In My Mailbox #25

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren! Here's what was in my mailbox this week...

Egads, the books just kept coming this week! (Which is awesome.) Since the post got kind of long, I'm just going to link to GoodReads (as per usual), where you can read a summary of each book.

Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles (Bloomsbury, April 2010). And yes, I won this in a contest over at Stacked, so I'll be giving this away... stay tuned!

The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez (Knopf Books for Young Readers, May 2010). Very excited about this one - not only is this a 2010 debut author, but I've already started reading it and it's very good!

The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood (Blazer & Bray [HarperCollins], March 2010). I read the first few pages and it seems very Lemony Snicket-ish (in a good way), so I'm excited to read it.

The Suburb Beyond the Stars by MT Anderson (Scholastic Press, June 2010). This is a sequel to The Game of Sunken Places.

The Deadly Sister by Eliot Schrefer (Scholastic Press, May 2010).


Wolven by Di Toft (Chicken House, June 2010). This is a debut author, published in 2010 in the US!

Wish I Might: From the Life of Willa Havisham (Scholastic Press, May 2010). 

The Keepers' Tattoo by Gill Arbuthnott (Chicken House, May 2010). This is a 2010 debut!

Runaway by Meg Cabot (Point, May 2010).

Great mailbox week! Did you get anything awesome in your mailbox?

Around the interwebs

Oh, happy Saturday. I'm at work (we're having an Egg Decorating Workshop today!), but you should enjoy these links:

If you are (like me) trying to put a book order together when you have eleventy billion other things to do (planning Summer Reading Club, for one...), you will find this helpful: Starred Reviews (So Far), 2010. Thank you, THANK YOU to the lovely Elizabeth Bluemie for putting this post together and also thank you to Elizabeth Bird at Fuse #8 for linking to it.

And speaking of the lovely Fuse, have you been keeping up with her Top 100 Children's Novels Poll? If not, you still have time to get caught up and submit your predictions for the Top 10 by March 25. I would totally submit my predictions except that I have no idea. Also, the aforementioned eleventy billion things to do...

As I mentioned, planning the Summer Reading Club is one of my eleventy billion things. If you're also planning a Summer Reading Club, you may find these links for cool activities from The Imaginary Librarian helpful.

John Grisham's writing a kids' book: Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer. Oy. Thanks (I think) to Leila at bookshelves of doom for the link.

Um, and okay. I was all set to be indignant about this summer's Ramona and Beezus movie, but... John Corbett? I love John Corbett! And in this preview is one of my favorite things in the series (when Ramona and her dad draw the huge picture on long paper... I love it so much I just did it with my After School Adventures kids last week!) Head over to GreenBean TeenQueen to watch the trailer. I've got to be honest, I think it looks super cute (Selena Gomez notwithstanding... she is way too pretty to be Beezus...)

I didn't know about this book until I saw it at my local independent bookstore yesterday, but MotherReader (and Teen Reader) has a review of The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary. Of course I'll add it to the order, though it'll be just another Wimpy Kid book we can't keep on the shelves... If you have Wimpy Kid fans, you'll want to get this one!

In related collection development news, Dav Pilkey is finally coming back with another Captain Underpants book!!!! I know many a grade-schooler who will be happy about this news. The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future is due out in August.

And on that note, I'm out. Enjoy the beautiful weekend, everyone! (It will be beautiful here... maybe not so much in other parts of the world...)

Curious George Exhibit at The Jewish Museum in NYC

Some of you are lucky enough to live in (or close to) New York City, where they have fabulous events all the time. Here's one such fabulous exhibit you might attend if you're going to be in NYC between now and August 1!

Press release:

CURIOUS GEORGE SAVES THE DAY:
THE ART OF MARGRET AND H. A. REY
OPENS AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM ON
SUNDAY, MARCH 14TH

DRAMATIC STORY OF ESCAPE AND SURVIVAL
REVEALED THROUGH NEARLY 80 ORIGINAL DRAWINGS

New York, NY – The Jewish Museum will present a new exhibition, Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret and H. A. Rey, from March 14 through August 1, 2010.  Curious George, the impish monkey protagonist of many adventures, may never have seen the light of day were it not for the determination and courage of his creators: illustrator H. A. Rey (1898 – 1977) and his wife, author and artist Margret Rey (1906 – 1996).  They were both born in Hamburg, Germany, to Jewish families and lived together in Paris from 1936 to 1940.  Hours before the Nazis marched into the city in June 1940, the Reys fled on bicycles carrying drawings for their children’s stories including one about a mischievous monkey, then named Fifi.  Not only did they save their animal characters, but the Reys themselves were saved by their illustrations when authorities found them in their belongings.  This may explain why saving the day after a narrow escape became the premise of most of their Curious George stories.  

