News

I love these: minimalist posters of children's classic.  I think Little Red Ridinghood is my favorite, followed by The Pied Piper.  From BrainPickings.

Well, this makes me sad:  Two-thirds of parent's never read to their babies.  Read to you children!  From The Guardian.

The secret subversiveness of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.  From The American Prospect.

Frog and Toad is going to be an animated movie.  It's from The Jim Henson Company, so maybe it will be OK?  From kidsscreen.

Carnegie medal winners Patrick Ness and Jim Kay talk about how they worked together on A Monster Calls without ever meeting.  From The Guardian.

A 12-year-old girl from Plymouth is half way to her goal of collecting a million gently used books for needy children.  Rock on, kid.  From Star News.

Children's books that look death in the eye.  From io9.

Lost tributes of The Hunger Games.  From The Huffington Post.

Patrica Polacco's In Our Mother's House was banned from a school in Utah.  From SLJ.

South Korea removes textbooks that teach evolution.  From Scientific America.

10  most terrifying children's books from around the world.  From Flavorwire.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine to spotlight an upcoming release that we're excited about. This week I'm waiting on The Crown of Ember by Rae Carson.

In the sequel to the acclaimed The Girl of Fire and Thorns, a seventeen-year-old princess turned war queen faces sorcery, adventure, untold power, and romance as she fulfills her epic destiny.

Elisa is the hero of her country. She led her people to victory against a terrifying enemy, and now she is their queen. But she is only seventeen years old. Her rivals may have simply retreated, choosing stealth over battle. And no one within her court trusts her-except Hector, the commander of the royal guard, and her companions. As the country begins to crumble beneath her and her enemies emerge from the shadows, Elisa will take another journey. With a one-eyed warrior, a loyal friend, an enemy defector, and the man she is falling in love with, Elisa crosses the ocean in search of the perilous, uncharted, and mythical source of the Godstone's power. That is not all she finds. A breathtaking, romantic, and dangerous second volume in the Fire and Thorns trilogy. (Summary from Goodreads)

I really enjoyed the first book of this, and am quite excited to see where Rae Carson takes the story. The Crown of Embers comes out Sept. 18.

Origin by Jessica Khoury

Pia has grown up isolated in the scientific compound of Little Cam in the middle of a jungle.  Pia is immortal, the product of the scientists research.  All Pia wants is to be able to join the Immortis team and help to create other like herself.  But when Pia has a chance to explore the jungle and meets a boy named Eio, she begins to wonder what else is out there in the world she doesn't know about.  And then she learns that the Immortis project has a dark side she never imagined.

This essentially was a supernatural romance, but we've replaced the supernatural part with science fiction.  Well, sort of science.  Pia will never age past 20, her skin is impenetrable and she isn't susceptible to any diseases.  I had questions about this, like "can she drown?"  "It's not so much that she's immortal, but that her aging process is in stasis."  "Am I thinking too hard about the science part of this?"  Anyway, Pia has never been outside the fence and then she gets outside the fence and guess who the first person is she bumps into?  A beautiful boy she feels drawn too.

News

Catching up with Jack Gantos.  From the New York Times.

Um, this is amazing.  JK Rowling plans 40ft high adventure treehouse for children in her backyard.   From Mail Online.

Interesting article about the "timelessness" of children's books.  From The Guardian.

23 terrifying movie adaptations of children's books.  From cracked.com.

Oh thank goodness!  Twilight Saga reboot denied by Lionsgate.  From The Guardian.

Remembering Sally Ride.  From PW.

Was Harry Potter a socialist?  Like we needed to give people another reason to ban Harry Potter.  From The Huffington Post.

Have I mentioned how much I love Neil Gaiman?  I love him.  Here's the transcript of 7 year-old Neil Gaiman being interviewed by the BBC about Scientology.  I think he kind of looked like Michael Phelps as a teenager. From The Village Voice.

Why don't Dr. Seuss books make good movies?  Duh.  Because the movie people won't leave them alone.  From The Guardian.

Also from The Guardian, The Hunger Games made archery cool.


7 video games that would make great books.  From PW.

Time out.  James Joyce wrote a children's book?  Does it have any punctuation?  From Yellow Brick Reads.

