Author of the Week - Robert Cormier

I was never a big fan of Robert Cormier, perhaps this was because I was forced to read The Chocolate War as a teenager, a book that I did not like and therefore will never review. However, after getting off my distrust of Cormier I then read a small lesser known book called The Bumblebee Flies Anyway. Cormier won me over.

Robert Cormier was born in 1925 in Leominster, MA. He was the second eldest of eight children and because they had so many kids, their family was forced to move often since rent was so expensive with so many children. Robert never left or moved away from his hometown, until the day he died. Even his summer home was only 19 miles outside of town. Robert attended a private catholic school and starting writing from a young age, deciding to become a poet in middle school. As a freshman in college, Robert had his first short story published, The Sign. Robert went on to work as a journalist and wrote scripts for radio commercials, and continued to write for his local newspaper. The Chocolate War was Cormier's first novel, followed quickly by I Am the Cheese and After the First Death. Despite this bloggers dislike for his premier novel, Robert was good at finding the core issues that teens deal with and his books have withstood the test of time. Some of his other books have included Heroes, Fade, In the Middle of the Night, Tenderness, and We All Fall Down.

Illustrator of the Week - Brian Selznick

Brian Selznick has been working as an author and illustrator for a number of years. His fanciful, cartoon-like drawings can be seen on many books, some of which I'm sure you are familiar. Having attended The Rhode Island School of Design and then working at Eeyore's Books for Children in NYC, Selznick developed of love for children's books. His first book, The Houdini Box was publishing in 1991, quickly followed by titles such as Frindle, The Doll People, Mary's Ghost, When Marian Sang, and the Newbery Award Winning The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Author of the Week - Jon Scieszka

Jon Scieszka was born in 1954 in Flint, Michigan. In his family there were six children, all boys. His father worked as an elementary school principal. Jon's grandparents were from Poland, hence the last name which means "path" in Polish. In high school Jon went to a military academy, then thought about studying to be a doctor, but instead he got a degree in Science and English, and then an MFA in Fiction. Jon then went to teach elementary school, a career that obviously plays a large part in his writing. In Jon's words, elementary school helped him re-discover how smart kids are and that the best audience for his weird and funny stories were these children. He took a year off from teaching and began to write children's stories. As he was writing, Jon met an illustrator named Lane Smith through his wife. Lane immediatly fell in love with Jon's stories. Despite numerous rejections of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Lane and Jon kept trying to find a publishers, until an editor at Viking Press with the same sense of humor picked it up. In 1989, Jon and Lane publishers their first book. Over the last two decades Jon and Lane have worked together on 8 pictures books and 8 Time Warp Trio's, which have been adapted into a television show. Jon had published over two dozen books including The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Math Curse, The Frog Prince Continued, Welcome to Trucktown!, Robot Zot, and his newest book Spaceheadz. Jon has won numerous awards and was named by the American Library Association as the National Ambassador for young People's Literature.

Illustrator of the Week - Lydia Monks

Lydia Monks is a collage artist born in Surrey. She studied illustration at Kingston University and is an Irish dancer. Lydia's interesting collage style and bright colors seems to have found its niche in young children's picture books, but she has also illustrated poetry books, middle grade book covers, and picture books-some of which she has written herself. She currently lives in Sheffield with her partner and their baby daughter.

In Honor of my Father

When I was a kid my dad used to tell us stories. We thought he was amazing. Surely, he should write down these wonderful ideas about dragons, jewels, and magic. Every night he told us a little more, sitting at the foot of my brothers' beds while I curled up on the floor with my pillow and my favorite blanket. The story went on forever, but I could never figure out why my mom would stand in the doorway laughing quietly to herself. I mean, the story was not that funny.

Then, one day, when I was fifteen I pulled a book off my dad's bookshelf that he claimed was the best book ever written. Lord of the Rings was a giant tome and at the time I thought it extremely cool to read the thickest books I could find. Just off of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, Lord of the Rings seemed like the perfect story to tackle.

