Richie of Richie’s Picks has released his best of 2008 list.  You will find great nonfiction and fiction for middle schoolers and older.  Though he does sneak in one wonderful wordless picture book at the very end.

Richie is fabulous for finding boy-friendly titles and books that kids will love but which are also really well written.  This is a great list of books.  Also check out his reviews that come out regularly throughout the year.  There are treasures there that didn’t make his annual list.

A huge BRAVO to SLJ for picking an enormous number of my favorite titles of the year to highlight on their list.  Lovely!  They have selected 67 titles this year that span from infants to teens. 

I am especially happy to see some of my favorite teen novels made the list.  It’s been an amazing year for teen fantasy and science fiction, hasn’t it?

I am heading off to place library holds on the ones I haven’t gotten my hands on yet.  Enjoy the list!

The CCBC has posted their preliminary list for the 2009 CCBC Choices.  This list is always full of books that feature different cultures, lovely poetry, and unique perspectives.  You are guaranteed to find titles that you will not have already read, but which are incredible reads.  Enjoy!

While you are on their web site, you can also check out the Charlotte Zolotow Lecture by Judy Blume that took place this fall.

I’m caught up in election fever.  It’s a buzz that you can feel throughout the library as conversations turn to how long lines will be, though no one says that they will NOT vote.  For some reason it has become cool to be hooked in, to vote, to decide.

So I took some of my favorite words of the election.  The ones that are part of that buzz.  And put them into our library catalog looking only for children’s books.

"Hope" brought me books on spring, fathers, mermaids, and wimpy kids. 

"Change" pulled up stars and moons, Lizzie Bright, Legos, and trees of peace.

"Yes" was filled with cartoons, potty books, parties and science.

"Victory" had knights, racing cars, dancing, and lots of history.

Sounds to me like a pretty good mix.

A huge hurrah!  Neil Gaiman’s wonderful Graveyard Book seems to be on its way to being made into a movie.  In an interview with MTV, Gaiman reveals some of the pieces of the plan.  All of them will set a fan’s worries to rest. 

Gaiman sought out a UK special effects house (which was involved in The Dark Knight) to be the studio to do it.  The story will still be set in Britain and will feature a British cast (I can’t wait to see who gets which part!) And to shepherd it through successfully, Gaiman will be a producer of the film.

Sigh.  Bliss.  This is the sort of control an author of the magnitude of Gaiman has.  If only other authors could shepherd their works to film with the same amount of involvement.

Knucklehead: tall tales & mostly true stories of growing up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka

I firmly believe that Jon Scieszka set out to write the most boy-friendly book in the world, and succeeded.  This autobiographical book has all the elements that boys want.  It is guaranteed to fly off the shelves thanks to the amazing vintage comic-book cover.  When boys read it, they are bound to share it with their friends thanks to the firecrackers, peeing, barfing, and continuous wild antics of the Scieszka brothers.  But what the cover and the louder moments of the book won’t reveal is the lovely tone of the book that captures boyhood and brotherhood with such ease.  The author is right there laughing with us at each event, loving looking back into his childhood together. 

He is also doing other important things, vital things for his young male readers.  He is showing boys that it is just fine to be pure boys.  To be silly, wild, crude, and violent.  That humor is contagious and that laughing together is powerful.  That being unique or even a little odd is just fine.  And that adults need not approve for it to be a great great story.

I read this book aloud to my sons at bedtime.  During the two weeks we shared the book together, they asked to go to bed EARLY multiple times to hear the story continue!  There was a visceral connection there, a community of men and boys being built, there was wonder, humor, and definitely wild abandon.

Anyone looking for an incredible read aloud for boys has found it here.  Age appropriateness is up to you as a parent.   There are crude things here in all of their bodily-function glory.  I happily read it to my own seven-year-old, but probably would not use it with a class of 2nd graders.  This is a treasure of a nonfiction book.  Share it with the knuckleheads in your life.

