Jimmy Coates: on location

Joe Craig, creator of the Jimmy Coates books takes readers on a trip around London to actual locations in the stories.

He has also mapped the books' events on a London city map.

If you are not familiar with the books, here's author Joe Craig's description of the series:

The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones

The paintings of the Dutch masters have always been fascinating to me.These expressive portraits are astonishing. Being a "fabric" person, I find myself looking at the exquisite lace collars. The viewer can almost feel the crisp linen. In the van Miereveld, below, the intricacy of the lace is apparent. The Jan Cornelisz Verspronck at the left details the lace and the patterned damask dress.

How did the artists accomplish this?

In museums I have crept ever closer to see if I can determine the technique that so perfectly evokes the lace and fabric but looking closely, all I can see is blobs of paint and, seemingly, chaotic brushstrokes. At this point I usually see a guard moving determinedly in my direction so I back up, no clearer in my understanding than before.


I invoke this bit of art appreciation because it came to mind as I reached the bottom of page two of Helen Hemphill's new book, The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones. I had to stop reading in order to drive the entling somewhere and as I reluctantly set the book aside I found myself worrying about the young hero, Prometheus Jones. Was he going to get his money for breaking that horse? He sure was a cool customer facing down those loathsome Dill boys.

Wait a minute, I'm only on the second page of the story and I am totally and utterly committed to this young man and his predicament. How did Hemphill do that? Was it her use of verbs or adjectives? Prometheus hasn't even said that much yet, can it be his "voice?" Maybe it is my fondness for Westerns? How did she do it? How did she pull me in so quickly?

Well, however she accomplished it, I cheered, I gasped, I cried for fourteen year old Prometheus as he and his cousin Omer join a cattle drive headed to South Dakota. They plan to make the return trip to Texas with the outfit so Prometheus can look for his father there.

Prometheus has a gift for working with horses. He knows he has to prove himself to the cattle boss, even though the boss is surprisingly free of the prejudice that Prometheus and Omer have frequently experienced as young black men.

Cattle drives are hard work. Difficult river crossings, long hours in the saddle, snakes, stampedes and the threat of Indian attack mean cowboys are on constant alert. Prejudice and frontier justice are equally lethal as Prometheus discovers when he encounters some old enemies who are determined to have him hanged.

Hemphill's character, Sassy, from her book Runaround is a girl you want to hug. Prometheus is a young man whose hand you want to shake. His sense of fairplay, justice and loyalty is admirable and endearing.

In the author's note at the end of the book, Hemphill explains that her inspiration for this story was a 1907 autobiography of Nat Love, an African American cowboy who began working for cattle drives when he was fifteen years old. With Prometheus Jones, the author has honored Nat and cowboys everywhere.

The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones by Helen Hemphill, Front Street, (Nov.) 2008.

DVD: Slings and Arrows

Treebeard and I finished watching the first season of Slings and Arrows last night. I didn't know anything about the show but Mental Multi-Vitamin recommended it.

This jaw-dropping series from Canada originally aired in the USA on the Sundance channel. NPR billed it as a refuge for Sopranos-mourners. I never watched the Sopranos but I am drumming my fingers waiting for the next DVD of this series to get here from Netflix.

There are so many surprises and astonishing moments in the first six episodes that I almost hesitate to tell you anything about it because part of the delight of this show for me was having no idea what was coming next.

The basics, to pique your interest, (in case my recommendations and M-MV's are not enough) The New Burbage Festival has seen better days. Its productions of Shakespeare are stale, the director and actors are uninspired. When the company finds itself in need of a new artistic director, a former Burbage player, Geoffrey Tennant, reluctantly takes charge despite his history (he had a breakdown while onstage in the middle of Hamlet, years earlier) with the company.

Economic forces are constantly at odds with art. Actors' lives are messy and dramatic. Young movie stars (think Keanu Reeves/Orlando Bloom) seek growth and legitimacy through Shakespeare. There is language and sex (we watched it while the entling was a-promming) but if you let that put you off, you will miss moments like this:




Blast, it is Sunday. No mail delivery today.
... drum, drum, drum...

Waiting for Percy

It has been entling no. 3's and my tradition to buy our copy of the latest Percy Jackson book each year, at Blue Willow Bookshop. Four books ago, we were there with a small group of listeners while Rick Riordan talked about his new book, The Lightning Thief. We bought a copy and the entling disappeared for a few hours to read when we got home. When I finished the book the next day, I told Treebeard, "this man is a rock star" and the rest is history.

Since then, it has been a tradition for us to visit the bookstore and acquire signed copies for us and for the ent-nephew. Last year we dodged lightning bolts and crammed our way into the store which was wall-to-wall fans.