About fifty pages in I realized that the story sounded familiar. The little people, the magic ring, but I read on. With each turn of the page I realized that my father was not a great storyteller, he was a great story-re-teller. All those nights sitting in thrall, he had been telling us a slightly altered version of Lord of the Rings. And I didn't care. See, it wasn't the story or even that he tried to pass it off as his own, it was the fact that my father loved us enough that he took an hour out of his day every night to tell us stories. So even though my dad is a very typical engineer and cannot spell half of the words he tries to write, perhaps a little of my love for storytelling comes from him. I'm thinking he will carry on the tradition. After all, doesn't my nephew look like he is going to be a reader?

Author of the Week - William Kamkwamba

I know some authors worry about their last names being too strange or hard to spell, but in the case of Mr. Kamkwamba, it was the reason I picked up his book. I mean, really, how often do run across a book by an author with such a great last name? And what an interesting fellow he is too.

William Kamkwamba was born in 1987 in Masitala Village, Wimbe, Malawi. William grew up in a family of seven kids, six of which are girls. Educated at Wimbe Primary School, William received the opportunity to attend secondary school, but was forced to drop out when a severe famine hit Malawi and his family could no longer pay the $80 in annual fees to support his education. Rather than accept his fate, he began borrowing books from a local library, borrowing everything from fiction to textbooks. Using one book about Energy, William built a windmill in 2002 (at the age of 15)to power a few electrical appliances in his family's home eliminating his family's need for kerosene. He used bicycle parts, blue gum trees, light bulbs, radio parts, and tractor blade fans among other things. With this prototype he then took it a step further creating a larger version and adding a car battery for storage as well as making his own light switches and circuit breakers. Since then, he has built a solar-powered water pump that supplies fresh drinking water into his village for the first time, a radio transmitter to broadcast popular music and spread HIV prevention messages, drip irrigation systems, and malaria prevention. William's work has drawn the attention of many people, including doctors, inventors, journalists, and legislators. He was even invited as a guest speager to TEDGlobal, a prestigious gathering of thinkers and innovators.

In 2005, William wrote and performed an HIV prevention comedy with some friends entitled You Can't Judge a Book by its Cover. Thanks to his hard work and media attention, William was able to re-enroll in secondary school before transferring to the African Bible College

Christian Academy, a private prep school before going to Cambridge, UK to study. He hopes to be a teacher one day, to educate the next generation in academics, ethics, entrepreneurship, and ingenuity.

In 2009, William wrote an autobiography called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Current of Electricity and Hope, published by HarperCollins. The book is incredible, but more so because of William's extreme drive and determination and complete understanding of how important reading and education are. It thrilled me to see someone, despite all the odds, become someone so affluent in his community and the world.

Illustrator of the Week - Leo & Diane Dillon

It is a rarity to find artists who work in tandem, considering the nature of art, there must be a lot of compromises that one would have to make in order to work collaboratively with someone else. Leo and Diane Dillon were married in 1957 and have worked together for over fifty years on everything from book covers to picture books to woodwork to tapestries. One thing is sure, they love to experiment with all different kinds of art styles, never allowing themselves to be pigeon holed as one kind of artist. Their children's books include Sabriel by Garth Nix (as well as the entire Abhorsen trilogy), Why Mosquitos Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aardema, Two Little Trains by Margaret Weiss Brown and dozens of others.

Book of the Week - Uglies

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.

I love Science Fiction. Let's just put that out there from the beginning. As a kid I was hooked after reading Away is a Strange Place to Be by H.M. Hoover, a wonderful book about two kids kidnapped and forced into slave labor on a space station. I devoured sci-fi book after sci-fi, leaving young adult books far behind when I ran out of them. I turned to Herbert, Heinlein, Ben Bova, Timothy Zahn, and C.J. Cherryh. I say this to tell you that there is a considerable difference between young adult and adult sci-fi, even the ones with children characters likeEnder's Game, which was originally meant for adults is completely different.

