Half-Day Conference in Massachusetts

The Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College is proud to announce a new partnership with The Foundation for Children’s Books (FCB), a nonprofit organization that cultivates children’s curiosity, creativity, and academic achievement by igniting in them a love of good books. The FCB and Solstice MFA Program will co-host the first in a series of biannual events, “What’s New in Children’s Books” —a half-day conference featuring authors, illustrators, and library and bookstore professionals— Saturday, November 5^th from 8 a.m.–noon on the Pine Manor College campus, 400 Heath Street in Chestnut Hill.

“What’s New in Children’s Books?” will feature illustrator Bryan Collier, winner of the Caldecott Honor Award and the 2011 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave, written by Solstice MFA faculty member Laban Carrick Hill; middle-grade and teen novel writer Mark Peter Hughes, whose book Lemonade Mouth is now a Disney Channel movie; Penny Noyce, doctor, educator, mother of five, and author of Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers; and Terry Schmitz, owner of the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, MA. The conference includes coffee and refreshments, new books from the Children’s Book Shop, and book sales and signing.

As one of the few low-residency MFA programs to offer a concentration in writing for children and young adults, the Solstice MFA Program of Pine Manor College has worked to integrate writers whose work is targeted toward a variety of audiences.“The Solstice MFA Program believes that our children and young people deserve high quality literature that reflects the diversity of America,” says Solstice MFA Director Meg Kearney. “Our new partnership with the Foundation for Children’s Books underscores our mutual goals of putting good books into the hands of young readers, and introducing writers and illustrators to the people who play a vital role in exciting children about literature: teachers and librarians.”

National Book Award Finalists

Today, on Oregon Public Broadcasting, National Book Award winner Virginia Euwer Wolff announced the five finalists for the National Book Award in the young people’s literature category. They are:

My Name is Not Easy by Debby Dahl Edwardson

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Flesh and Blood So Cheap: the Triangle Fire and Its Legacy by Albert Marrin

Chime by Franny Billingsley

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion)

Winners, each of whom receive $10,000, will be announced at a Nov. 16 ceremony in New York hosted by actor-author John Lithgow. Honorary prizes will be presented to poet John Ashbery and Florida-based bookseller Mitchell Kaplan. The National Book Awards are sponsored by the National Book Foundation, an association of editors, writers, and publishers. The first awards were presented in 1950.

The Commentary Begins …

Interesting analysis by Laura Miller, senior writer at Salon.com, about “How the National Book Awards made themselves irrelevant.” Here’s an excerpt pertinent to children’s literature:

“For these reasons, the National Book Award in fiction, more than any other American literary prize, illustrates the ever-broadening cultural gap between the literary community and the reading public. The former believes that everyone reads as much as they do and that they still have the authority to shape readers’ tastes, while the latter increasingly suspects that it’s being served the literary equivalent of spinach. Like the Newbery Medal for children’s literature, awarded by librarians, the NBA has come to indicate a book that somebody else thinks you ought to read, whether you like it or not.

“As a kid, after several such medicinal reading experiences (“… And Now Miguel” by Joseph Krumgold was a particular chore to get through), I took to avoiding books with that gold Newbery badge stamped on their covers. If it weren’t for a desperate lack of alternatives one afternoon, I’d never have resorted to E. L. Konigsburg’s “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” which became one of my favorites. Today’s adult readers, with millions of titles a mere click away, are unlikely to find themselves in such straits.”

Much brouhaha

“Oh, the humanity.” Lauren Myracle’s book Shine was a part of the nominated five for a short time period until the National Book Foundation realized they had meant Franny Billingsley’s Chime instead of the Myracle book. Many reactions were posted all over the Internet, but the author’s own response moves her definitively into the class-act category. And to prove that good things come from mix-ups, here’s one tweet she received: “As a gay boy living in NC, thank you for Shine, which I wouldn’t have known about w/o the screw-up. You may have saved my life. –@anonymous”

Who is Harris Burdick?