The exhibition at The Jewish Museum will offer visitors a rare opportunity to view nearly eighty original drawings and vibrant watercolors of Curious George and other characters. Many of these works have never been on display before.  Preparatory dummy books, vintage photographs, and documentation related to the Reys’ escape from Nazi Europe, such as H. A. Rey’s journals detailing the couple’s perilous journey to freedom, are also included.  One of the exhibition galleries will be transformed into a reading room for visitors of all ages inspired by the beloved monkey’s escapades in Curious George Flies a Kite. 

In addition, the exhibition features an interactive timeline, accessed via a touch-screen computer, about the Reys’ life in France from the late 1930s through their fateful escape in the summer of 1940.  Visitors will be able to view additional pages of H. A. Rey’s journal detailing the couple’s journey to safety, images of illustrations by H. A. Rey and photographs taken by Margret Rey in France, documentary photography related to early World War II in France, and historic video, as well as listen to an interview with the couple. This program will be also available at thejewishmuseum.org.

About The Jewish Museum

Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent United States institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture. The Jewish Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains an important collection of 26,000 objects—paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media. 

General Information

Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm.  Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members.  Admission is free on Saturdays.  For general information on The Jewish Museum, the public may visit the Museum’s website at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212.423.3200.  The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan.

Book Review: Mockingbird

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. (Grades 4-7.) Philomel Books, April 2010. Reviewed from ARC provided by publisher.

Caitlin has a hard time relating to people. She sometimes can't tell how they're feeling from their facial expressions. She's almost completely literal. Caitlin has Asperger's Syndrome.

In a confusing world where her classmates' faces don't always look like those on her Facial Expressions Chart and a teacher saying that she wants you to do something turns out to mean do it, Caitlin could always count on her older brother Devon to help her figure out what was going on.

But now Devon is gone, a victim of a tragic school shooting that's rocked their small town. And Caitlin has to deal with not only her own grief, but the grief of her father and of their entire community.

This is a moving story seen from a unique perspective. Caitlin and the other characters (notably Caitlin's dad, a single father trying to deal with his own grief as well as take care of his daughter) had me choked up in many different spots. But Kathryn Erskine has mastered that blend of humor with poignancy and I found myself laughing out loud in several spots, too.
Take, for example, this passage:

...Her hands are on her hips and her head is moving up and down and she keeps leaning forward and back again. I think this means she's mad. Sometimes it means The Chicken Dance but I don't think that's what she's doing right now.

See what I mean? 

Caitlin's story is one that will definitely stick with me. I'm thinking kids will dig it, especially kids who dig books like Lauren Tarshis's Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree or Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn Dixie. You'll also want to make sure you have a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird (and the movie) around because they're mentioned in the book and would make a great pairing.

Read more reviews at bibliochic, Successful Teaching, and Glitter Glue Library. And do check out this interview with Kathryn Erskine on Holly Schindler's blog and another interview over at The Furnace.

Mockingbird will be on shelves April 15 (happy birthday, S!).

Can't get enough of those chickens...

Okay. I apparently have a thing about chickens. I have posted chicken storytimes NOT ONCE, but twice before. And here I am again. I won't go on about more chicken books (although I will say that this time it was "Chickens and Eggs" and one of the books I added was First the Egg by Laura Vaccaro Seeger, which is a fabulous book for spring time).

No, today I want to post about two of the "stretchers" that we included in this Chicken and Eggs storytime.

First, the activity that had us singing all week long and caused a couple of kids to exclaim "That was awesome!"

Egg shakers. It fit in perfectly with our theme. They were super easy and cheap to make (you can buy them, too, like these egg shakers from Lakeshore). And they were so much fun. We'll definitely use them again. To make them, I just used some plastic Easter eggs we already had (if you're shopping in the right season, you can also find them quite easily at your local Dollar Tree, grocery store, etc.). I filled each one with a small handful of beans, and put tape around the middle of the eggs. None of them broke open. They're not works of are, but they are colorful and they make noise.

We used the shakers with the song "I Know a Chicken" by Laurie Berkner, on her CD Whaddaya Think of That? It's a great song to use with shakers because in addition to just shaking on the beat, it gives explicit instructions (i.e. "Shake 'em fast!" "Shake 'em slow.", etc.). (Boy howdy, the kids loved shaking them fast. So did I.)