How you ask? Simply this. Adults books don't preach.

Adult books just tell a good story. And epic story but a story nonetheless. Yes, there are books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451, perhaps even I, Robot could be included in that preachy mode of storytelling, but one thing is for sure, I never felt like the author was trying to tell me how ridiculous something was. There is a disturbing likeness to the young adult sci-fi I have read recently. This is the trend I have noticed:

An author finds something that bothers them about our society. (usually American society) These social ills can be anything from not living green (enough), obsession with beauty, safety, science, violence, terrorism, etc. Then they take it to the extreme.

In Uglies, Westerfeld creates a society in which everyone at the age of sixteen turns Pretty. All your life you are told how ugly you are and how one day, just like everyone else, you will become beautiful and never have to worry about anything again. No one will be too fat or too skinny. Frizzy hair will be a thing of the past. Everyone equal. Tally Youngblood can't wait to turn sixteen, but then she meets Shay, another ugly, who disdains the falseness of their society and runs away. Tally doesn't go, but is soon blackmailed by the authorities into finding the Uglies camp, if she helps they will make her pretty. But reality makes Tally wonder if the truth she has been told all her life is really a lie.

On the whole, the book is written well. It is action packed with rich characters and an interesting plot. But I just can't seem to get over the preachiness of it. Believe me, it was clear what the author was getting at from the very beginning. It just screamed, "Hey, isn't it terrible how obsessed we are with beauty? Look what could happen if we don't stop." Sometimes adult books can have moments of preachiness, but personally I think the best stories are the ones that move away from the preachiness to focus on story.

But Uglies isn't the only one doing it. The Roar by Emma Clayton, Incarceron by Catherine Fisher, Feed by M.T. Anderson, Rash by Pete Hautman, Un Lun Dun by China Mieville, Shade's Children by Garth Nix, Unwind by Neal Shusterman. This is not to say these novels are badly written, it is just that the "message" was way to much for this blogger's tastes. Yes, adults books do it too, but I never felt like Isamov or Bova was trying to say, "Look what happens when we get obsessed with--well you fill in the blank."

Author of the Week - Kate Douglas Wiggin

Kate Douglas Wiggin was born in 1856 in Philadelphia. Her father died during the Civil War, leaving Kate and her sister Nora to be raised by their young widowed mother. They moved to Portland, Maine a few years after her father's death, where he mother remarried. A baby brother was born. Education in such a rural area was stilted, consisting of some public education, a finishing school, and home schooling. Even with this limited schooling, Kate still received more education than most girls of her time period. In 1873 Kate and her family moved to San Francisco as her step-father was ailing, sadly he died three years later of a lung disease.

Kate was devoted to education and the well-being of children, often fighting against child labor in an era when such things were rarely thought about. Kate loved the wild ways of the street children she taught, but had to resign from teaching as was the custom at the time when she married Bradley Wiggin. Still, Kate continued to devote herself to the children, raising money through her writing starting with her first story The Story of Patsy and The Birds' Christmas Carol. Kate never had children and when her husband died in 1989, Kate moved back to Maine. Kate was said to have grieved and wear widow's black for the rest of her life, but that did not stop her from traveling and writing. Her most popular and famous novel is Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Among her other stories were The Old Peabody Pew, Penelope's Experience in Scotland, Mother Carey's Chickens, along with several non-fiction pieces speaking out against child labor. All the proceeds from Kate's books went to her living costs and the children she loved so much.

