Seabiscuit (Race horse)--1930-1940.

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, 2001
I have worried and suspected that I had lost my ability to read "grown up" books. Children's books are usually so well written that my eyes and mind slip through the pages easily and with great enjoyment.

When the movie Seabiscuit arrived at theaters I saw and enjoyed the film. People told me they had not liked the movie as much as the book. Not having read it, I did not fully appreciate their comments or passion. Now I have read Seabiscuit.

This book is a triumph for Laura Hillenbrand. Her writing is compelling and beautiful. She draws fine portraits of Charles Howard, Red Pollard, Tom Smith and Seabiscuit himself. Through her artful storytelling the reader sees the horse’s personality as clearly as the other players in the tale.

Now, Book Moot website is devoted to children's and young adult literature. Seabiscuit was NOT written for children but parts of the story beg to be read aloud to the family.

Hillenbrand's reenactment of the match race with War Admiral must be the most exciting eleven pages I have ever read. The tension, the anticipation, the fear, the cheers and pandemonium of the crowd are brilliantly crafted. As a reader, I was there, in the mind of trainer Tom Smith. I was then seeing the race through the eyes of the jockey, George Woolf, who, interestingly, suffered from Type 1 diabetes. Finally, I was shrieking deliriously with the crowd as the horses pounded around the track.

This amazing book will go on my absolute favorite-books-of-all-time list. What a stunning achievement!



There are books about this remarkable horse for young readers. I am dying to get my hands on Seabiscuit vs War Admiral: The Greatest Horse Race in History by Kat Shehata, illustrated by Jo McElwee. There is also A Horse Named Seabiscuit (All Aboard Reading. Station Stop 3) and Come on Seabiscuit! by by Ralph Moody, Robert Riger.
I have Seabiscuit Fever!

2000 Year Old Man Goes to School

Things that make me go hmmm...
Business Wire reports:

HarperCollins Children's Books announced today that it has acquired world rights to publish The 2000 Year Old Man Goes to School by award-winning comedians, actors, writers and directors Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.

The 2000 Year Old Man Goes to School stars Brooks' and Reiner's classic character, the 2000 Year Old Man, created while working on Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows" with Reiner as an interviewer and Brooks an old-timer born in 40 B.C. In this hilarious picture book version pitched for young school children, the 2000 Year Old Man comes to a classroom for an unforgettable show-and-tell exhibit. Through a question and answer session with the children in the class, the 2000 Year Old Man shares his worldly wisdom on everything from what school lunches were like in the Stone Age (terrible--you had to catch your food before you could eat it!), to how he did his homework (he had to literally build a home!), to how he got around (Fear! When a sabre tooth tiger was after him it made him move very quickly!).
"We are thrilled to be publishing two of the greatest comic geniuses and have the opportunity to introduce children to this world renowned character," said Jackson

Banned Books Week

September 26-October 2, 2004 is Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association and the American Booksellers Association. It is a week to ponder the freedom to read and celebrate printed ideas that are unconventional, even unorthodox. In countries like Cuba, citizens are denied free access to books and information. For more information on that subject visit The Friends of Cuban Libraries website.

The issue of what is appropriate for children to read has been a point of debate since ...well...the publication of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan (1678).

Parents can and should "steward" their family's reading choices (although if a child really has the "reading bug" it might be safer to just stand back.) If a library book is not a good fit for their family, just take it back.

Kelly Milner Halls of The Denver Post has a thoughtful article addressing the issues of reading and censorship.

Author Chris Crutcher has been writing books for high school readers for many years. His book Whale Talk was the subject of a challenge in Fowlerville, Mich.

Said Crutcher, a family therapist in Washington, "you do not, as an adult, have to like the story or agree with its messages to have a valuable conversation with your children. I think we put ourselves in a tough position as adults when we refuse to hear our kids' stories in their native tongue."

...and remember, public libraries serve the p-u-b-l-i-c.

