Author Tanita Davis has created an excellent study guide for her novel MARE’S WAR, full of inspiration for further discussion & rabbit trails. It’s way cool. Much like Tanita.
Click through for details on a giveaway especially for homeschoolers!
Saturday at Midwinter was a happy day for Maud Hart Lovelace fangirls like me…HarperPerennial hosted a booksigning, giving away tote bags and copies of Carney’s House Party and Emily of Deep Valley to a crowd of happy conference-goers. Mitali Perkins and I signed our forewords in the gorgeous reissues, and I loved getting to meet so many fellow Betsy Ray devotees, including several lovely women I know from the Maud-L discussion list.
With Maud-L listren Nancy D. and Kathleen W., a happy meeting!
The lovely Mitali Perkins
Me, HarperPerennial’s Jennifer Hart, and Mitali Perkins
Delightful lunch company. All of us are card-carrying members of the Betsy Tacy Society. (Well, I guess baby Lucy isn’t carrying a card…yet.)
Related posts:
Heaven to Betsy! High-school-and-beyond books being reissued! (Sept 2009)
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
Betsy-Tacy e-books!
The Betsy-Tacy Songbook
Interview with Mitali Perkins, Jennifer Hart, and me about Maud’s books
Photos of my visit to the real Deep Valley, as chronicled by Margaret in Minnesota
Why I love Carney
Why I love Emily
A Reader’s Guide to Betsy-Tacy
It’s great fun to have ALA Midwinter happening in our own back yard this year! I’m looking forward to seeing a number of publishing pals and kidlitosphere chums this weekend. I’ll be at the YA Blogger meetup on Friday night (details here), and on Saturday I’ll be at the HarperPerennial booth (#2016) with acclaimed author Mitali Perkins from 11:30-12:30, where we’ll be—as Mitali aptly put it—reverently signing our forewords for the beautiful reissues of Maud Hart Lovelace’s Emily of Deep Valley and Carney’s House Party/Winona’s Pony Cart.
If you’re attending the conference, I hope you’ll stop by and say hello!
While I’m at it, this is a good time to mention that I spilled a little bit of news on my Facebook author page yesterday. 🙂 I’m very happy to say that my early reader, Fox and Crow Are Not Friends, will be published by Random House in 2012. I’ve been bursting to tell for quite some time, but we had to wait until things were all official and tidy-like.
I also have a YA novel in the works—more on that in the weeks to come!
My very favorite book when I was a preschooler, made all the more wonderful by the art of the inimitable George Booth. “Never tease a weasel, not even once or twice. A weasel wouldn’t like it, and teasing isn’t nice!” This was one of the first books I learned by heart. Loads of fun with language, and that refrain is irresistible.
Bink reminds me of Tib: tiny, fluffy, determined. Gollie is just this side of an Edward Gorey character. Which is to say: I adore ’em both. Rilla won’t let me read this one to her just once. Gotta be two or three times in a row. A smart, funny, sophisticated Early Reader—which sounds like an oxymoron but isn’t. Rilla is captivated by the intense personalities of Bink and Gollie, and by the ups and downs of their relationship. Every time we read it, she wants to discuss and discuss. In a way, this is her first book-club book: that book you love so much you just have to talk about it.
Mr. Pusskins and Little Whiskers: Another Love Story by Sam Lloyd.Poor Mr. Pusskins, tormented by that rogueish kitten, and blamed for his hijinks to boot. Wonderful expressions on the feline faces here. Rilla is smitten with cat and kitten.
Rhyming Dust Bunnies by Jan Thomas.My SIL recommended this one and I bet I’ve read it a hundred times so far this week. No exaggeration. Huge hit with the three youngest, especially Rilla who is in a big rhyme phase. Bonus: vacuum cleaner sucking noises.
How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham.One of my favorites from my stint as a first-round CYBILs picture book judge in 2008. Now a repeat request from Rilla, who loves the quiet, earnest tone of this story about a boy who rescues an injured pigeon. The kind of book you pore over and talk about, heads together.
Hooray for Grandma Jo by Thomas McKean.A family favorite. Grandma Jo loses her glasses the night before Little Lloyd is due for a visit. That’s how she happens to bring home an escaped zoo lion instead. She plies her furry visitor with ice cream and dancing, and they have a fine old time, managing to thwart a burglar while they’re at it. Big belly laughs from my littles over this one.
More book recommendations here.
Alison McGhee, Bink and Gollie, Bob Graham, books I adore, books my five-year-old loves, books my four-year-old loves, books my three-year-old loves, George Booth, Hooray for Grandma Jo, How to Heal a Broken Wing, Jan Thomas, Jean Conder Soule, Kate DiCamillo, Mr Pusskins and Little Whiskers, Never Tease a Weasel, picture books, Rhyming Dust Bunnies, Rillabooks, Sam Lloyd, Thomas McKean, Tony Fucile
• GeekMom » Blog Archive » Get Physics Now!—Hey Jane, heads up! This sounds like something we gotta check out.
• Granola | Mark Bittman—via Brooklyn Arden. This is similar to a recipe I used for years, back when I made granola about 3 times a week. Why’d I stop? It was so tasty! Huh.