Illustrator of the Week - LeUyen Pham

From very early in life, LeUyen Pham has been touched with luck. At the age of two, her family escaped on the very last transport ship out of Saigon right before the Vietnam War broke out. Her father worked for the CIA, and his connections helped them escape to California. Despite her parents dream to become a lawyer, and her degree in political science, Pham knew she would never be a lawyer. Pham won a scholarship thanks to a mentoring profesor and spent the next three years in an accelerated art program. Pham then had another stroke of luck when she landed a job just out of college working for Dreamworks. On the side Pham strted to illustrate picture books. Her first book The Sugarcane House was done in pencil illustrations. She has now illustrated over 30 books including Can You Do This, Old Badger?, Big Sister, Little Sister, A Father Like That, Freckleface Strawberry, Alvin Ho, Bedtime for Mommy, God's Dream, and Grace for President.

Book of the Week - The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger

Origami Yoda is yet another book trying to fill the graphic novel/literature genre that Diary of a Wimpy Kid made oh so popular. This story is not so heavily graphics driven as Wimpy Kid, but the obvious attempt is still good, and its not a bad attempt.

Tommy only wants to know one thing. Is Origami Yoda real? Sure, it's a real puppet on Dwight's finger, but is Dwight/Yoda really tuned into the force or is it just some stupid Dwight trick? Tommy sets about chronicling the advice and after affects all in an effort to see if he should be taking Orgami Yoda's advice. And that advice is should he ask Sarah to dance at the next school dance?

It's a classic story. Should the boy ask the girl out? But the fun twist with Origami Yoda makes it a little more interesting. Middle grade readers, especially the misfits (weren't we all), will find themselves in the various characters. However, the story fell a little flat. After a few chapters, the reader may find themselves tempted to skip, as there is only one plot and only one aim of the story. No depth, no sub-plot, and certainly not much substance. Despite my love for all things Star Wars, I'm afraid the cute little finger puppet was the only character I found interesting.

On a structure level, each chapter is told by a different kid, their side of the story followed by Tommy's thoughts and then Henry's (another character who thinks Origami Yoda is a fraud). Each chapter is done in different "handwriting" adding to the personal diary-like feeling of the book. This allows Angelberger to play with something that is rare in middle grade fiction, multiple narratives, which only added to the authenticity of the book. The illustrations were fun, and added some flair, but they often felt needless. Pictures just to have pictures.

For those looking for a light quick read, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda will fill that notch, but if you are looking for something of substance with pictures I suggest The Graveyard Book.

One nifty thing. the back of the book does have instructions on how to make your very own Origami Yoda. Now that's cool!

Author of the Week - Carolyn Cohagan

Being in the middle of this book, I thought I would feature a new debut author whose first book was just published this past February. It can give hope to those of us writers who are still struggling.

Carolyn Cohagan has an usual story about her path to print. Carolyn was born in 1973 in Lake Travis, Texas. She began her career as a stand-up comedian, performing around the world from New York to Auckland to Amsterdam. After studying for a year in Paris, Carolun wrote a couple of one-woman shows with a theatrical company she co-founded. With all this expertise Carolyn also began trying her hand and writing and directing in Los Angeles. This led her to her job as an editor and red carpet interviewer for Film Independent.

Carolyn then tried her hand at writing a screenplay, but was dissatisfied with the stories visual weaknesses and heavy dialogue. She then tried to turn the story into a film treatment. Six years later, Carolyn had a novel. Like The Graveyard Book, The Lost Children is dark, but so far it is a good read. She is currently working on a sequel. Here's to hoping it won't take another six years.

Carolyn's advice for those who want to become authors, are to persevere and be willing to rewrite.

Author of the Week - Regan Dunnick

It is my policy to never review any of my professors books on this blog. A professional courtesy. However, I can and do feature their illustrators. Phyllis Root recently wrote a book called Creak, Said the Bed, a fun little book that I read at story time two weeks ago. No review, but at the end of the story one of the little boys shouted, "Wow, those people are fat." Not sure what I am talking about? Go read the book.

Moving on to Regan Dunnick. Regan is an internationally known illustrator whose works are in the permanent collection at the Library of Congress. He has won numerous awards and toured the world. Currently, he teaches at The Ringling School of Art in Florida.