The times they are a-changing.

The next few weeks will mark several family milestones which will keep us hopping, one of which will take me out of town when Rockstar Rick Riordan is at Blue Willow.

Also (sob) the ent-nephew and his family are leaving the continent. He has a long airplane flight ahead of him so I want him to have the new book for the trip and I want him to have a signed copy to go with his others so I will buy his copy on May 6, the release day and the good people at the bookstore are going to ask RRR to sign a bookplate for him when he appears there on May 17.

My priorities may be a little wacky, forget the college graduation, how am I going to get my signed copies of Battle of the Labyrinth?

Percy and friends have made such an impact on the reading lives of the kids I know and work with. They have a real loyalty and love for this series, like an earlier generation did as it grew up with Harry Potter. This bit of news from RRR's blog made me smile:

My publicist emailed today to let me know that Percy Jackson & the Olympians will be #5 on the New York Times children's series bestseller list for next week (before Battle of the Labyrinth is published). Why is this significant? Because it marks fifty-two consecutive weeks that Percy Jackson has been on the bestseller list -- one full year.

This series has been a blessing for all of us.

Also, via Myth & Mystery, I loved the time this young reader put into this video.

Author: Stephenie Meyer

Interesting article, "Stephenie Meyer: A New J.K. Rowling?" in Time this week.
Journalist, Lev Grossman makes many on target observations about the Twilight series and Meyer's writing.

Meyer's books are full of gusting emotions. Bella never stops gasping and swooning and passing out and waking up screaming from nightmares. Her heart is always either pounding or stopping. (Bella's histrionics don't feel at all unrealistic. When you're writing about adolescents, melodrama and realism are the same thing.)


...and this bit...


There's no literary term for the quality Twilight and Harry Potter (and The Lord of the Rings) share, but you know it when you see it: their worlds have a freestanding internal integrity that makes you feel as if you should be able to buy real estate there

Her next book Breaking Dawn, will be out in August, 2008.

oh, as a personal aside:

Can the copy writers and headline thinker-uppers pu-leeeze STOP writing headlines like "Is [insert name of author here] the next J.K. Rowling?"

Iggy Peck, Architect

Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by David Roberts, Abrams, 2007

My first thought when I saw this book was how perfect it would be for the GT Architecture unit taught in my local school district. With humor and rhyme, Andrea Beaty describes young Iggy Peck, who has a passion for building even as a baby.

Young Iggy Peck is an architect
and has been since he was two,
when he built a great tower--in only an hour--
with nothing buy diapers and glue.

Nether his mother, the neighbors or his second grade teacher, fully appreciate his talent. Thankfully, his building zeal is not daunted by his teacher's displeasure and he figures out how to construct a new bridge from odds and ends when the old one collapses, and traps his class on an island.

The story rolls off the reader's tongue easily. Illustrator David Roberts has made canny use of quadrille paper for the background of the cover and title page.

Iggy's architectural efforts are familiar which is half the fun of this book. The tower he constructs out of stinky diapers is the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He creates Neuschwanstein from pieces of chalk. The St. Louis Arch is constructed from "pancakes and coconut pie" and he recreates the Sphinx from mud and dirt in his yard.

I also noted the book design is by Chad W. Beckerman who blogs at Mishaps and Adventures. I was already a fan of his work.

Whether you are introducing the concepts of architecture of just celebrating the urge to build, Iggy is a splendid little fellow and there is no doubt, he has a bright future a head of him as we are left with images such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, the Acropolis on the last pages.

Buy it for your library, now!

Threadless T-Shirts

My Threadless T-Shirt letter features a new design!
"Attack of Literacy"

NonFiction Monday: Now & Ben

Dewey: 609/.2


Now & Ben: the modern inventions of Benjamin Franklin by Gene Barretta, Henry Holt, 2006

As soon as the reader opens this book the endpapers display a timeline noting Franklin's numerous inventions and progressive ideas.

Barretta's opening illustration depicts Franklin's many roles as a writer, diplomat, printer, musician, postmaster humorist, scientist, inventor, traveler, philosopher, cartoonist, statesman inscribed on cobblestones while Ben stands framed in a style reminiscent of the one hundred dollar bill.

The book describes Franklin's inventions and ideas and depicts how those ideas are still in use in the present.

Experiments with lightning lead to the invention of the lightning rod. A store clerk uses the Grabber for grabbing a box of cereal that is out of reach, while on the opposing page Franklin uses his Long Arm to reach a book high on a shelf.