You’ll enjoy Kate DiCamillo‘s story in this book honoring Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

Getting Ready for Kindergarten

Anne Rockwell‘s Welcome to Kindergarten is one of five top picks by Susie Heimbach, children’s librarian at the Mulberry Street branch of the New York Public Library.

And the Good News is …

You can bring the Alphabet Forest to your State Fair or school carnival.
We’ll help with your state’s Homegrown Authors.

Fair Buddies: Keith & Dale K. 2011: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com

 Pick of the Posts

Video: The American Booksellers Association president, Becky Anderson of Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, Illinois, is interviewed about the current state of books, bookstores, and e-books.

Don’t miss extraordinary teacher-librarian John Schu‘s blog about the most requested books in his K-5 library during the first week of school. Any surprises here? What are your own school library’s most frequently requested books?

Over on Jacqueline Briggs Martin‘s journal, The Chiru of High Tibet, she ponders over a farmer selling peaches at a market stand since 1947. What’s his story? (Bonus: a lovely recipe for English muffins)

Read-Aloud Dad’s thoughts about “Why Reading Aloud is for Losers.”

LitKid, a mother-daughter book blogging duo, recently interviewed Anita Silvey, “children’s literature storyteller extraordinaire.”

Three Stars!

Congratulations to Avi, whose most recent book, City of Orphans (Simon & Schuster) has received three starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. Set in 1893 New York City, Maks Geless is a newsboy who is forced by circumstance to become a boy detective, dealing with a world of wealth and crime while struggling against powerful forces threatening new immigrants and the fabric of family love.

A salute to Joyce Sidman and Beth Krommes, whose new book Swirl by Swirl (Houghton Mifflin) has garnered three starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and The Horn Book. Have you ever asked yourself why a tiny snail shell is so beautiful? This shape occurs in nature over and over again—in rushing rivers, in a flower bud, inside your ear.  Whether or not you’ve heard about the Fibonacci sequence, Swirl by Swirl will fascinate you with its exploration of spirals and the artwork will keep you studying the pages.

“Kindergarten Friendships”

This month, on the Charlesbridge website blog Unabridged, author Catherine Urdahl contributes a blog about her own experiences in kindergarten, being a shy girl, and the books she loved the best in the school library. All of this eventually worked their way through her brain into her new book: Polka-dot Fixes Kindergarten (illustrated by Mai S. Kemble, Charlesbridge), about a young girl who meets up with a bigger challenge than she imagined on her first day of school. Good thing she has a fix-it kit with her, supplied by her grandpa, including duct tape and runny soap.

Gary D. Schmidt Honored

The Michigan Library Association has selected Gary Schmidt as the winner of the 2011 Michigan Author Award. Gary will be accepting his award at the annual MLA convention in Kalamazoo, MI.

This is the 20th year the award has been given in recognition of an outstanding body of fiction, non-fiction, poetry or playscripts. The work of the previous nineteen winners covers a wide range of styles but they all share a common connection to the state of Michigan. Gary Schmidt has been a resident of the Great Lakes State for over twenty years, first moving to Michigan in 1985 to join the faculty of Calvin College. He is still a member of the English Department at Calvin and over his years there has published a steady stream of fiction and nonfiction children’s books which have garnered much praise. His novel Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy was both a Newbery Honor Book and a Printz Honor Book in 2005 and three years later he received yet another Newbery Honor Book designation for The Wednesday Wars. His two most recently published young adult titles are Trouble (2008, Clarion) and Okay for Now (2010, Clarion).

Gary received both his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and currently lives with his wife, author Elizabeth Stickney, and their six children on a farm in Alto, Michigan. You are invited to attend the Michigan Author Award luncheon, on Friday, October 28th, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at 12:45, to see him accept his award and hear him speak. Tickets are available now for $25.00.

Fake Reviews?

Paying for book reviews to be posted on Amazon? I’ve received the pitch. Have you? A group of students at Cornell University is looking into it. “The whole system falls apart if made-up reviews are given the same weight as honest ones,” said one of the researchers, Myle Ott. This quote, taken from The New York Times article, “In a Race to Out-Rave, 5-Star Web Reviews Go for $5,” is a must-read for everyone who makes decisions about buying books. There have been trusted review sources for years—is it time to discuss why these are still needed?

