Renaming Kidlit Novels

Credit: SpecialKRB, Flickr

Inspired by this NPR blog (“How to Name Your First Novel”), we’ve gone ahead and used the requirements (sometimes interpreted loosely) to re-dub famous children’s books. Take a guess at the real titles, and check your answers by clicking on the links.

If Your First Novel Will Be A Busted Romance
[ANY OF THE SEVEN DWARFS]: A Love Story
The Golden Monkey: A Love Story

If Your First Novel Will Be A Harrowing Historical Account
The [A COLOR] [REPEAT THAT COLOR] [A FLOWER]s Of [A CITY IN EUROPE]
The Colorless Colorless Apples of Elsewhere

If Your First Novel Will Be A Withering Teenage Quasi-Memoir
How I Flunked [YOUR WORST ACADEMIC SUBJECT] But Passed [THE FIRST MUSICIAN YOU SAW IN CONCERT]
How I Flunked Wrestling But Passed Jane Eyre

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Time Travel, Anyone?

A friend of mine just made this video on How to Build a Time Machine—not exactly a how-to manual (we’re millennia away from setting up shop), but an excellent summary of what we know and don’t know. It had me flashing back to befuddling physics classes of trains speeding past spaceships at faster-than-light velocities and timey-wimey wormholes. On a happier note, some of the best books I’ve ever read depend on time travel for plot.

My intro to the concept was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet, which confused the heck out of me. I ended up reading it twice, and even drew little family trees on index cards (didn’t help). Planet belongs in the changing history category—the kind where time travel is used to alter the present, like in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. These tend to be the most confusing, since you end up with mind-bending paradoxes.

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The Last on Jane Eyre, We Swear

Having recently read Gary Schmidt‘s excellent Okay for Now, I, like Jen, have developed a sudden interest in Jane Eyre. I actually slogged through the tome in high school, and while I don’t have the energy to re-read the whole thing, it’s fun to skim the memorable moments—Bertha Mason encounters, Jane lecturing her aunt, the passive-aggressive party scenes involving Blanche Ingram.

Aside from any Okay for Now connections, Jane Eyre seems to be everywhere these days. It might have to do with the recent movie that came out, or maybe it’s like learning a new vocabulary word: once it’s on your radar you notice it all over the place. On a recent trip to the bookstore I found three different editions prominently displayed next to the door:

#1, The Illustrated Jane Eyre (above) goes for spiky gothic. And the artist’s pen name—I kid you not—is Dame Darcy.

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Monsters and Lightning and Pegasi Oh My

I’ve been keeping a list of outcoming books, and these are the ones that I’m especially looking forward to:

Coming September 2011

1. Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

As if The Invention of Hugo Cabret wasn’t awesome enough, Selznick’s next book further pushes the boundaries by telling two stories at once. Rose, a deaf girl in 1927 has her tale told entirely in pictures while Ben, a boy living in 1977 gets the traditional text approach. Their narratives weave in and out, of course, before intersecting at the end. The advance reviews have all been glowing, and at 600+ pages there’s sure to be plenty of art to be goggled at.

2. Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

A teenage protagonist named Jack Gantos who writes obituaries and suffers from chronic nosebleeds? It’s wacky enough to hook anyone in…

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Book to Film: the success stories

(This is a joint post).

In light of the previous post, we decided to acknowledge some of our favorite children’s books that were also adapted into great movies. I mean, the kind of movies that draw on the original material but still hold their own. Granted, this doesn’t happen very often, but here are a notable few that made the cut:

To Kill a Mockingbird

• Gregory Peck is Atticus!
• the child actors hold their own, too. Mary Badham, the actress who plays Scout, completely nails her character. So does Phillip Alford as Jem
• the amazing title sequence is incredibly nostalgic. The box of Boo’s gifts and the crayon drawings act as a time capsule to Jean Louise Finch’s childhood
• the side stories are pruned to focus mainly on the Finch family, Boo, and Tom Robinson’s trial. Thus, Dill’s there from the beginning; no back story needed. Miss Rachel and Miss Stephanie become one person. Some of Atticus’ key lines are shuffled to consolidate scenes. And it works.
• Bonus: we get to see Boo Radley!

