A Brief Brunch That Looks Ahead and Looks Back

Last Sunday’s Brunch was a day late.

This Sunday’s Brunch is a day late.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to make a habit of it. The holidays, while wonderful, have caused some disruptions in my normal routine. Things should return to normal as soon as the Christmas tree comes down.

...Unfortunately, last year I didn’t take the tree down until well after Martin Luther King Day.

But in 2010 I vow to do better. How’s that for a New Year’s Resolution?

In the spirit of the New Year, today’s brief blog looks back at the most representational children’s books of this past decade and looks ahead to a book from the next decade.


THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN

You know you patronize a cool bookstore when the owner calls you on Christmas morning to say that she just got an ARC (advance reading copy) of a new book that you’ll want to read. The ARC in question was THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN by Susan Beth Pfeffer, the third volume in the post-apocalyptic series that began with LIFE AS WE KNEW IT and continued with THE DEAD & THE GONE. Saturday afternoon I rushed over to the bookstore to pick it up and then spent Sunday reading it. Can you imagine a more cheery Christmas read than a novel of isolation, deprivation, euthanasia, and imminent death and destruction?

Susan Beth Pfeffer began her writing career just out of college with the publication of JUST MORGAN. Since then she’s written dozens of children’s and young adult novels, including such memorable titles as ABOUT DAVID and THE YEAR WITHOUT MICHAEL. In 2006 she published her best-known work, LIFE AS WE KNEW IT, which describes how a meteor strike throws the moon out of orbit, drastically affecting life on Earth. The story is related by Miranda Evans, a teenager from Pennsylvania, who records how the lunar catastrophe leads to starvation, mayhem, and the deaths of friends and neighbors. It’s a science fiction book for readers who don’t generally like science fiction -- a speculative novel that deals with the human side of a worldwide crisis. A sequel, THE DEAD & THE GONE (2008) told the story of the same event from the perspective of New York teenager Alex Morales.

THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN (to be published in April) is again told through Miranda’s diary entries. If LIFE AS WE KNEW IT was a tale of loss and letting go (not just the the loss of food, sunlight, and modern conveniences, but also friends who do not survive the crisis), THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN is a story of gaining new family members and friends, and opening oneself to experiences such as traveling (even a ninety-mile journey is an adventure) and falling in love.


It’s been nearly a year since the moon fell out of orbit and Miranda, her brothers, and their mother, are still cold and starving. Things start to look up when Miranda begins breaking into abandoned houses for food and supplies and her brothers travel to fish from the Delaware River. Soon her older brother marries a girl he barely knows and Miranda’s father, new wife, and their baby arrive with a group of travelers...including Alex Morales and his younger sister Julie. It was perhaps inevitable that Miranda and Alex would meet in Pfeffer’s series and their subsequent hasty romance at times feels more prescribed by plot than truly felt by the characters. Nevertheless the book is a page-turner, and the author does a great job showing how some aspects of daily, domestic life are retained while others are lost forever in the face of encroaching horror. In the final pages, a tornado -- almost a deus ex machina in reverse -- brings further destruction and causes Miranda to make some shattering decisions that will forever change her life. Although she ends the novel saying that she will no longer write in her diary, the story practically demands a sequel (readers will want to know more about the rumored “safe towns” located around the country...and there needs to be a follow-up to the tantalizing hints that Miranda’s new sister-in-law has given about her past.) Anyone who reads THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN will anxiously await the next installment in this fascinating series.


A DECADE ENDS

Seems like it was only a couple years ago that we were stockpiling water and batteries for Y2K. Now the decade is about to end. This got me wondering about titles best represent the past ten years. It’s not necessarily a list of good books -- in fact, a couple of the titles below stink to high heaven -- but just a roster representing the state of children’s publishing from 2000 to 2009.

2000 / HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE by J.K. Rowling

Not the first HP book, but the first from this millennium, and it helped set the tone for the era. Suddenly children’s books were cool for adults and crowds would turn out for midnight release parties. If only more children’s books got this kind of reception!

2001 / READING MASTERY II : STORYBOOK I by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner

Why would a book in a thirty-one volume reading text best represent 2001? Because one of the stories in this book, “The Pet Goat" was being read by the president while planes crashed into the World Trade Center. “The Pet Goat” immediately became one of the most well-known titles in children’s literature (though most people called it “My Pet Goat” for some reason) yet it remains a story that almost nobody has read.

2002 / HOOT by Carl Hiassen

After about twenty years of celebrities and “adult writers” trying to write children’s books and producing the literary equivalent of plant fertilizer, Carl Hiassen attempted a kids’ book and scored both a popular and critical (Newbery Honor) triumph. It’s probably the high-point of the “celebrity author trend.”