Children’s Book Council of Australia

The CBCA celebrates Children’s Book Week from August 20th to the 26th in 2011. Each year, many schools and public libraries from all over Australia spend a week celebrating books and Australian authors and illustrators. Classroom teachers, teacher librarians, and public librarians develop activities, offer competitions, and tell stories relating to a theme to highlight the importance of reading.

CBCA announced its Children’s Books of the Year 2011 on August 20th. The winner and honour books in each of the categories are decided at the Judges’ Conferences after extensive discussion and by secret ballot by the Judges.

We’ve listed the winners here:

Older Readers: The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett (Viking Books, Penguin Group)

Younger Readers: The Red Wind by Isobelle Carmody (Viking Books, Penguin Group)

Early Childhood: Maudie and Bear by Jan Ormerod, illustrated by Freya Blackwood (Little Hare Books)

Picture Book: Mirror by Jeannie Baker (Walker Books) and the Joint Winner, Hamlet by Nicki Greenberg (Allen & Unwin)

Eve Pownall Book of the Year: The Return of the Word Spy by Ursula Dubosarsky, illustrated by Tohby Riddle (Viking Books, Penguin Group)

To view the honor books, head to the CBCA’s website.

Here’s how judging works for these awards in Australia: The Fiction Judging Panel for the Picture Book, Early Childhood, Younger Reader and Older Reader categories is made up of eight judges, one elected by each state or territory Branch. The Eve Pownall Award for Information Books is judged by a panel of between three and four judges all of whom come from the home state of the current national executive. The judges work under the direction of an Awards Coordinator. According to the published criteria, they select a shortlist of up to six books per category, from which they may choose a winner and two honour books per category.

Pick of the Posts

Robert Lipsyte, author of many fine teen books on sports and growing up male, has written “Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?” a must-read article for parents, teachers, and librarians, published in The New York Times.

“The good news is that children, not having already read 100 books with a similarly worthy moral (not to mention the entire run of O: The Oprah Magazine), won’t gag.” Read “Elephants in the Room” by Bruce Handy, a review of three children’s books about elephants in The New York Times.

Pamela Paul, editor at The New York Times Book Review, shares her opinions about three picture books in “Shy, Bookish, and Beastly Creatures.”

Economics as taught in familiar children’s books? Yes! Motoko Rich, the economics reporter for The New York Times, writes about books that commute economic principles in “Fairies, Witches, and Supply and Demand.” As she says, “Justin Wolfers, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, cited Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin, a book about cows that withhold milk from a farmer until he provides electric blankets. Mr. Wolfers read the book to his 1-year-old daughter, Matilda, during the Wisconsin protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on union rights.”

Read an article in the Columbia Free Times about the University of Southern Carolina’s first Augusta Baker Endowed Chair appointment, Michelle Martin, the author of Brown Gold: Milestones in African American Children’s Picture Books 1845 – 2002, who is currently completing a book on the children’s literature of Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. “At USC she will conduct research, teach children’s literature and oversee literacy outreach programs throughout the state as part of the center’s efforts to reverse the cycle of illiteracy in one of the least literate states in the country.”

Library Transparency

Here’s a terrific post by Library Girl (aka Jennifer LaGarde) about the ways in which she’s showing monthly data out loud in her library, thereby working positively to allay the mistrust some administrators and budget-deciders show for librarians: “Show Me the Data: Developing Plans for Library Transparency.” Library Girl was inspired by …

Doug Johnson, in his Blue Skunk Log, writes about “Transparency and Trust for Librarians” by beginning: “Don’t take it personally, but librarians are often regarded with distrust by teachers. Why? Unlike classroom teachers, we have both discretionary time and funds to allocate. Have you ever heard questions like “Just where does all the money in the library budget go?” or “What does the librarian do all day anyway?” Take a look.