Book of the Week - The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Somewhere in London, a man with a razor-sharp knife creeps up the stairs of a small house where he has already murdered a family. However, the youngest child, a toddler, slips away to a graveyard. The ghosts of the graveyard adopt the child naming him Nobody Owens or Bod for short. Bod is curious and quiet, learning all the ways of the dead, making friends with 200 year old forgotten poets and opinionated witches. As he gets older, Bod goes through a series of adventures both in and out of the graveyard, and he learns that death may be natural but it is life that is more interesting.

When I first started reading this book, I was rather shocked by the darkness of the beginning. Most middle grade books do not begin with a murder followed by ghosts. But it was done so well. At no point was the story overly graphic. Don't get me wrong though, this story is scary and creepy and violent, but it isn't a horror story. This is a dance with the macabre, one to which the reader will feel the goosebumps traveling down their arm as they read about the Sleer and read in horror as the murderer who killed Bods family seeks him out with relentless vengeance.

Another reviewer pointed out that this story is a dark version of The Jungle Book, and I can see that likeness. The important thing about The Graveyard Book is that despite the darkness, it is a book about light and life. Despite the violence, it is a book about peace. Bod is a character with a deep emotional resonance. There is so much depth to the book. Aren't all adults like ghosts to children? These people who share and impart wisdom which is often impractical to the child who wants to play with their friends and simply be.

My one and only complaint would be that the timeline and age of Bod were not always clear, and I didn't find it clear by the way her spoke. No age indicators. He always sounded about twelve to me. A small complaint in the scheme of a great novel.

Question of the Day: Which of these covers is your favorite?

Illustrator of the Week - Marc Simont

Whether you realize it or not, you do know Marc Simont...at least you should be familiar with his artwork. Marc Simony was born in Paris in 1915. Marc was a sickly child who taught himself how to write by tracing words out of his favorite picture book. Starting out as a political cartoonist and artist, he soon found a calling among children's books in 1939. He won a Caldecott Honor for his illustrations in Ruth Krauss' The Happy Day and the Caldecott Medal for A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry and again in 2002 for The Stray Dog. But his most famous illustrations are in the Nate the Great series by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat.

Book of the Week - When You Reach Me

Set in the late 1970s, twelve-year-old Miranda was named for a horrible kidnapper. Sort of. Her single mother, once a law student had to drop out and become a paralegal when she discovered she was pregnant, but that didn't stop her from naming her baby after the famous Miranda rights.

Told in the first person, with some jumps through time over several months, Miranda struggles with being a latch key kid, rereading A Wrinkle in Time to escape, preparing her mom to appear on her favorite game show, being friends with girls, no longer being best friends with a boy, passing a potentially crazy homeless man each school day, race issues, and the fact that her mom hates her job.

When You Reach Me is a quiet book, unassuming with its cute cover and questioning characters.

Being this years' Newbery Award Winner, and having loved the past two year's winners (Savvy and The Graveyard Book), I fully expected to love this one too. I fear my expectations were perhaps a little high and in the end I felt the story was rather limp. Although the characters were true to their time period, in a time where children were allowed to walk to and from school by themselves and work in deli's during lunch breaks, I didn't feel that those characters interactions with each other were realistic. Miranda has whole conversations with strange kids about time travel and makes friends with a girl who doesn't really seem to want to be her friend. I truly expected the two's friendship to last a week and then be over since the two girls didn't have too much in common. Perhaps that was the point, a bunch of random people thrown together under--umm--usual circumstances. Her relationship with her mother and soon-to-be step-father seemed the most accurate, but as we all know, parents cannot play large parts in a children's book, for children cannot have adventures under the constraint of their parents.

Then, when the main character did carry on real conversations with others, I found that I didn't particularly like her. For example: when someone has read A Wrinkle in Time a hundred times, I would think that a philosophical conversation about the puzzles of time travel in that book would be of interest to the reader. However, Miranda is not remotely interested, dismissing the topic as "too weird". This may be my own bias as a reader, for even as a child, I over-analyzed everything I read, especially my favorite books. However, I felt like this was a symptom of this character for she was generally uninterested in a lot of things and dismissed many situations out of hand.