His See Far/See Near became today's bifocals and his improvements to fireplace design helped move smoke out of houses. He designed the first clock with a second hand and as the reader looks at a school bus driver checking the mileage on the odometer and we see Ben's odometer on a cart which was used while he was postmaster general to measure postal routes.

Barretta shares the information with humor. We see an alarm clock buzzing at 6 a.m. with the moon still high in sky while bleary eyed kids struggle to struggle to wake up. Franklin advocated the idea of daylight savings as a means to save candles and gain more daylight for farmers.

Benjamin Franklin is the Founding Father of choice to study in depth here in 5th grade. His extraordinary life lends itself to many areas of the curriculum. This is terrifically engaging nonfiction picture book that would be great fun to share with students.

Paris, je t'aime!

My Google homepage is dialed to a live cam image of the Eiffel Tower. I loved this photo of the sunrise on Feb. 2 because it was beautiful and the bands of color look like the French flag.
The Eiffel Tower was "born" on March 31, 1889 so it just had a birthday. It is a universally recognized symbol of Paris and la belle France.

Our neighbors just got back from a spring break in Paris but I haven't seen their pictures yet so I am going to indulge my inner French major now and take a trip to Paris through children's books.







Everybody Bonjours! by Leslie Kimmelman, illustrated by Sarah McMenemy. Knopf, 2008.

This book (livre) est tout à fait charmant.
On the title page we see a family packing for a vacation and arriving at the airport. A little girl lets her teddy bear listen to the headphones on the plane. As they arrive at their hotel, the text begins:

When in Paris...
everybody bonjours.
From shores.
In stores.
On guided tours.
Everybody bonjours!

We follow the family down the Seine, through the Louvre, up the Tour Eiffel and down into the Metro. The story has a nice rhythm that swings along with the page turns. The book won my complete devotion though, when I arrived at the text, "batter pouring," with a picture of the family buying a crêpe sucrée from a street vendor. I will have mine , avec Grand Marnier, s'il vous plait.

Identifiable Paris landmarks are featured on each page but McMenemy has been subtle. I know our young tourist is visiting Notre Dame because of the view and the gargoyles. She watches a street musician performing with the Pompidou in the background.
Each illustration features a little mouse (shades of Goodnight Moon) which is fun to look for.

The endpapers display a map of Paris and various landmarks. There is a splendid "Out and About in Paris" at the end of the book, with thumbnail drawings and a brief description of each locale.




Anatole by Eve Titus, pictures by Paul Galdone, Knopf, originally published 1956.

Titus wrote a series of Anatole books, including Anatole and the Cat, Anatole Over Paris and Anatole and the Piano.

Anatole is a Parisian mouse who loves his wife and six children but does not want to steal food to feed them, he wants to earn it. He has the idea of providing critiques to the Duvall Cheese Factory in exchange for the cheese he takes. As a mouse, he knows cheese and his discerning palate results in more sales for the cheese company and food for Anatole's family. Paul Galdone's distinctive style and tri color scheme is still engaging and fresh.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the series, Random House has reissued the first two books in the series, both Caldecott honor books.




Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

The adventures of the courageous little Madeline who poo-poos the tiger at the zoo and proudly displays her appendicitis scar. This classic story, set in Paris, evokes the city in every way thanks to Bemelmans's loose and sketchy illustrations .



Honk!: The Story of a Prima Swanerina by Pamela Duncan Edwards, illustrated by Henry Cole, Hyperion, 2000.

When a ballet crazy swan named Mimi, sees a production of Swan Lake from the ledge of the Paris Opera House she is determined to join the corps de ballet. Mimi is undeterred by failure and when she finally makes it onstage, she is a hit! I always love reading this story and sharing photos of the actual Palais Garnier. Henry Cole depicts the famous theater from the famous grand staircase to the stage door.




Eloise in Paris by Kay Thompson, drawings by Hilary Knight, 1957

Eloise is on her way to Paris with "Nahnee." Their preparations are classic Eloise mayhem. She embraces Paris with joie de vivre. Her favorite word is pas de quoi. Originally published in 1957, Eloise encounters Christian Dior and Yves Sain Laurent as she is measured for couture clothing. They visit the Louvre, Versailles, picnic in the Bois de Boulogne and dine at Maxim's. Hilary Knight captures Paris from the cafe awnings -- Aux Deux Magots to the Arc de Triomphe.

I loved the Franglais that flows across every page. It sounds like the way I speak French nowadays.

Il y a beaucoup de sights to see
for instance you can go to the Eiffel Tower
it is absolutely large and rawther high
so I always tie my binoculaires
to my head in this breez and go up sideways.

Oohh-la-la!