Along with all the great chicken books and the egg shaking, we also made this craft, which I completely stole from my good friend J at the Solon Public Library (and I also stole her photo):

Each child gets a paper plate which they color yellow (or whatever color they want - we had at least one green chicken) and then cut in half. Staple the two halves together so that they form a little basket, leaving the top open. Affix the google eyes, beak (you can staple it on, between the two plate halves, or tape it or glue it), draw a wing, and tape (or staple) two bent pipe cleaners to the inside of the plates for handles.

The kids quite enjoyed making it, and to my mind it was a good mix of things they could do on their own (coloring, gluing), things they could do with help (stapling), and things the parents had to do (taping the pipe cleaners to the inside was the trickiest part).

And now maybe I have posted about chicken storytimes enough. Once more and I'm going to have to start calling my blog The Chicken Librarian.

Book Review: The Grimm Legacy

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman. (Grades 7+) G.P Putnam's Sons, July? 2010. Reviewed from ARC provided by publisher.

Do you believe in magic? 

Elizabeth does not have your average after-school job. She works at the New York Circulating Material Repository, a library containing all sorts of objects, some commonplace and some very rare. The rarest of all are housed in the special collections, including the Grimm Collection, a collection of magical objects from Grimm fairy tales. Seven league boots, magic mirrors, enchanted cooking pots... Elizabeth, already a fan of the Grimm fairy tales, finds it almost too good to be true! But when Elizabeth discovers that objects from the collection are disappearing and losing their magic, she's got to try to find them before it's too late and these precious items are lost forever! 


This is a delightful book! In fact, I picked it up right after I got it, intending to just read the first few pages, and I found myself not putting it down until I was done. I got caught up in this magical world and didn't want to let it go. 

Polly Shulman builds a fascinating world inside the Repository and she makes it seem so realistic that I actually Googled it when I finished the book to see if such a thing really existed. (It doesn't - at least as far as my brief Google search could tell me.) Ms. Shulman also builds a believable and relatable set of characters. I appreciate the fact that Elizabeth's new friends come from different cultures (Anjali is East Indian-American, Marc is African-American, Aaron is Jewish...), especially since they're in New York City where it's logical that Elizabeth would meet people from different backgrounds. I also appreciated that the cultures played a role in the story (but not the central role in the story). It's not just mentioned once that Anjali is of Indian descent - Elizabeth visits her house and eats an Indian meal with her family, etc. 


Definitely hand The Grimm Legacy to fans of Sarah Beth Durst's Into the Wild, and it's sure to please any fan of fairy tale retellings. The ending leaves the way open for sequels and I'm hoping that we'll see more of Elizabeth's adventures in the Repository! 

Good Reads has the pub date listed as July 8, but I've also seen a May pub date. So, fairy tale fans, put it on your TBR list and look for it this spring/summer!

Book Review: Older Than the Stars

Older Than the Stars by Karen C. Fox, illustrated by Nancy Davis. Grades 2-5. Charlesbridge, February 2010. Review copy provided by publisher.

You are older than the dinosaurs. Older than the earth. Older than the sun and all the planets. You are older than the stars. You are as old as the universe itself.

So begins Older Than the Stars, a picture book that sets out to explain the Big Bang Theory and how the universe was formed. The text follows the same structure as This is the House That Jack Built, only we start with "This is the BANG when the world began." From there, Karen Fox shows us how the tiny particles from the Big Bang formed atoms, which formed gases, which formed stars, etc. etc.

On each page, in addition to the rhythmic, rhyming text, there is also more information to explain each step as the universe builds itself before our very eyes. Atoms form and reform, dust clumps together and makes planets, stars are born (including our sun). Besides all the information on how the universe formed, the takeaway idea here is that the stuff that our bodies are comprised of is the same stuff that's always been here.

The iron in your blood may have once been part of molten lava from a volcano. The carbon in your fingernails may have been part of a tree leaf. And the oxygen in your lungs was probably once breathed by dinosaurs.

The author includes a timeline of the universe and a glossary in the back of the book. The illustrations are very bright and colorful, interacting whimsically with the text. The Big Bang and the formation of the universe is a pretty complex subject, but Older Than the Stars does a great job of simplifying it for young readers.  I'd pair it with something like When Fish Got Feet, Sharks Got Teeth, and Bugs Began to Swarm by Hannah Bonner for more information on the earth a long, long time ago.