When time travel did make an appearance in the story, it was anti-climatic as Stead had introduced the reader to the concept so many times in the book that the reader should have seen it coming. I had the big mystery solved after the first time travel discussion, and was rather upset to discover I was right. Unlike my favorite twist-ending book The Thief, there was no reason to go back and read, no ah-ha moments. I was especially disappointed in the end, when I thought I would get an explanation of this whole time travel thing. The hows and whys, were never revealed. It was like a tantalizing tidbit that I never got. Perhaps there will be a sequel? A sequel from the viewpoint of Marcus? Perhaps it doesn't matter, but the only reason I keep thinking about the book is because I want to know how.

I'm frankly surprised that Stead's book won The Newbery. However, that it did so tends to confirm a phenomenon that Anita Silvey discussed (and there is a link below) in which she wonders about the accessibility that these Award winners have to the age groups they are geared towards. I know that at my bookstore, there are no children clambering over their mothers, begging for When You Reach Me. Instead they want the newest Wimpy Kid book, the Candy Apple series, and for the astute reader...The Lightning Thief.

Author of the Week - Anita Silvey

Anita Silvey is a well-known editor and literary critic of children's literature who I have had the pleasure of listening to a few times now. Anita has devoted 35 years to promoting books that will turn the young -- and families -- into readers. In 1975 Anita was a co-founder of the Boston Review. She served as Editor-in-Chief of The Horn Book MAgazine from 1985-1995. Between 1995 and 2001, Silvey worked as vice-president at Houghton mifflin where she oversaw children's and young adult publishing for the Houghton and Clarion divisions. Some of the authors and illustrators that she promoted were David Wiesner, Chris Van allsburg, Virginia Lee Burton, and Lois Lowry. She has also authored a number of critical books about children's literature, including 500 Great Books for Teens, The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators, and Everything I Need to know I Learned From A Children's Book.

In 2008, Anita wrote an influential School Library Journal article in which she criticizes the Newbery selections as too difficult for the intended target audience. Anita is currently a member of the Editorial board of Cricket Magazines and the Board of Directors for the Vermont Center for the Book. She teaches courses at Simmons College in Boston and speaks at many schools and events, in front of children and adults alike.

Her newest book Everything I Need To Know I Learned From A Children's Book interviews many influential people, asking them what their favorite children's book was and how it influenced them. Is it surprising that Ronald Mallet, a well-respected physicist enjoyed The Time Machine as a child? Or that Katherine Paterson, author of Bridge to Terabithia, was in love with The Secret Garden as a young girl?

So here is a question--What was your favorite books as a child and what does it say about you?

Illustrator of the Week - John Strickland Goodall

Thanks to Chris Campell for this illustrator suggestion.

John Strickland Goodall was born in Norfolk in 1908, coming from a long line of doctors. However, at an early age he showed a great talent for art and his father reluctantly agreed that he could study drawing. In the 1930's, Goodall worked mainly as an illustrator for such magazines as the Radio Times and the Bystander. He also painted landscaped, interiors and conversation pieces, mostly in watercolor, which he preferred to painting in oil.

During World War II he was posted to India, where he worked in camouflage. After the war, he and his wife moved near Tisbury. They had a small cottage with a large garden and studio shed which was to feature in many of Goodall's pictures. When his wife grew ill, Goodall nursed her devotedly. This seclusion is what led him to work on children's books, and funny enough his greatest success as an artist. He is best known for his wordless picture books including the award winning The Adventures of Paddy Pork, The Creepy Castle, Naughty Nancy, and Kelly, Dot, and Esmeralda. Although his art has included photography, his illustrations have been used in many publications. Goodall was said to be gentle, humorous, and modest. As an artist, many people said he was a joy to deal with.