The gap between opposing camps may seem expansive, but Douglas Public Library District director Jamie LaRue, who has lost only one of the 200 challenges he's fielded, believes bridging ideologies is often a matter of thoughtful communication, not battle lines.

"These people are not our enemies," LaRue says. "They are using the library. They are encouraging their children to use the library. They are paying attention to what their kids read. They are even going out of their way to talk to a public institution."

He adopts a candid approach when a parent questions his collection. "I often ask the parents if their children will grow up to live in a real and sometimes dangerous world," he says. "Then I ask, 'Where do you want your child to encounter this subject for the first time - at home while he can still talk to you, or out on the street?"'

By addressing the core concern, which he insists is protecting the people they love, LaRue attains the impossible - compromise.

Jamie Lee Curtis interview

Jamie Lee Curtis has a new book out, It's Hard to Be Five: Learning How to Work My Control Panel. She is a "celebrity author" who actually has a gift for writing for children. The National Post has an interview with her.
The ideas for her books evolve because "she's a very sharp listener, and the conversations she overhears are the basis for her best-selling children's books."

AP: Are your six children's books entertaining storybooks or morality tales?

Curtis: Someone referred to them the other day as self-help books for kids. It would be obnoxious if I coined the phrase, but it was a lovely compliment and I took it.

When asked about the celebrity author children's book trend she answered:

Curtis: (When I started) I hadn't done True Lies yet, so the biggest success I'd had at that point was A Fish Called Wanda, and although it was a big success, I was not a big celebrity or a media darling on any level, I was a very low-level movie actor who'd had a little success.

Charlie Bone

Charlie Bone and the Invisible Boy by Jenny Nimmo, 2004
When I first encountered these books at a book fair I assumed they were Harry Potter wanna-be's. As I read the first one, Midnight for Charlie Bone, I was completely engaged by the story and could see the potential in the characters and storyline. The second book, Charlie Bone and the Time Twister did not disappoint me and the third one was a delight to read.

Charlie "with his eager and often clumsy attempts to help people" continues to find out more about his family history. At school, his friends, Emma, Tancred, Olivia, Gabriel, and Lysander are determined to help Ollie Sparks, a student who "disappeared" but might be living in the attics of Bloor's Academy. Their kind art teacher Mr. Boldova has a personal interest in their quest and they receive help from Cook and surprisingly the spy Billy Raven. Has Billy changed his stripes for good?

The question my nephew asks, "Why are Charlie's aunts so mean?" remains unanswered.

Scholastic has a website with puzzles and trivia questions about the series.

The Westing Game

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, 1978
I don't know why it has taken me so long to get to this book. I think I was inspired by a group of 6th graders who were checking out mysteries. Two of them had selected The Westing Game and it made me realize I had never read it. What an engrossing story! This book won the 1979 John Newbery Medal for distinguished writing for children from the American Library Association, the 1978 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Best Fiction for Children, and the 1979 Banta Award for writing excellence in a general literary competition of the Wisconsin Library Association.

I tend to be a very passive mystery reader and I go along and enjoy the plot. Sometimes I can guess the solution but usually I am content to follow the story to the end when all is revealed. From the first page of this book I was totally engaged and trying to decipher the clues and pondering the suspects. If you have not joined the Westing Game, grab a copy today and get reading. You will enjoy it.

A wonderful tribute to Ellen Raskin is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison website. They also have the manuscript to the book available online with an audiofile of Rasking talking about her book.

Ellen Raskin often remarked during her career that she wished she had known "where children's books come from" while she was a young UW-Madison art student. She wanted to make it possible for future UW-Madison students to see something of the creative process of writing a manuscript, the editorial process and matters concerning page and jacket design, decisions concerning the selection of the typeface, and many other details about creating a children's book.