2003 / ERAGON by Christopher Paolini

Personally I couldn’t read it, but ERAGON deserves recognition for representing the trend of self-published books that ended up getting attention from big mainstream publishers with deep pocket$.

2004 / THE O’REILLY FACTOR FOR KIDS by Bill O’Reilly

Every day millions of children turn off their iPods, power down their computers, and put down their Playstation joysticks to gather around the TV to watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox TV. They don’t? Then how to explain the huge sales figures for this advice volume from a TV blowhard and falafel fan? Obviously it was this decade’s “Most Purchased Book by Parents and Grandparents.”

2005 / TWILIGHT by Stephenie Meyer

The reason why every other young adult title now must contain one of the following words: neck, blood, vamp, undead, bite, or suck.

2006 / THE END by Lemony Snicket

The end of an era. When I read THE BAD BEGINNING, the first volume in this series, I thought it was mildly-amusing, but didn’t have a lot of appeal for kids. Seven years, thirteen volumes, and fifty-five million copies later, Lemony Snicket proved me wrong.

2007 / THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET by Brian Selznick

Winning the Caldecott Medal proved that the graphic novel for children had really come of age.

2008 / THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman

Similarly, many cheered when this novel won the Newbery Medal, marking one of the rare times when a book both critically acclaimed and kid-friendly had won the big N.

2009 / ???

What book do you think best represents the state of children’s publishing for 2009? Which titles above would you bump in order to include other books better representing this past decade?


Thanks for visiting Collecting Children’s Books. Hope you’ll be back!

Christmas is for Kids

According to the calendar, December 21 is the longest night of the year. But when we were growing up, December 24 always felt like the longest night.

What kid can sleep on the night before Christmas?

On Christmas Eve, my brother and I were not nestled all snug in our beds while visions of sugar plums.... Instead, we sat on our knees in front of our bedroom window, scraping ice off the pane with our fingernails, in order to watch our neighbors across the street open their presents. They were Christmas-Eve-Gift-Openers. We were Christmas-Morning-Openers, so had to wait all night before we could go downstairs and see what lay under our own tree. But for about an hour on Christmas Eve we could live vicariously through the kids across the street, seen merrily tearing open gift wrapping in their living room window. My brother and I still vividly remember the youngest daughter in that family walking back and forth in front of their window pushing a doll carriage that she’d just received as a present.

Downstairs our parents were putting the finishing touches on our Christmas -- stacking gifts under the tree and stuffing stockings. Upstairs we watched the neighbors until their lights went off, then we’d get into bed and toss and turn and complain that we were still WIDE AWAKE and would never, ever fall asleep. The night seemed to last forever.

Of course nothing really lasts forever, does it?

The little girl with the doll carriage is now over forty and has three kids of her own. (I wonder if they open gifts on Christmas Eve?)

And here it is Christmas Eve and -- instead of tossing and turning while my parents fill our stockings -- I’m up in the middle of the night filling stockings for my parents:


A little misshapen, aren’t they? Back in the day, my folks knew how to fill stockings just right -- from the orange in the toe all way up to the gifts peeking over the top. Whenever I try to fill a Christmas stocking, it looks boxy and stretched and saggy.

Same goes for gift wrapping. The presents we received as kids were smoothly covered in beautiful paper and held together with small, unobtrusive pieces of tape. The edges were tucked in as neatly as “hospital corners” on a bedsheet. They were adorned by bows and ribbons and special nametags.

I have no skill at giftwrapping. My packages at invariably lumpy and held together with yards of tape:


I’ve never quite gotten the hang of being an adult.

Though I think that I have a much more grown-up view of Christmas these days. Instead of laying awake all night, greedily wondering what presents I'm going to receive in the morning, I'm now much more excited about the gifts I'm going to give.

However, I guess I can’t congratulate myself too much on my “adult attitude” after what happened on Wednesday.

That was my last day of work until after the holidays. The entire university library system will be closed until January 4, 2010. Of course I was looking forward to having eleven days off. Celebrating the holidays. Seeing relatives. Staying up late every night. Sleeping in every morning. Maybe catching a couple movies. And of course reading. But by noon on Wednesday I started getting nervous. The library was about to shut down for nearly two weeks! What if I ran out of books to read?

Which is why I ran to the stacks and quickly began pulling books to read over the holiday break.

Okay, if you were me, how many books would you have borrowed?

Three?

Five?

How about eleven -- one for each day of vacation?

Yeah, those are all good guesses.

But was there really any valid reason I needed to check out THIRTY books from the library on Wednesday?


I’ll probably never get around to reading half of them. Especially since I’m not a very fast reader. And I already have stacks of new unread books at home:


That is just a very small section of a long row of books which sit on my bedroom floor -- double parked! Yes, there’s another entire row behind them.