An aside from my real job as the director of the Elisha D. Smith Public Library in Menasha, Wisconsin:

 

We have won Wisconsin Library of the Year!  Our application cited the large increases in circulation we have seen this year, our increased programming for all ages, our del.icio.us links, and the way we work with our community and other organizations. 

Personally, I love the linkage of technology and service, which makes me immediately think Library 2.0.  While I definitely give my staff all of the credit for winning the award, I am so happy that at least a small piece of it was because of 2.0 and all that it offers libraries in terms of innovation and creativity. 

What a thrill to be a director with a staff of people willing to play and try new things.  What a joy to serve a community so diverse and interesting.  What an honor to be given the opportunity to lead a library this fantastic forward.  It takes one’s breath away.

I’m not quite sure what to make of the news that Wal-mart supermarket in the UK has pulled the book My Sister Jodie by Jacqueline Wilson because of a swear word.  OK, so that’s not surprising.  It’s the sort of thing that I’ve come to expect from Wal-Mart.  But the surprise comes from Random House who has agreed to edit the book and remove the offending word by changing one letter so that it reads "twit" instead.

The book has already sold over 28,000 copies with no complaint.  Here’s the response from Random House:

A spokesman for Random House Children’s Books said: "In the context of the character, we felt it was used in a way that accurately portrayed how children like Jodie would speak to each other.

"The book is aimed at children aged 10 and over, and we felt it was acceptable for that age range.

"However, in light of this response we have decided to amend the word when we reprint the book."

In the US, we don’t know Dame Jacqueline Wilson as well as they do in the UK, but she is amazingly popular there.  She has sold over 20 million books in the UK alone!  Which is another piece of this puzzle that makes Random House’s response all the more odd.

So what do you think?  What should Random House have done?  Is that word appropriate for books aimed at children over age 10?  Do powerful retailers have the right to ask for edits in books? 

Home on vacation watching a documentary on Netflix Watch It Now.  It is Stone Reader, a film about a quest to find an author who only wrote one book that is strikingly forgotten.

I adore documentaries in much the same way I do books.  For me, just like books they reveal deeper truths below what we see on the surface every day. 

I was so happy to see that the documentary talks about other books as well, including the books that Mark Moskowitz and his friends read during their childhood.  It is these books that immediately bring smiles to their faces and get them talking about reading.  All pretension falls away and there is just the joy of reading a really good book.

They talk about Dr. Seuss, Harold and the Purple Crayon, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and the Hardy Boy series.   It got me thinking about what books define my childhood.  Here are the ones that immediately come to mind:

Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (controversial now that I am an adult, but I loved these.  I still have my battered first copies that I read and reread again and again, held together by shockingly red tape and yellowing Scotch tape.)

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett (I knew this book so well that I stopped reading it front to back and would just dive in wherever I wanted to be at that particular time.  Did I want wealth and pampering or did I want dark, cold attic?)

Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken (I tried and tried to read other Aiken novels, but never made it through another one.  This one I read over and over again, loving the adventure, the danger and gutsy heroines.)

Tell Me a Mitzi by Lore Segal is a book that brings back such memories for me that I actually can smell my childhood and taste it.   I finally got my own copy of the new paperback edition because I couldn’t find an old copy in my local libraries. 

All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown by Sydney Taylor, is one that I still have my tattered childhood copy of.  I won it in second grade for reading the highest number of books (tied with my best friend so that we could both win a book!)  My favorite scene is when one of the children looks into the fire and pulls out the glimmering jewel-like coals.  I still think of that whenever I gaze into a fire and the coals are bewitching.

Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink is still a favorite.  Caddie was so spunky and vivacious and her childhood reminded me strongly of the stories I heard about my mother growing up on a farm.  I adored both Caddie Woodlawn and Magical Melons.

There are many others that I loved as a child.  But these are the ones that I read time and again as a child and sought out as an adult to have surround me.  As I look back at the list I just made, I am struck by the strong heroines in all of the books.  Not something I was consciously trying to do at all. 

That’s my list.  What would be on yours?