...we are pleased to be able to help fulfill the author's dream of making the manuscript more widely accessible by showing portions of it on the CCBC's web page and by webcasting the original audiotape that Ellen Raskin recorded at the CCBC on May 2, 1978. These pages have been designed so you can listen to Raskin's words while you view the corresponding parts of the manuscript. Brief explanatory notes also accompany each section so that you can learn what Raskin said about each portion if you are unable to listen to the archived audiotape.

Letters about Literature

My readng friends need to enter The Center for the Book's Letters about Literature reading and writing program. Go to the program link to print a copy of the entry coupon. The deadline is December 4, 2004.

To enter, readers write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre-- fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic, explaining how that author's work changed the student's way of thinking about the world or themselves. There are three competition levels: Level I for children in grades 4 through 6; Level II for grades 7 and 8, and Level III, grades 9 - 12. Winners receive cash awards at the national and state levels.

You can choose any kind of book, a picture book, a novel, an informational book...I know some amazing and thoughtful readers. I hope they will put their thoughts on paper and enter.

Misc. cool stuff

This is a sweet comic about librarians and libraries from Frazz by Jef Mallett.
An interesting music video from Röyksopp, "Remind Me" Melody A.M. Directed by: Ludoeic Hoplan & Hervé Crécy about living in an "information age."
both tips via Jack Stephens at Conservator

The Internet: a drowning pool?

Excellent article, "The Internet: Is it student lifesaver or drowning pool?" by Ryan Quinn in the North Adams Transcript on college libraries. Please read the WHOLE thing.

He quotes the Pew Internet and the American Life Project from two years ago that indicated college students were more likely to use the internet than the college library. Happily, that trend seems to be changing according to Rebecca Ohm, a reference librarian at Sawyer Library at Williams College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.

"Libraries are at the forefront of using technology," she said, eager to demonstrate how the library's Web site made it easier for students to search the dozens of indexes and databases that the college subscribes to electronically. "It can seem daunting," she admitted of the amount of information available. But this may be the very reason students now seek out library resources, which, unlike Web pages, are catalogued for easy access.

A Williams art history major from Schenectady, N.Y., who declined to give her name, said the library has become easier to use than Internet because she can search databases of scholarly journals to locate the full text articles she needs for research projects. And if she gets stuck, she asks a librarian for help. And that, Ohm insists, is what librarians are there for.

"That's why I went into this profession," she said. To help students, and also to expose them to the research tools that they might not be aware of. Ohm said she was appalled when she heard a student had purchased an old article from the New York Times' Web site for $2.95. The library at Williams, she said, has the Times archived electronically back to the 1800s -- all of it free of charge.

I always warned my students...

"Anyone can put up a site and publish whatever they want," he said. He encourages his students to use the library, where they have easy access to "refereed" or "peer reviewed" articles, articles that have endured blind readings by board members of a scholarly journal to ensure quality. Students reported that some professors did not allow them to use a Web site as a source in their research, and almost all said they thought their professors preferred them to use the library.

I am mailing a copy of this article to both of my college kids.

Author: Daniel Handler

The Toronto Star has an article on author Daniel Handler today.

The name Handler is hardly household yet, but it's a good bet, particularly if you hang around any remotely bookish kids age eight and up, that you've heard of his nom de plume — Lemony Snicket. As Snicket, Handler is the wicked genius behind what would be the hands-down most successful Kids Lit franchise of our time, if it weren't for that kid at Hogwart's.

The article discusses Handler's musical ability including his instrument of choice: the accordion.

The more dulcet tones of Handler's accordion can be heard on 69 Love Songs, the 1999 breakout album by the New York-based ensemble The Magnetic Fields — Snicket-appropriate song titles on the album include ... "No One Will Ever Love You" and "I'm Sorry I Love You" — and the instrument is also his main accomplice during his riotous, side-splitting "readings" on book tours.
...His own bands, from garage school days on, had such names as The Edith Head Trio (one Head song was titled "The Donner Party Tango," alluding to the infamous 19th-century pioneers who turned to cannibalism) and, more gratifying to Canadian ears, The Zambonis.