Plug of the Week: Children's Bookshelf Newsletter

I really enjoy Publisher's Weekly's "Children's Bookshelf" email newsletter. My personal highlights from this week's edition are an interview with Mark Teague, another with John Burningham, a list of the bestselling picture books, and an article about annual industry-wide sales projections for children's books, 2009 and beyond. I additionally enjoy the "Shelftalker" blog on the PW website. Tidbit I just learned today from the newsletter: John Burningham is married to Helen Oxenbury.

Novel of the week: East by Edith Pattou

East is based on one of my favorite fairy tales—“East of the Sun, West of the Moon”, originating in a group of Norwegian tales collected by Peter Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe in the late nineteenth century. I admire the strong heroine, the enchantment of the white bear, and the personification of the four winds. Yet somehow I've allowed myself to ignore this novel-length retelling. Finally getting around to reading it this week, I was well rewarded.

When I sat down with East in my hands, I looked forward to seeing how Edith Pattou would treat the elements of the original tale. Although she eliminates one of my favorites—the personification of the four winds—she introduces many details which complement the story well. For example, Pattou uses compass points as a motif. The protagonist, Rose, comes from a family of mapmakers, her mother is superstitiously concerned with which direction mothers face during childbirth, and her father draws a compass rose for each of his children. There is lots of adventure in this story, including a sea voyage on a Viking ship and a journey across Greenland by foot, kayak, and ski.

Pattou provides yards of background to fill in between the lines of the original story. She describes the trolls’ culture and location in the Arctic, why the troll princess kidnapped the human prince, and how the enchantment was made by the troll king. She attends to every detail, such as inventing a drink called slank that enables the humans to survive in the brutal cold. I constantly marveled as she blended her own creations flawlessly with the original short tale.

Girl to the Rescue

Audio/Picture book of the week: East of the Sun, West of the Moon, Rabbit Ears Productions.

This story’s original version is a folktale collected by Asbjornsen and Moe, the Scandinavian equivalent of the Brothers Grimm. Compared to the original, D. J. MacHale’s retelling is leaner, excising a wicked stepmother and a few steps of plot after the girl arrives at the castle. The story does not suffer from this paring down, but instead is better focused on the girl’s courage and determination. She is in league with Clever Gretchen, Tatterhood, Mastermaid, and other feminists of the folklore world, the opposite of a passive maiden in distress.

Max Von Sydow’s voice and Lyle Mays’ music are the stars of this show. Rabbit Ears productions are picture books with an audio CD, and the readers are Hollywood stars. I can’t think of a better choice than Swedish actor Max Von Sydow for this Scandinavian folktale. For me, Von Sydow’s deep voice conjures up images from "The Seventh Seal" and other “ultra-serious” Ingmar Bergman films. Lyle Mays’ musical score, synthesized rather than orchestrated, is like the weather in the way it shifts, swells, dies away, and returns. It perfectly reflects the characters of the four Winds in the story.

I love the mystery surrounding the nightly visitor to the girl’s bedroom, and the dual nature of the white bear’s enchantment. I wonder whether the screenwriter(s) for the movie “Ladyhawke” had this enchantment in mind when they began their own story. Another thing I like is the twist that the Beast in this story is perfectly well-behaved, whereas it is the short-sighted Beauty whose heart needs refining. I like the pattern as the girl goes in turn to each of the four Winds, and I like the repetition of the question, “Are you afraid?” from both the bear and the North Wind.

Vivienne Flesher’s illustrations are like vague recollections from dreams: floating, fuzzy, and primitive, yet richly colored. Like Egyptian murals, only essential objects and people are shown, and they are portrayed as flat. Washes of color are placed behind each scene instead of detailed backgrounds. This style keeps the essence front and center with no distractions.

Several hints of the Middle East are placed throughout, such as domed architecture, turbans, golden sand, and toga-like costumes. They don’t seem to be in harmony with the story, but there is only one case in which the tropical setting can be said to specifically contradict the story. The first line of the story states that the peasant farmer and his family live “hidden deep in the blue forest of Norway,” but a depiction of their newly-prosperous dwelling a few pages later includes a palm tree and an elephant in the yard.

