HarperCollins has announced that in conjunction with the Olympics in Beijing, they will be publishing a series by Yang Hongying, Chinese bestselling author of children’s books.  I am always happy to see books from other countries being brought into the U.S.  I think that they serve as real windows into a culture, especially when they are contemporary stories.  So often we view other cultures through books set in the past.  This should be a refreshing change.

Barnes & Noble has a very active Kid Lit Book Club on their website.  It is done using a forum format that combines open conversations about broad topics with monthly focused book clubs on specific authors or titles.  If you take a look, each subject has thousands of views!  Whew!  Lots of recommended reading flying around.

I am off for a long Labor Day weekend where we will be having the last of our lazy summer days as a family.  I’ll be back on Tuesday!  Enjoy your holiday weekend!

A huge warm welcome to the Kidslitosphere for fellow Wisconsinite KT Horning!  Not only is KT active on the national children’s lit level, but she also runs the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in Madison, a place where I wish I had time to simply bunk down for months and read, read, read.

KT’s new blog is Worth the Trip, a blog of “queer books for kids and teens.”  Hurrah!  I am adding it immediately to my collection of blogs I must read daily.

Thanks to several other blogs for the link.  Definitely worth repeating.

It’s always with mixed emotions that I look at the Guardian Children’s Fiction Longlist.  Since it is a British award, so often the books aren’t published here yet.  So it can be a frustrating list to look at.  But here they are.  I will list whether they are out in the US yet, to warn you whether to not get so very excited yet.

Guardian Children’s Fiction Longlist for 2007

The Boyhood of Burglar Bill by Allan Ahlberg (Not in US yet)

Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher (In US as hardcover, will be out in paperback in 2008)

The Falconer’s Knot by Mary Hoffman (In US)

Fearless by Tim Lott (Coming out in US in Oct)

The Penalty by Mal Peet (In US)

The Truth Sayer by Sally Prue (In US in paperback)

Mr. Gum and the Biscuit Billionaire by Andy Stanton (Not in US, though the title will probably have to be changed to “Mr. Gum and the Cookie Capitalist”)

Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine (Not in US)

Here is a very nice article from SLJ that talks about great back-to-school books.  I like their various categories by age ranges plus a special section for the first day jitters.  I’m sure someone will have those around our house.  Probably me.

Eggs by Jerry Spinelli.

Nine-year-old David simply cannot get along with his grandmother.  Ever since his mother died, she has been taking care of him while his father works.  But every word she says is like a challenge to him and a reminder that his mother is gone.  It isn’t until David meets Primrose, a strange thirteen-year-old girl, that he starts to open up again.  Primrose lives with her mother, who works as a palm reader.  She resents that their roles are often reversed and has decided to move out of the house and use an abandoned van in their yard as her room.  When she befriends David, she too begins to slowly realize what she has and what she is missing in her life.

This book’s title is perfection with both characters because they are so brittle on the outside and so golden and soft inside.  So very breakable.  But it also holds the key to the writing itself which is filled with a delicious tension and its own shell and hidden insides.  The writing is golden, liquid and tense at the same time.  Add to that the two main characters and you have a real gem.  Both children are vivid and complex people whose very relationship is filled with complexity, anger and need.  They are never two-dimensional and neither are the adults in their lives.  While it would have been easy to make David’s grandmother a secondary and forgettable character, Spinelli takes the time to make her real and allow the readers to see her own fragility and pain. 

There is a delicacy here, a tenderness that is not often seen in children’s books.  And so often Spinelli takes the risk of disrupting that, wrenching it, allowing us to see exactly what is frail and fragile and what is strong and unbreakable in life. 

I consider this book one of the top books for elementary to middle grade readers of the year.  Highly recommended for both boys and girls of that age.

An intriguing article on German authors breaking into the English book market.  We all know of Cornelia Funke, and I have often wondered what other treasures we are missing.  Of course, that means not just German authors but world-wide, what children’s fiction could we be enjoying!  It seems to me that picture books are more likely to cross over, perhaps because translation is simpler?  I love publishers like Kane/Miller who focus on bringing in foreign titles.

There is hope:

Around twice as many licenses for German-language children and teen
literature were sold to foreign countries in 2006 than in 2001,
according to Germany’s book trade association. All told, 2,300 foreign
licenses were sold for German-language literature for children and
teens last year, far more than for adult fiction. The increase,
however, also reflected the fact that German publishers have been
granting more licenses generally.

The San Jose Mercury News has a great article by librarian Julie Winkelstein, who writes about the lack of reading material for children when they travel.  I admit that I am guilty of this as well.  My house is filled with books for children, but when we travel we pack handheld games, DVDs, and pencil activities rather than books.  I’ll blame it on the noise of the airplane, but it really would be nice to read aloud a chapter book to my youngest, or see the oldest with his nose in a book rather than a screen.  Hmmm.  Time to pack away some reading treasures for our next trip!