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Of Mice and Men: Acknowledging the Kidlit Mice in My Life

Unlike their non-fiction counterparts, literary mice are adorable and adored by authors and readers alike. My childhood book list has been marked with murine milestones. Most recently Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt (Jan 2011) and Bless this Mouse by Lois Lowry (Mar 2011) charmed the kidlit world. Both stories have the awww factor going for them, thanks in part to illustrations by Louise Yates and Eric Rohmann, respectively. Now you may say that mice have been adventuring ever since Ralph got on his motorcycle and the Frisbys had to relocate, that cute questing mice have been running amok shelves for ages, but here’s what made each tail–ahem, tale–so special to me (click to zoom):

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Art Links

Sometimes the mark of a great book is how much it makes you care about other books—or works of art, theater and music. Take Gary D. Schmidt’s Okay For Now. Hundreds of kids will probably finish the book and start searching for the “Bertha Mason shriek” in a copy of Jane Eyre. Schmidt also put in quite a plug for Audubon. I’ve always had a vague interest in his art, but until now had never taken the time to pore over individual paintings. When Doug cared, I cared, because Schmidt makes you care about Doug.

Here are some more books that act as ambassadors, or default advertisement, for the arts:

Music

The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder: when I was little, I had a deep envy of Pa Ingalls’ fiddle-playing skills (I still do). I too wanted to wake up to his silly songs and march off to bed as he played rollicking tunes (I conveniently ignored the fact that the marching was necessary to prevent them from freezing to death in the days before modern heating).

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More Tragic Covers…

…because some books are cursed with more than one.

Round two of terrible cover art highlights the unfortunate books that had multiple times to get it right, yet continued to fail. Take Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars. What a mad, fantastic tale—I’m willing to bet no other book has so seamlessly entwined Shakespeare and cream puffs (just reading the book makes me hungry). But the covers feel generic. In the first one, Holling looks like he’s in elementary school, not eighth grade, and the rats are too cute to promise mayhem.

The second version has more success with a Shakespeare ruffle, but still—a dusty blackboard? Yawn.

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Most Beloved Pranksters

(This is a joint post by Lisa and Jen)

At this very moment, kids all over the country are hatching jokes, elegant or otherwise, on their hapless victims. Gmail probably has some ridiculous ruse set up, and the French are slapping each other silly with paper fishes. In honor of this very special day, we celebrate the ultimate grand masters of pranking, those select few whose feats and smarts will no doubt inspire glory in generations of readers to come:

1. Fred and George of Harry Potter fame. Born on April 1st, pranking is just as much their birthright as magic. Canary Creams, Ton-Tongue Toffee, and their all-out war on Umbridge; need we say more?

2. Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus. His April Fool’s Day schedule looks something like this:
-Eat people, preferably little old ladies with poodles and shopping bags
-Sing bawdy songs about reigning heads of state (in hearing range of said leaders)
-Mouth off to current master until magician puts a toe over the line (dessert to wash down the previously consumed poodles)
-Fight bigger and badder demons. Win. Swagger off.
-Repeat.

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Best Books with the Worst Covers

There are some really bad children’s book covers out there. But most of those books aren’t exactly best-sellers…the real tragedy occurs when the cover is an insult to the text inside. Off the top of my head, here are two books that really don’t deserve their disastrous cover art.

First up: The Chosen by Chaim Potok. A character-driven story about friendship, fathers-and-sons and something you don’t often encounter in YA literature: in-depth discussions of Judaism.

Alas, the cover promises much boredom. You can’t go duller than brown on brown, and the kid doesn’t even look angsty. He just stares, slightly dreamy and contemplative, like a surveyor of mediocre art.

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