Year: 2011

Booklist’s Top 10 Graphic Novels for Youth

| Tasha

Booklist has a list of their top picks for 2011 Graphic Novels for Youth selected from those reviewed in the past 12 months.

   

Crogan’s March by Chris Schweizer

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Joann Sfar

The Meeting by Brigitte Luciani

The Odyssey by Homer and Gareth Hinds

  

Return of the Dapper Men by Jim McCann

Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson

Set to Sea by Drew Weing

  

Trickster: Native American Tales ed. by Matt Dembicki

The Unsinkable Walker Bean by Aaron Renier

Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, illustrated by Randy DuBurke

Owly & Wormy: Friends All Aflutter

| Tasha

owlyandwormy

Owly & Wormy: Friends All Aflutter by Andy Runton

The popular Owly graphic novels make their picture book debut with this colorful new story.  Owly and his best friend Wormy want to make friends with some butterflies.  So they plant a milkweed plant, hoping to attract some.  All they manage to attract are some bugs that are definitely not butterflies and that are munching on the milkweed leaves.  Owly and Wormy make friends with the bugs instead until one day the bugs have to leave.  Now Owly and Wormy are left alone.  They wait and wait for their friends to return.  When they eventually do come back though, Owly and Wormy don’t recognize them!

Runton’s friendly and funny Owly graphic novels are some of my go-to graphic novels for younger children.  This new book makes the Owly stories available to even younger readers.  With the wordless format, this is a book that will appeal to children just about to become readers themselves. 

Add the bright colors to the illustrations and you have a very appealing book that is about friendship and metamorphosis.  The cartoon-like illustrations filled with smiling faces large and small are very friendly themselves.  The illustrations run from two-page spreads to smaller more graphic-novel-like images that read as panels.

This book takes graphic novels to the youngest readers and introduces them to a friend that they can share adventures with for years to come.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Simon & Schuster.

Okay for Now: A Brilliant, Amazing Read

| Tasha

okayfornow

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

Released April 18, 2011.

Let me make this simple – READ THIS BOOK!  If you are a fan of the book this is a companion book to The Wednesday Wars, you will fall head-over-heels for this one.  If you never read that book, it doesn’t matter, still read this one.  It stands on its own fantastically well.  In this book, a small character from The Wednesday Wars is given his own book.  Doug Swieteck is a boy who has just moved to a new town with a brother who gets into plenty of trouble, a mother who smiles far too rarely, and a father whose hands are fast when he is angry, which is most of the time.  But Doug is more than the “skinny thug” that people assume he is, much more.  This coming of age story set in 1968 is about how a entire town can be wrong and how that same town can help raise a boy to be the man he is capable of being. 

This is my favorite Schmidt book yet, and that is saying something!  The characterizations here are so well rendered.  The people are real, tangible and each and every person in the book is human and complex.  Yet the book remains fresh, easily read, easily related to, and vibrant.  It is a book with space inside it for the reader to make realizations, come to conclusions, and bring their own perspective. 

Told in first person by Doug, the voice of the book is entirely his own.  It never stumbles, never becomes an adult looking at the situation, never lectures.  Instead it learns as it speaks, realizes as it voices and sometimes doesn’t figure out what the reader has come to understand.  It is raw, beautiful and heartrending.  

I’m afraid I cannot capture in my review what this book is.  To say that it should be a contender for an award this year is to lessen it.  Instead, this book is one that can honestly change the way a child sees themselves.  Not through anything didactic, but instead just allowing an honesty to pervade the book, a realization to happen, art and words to flow and reveal.

An unforgettable book that is sure to be a classic in years to come, this is a book that defies categorization and summary.  Appropriate for ages 11-14.

Reviewed from NetGalley digital galley.

 

Also reviewed by:

New Funny Prize

| Tasha
Roald Dahl

Cover of Roald Dahl

Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen has started a new book prize that celebrates the funniest of children’s books.  The Roald Dahl Funny Prize will reward authors and illustrators who celebrate the humor of life.  There will be two categories: age 6 and under, and ages 7-14.  The prize will be administered by Booktrust.

The first shortlist will be announced to coincide with the third annual Roald Dahl Day on September 13th.

I can hardly wait!

Margaret Mahy Turns 75

| Tasha

Author Margaret Mahy celebrated her 75th birthday.  She is the author of more than 200 books, translated into more than 15 languages.  She is the only New Zealand author to have been awarded the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award for children’s literature.

Mahy tried to create stories that children and adults could appreciate.

"I hope they have the same sort of relationship [with her books] that I had with the ones I read as a child," she said.

"I still read them, and they sort of become part of your life." Mahy said her writing rate had slowed – "part of the charm of being 75" – but she was "edging towards the end" of another book.

Charming, wise and wonderful.

The Lorax–The Movie

| Tasha

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss will be made into a film in 2012.  It will be an animated feature, which is good news.  But the voice actor casting may bring your hopes right back down again.  Zac Efron and Taylor Swift join Danny DeVito as the Lorax. 

Via /Film

Peter Pan–A Hot Commodity

| Tasha

I mentioned a few days ago that Peter Pan is being made into a new movie.  But that is only part of the Peter Pan potential out there right now.  Brace yourself. 

There are FOUR Peter Pan related projects in the works. 

There is an untitled project that is being sold as a family adventure.  OK, no warning bells there.

There is “Pan” which is based on the 1904 stage play, which is the project I mentioned earlier.  You may remember it as the one that is written with Peter and Hook as brothers.  Ick.

Then there is “Neverland” which seems to be turning the story on its head with Peter as the villain and Hook as the hero.  Say what?

And finally, my favorite, “The.Never.Land” which has Peter and Wendy together with a Twilight spin.  Yes, Twilight.  Think tween schoolgirl and the boy who never grows up.  Double ick.

Via Cinematical

Boxcar Children Prequel

| Tasha

Albert Whitman & Company has announced that Newbery Award winning author, Patricia MacLachlan will write the prequel to the Boxcar Children.  The Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner has over 150 titles with more than 50 million copies sold.  The series has been continuously in print since the first book was published in 1942.

Patricial MacLachlan is the author of over 20 books for children.  About writing the prequel, MacLachlan said:

Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny are kind to one another and embody the true sense of family. They are resourceful and positive. I find them both true children and true heroes at the same time. It occurs to me that perhaps their parents were the same. I’m looking forward to exploring that idea and more.

The prequel will be published in 2012.

Katniss Casting–Interview with the Director, Gary Ross

| Tasha

Entertainment Weekly has an interview with Gary Ross, the director of The Hunger Games film.  He answers questions that we are all asking:

1. What about Jennifer Lawrence’s age at 20 compared to Katniss at 16?

2. What about race when portions of the books hint that Katniss is biracial?

And the answers time and again are that Suzanne Collins played a huge role in the casting of Katniss, which will be music to the ears of fans.  But I’m not sure it really answers the heart of the questions about this casting.