Omnivoracious

Winners Announced for the 2008 Weird-Ass Picture Book Awards!

The results are in! The 2nd annual Weird-Ass Picture Book Awards concluded this week, ending frenzied speculation and putting to rest months of controversy over the WAPBA's arcane selection process as well as ballot-stuffing rumors related to the 2007 WAPBA winner The Fuchsia Is Now, by J. Otto Seibold.

Actually... almost none of that happened, aside from the Weird-Ass Picture Book Awards themselves. The WAPBAs are a fiction created by popular kid-lit blogger MotherReader, while she was antsy waiting to hear the Oscar nominations in January. But it's such an entertaining fiction that it's hard not to love. And the winners? They're all great books--nominated by MotherReader readers and selected by the MR herself:

WAPB Award for Cover Art: New Socks, by Bob Shea

WAPB Award for Illustration: Bow Wow Bugs a Bug, by Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash

WAPB Award for Story: Five Little Gefiltes, by Dave Horowitz

2008 Award for Best Weird-Ass Picture Book: Cowboy and Octopus, by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith

And alas, there's no love for what many pundits and odds-makers put as a favorite for the Best WAPB award: the Steve Martin and Roz Chast collaboration The Alphabet from A to Y With Bonus Letter Z! ("[While it] was nominated and considered, ultimately it was rejected by the committee (uh, me) as being an adult book in children’s picture book clothing, and therefore ineligible for the award. Plus it sucked.") --Paul

Cool new kid-lit blogs: one here and one on the way

It's a lucky day when you discover not just one but *two* brand-new kids' book blogs worth checking out. One is already up and the other is still coalescing into blog-ificence:

1. I.N.K., i.e. Interesting Nonfiction for Kids. This blog promises to bring even more "charm, wit, and good looks" to this sometimes-neglected subphylum of kid lit. So far so good, with savvy recommendations like these "handsells":

   You say you really enjoyed the terrific humor and insights of the recent Newbery honor winner THE WEDNESDAY WARS? Well, let me tell you, if you liked those rats, you'll be blown away by Rats. The Story of Rats and People by Al Marrin. It's rats through the ages, reproducing and thriving, even in a court of law.

   Are you the more sensitive type who usually enjoys a tender tearjerker like Jenny Downham's BEFORE I DIE about a girl's battle with incurable cancer? We NF people do diseases--and lots of them. Why not give ace NF writer James Cross Giblin's When Plague Strikes. The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS a try? Mr. Giblin does not disappoint in his ability to totally immerse his readers in infection, illness and disease.

2. Guys Lit Wire. Don't get too excited just yet: this site still isn't up, but it should soon be a great resource for teen-boy-book recommendations--both for people seeking books for teen boys and (it is hoped) for "actual teenagers," too. With its Guys Read-flavored mission and help from multi-talented bloggers like Colleen Mondor and Sara Lewis Holmes, it's bound to be great.

And it should be noted: I found I.N.K. via Tea Cozy, which points out another great kid nonfiction resource, the ALA's Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults' list "I'm Not Making This Up." --Paul

Kids' Books to Caucus By

In our home, we read political blogs compulsively (from smart liberals *and* smart conservatives) and we haven't been able to stop listening to streaming local radio from Iowa, New Hampshire, and now Nevada, all while watching the latest results tallied on Politico.

So how do we incorporate our kid into the action? At nine months, about the only way Silas gets involved is by laughing when we cheer and/or moan--in the most exaggerated way possible, for his entertainment--as primary results come in. And we may try to deploy his cuteness to sway fellow caucus-goers in February. (You have been warned, precinct #SEA 43-2059!)

But little did I know that for even slightly older kids, there's a slew of new political books out--even picture books! Publishers Weekly just posted a thoughtful and seemingly exhaustive list of new books this year on politics and elections, from novels to kid-friendly biographies of current candidates to a scrapbook-style history of Lincoln. (Sadly, there are no Huckaberry or Chicka Chicka DNC board books.)

There are lots of intriguing titles on the list, including a DK book on the voting process, an entry from one of my favorite kids' book dogs, and even a story written by White House press correspondent/legend Helen Thomas. Check out the informative PW article for more commentary and context on all the books, but here's the list--and if you don't see a link, that probably just means the publication date is still too far out:

Our Family's Holiday Book Recap

Heidi and I just got back from a long holiday break, including three family xmases and a New Year's trip to Vegas (in which we learned that 8-month-old Silas could care less about the Bellagio's fountains, but he loves fireworks and trying to eat Keno tickets). Silas and his cousin got plenty of books, so I figured I'd share some of the highlights:

• Winter in White: A Mini Pop-up Treat: For my money, you can't beat The Night Before Christmas for yuletide Robert Sabuda pop-up madness, but my mom got Silas this smaller, more subtle Sabuda pop-up and it seems like just the right scale.
• Gallop: Why hasn't this been done before? The low-tech, zoetrope-like animations (patented as "Scanimations") in this stout little board/pop-up book are weirdly compelling. A horse, cat, turtle, eagle, etc., comes to life on each page--without batteries or a screen--looking much like primitive Muybridge animations. The effect is too subtle for Silas (who finds everything fascinating), but kids who are even a little older will appreciate the coolness. I'd think that Robert Sabuda would be kicking himself over not thinking of this first, but he's got an admiring blurb right there on the back cover.
• Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?: I'm such a sucker for Eric Carle's illustration style, and this board book has fun rhymes and repetition, too. Plus, all the animals in this particular book are endangered, so you can have fun reading a loud while also feeling terrible about destroying the planet. (How much habitat did I destroy from buying yet another board book? I don't even want to think about it.)
• Moomin books: My comics-loving friends and my Finnish friends (okay, one Finnish friend) couldn't believe that we'd never heard of Moomin. Moomin "is, like, the Mickey Mouse of our country"--with, I now know, an amusement park and everything. I loved a clever and goofy die-cut kids' book with the Moomin characters called The Book About Moomin, Mymble and Little My, but grownups and older kids will get way more out of the popular and very fun comic strip, a densely idiosyncratic serial that's more like Barnaby or Krazy Kat than more current strips. It was originally published in English in the 1950s in the London Evening News and has been collected in nicely oversized hardbacks by Canadian comics publisher Drawn and Quarterly. I devoured volumes one and two.
• The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: This was the sleeper hit of Christmas, for Silas' almost 5-year-old cousin, and for me and his dad. It should be noted that this was from the library, because we couldn't find it anywhere--despite trying, since Silas' cousin carried it with him everywhere, even though the entire beat-up book was in black and white, and he couldn't read the entries. He just kept asking, "Who is this? Who is that?" And we'd tell him, "Oh, that's Kang the Conqueror. Let's see, he's, uh... from the 40th century. And... he traveled back in time to become a pharaoh." And so on, through hundreds (thousands?) of entries. This seemed like classic, mastery-of-arcane-knowledge boy reading--like the way I (and his dad, coincidentally) would read the Guinness Book of World Records cover to cover and back again growing up. We never did find the Marvel guide in print before Christmas, so he could have his own copy, but it looks like an updated edition is coming out this spring. (We got him another slightly age-inappropriate book instead, DK's Spider-Man Ultimate Guide, to feed his growing Spidey obsession. We got bonus points because it matched his pajamas.)
• Drawn to Enchant: This wasn't a gift for anyone but just a book that I was carrying around reading, which has a ton of amazing illustrations, images, and ephemera, from children's books going back well over a century. I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone who isn't particularly interested in kids' literature, but Slate (where I originally learned about it) has a great slideshow of the highlights, including my favorite, an early sketch of Gandalf and Bilbo by Maurice Sendak, from a book that was never produced:

--Paul

If Omnivoracious had a secret world headquarters...

Or I guess it wouldn't be much of a secret in this case, but I think it would have to mimic our own top-o'-the-blog Omnivoracious bookshelf just like this:

These Brobdingnagian books cover the parking garage of Kansas City's Central Library. I've got to say, I even like the title curation. (And when I read Lord of the Rings the first time as a kid, I remember it felt that big.)

You can see more pics of the library in this nice person's flickr set. (Found via the ever-awesome Bookshelves of Doom. DOOOOOM.) --Paul

“Brooms down. Eyes closed. And the snitch is loose.”

In case you hadn't heard, Vassar won this year's Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup on Sunday:

(photo from the entertaining Midd Blog)

So how do you play quidditch without flying broomsticks? It's "a violent ballet, of sorts," with a bunch of nonflying broomsticks, a volleyball, gold-painted hula hoops, some red playground balls, and--my favorite--a modified snitch: in the case of Middlebury, "Rainey Johnson, a rogue player dressed all in gold, runs wild throughout the game, a tennis ball in a sock attached to the back of his shorts. He isn’t confined to the field; he can run all over campus."

Note that Middlebury players frown on variants at other colleges that use a remote control helicopter for a snitch. “Our snitch does flips,” [referee and junior Victor] Larsen said. “Rainey is a cross-country runner and also a wrestler, so he’ll take you down if you try and get him. I’ve never seen a helicopter do that." (Yes: “Foul play is definitely encouraged.”)

And in addition to the compelling physical ridiculousness, you also get pageantry. Behold a Midd Blog pick for favorite uniform:

What's not to love? If you must know more about muggle quidditch, watch Middlebury prepping for last Sunday's matchup. --Paul

Ready for Children's Book Week?