A new, exotic setting for this story could work, but to be genuinely done would require even more than just the elimination of the word “Norway”. The author would need to be involved, using words to convey climate, geography, culture, and so forth, fully grounding the story in its new time and place. As it currently stands, the exoticism comes across as a flawed attempt, and it’s not clear whether an editorial oversight occurred. It’s possible that the editors chose to leave this discrepancy in place, reasoning that the pictures are meant to be dream images and therefore don’t have to be tied to physical setting. Truth be told, for me, who listens to the audio in the car, captivated by Max Von Sydow’s deep intonations and carried aloft as the music swells, the book itself isn’t needed.

Credits: written by D. J. MacHale, illustrated by Vivienne Flesher. Read by Max Von Sydow, Music by Lyle Mays. Copyright 1991 (the year I graduated high school!), this is still in print as a Playaway Audio or as part of the CD "Rabbit Ears Treasury of World Tales, Vol. 1". Yes, this is the same D. J. MacHale who has gone on to write the Pendragon series in juvenile fantasy.

Twilight Hubbub

Hot topic today on Alice Pope's CWIM blog by a guest blogger: Is Edward an abusive boyfriend?

http://cwim.blogspot.com/2009/04/edward-bella-abusive-relationship.html

The Twilight books are still on my "To Read Sometime Later" list, so I cannot personally weigh in on whether Edward is abusive, nor whether Bella is a bad role model for teenage girls (which issue was raised in the comments to the post). But isn't it great that readers are so up-in-arms about it? I enjoy hearing lively discussions like this, even when I haven't read the book in question. I don't fear having details "spoiled" in advance. I like having advance context in which to ground my own reading experience. By now I have plenty of fuel for my fire, so I really must get around to reading Twilight. And after that, on to watching the movie, which just yesterday I overheard a teen at the library circulation desk say is "stupid". I predict that I won't agree with her on that.

Pleasure reading and Reference all in one

This plug is for Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market, by Alice Pope, published by F & W Media. Who knew good ol' Cincinnati, Ohio was such a shining star in the kid-lit-osphere? I didn't, until just this year. I have begun searching for a way to align my professional life with my passion for children's books, and I picked up this book as part of that career-change research.

This book is mainly a directory of children's book publishers and other info, geared to writers and illustrators as they try to get published. However, it's much more--each edition has something new to enjoy, because it also contains articles and author interviews! My favorite interview in the 2008 edition was with picture book author-illustrator Mo Willems. I so enjoyed learning how he "became acquainted" with the Pigeon--Willems says he was working on a project and the Pigeon kept appearing in the margins of the sketches, criticizing them. Oh, that pesky Pigeon!

My favorite features in the 2007 edition are the articles "U.S. vs. U.K. Children's Fiction" and "Creating Books for the Youngest Reader". The latter is a roundtable discussion with six people who write, edit, and/or publish board books. It was fascinating to learn the current issues with marketing this niche. I really nodded my head along with Emily Jenkins, who in response to the question, "What are the most common misconceptions about baby board books?", said,

"...that quality doesn't matter. People assume a junky, badly written thing is fine for a baby, because the baby doesn't know the difference and is only going to suck on it anyway."

There are many other great points raised in that article. The 2007 edition also contains interviews with Christopher Paolini and William Joyce. For anyone interested in children's literature, even if you don't plan to write or publish your own, CWIM is a must-read. Enjoy!

Novel of the Week: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The book thief is a young German girl who is taken in by foster parents in Munich in 1939. She is terrorized by nightmares about the recent death of her younger brother. Her foster father sits by her bedside at night to comfort her, and helps her learn to read. This is a story about the lives of civilian Germans during the Second World War. Tough times, indeed. The narrator of the story is Death. He sees a lot as he traverses the world, bearing away the souls of the dead. He is an unusual observer to hear from, because he has so much contact with humanity but remains an outsider.

I enjoy how what I learn from one story expands my reading of another. Recently I watched a movie about the life of Pope John Paul II (title is "Pope John Paul II"), and it taught me about the experience of civilians in Poland during the 2nd World War. First they had Fascism thrust upon them, which restricted their freedom of worship, reduced their political choices, and tried to remove their national identity as Poles. They were then rescued by the Communist invasion, coming from the east and ousting the Fascists oppressors. However, the Polish people soon found that they were no better off, because Communism occupied and oppressed them in the very same ways. Another story, which further expanded my reading of The Book Thief, was The Sisters (about the Mitford family, by Mary S. Lovell). Learning about the Mitfords demonstrated for me the waves of political ideas in Europe in the 20's and 30's. Communism and Fascism were competing schools of thought, present as political parties in many countries, not just in Russia and in Germany.