Drama by Raina Telgemeier

Callie's passion is the theater.  She and her friends are the devoted stage crew of Eucalyptus Middle School.  Callie will do whatever she has to to make sure the sets are beyond perfect.  Sometimes it's hard

Loved.  Totally adorable.  So sweet I want to snuggle it.  Especially if you were ever a theater kid, whether on stage or off, it will be such fun to read this.  But even if you're not, you'll still enjoy it because it's about boy issues and friend issues and growing up.

Callie and her friends are a delightful rainbow of multiculturalism.  It isn't mention in anyway, it just is.  They're just a bunch of kids, of a variety of different ethic and cultural backgrounds and sexual preferences and they all hang out and accept each other, because why wouldn't they?  Awesome.

I must say, these are some seriously talented middle school kids.  My middle school theater productions were nowhere near as professional.  And the students are pretty much doing it all themselves, from sewing the costumes to designing the sets.  Sometimes it was hard to believe they were 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, but then, I also wasn't kissing boys in middle school. 

Callie is awesome.  She knows her passion and nothing will get in her way.  She loves theater and wants to be a set designer.  She's already pretty good at it, and will go to no end to make her vision come true.  She also has bad luck with boys.  Her first crush, her friend Matt's older brother Greg, kisses her then ignores her and gets back together with his old girlfriend.  The Callie falls for someone who may not be into girls.  Callie goes through a lot of frustration, and even a few tears, but she shows her true awesomeness by the end.  She not only rejects Greg when he asks her to be his girlfriend (after his girlfriend breaks up with him) but she ends the story without a boyfriend and  totally cool with it.  I love you Callie!

Since this was an ARC, it isn't in full color yet, but it's done in Raina's signature sweet style.  I loved Callie's little brother.  Raina perfectly captured the exuberance of an annoying little brother with a million questions.  Raina can give her characters so much personality, with just a few freckles or a signature hairstyle.

So it was fabulous.  MAKE SURE  to get this for your library when it comes out, which will be September 1, 2012.

Pizza, Love, and Other Stuff That Made Me Famous by Kathryn Williams

Sophie Nicolaides has grown up in the kitchen of her family's Greek-Italian restaurant.  Sophie dreams of becoming a chef, and she might get her chance sooner than she thought when she enters to compete on a reality TV teen cooking contest.   But the contest is not what Sophie was expecting.  Is having her life exposed worth the possible reward?

This was fast, fun and sweet.  It's good to have nice books.  Nothing terrible happens, nothing overly sexy besides a few kisses.  A little bit of friendship and relationship drama and it all ends happily.  Delightful!

Sophie wants to have a real restaurant, not a family restaurant like her father owns.  Sophie wants to be a chef, not just a cook.  This is something that her father doesn't really understand.  Sticking with family means everything to him, and he doesn't understand why Sophie would want something different.

Sophie has a crush on (of course) her best guy friend Alex.  But when she goes to Napa for the competition at the National Culinary Academy she meets a dashing French student named Luc who gets her all confused!  What's a girl to do?  It doesn't help, of course, that Sophie's every move is being filmed and broadcast.

Sophie and her fellow competitors are shocked, shocked when they realize they're being manipulated by the show's producers to heighten the drama.  Come on kids, have you never seen a reality TV show?  Surely you didn't believe that's all happening naturally?  Do you?  This is why we need to teach media literacy, folks.

I think this would be a great pick for a middle school girl who liked books like The Tea Shop Girls or The Mother-Daughter Book Club.

I am NOT pleased to see that covers where the girl's head is cut off are making a comeback.


Pizza, Love, and Other Stuff That Made Me Famous comes out August 21, 2012.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking the Spine to spotlight an upcoming release that we're excited about. This week I'm waiting on The Peculiar by Stefan Bachmann.

 Bartholomew Kettle won't live long. Changelings never do. The child of a human mother and a faery father, Bartholomew is a secret, despised by both his races. If the English don't hang him for witchcraft, the faerys will do something worse. So his mother keeps him locked away, hidden from the world in the faery slums of Bath.

But one day Bartholomew witnesses a mysterious lady kidnap another changeling through a shadowy portal, and he realizes the danger is closer than ever before. Changelings are surfacing in the rivers, their bodies empty of blood and bone and their skin covered in red markings. A powerful figure sits in the shadows, pushing the pieces in place for some terrible victory. When a sinister faery in a top-hat begins to stalk Bartholomew's steps, he knows it's his turn. Something is coming for him. Something needs him. But when you're a changeling there's no where to run...

The Peculiar come out September 18, 2012.