 Read more reviews at Kids Lit and My World - Mi Mundo, and check out the book's website.

Happy Nonfiction Monday! Check out the roundup over at In Need of Chocolate.

In My Mailbox #24

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren! Head on over there to see what delightful and much-appreciated books bloggers received in their mailboxes (or bought at bookstores or checked out from the library) this week! (Did everyone remember to set your clocks ahead?)

 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, illustrated by Robert Ingpen. Sterling Books, March 2010.

This is a lovely new edition of the classic book. It's a nice, large size and has beautiful, full-color illustrations.




Linger by Maggie Stiefvater. Scholastic Press, July 2010.

Oh, I *squeed* when I got this one in the mail. I was a big fan of Shiver, so I'm looking forward to checking out this sequel!





Countdown by Deborah Wiles. Scholastic Press, May 2010.

Summary from ARC:

Franny Chapman just wants some peace. But that's hard to get when her best friend is feuding with her, her sister has disappeared, and her uncle is fighting an old war in his head. Her saintly younger brother is no help, and the cute boy across the street only complicates things. Worst of all, everyone is walking around just waiting for a bomb to fall. 

It's 1962 and it seems that the whole country is living in fear. When President Kennedy goes on television to say that Russia is sending nuclear missiles to Cuba, it only gets worse. Franny doesn't know how to deal with what's going on with her family and friends. But somehow she's got to make it through.

The book calls itself a "documentary novel" and interspersed with the story are photos, ads, and other footage from 1962. I am in the middle of it right now and finding it completely intriguing. 

Trackers by Patrick Carman. Scholastic Press, May 2010.

Looks like Scholastic and Patrick Carman are going the way of the books + online videos route like in Skeleton Creek. This is the first in a series and here's some info from the publicity:

In today's landscape of bits and bytes, everyone leaves a digital footprint - even the most advanced cyber criminals. And that's where the Trackers come in - four tech-savvy kids armed with high-tech video cameras and esoteric coding skills. Told through an interlinked web of text, videos, and websites, this series follows Adam, Finn, Lewis, and Emily as they become entangled in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with Shantorian, the world's most dangerous hacker.

Big Nate: In a Class by Himself by Lincoln Peirce. Harper (an imprint of HarperCollins), March 2010.

Jacket copy:

Big Nate is in a class by himself! Nate knows he's meant for REALLY big things. But life doesn't always go your way just because you're awesome. Trouble always seems to find him, but Nate keeps his cool no matter what. He knows he's great. A fortune cookie told him so.

Big Nate is a syndicated comic strip and now it's being turned into a tween series. It looks (and is being publicized as) distinctly Wimpy Kid-ish. A ploy? Perhaps, but if it'll satisfy the Wimpy Kid fanatics at my library, more power to 'em. I shall report back.

Another fabulous mailbox week (everyone at my apartment complex office knows me and whenever I go in there, they're always like "Another package?"). How about you?

Whatcha listening to?

Y'all, don't forget that on April 1, I'll be posting our monthly AudioSynced Roundup, collecting audiobook reviews and news from the month of March. There's still plenty of time to post! You can drop me a link to your post any time (comment, email) or head over here to Abby (the) Librarian on April 1 to add your link to the roundup.

Check out last month's AudioSynced Roundup over at Stacked. 

Feel free to grab this graphic for your post if you so desire and please spread the word!

Around the interwebs

I'm having a brief interlude with World of Warcraft, but I've wakened myself from the gaming stupor long enough to put a few links together...

Obviously, it is never too early for Betsy of A Fuse #8 Production to put together a Newbery/Caldecott prediction list.

What are you doing on April 14 and 15? Mark your calendars for the YALitChat, a Twitter chat featuring such YA superstars as Lisa McMann, Ellen Hopkins, Holly Black, and more! Thanks to @galleysmith for the link.

Travis of 100 Scope Notes has compiled a gallery of book spine poems and it is marvelous. I was too lame to remember to make one, but do check out all the awesome poems there in celebration of Poetry Friday.

Check out the opening ceremony of The Battle of the (Kids) Books! The matches start Monday, so get your brackets filled out! (No, I haven't done mine either...)

Melissa of Book Nut has a great post about helping your kids to develop a love of reading (whether they're precocious or not).

And we all love process. Take a look at this video about book cover design. Who knew they used so many photos to make one cover?!



Thanks to Jacket Whys for the link.

And on that note, I'm going back to my video game. :)