The Book Thief helped me to be less judgmental of German citizens who lived through and "participated in" the Nazi regime. It demonstrated that there were people who joined the Nazi Party out of necessity, but didn't necessarily agree with it--they joined out of fear of retaliation if they didn't go along. And they could not know whom to trust. That atmosphere reminded me of the culture of denunciations and arrests in Communist Russia, as described in The Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

A good movie I'd like to see again, after having read The Book Thief, is "The Nasty Girl," made in Germany in the late 1980's or early 1990's. It's about a young wife who investigates the involvement of people of her parent's generation in the Nazi regime. What's so intriguing is, these people are the older citizens right there in her hometown, still living, and they do not want that terrible time dredged back up. She finds that everyone has behavior they're not proud of.

The Book Thief is a powerful story. I should mention that it has quite a lot of profanity, but despite that, it was edifying. It saddened me, but also surprised and rewarded me. I recommend it for teens and adults.

Picture Book of the Week: Bedtime for Frahnces

My first featured picture book is the gem Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Garth Williams. Since it has been around since the 1960's, I don't feel the need to describe its plot. I have heaps to share about it in other regards.

The h in Frahnces in this posts's title is not a typo. I first encountered this book read aloud by Glynis Johns, on a long-playing record, which my family checked out from the Lane Public Library in Hamilton, Ohio. If you haven't heard Glynis Johns reading the Frances books, you have missed one of the most charming experiences available in the audiobook world (the recordings are currently available on CD from HarperCollins Audio, titled "The Frances Collection"). Ms. Johns' British accent pronounces the name as Frahnces, and after hearing it that way thousands of times, so do I, my siblings, and their children.

For those reading who may not otherwise know Ms. Johns, I will inform you that she is an actress, possibly most frequently seen in her film role as the mother in Disney's "Mary Poppins". I was delighted decades later to see her as the grandmother in the romantic comedy "While You Were Sleeping".

The illustrations by Garth Williams depict Frances and her parents as badgers, although in the text that identity is not specified. Russell Hoban wrote the story picturing Frances as a little girl, but via Williams' pencil she became otherwise. I very much like the dynamic between the text and illustrations. The story is told sparingly, with no reference to whether the family lives in a house or in a burrow, no mention of paws versus hands, yet on every spread there is more "story" available in the pictures, such as observing Frances' sweet little snout as she reaches up to her mother, or seeing that when Frances and her father brush their teeth, they each have 4 large fangs. The illustrations expand the story, but the text also stands perfectly on its own. Perhaps that is why the audio versions succeeded with my family despite the absence of the books. The experience is like a good radio show, where you never miss having pictures.

I note that in the 1990's, HarperCollins "updated" all the black and white illustrations of the Frabces books by inserting splashes of color in the latest editions. Although it was done subtly, I am surprised they felt it was necessary, and it seems to indicate short-sightedness. I suppose they came to the conclusion that if Garth Williams and Lillian Hoban--who illustrated all the other Frances books besides Bedtime--had full color at their disposal when they made the illustrations, they would have used it; they only kept to pencil because of the limitations of the printing process at the time. My response is that a talented artist does not need to be second-guessed 30 years later. Williams did in fact publish many full-color illustrations, such as his Little Golden Books, and therefore his choice to work in a different style should not be written off as "financial limitations" which we moderns are now free to revise. This is not the only instance I have seen of HarperCollins "revising" classic children's books in various ways (which tangent I will probably pursue in a later post). Suffice it to say that I have given over to shaking my head and muttering, "Remorseless Philistines!".

Hoban uses repetition in his writing, which sets the reader up for wonderful surprises. I love the exchange between Frances and her Father, when her antics have continued past Father's bedtime, and she has succeeded in waking him up. He informs her that the reason the wind is blowing the curtain is because that is the wind's job, and if one does not do one's job, one will be out of a job. However, we learn that if Frances does not do her job, which is to go to sleep, she will not be out of a job--she will be in big trouble.

In conclusion, I invite readers of all ages to pick up this book and savor it--whether for the first time or the umpteenth. Frances has a special place in my heart.

A Blog Down Yonder

This blog is intended as an outlet for me to write about my principal hobby--children's books. I will share my favorite picture books and middle readers, as well as any general information that suits me. Everyone with a fondness for picture books is invited on this Best Friends' Outing.