Synchronicity: 1. the quality or fact of being synchronous; 2. the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality
This list of similarities and coincidences among the 2010 Cybils YA Fiction nominees is humbly submitted to you by the seven members of the 2010 Cybils YA Fiction first-round panel. It is no way to be considered completely exhaustive, as we are certain some nominated books and coincidences will have been missed. This list developed as the seven of us read our way through the 182 titles. If you know of a nominated title that should be included in one of the synchronicities below, please feel free to submit it in the comments! To get the entire list, you’ll have to visit all seven blogs:
• Amanda Snow, A Patchwork of Books [TW] 1-10
• Ami Jones, Three Turtles and Their Pet Librarian [TW] 11-21
• Cherylynne W. Bago, View from Above and Beyond [TW] 22-32
• Jackie Parker, Interactive Reader [TW] 33-42
• Justina Ireland, The YA 5 [TW] 43-52
• Kelly Jensen, Stacked [TW] 53-63
…and I’m bringing up the rear with SYNCHRONICITIES #64-72.
64. Swim Lessons: The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin; When I Was Joe
65. Swingsets: Hold Still; Love Drugged; Will Grayson, Will Grayson
66. Taylor Swift: Friend is Not a Verb; Perfect Shot
67. Texting/IM Conversations: The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin; The Secret to Lying; Will Grayson, Will Grayson
68. Thieving Fathers: Compromised; The Daughters; Heist Society
69. Titles with a Little “Little” in Them: A Little Wanting Song; Dirty Little Secrets; Every Little Thing in the World; Little Blog on the Prairie
70. Verse Novels: After the Kiss; The Firefly Letters; Glimpse; Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs; Three Rivers Rising; Wicked Girls
71. War: Abe in Arms; Bamboo People; Revolution; Sweet, Hereafter; The Things a Brother Knows; Thunder Over Kandahar; Woods Runner
72. Non-book-Related: Kelly and Jackie came to the realization they are naming their first born daughters the same thing… And no, they aren’t telling you what that is. (Wilma Grayson?) (Kelly says it’s Xander!)
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Announcing the Betsy-Tacy Songbook
I can finally learn the Cat Duet!
And “Dreaming,”
“Because You’re You,”
“Morning Cy,”
“Same Old Story,”
and all those other good old tunes.
From the Betsy-Tacy Convention site:
Hot off the presses! The Betsy-Tacy Songbook is now available at Willard’s Emporium!
Join Betsy Ray and her Crowd as they gather around the piano and sing the popular hits of their day.
The Maud Hart Lovelace Society has lovingly and painstakingly researched the songs mentioned (and sung, and danced to) in the Betsy-Tacy books and assembled a “greatest hits” list of songs for your musical enjoyment.
The book is 212 pages long, spiral bound in green, and contains 40 songs mentioned in the Betsy-Tacy books, with scanned original vintage copies of the sheet music covers and the sheet music itself. There is information about each song and where it appears in the Betsy-Tacy books, as well as biographical information about two of the musical stars of Betsy’s day, Chauncey Olcott and Joe E. Howard.
Related posts:
Heaven to Betsy! High-school-and-beyond books being reissued! (Sept 2009)
Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill
Betsy-Tacy Goes Digital!
Interview with Mitali Perkins, Jennifer Hart, and me about Maud’s books
Betsy-Tacy booksigning at ALA Midwinter
Photos of my visit to the real Deep Valley, as chronicled by Margaret in Minnesota
Why I love Carney
Why I love Emily
A Reader’s Guide to Betsy-Tacy
[openbook booknumber=”1553378830″ templatenumber=”1″]
This is a book I read about at Hilltop Farm a while back, and at Big A little a a much longer while before that but then I forgot about it until the Hilltop Farm post reminded me. Methinks we’re going to enjoy this tale, which gets off to a fine start with lively characters such as a young female aeronautics enthusiast, an eccentric natural-foods-loving auntie given to serving up dishes like earwig curry and rhubarb-centipede-dandelion crumble, and a tactful Sikh butler. I’m reading it to Rose and Beanie (the others are welcome to listen in), and it’ll be the centerpoint of a little cruise we’ll be taking through the Victorian era during the next month or two.
[openbook booknumber=”9780806966120″ templatenumber=”5″] Who better to pull off the shelf next than Tennyson? We read “The Mermaid” and “The Eagle” and, because his language practically begs you to, talked about alliteration and imagery and simile. Like that gorgeous bit in Mermaid when “that great sea-snake under the sea / From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps / Would slowly trail himself sevenfold / Round the hall…” Wonderfully creepy, that, and then the surprise of the sea serpent not attacking but instead looking “in at the gate /With his large calm eyes for the love of me”—delicious. And the Eagle’s lonely lands and wrinkled sea, so incredibly evocative.
This particular volume, part of the Poetry for Young People series, only includes the first two stanzas of “The Mermaid,” so perhaps we’ll look at the third stanza another day, as well as its companion poem, “The Merman,” while we’re at it.
[openbook booknumber=”9780806955414″ templatenumber=”1″] After that we indulged in a bit of Lewis Carroll—“Jabberwocky” at the 12-year-old’s request. Reading that poem aloud may be rather like eating a rhubarb, centipede, and dandelion crumble—all sorts of intriguing and unnerving textures in the mouth.
I’m in love with this new blog already. Love its layout, love the concept, love the nifty things I learned. Going to be a fun daily visit, I can tell.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
(Testing out this post-to-blog feature at Diigo. Did you see COD’s comment on my post yesterday, about Delicious being on shaky ground? Diigo seems a good alternative & easy transition. I’m investigating.)
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(OK, so the formatting is a little off. Easily tweakable and I liked the oneclickness of it. Could be a decent way to share stuff.)
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