The 88th annual Children's Book Week is next week, November 12–18. I know, I know: If you have kids and you're reading Omnivoracious, every week is probably Children's Book Week in your home. But the Children's Book Council has some good ideas for celebrating the occasion—including a few worth stealing from their suggested parents letter for teachers:

 

• During dinner, each family member should share their current favorite book by naming the title, author and illustrator, and giving a brief description of the book and why it’s a favorite.
• Go to the library or a bookstore as a family and help each other pick out new books to bring home.
• Work with your child and some friends to develop a play based on a scene from their favorite book. Invite family and friends to view the production. Remember to take pictures.
• Write a story based on some favorite book characters. Work together as a family to develop plot ideas.
• After dinner, instead of watching television, read aloud from a book (or books) to each other. If you haven’t been read to in a while, you’ll be surprised how much fun it is.

Also: be on the lookout for read-ins, author and illustrator visits, and awards parties in your area or school. And don't miss the very cool vintage posters for sale from past book weeks, e.g.:

--Paul

Guys Read

The new Horn Book magazine just came out, but darnit if I didn't just get my hands on the previous one! We took Silas to lunch with his great-grandmother yesterday, and Heidi read from the Sep/Oct issue aloud in the car. (I highly recommend the human audiobook to all young families as a way to squeeze in more reading time.) The Horn Book was my pick because I've been wanting to read editor Roger Sutton's interview with Jon Scieszka (the genius behind The Stinky Cheese Man, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, the Time Warp Trio books, etc.).

Scieszka was mostly talking about his crusade-slash-Web-site Guys Read, which is intended to draw attention to boys' literacy. ("Boys often have to read books they don’t really like. They don’t get to choose what they want to read. And what they do like to read, people sometimes tell them is not really reading.") The interview is insightful and often hysterical and I wish it were online to share, but I'll transcribe one particularly entertaining snippet. He's talking here about what happened when a neighbor of his tried to start a boy-friendly book club for his sons that also involved pizza and soccer:

I went to a couple of the meetings, and they were really funny. It was just like a bunch of guys in a bar. Even though they were only eight years old, they were master bullshitters, just throwing out what they knew about, say, Jackie Robinson, when the book under discussion was The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963. They'd go off on these tangents, little eight-year-olds trying to show that they each knew more than the other guy, and nobody was listening to each other at all. That's a different way boys experience books, and part of why they enjoy nonfiction, certainly. There's something about boys amassing expertise and being in charge of that knowledge, whether it's about all the dinosaurs in the world or every kind of truck that there is on the planet.

The interview is great if you can get a hold of it--and it's generated much discussion among parents, educators, librarians, and authors, e.g., on blogs on Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal.  --Paul

Where the Wild Things Are: Where It's At

If you already know about the upcoming live-action "Where the Wild Things Are" movie (directed by Spike Jonze, with a screenplay by Jonze and Dave Eggers, and a cast including Catherine Keener, Forest Whitaker,  James Gandolfini, et al.), then chances are you've already freaked out over the sneak-peek production still that was floating around a few months ago:

Sadly, there hasn't been much news since then for those of us hankering to learn more about the beloved book's adaptation—until last week! New York Magazine apparently got their hands on the script. The verdict? It's "really, really good":

In transforming the 338-word story of Where the Wild Things Are into a 111-page screenplay, Eggers and Jonze have fleshed out the story not, unexpectedly, with wild plot developments, and not, thankfully, with densely packed pop-fiction references. Instead Where the Wild Things Are is filled with richly imagined psychological detail, and the screenplay for this live-action film simply becomes a longer and more moving version of what Maurice Sendak's book has always been at heart: a book about a lonely boy leaving the emotional terrain of boyhood behind.

Say no more. Can't wait. (And yes, it was already a movie. But that one was only seven minutes long. And it was animated. Thanks to YouTube, you can still watch it.) --Paul

I Shall (Eventually) Read All the Best Books of 2007

This has been a weird year for books in our family. Heidi and I had our first kid in April--a boy, Silas, charming and no doubt doomed to bibliophilia, the poor guy--but that means I've been reduced to hit-and-run, guerrilla tactics in my reading. I'm fighting an increasingly asymmetrical struggle: the baby's naps get shorter, the stack of books I want to finish gets taller.

I've put my years of kids-book reviewing for Amazon to good use (as I hope to do in my posts to the Family Room), so I've at least had the consolation of satisfying reads with Silas, like Hug and Chicka Chicka ABC. But for sheer recreation, I'm definitely skewing now more towards nonfiction (esp. politics), comics, and anything else that I can quickly pick up and put down w/o completely losing the thread.

That's all my way of saying: Even though my survey of 2007 books hasn't exactly been encyclopedic, I have no reservations recommending I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets as my hands-down favorite. This bizarro time capsule rescued from the earliest days of superhero comics (1939-1941) is like a sublime, demented brick over the head. The collection--complete stories of "Stardust the Super Wizard," "Fantomah: Mystery Woman of the Jungle," and a couple others--surpasses itself in fantastical weirdness with nearly every panel, like an eight-year-old's dream of what a comic should be. