Fun to follow the epic battle between Snow White and Bilbo Baggins raging in a hashtag war now on Twitter for the  MTV Movie Award for Best Hero 2013. 

Here is the reason to #votebilbo

Falcon

Falcon
by Tim Jessell, Random House, 2012.
ISBN: 9780375868665

Breathtaking vistas and views greet the reader as an imagined flight of a falcon  sweeps them from the plains through mountain heights, over oceans and cliffs to a city-scape where a skyscraper becomes the falcon's eyrie.  Jessell's landscapes spread over two pages and evoke wind and sky and majesty from the falcon's point of view.  The child's imagination takes the falcon to the city where it dives towards people on the sidewalk and swoops away.  Jessell's landscapes and realism is fresh and welcome. 

His website gives an overview of his work and a look at his process for sketching and painting. 

Tim Jessell website

TED Talk -- Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Jarrett J. Krosoczka writes books that kids connect with on so many levels, through his artwork, his humor, his understanding of childhood.  When I am asked for a recommendation from a parent going in to a classroom to read, I want to give them a sure fire hit. I give them a Krosoczka picture book. 

I did not think I could be a bigger fan girl but now I've viewed his TED talk.

Krosoczka's TED talk should be a must view for everyone.

Sadness: Thomas Locker

I just learned that the wonderful Thomas Locker died this year in March, 2012.  This is the Publishers Weekly obit for him.  I feel as if I've lost a friend.   At some point over all these years, I should have written him and let him know how much I admired his artwork.

I love Locker's books.  For years I've marked his books at "required" for library start-up collections and added his titles to  acquisitions lists for established libraries.  I realize now that I own very few in my personal library.

His landscapes showed such a reverence for the majesty of the natural world. PW likened his work to 19th-century Hudson River School of painting. His work also evoked the English painter, John Constable and the great Dutch painter,  Jacob van Ruisdael.  His brooding Dutch skies in The Boy Who Held Back the Sea are a direct homage to van Ruidael.


For science connections his Cloud Dance is an exquisite rendering of the hydrological cycle (water cycle) as is Mountain Dance which depicts the rock cycle.

 His pairing with Jean-Craighead-George produced the lovely To Climb a Waterfall taking the reader on a climb up the Hudson River Valley's Kaaterskill Falls.

I always add Sky Tree to lists of books for my art teachers.  Each page is a study of the same tree during all seasons and at different times of the day.  It is breathtaking.

I feel a little poorer today and I have a new set of books to start collecting for my personal library.

I Like Old Clothes

With the pending arrival of the first grand-entling, I am once again regarding picture books with an eye to snuggle-up reading and inclusion in the best library a grand-entling could dream of.  I've put down the knitting needles here to look at some that delight me.

I Like Old Clothes
by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrations by Patrice Barton, Knopf, 2012. ISBN: 9780375869518

Hoberrman's words exult the hand-me-down and rejoice at the charity thrift store find.

"Clothes with a history, Clothes with a mystery"

Patrice Barton has re-imagined Hoberman's original 1976 version of this book with softly washed pictures "using pencil sketches and mixed media, assembled and painted digitally." The illustrations seem to appear on a background of "old clothes."  Fabric textures, prints, plaids and buttons serve as a backdrop for children who are playing dress-up and using old socks for hand puppets. There is no stigma to used sweaters or shirts here. Old clothes upgrade to  "vintage' in the hands of these junior fashion-istas.  Lovely.

Patrice Barton, illustrator website

Jack Gantos Newbery Speech 2012

The reviews from in the hall were true.

So very Gantos.  Highlights "the slippery lives of Newbery winners" including Will James and others.  He also announces that Daniel Radcliffe has purchased the rights to Hole in My Life.  
Daniel as Jack???

Revisiting Harry Potter

As a girl, I wore out the binding and covers to many books on my childhood bookshelves by frequently re-reading my favorite books. There are members of my family who read Lord of the Rings annually. The exhausted, almost non-existant binding of entling no. 3's copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 1) is the stuff of family legend and lore.

As what passes for a grown up now though, I rarely revisit a book. Too many books so little time, as the saying goes.

To my surprise, I have spent my summer listening to Jim Dale's readings of the Harry Potter books. It began early in the summer with an inability to settle on a book to read. I started many, only finished and enjoyed a few. I have a summer book club assignment to read George Eliot's Middlemarch, which I am over a third of the way through and enjoying but...

I felt an overwhelming desire to visit with Harry, Hermione and Ron again.  I have joined Pottermore but have not invested much time there to understand it.  I re-read the books in a sporadic fashion over the years, usually prompted by the pending release of a new volume in the series or in preparation for a  movie's premier. I have never worked all the way through from book one to book seven before. That is what I did this summer. The experience rewarded me with new insight into the story arc overall, renewed feelings of love and kinship for the characters and awareness of details and events that I overlooked or forgot from my previous readings.

As I read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) I chuckled over the Ministry of Magic's preparations for the Quidditch World Cup while I was also hearing about the difficulties of running the Olympic Games in London. The lighting of the Olympic flame happened as the Goblet of Fire kicked off the Tri-Wizard Tournament.  I found new thought provoking links to my faith in the stories that did not have the same meaning to me in my previous reads.

As I listened I found myself marveling at how timely and timeless Rowling's themes are. I was struck anew at how much I enjoyed the movies but how some of the movie's shortcuts and images had overwritten the books in my imagination. Even though I was only listening to the books I found Mary GrandPré's iconic illustrations coming to mind at different points.

As I finished the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)I found myself quite content with its place in the narrative. It had seemed oddly tacked on the first time I read the book but today I was perfectly happy with every aspect of it. As I listened to the last sentences about Severus Snape and Harry's scar I enjoyed that happy experience of a book making me cry.

Even though I continue to circulate the books to students at the different school libraries where I work, I have wondered if Harry's story will continue to call to readers without the media buzz, the midnight bookstore events and movie celebrations that were such a part of my family's life over the years.,  My experience this summer has assured me that Rowling created something classic and timeless and fine with these books. Like Tolkien, the stories hold up to re-reading and bless the reader with new insights and experiences along the way.

The False Prince

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen. Scholastic, 2012

This book will be one of my you-must-read-this recommendations when school starts this fall.
Part Prisoner of Zenda, part Count of Monte Cristo, The False Prince is a grand adventure that kept me listening continuously and avidly.  Nielsen has written an old fashioned tale of revenge, conspiracy, mysterious identity and betrayal.  The book works as a stand alone story but will be part of a planned Ascendance Trilogy. For the audio version that I listened to, narrator Charlie McWade provided a competent performance and kept the story moving along.

Thirteen year old Sage is an orphan, a thief and a smart mouth who has learned his street smarts the hard way. A conniving noble named Connor acquires him from the orphanage and along with three other youths from around the country, sets out to teach them the skills they will need to impersonate the long lost prince of the realm.  Knowing that the young prince is dead, lost at sea, Connor seeks to place an impersonator that he can control on the throne. He maintains that he is a patriot and trying to save the country from civil war.  Only one of the boys can go forward as the heir so the boys are pitted against each other to earn the spot. To lose the contest though means death for the others as the secret can never get out. To win has its own dangers because if the false prince is discovered he will be guilty of treason.

Sage is caught up in a game of politics, power and intrigue. There is no magic in this world, no ring of power, no invisibility cloak to help him. This is a story that echoes Robert Louis Stevenson more than JKRowling.

Great fun.

Robot Zombie Frankenstein!

Robot Zombie Frankenstein! by Annette Simon.  Candlewick Press, 2012

As a child of a certain decade, I remember ColorForms.  I see there is a anniversary edition of the toy available.  There is even an app for iThing users.  I hold the original version of the toy develops a sense of shape and color.  Young imaginations were enhanced and fine motor skills are enhanced as the plastic shapes were carefully peeled and applied to the shiny surface.

Annette Simon's mixes that same spirit of creativity with her imaginative use of shapes, vivid color and popular themes. The end papers offer a menu of the shapes that will be deployed in what at first seems a very simple narrative.  Robots made up of squares, triangles, rectangles, ovals, circles and crescents morph into zombie robot, then Frankenstein robot then pirate robot.  Add in a pie and a fork and there is an opportunity for the two robots to share some delicious pie.

There are so many ways to use this book in a school library or classroom or art class.  Shape identification, colors, build your own robot, friendship, sharing, collage are just some of the ways I can envision using this title.

This is going in my Go bag for this new school year. What a deliciously entertaining book.

Movie: The Leaf Men

It appears William Joyce's The Leaf Men has experienced an interesting journey to the big screen including a title change. It now called Epic.

Lovely trailer!