NOON, 22ND CENTURY. The research vessel Pegasus is getting ready for liftoff from a spaceport near Moscow. Its small crew of three comprises interplanetary zoologist Dr. Seleznev, his adventurous nine-year-old daughter Alisa, and the terminally pessimistic Captain Zeleny. As they search for rare animal specimens to expand the Moscow zoo's collection, they will discover which of the ferocious
tigerat's two tails is longer, save a planet of
robots from a paralyzing epidemic, and deliver a modestly sized
birthday cake.
[more inside]
posted by Nomyte
on Jul 8, 2011 -
24 comments
Glee's Chris Colfer is writing a children's book. The Land of Stories, aimed at middle grade readers, will
come out next year. He joins
many other famous folks who have decided to write for younger readers.
Perez Hilton is doing one. Madonna's done
many. Even the "stars" of Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice
got in on the kidlit craze. Of course, many of these authors
don't actually write the books they publish. Even if/when they do, many readers find the results underwhelming.
"If you are looking for the next Beatrix Potter or Maurice Sendak, you will not find it here," claimed the Guardian. There are
exceptions, but it seems that for a lot of celebrities, literature for children has become merely another form of
brand extension. Author, Adam Rex has countered with "
An Open Letter to Everyone Who Thinks it Must be Easy, Writing Kid's Books" Or, as
EB White said, "You have to write up to children, not down..."
posted by cal71
on Jun 9, 2011 -
31 comments
‘Everyone is a worker.’ That is a powerful statement, if you think about it. Richard Scarry wasn’t afraid to paint contemporary American society in such bold strokes. Nor was he afraid to explain commerce and capitalism to children. -
What Do People Do All Day.
posted by Artw
on May 4, 2011 -
34 comments
Vintage dinosaur books. Those of a certain age likely discovered dinosaurs in the pages of one of these books in their grade-school library. I'm almost sure that
this one was my first (but I remember the cover being black instead of red), and that
this was my second. Does anybody remember
this one? Or
this?
posted by e-man
on Feb 9, 2010 -
41 comments
"To really write for children, you have to think like a child. And to read a children’s book, you probably have to let go of grown-up reasoning. These thoughts occurred to me as I read two newly-translated books about Tintin and his creator, Georges Remi, better known to the world as Hergé. (The pen name is composed of Remi’s initials backwards, pronounced as in French.) There is much to be learned from these studies and others by “Tintinologists”—about Hergé, about the “world” of Tintin, even about twentieth-century politics. But as I read Pierre Assouline’s well-written biography of Hergé and Jean-Marie Apostolidès’s erudite study of the Tintin books, a version of the question we Jews love to ask kept coming to mind:
Are they good for Tintin?" A review of
The Metamorphoses of Tintin or Tintin for Adults by Jean-Marie Apostolides and
Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline at
The New Republic.
posted by ocherdraco
on Feb 4, 2010 -
17 comments
Ursula Nordstrom—the "
Maxwell Perkins of the Tot Department"—was, from 1940 to 1973, head of the Department of Books for Boys and Girls at the New York publisher Harper & Row, and until 1979 had her own imprint there, Ursula Nordstrom Books. A
legendary editor known to her authors as UN, she published the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak (whom she is credited with discovering) and,
to not a little controversy, E. B. White (
previously). One of "the last generation of devoted letter writers," she wrote
nearly 100,000 during her five decade career at Harper, of which 300 of the most amusing, acerbic, and illuminating are collected in
Dear Genius by Leonard S. Marcus, the first hundred pages of which
can be read at the Harper website.
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Jan 6, 2010 -
8 comments
If you have kids, you almost certainly have at least one of the
'I Spy' books, or something from the
'Can You See What I See?' series on your home bookshelf. Created by artist/photographer Walter Wick, the books have page after page of images filled with astonishing amounts of detail, including any number of objects for the kids to find.
Wick's website has
dozens of pages taking us behind the scenes, showing us how many of these wonderful photos were created, many involving the construction of
incredibly detailed models that are used for just a single shot. The
Impossible Columns is perhaps my favourite.
posted by woodblock100
on Dec 10, 2009 -
17 comments
From October 1972 to October 1973 a controversy over
Roald Dahl's
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory simmered in the pages of
The Horn Book. It began with an article, "McLuhan, Youth, and Literature", by
Eleanor Cameron, author of the
Mushroom Planet series for children and of
The Green and Burning Tree: On the Writing and Enjoyment of Children's Books. Spread out over the
October,
December, and
February issues, it tied the ideas of
Marshall McLuhan (
The Medium is the Massage) to the confection of
Charlie, calling it "one of the most tasteless books ever written for children":
"The more I think about Charlie and the character of Willy Wonka and his factory, the more I am reminded of McLuhan’s coolness, the basic nature of his observations, and the kinds of things that excite him. Certainly there are several interesting parallels between the point of view of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and McLuhan’s 'theatrical view of experience as a production or stunt,' as well as his enthusiastic conviction that every ill of mankind can easily be solved by subservience to the senses."
What followed was a knock-down, drag-out, letter-writing brouhaha, refereed by
Horn Book editor
Paul Heins, with librarians, parents, teachers,
Ursula K. Le Guin, and
Roald Dahl himself joining in, and it was one of the main causes of the book's
revision that year.
[more inside]
posted by ocherdraco
on Oct 15, 2009 -
68 comments
Neil Gaiman's latest work,
The Graveyard Book, is a kind of undead Jungle Book, with a man-child being raised by various ghosts and ghouls rather than animals. He's been the whole thing a chapter at a time on each stop of his American promotional
tour, and posting the
videos online (and
blogging about it of course), which means that with tonights reading the entire thing will be available online.
posted by Artw
on Oct 8, 2008 -
38 comments
My Beautiful Mommy is a children's book for children whose mothers suddenly come home from the doctor with giant hooters, or significant amounts of fat suddenly missing. A
bold new market in childrens publishing awaits.
posted by jonson
on Apr 18, 2008 -
66 comments
Asterix gets political. After over four decades of defending his lone holdout village from Roman attack,
French children's book icon Asterix is taking on America in the latest novel. The village is besieged by an alien army whose leader is named Hubs, (a thinly veiled anagram of the U.S. President). The aliens invade seeking non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
posted by jonson
on Nov 25, 2005 -
35 comments
Colin Thompson writes and draws children's picture books. These
books are a sheer joy to read, both for adults and children, as they feature an interesting storyline and fantastically
detailed pictures. You can
buy his prints from his site or you could take the plunge and buy this one for
U$4800.
posted by ashbury
on Apr 14, 2003 -
6 comments
Children's Books Online: The Rosetta Project is an
incredible online resource for 19th century children's books. From the site: "The Rosetta Project's collections currently contain about 2,000 antique children's books which were published in the 19th and early 20th century. We shall be putting these combined collections on line as funding permits. Our current goal of putting 2,000 volumes on line will create an online library of aproximately 65,000 html pages. However, as we are still collecting books from around the world, we expect the Rosetta Project online library to eventually reach millions of html pages." (via
coudal.)
posted by Pinwheel
on Mar 31, 2003 -
7 comments
Aslan gets a makeover? (NYTimes link, reg. required, sorry.) Apparently Harper-Collins and the C.S. Lewis estate see a
Harry Potter-style merchandising bonanza in the Narnian Chronicles -- if they de-emphasize that pesky Christianity, that is, and write a few more Narnia books, and produce some plush toys of the Narnian characters. I feel queasy.
posted by litlnemo
on Jun 3, 2001 -
39 comments
