadows (Probably not a Newbery, but it's my list! Reviewed here).
• Something I'm forgetting, I'm sure (See: London).

I'm wishing everyone involved, from authors to committee members to readers (and bloggers!) a good night's sleep and a happy ALA awards day.  See you on the other side--of the ocean and the announcements!

Maybe a Newbery story

Here's my story: I met Rita Williams-Garcia at ALA last summer.  She was signing One Crazy Summer (Amistad).  I hadn't come prepared to buy any books (I know; silly me!) and was counting out my loose change in hopes of having enough for one copy when someone at the booth took pity on me and let me have it for the cash I had on hand.  I was debating whether to ask Ms. Williams-Garcia to sign it to Leo or Milly and decided to ask her to sign it to both, remarking that they could fight over who got to keep it after it won the Newbery.  At that point,  the same someone (thank you!) handed over another copy and Rita came out from behind the signing table, gave me a hug and whispered, "From your lips to God's ear."  I hope so!