Not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of books that sit on my shelves -- some completely unread, others read and loved and just waiting to be read again.

THIRTY library books? I don’t know what gets into me sometimes.

Maybe it has to do with the holiday season. As I grow older, I see how life changes from Christmas to Christmas. One minute a little girl is pushing a doll carriage on Christmas Eve; a few years later she has kids of her own. One minute your parents are filling a stocking with surprises for you; a few years later you are filling lumpy, bumpy, misshapen stockings for your elderly parents. Seeing these changes, you realize the future isn’t infinite. There are a limited number of Christmases to come, a limited number of books I’ll ever get to read. So I’ve become a “greedy reader” -- tossing and turning my way through life, desperately reaching for all the books I still want to read...yet increasingly aware that there may not be time to get to every one.

Wishing everyone who reads this blog a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with lots of books...and lots of time to read them.

Sunday...er, Monday Brunch

Today’s brunch is a day late and a little short. Time seems to be getting away from me during this busy holiday season.Thank you for your understanding and patience.


THANKS

First, a big “THANK YOU” to all who responded to this week’s news that Candlewick has purchased WILD THINGS! : THE TRUE, UNTOLD STORIES BEHIND THE MOST BELOVED CHILDREN’S BOOKS AND THEIR CREATORS, the book I am currently writing with Elizabeth Bird and Julie Danielson. We were so gratified by how many people immediately “got” the concept of the book (not everyone has) and began cheering us on.

If you have any intriguing stories about the background or creation of a well-known children’s book...or have always wondered about something unusual or mysterious you’ve noticed within the pages of a book (something that made you say, like Miss Clavel in MADELINE, that “Something is not right”)...please feel free to drop me a line at Newbery13@aol.com.

Recent tips from blog readers have already got me looking at the swan boat riders in MAKE WAY FOR DUCKLINGS and checking out biographies of E. Nesbit.

Many thanks!


NUN OF THE ABOVE

To double-check the spelling of “Miss Clavel” above, I Googled her name and was surprised to see that she is frequently referred to as a Catholic nun. The Wikipedia mentions she’s a nun and later uses the phrase “Miss Clavel (aka Sister Clavel.)”

Really?

I am off work today (blogging, blogging, Christmas shopping) and don’t have ready access to the Ludwig Bemelmans books in our library collection to check this out, but I can’t recall the character ever being called “sister” in the books, or any reference to her as a nun.

I thought she dressed that way because she was a school mistress/nursemaid/nanny type.

But apparently there is some controversy about this. I just found a Catholic forum website in which someone proclaimed:

Miss Clavel is a nun, people! <...> But are nuns really that threatening to children, especially non-Catholic children, that the classic children's literature character needs to be remodelled?

So, is she a nun or not-a-nun?


CHECK YOUR ATTIC FOR THIS ONE

Living right on the border of Canada, we’ve always been able to receive Canadian television and radio stations in this area. Growing up, we all listened to the top forty on the “Big 8” -- CKLW, AM 800 -- a station then known for its high-octane “20-20 News,” which was broadcast by newscasters with nearly identical loud, booming voices. Today CKLW is a talk station and I listen to the spooky, syndicated “Coast to Coast” radio show over its airwaves nearly every night. The newsbreaks are much more traditional now, though it’s still interesting to hear Canadian pronunciations (ever heard a Canadian say “schedule”?) and phraseology (“The accident victim is in hospital”) -- not to mention the temperature in Celsius (“Tomorrow will be the hottest day of July, with the thermometer topping 30 degrees.”)

The other night I happened to hear a children’s book mention on CKLW’s news. They reported that a first edition of that Canadian classic, ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Lucy Maud Montgomergy, had just been sold for $37,000 at an auction in New York City. Only eight copies of this book have been sold at auction in the past three decades.

...So check your attic to see if you have a copy of this 1908 novel hidden away somewhere. Though if I ever sold a book for $37,000, I’d be so excited that I’d probably faint and end up “in hospital!”


SPEAKING OF AUCTIONS

Evaline Ness’s Caldecott Medal for SAM, BANGS & MOONSHINE was sold at auction for less than $6000 last week.

I actually thought it would sell for more.

There is a way to get a Caldecott Medal of your very own without having to bid thousands of dollars. Here’s all you need to start:


Sorry for the brevity of today’s blog, but I must run out to mail packages, finish addressing my Christmas cards, and do some shopping. And I’ll probably be up till all hours, knee-deep in ribbons, gift tags, and Santa Claus paper before I can finally say, “That’s a wrap!”

Thanks for visiting Collecting Children’s Books. Hope you’ll be back.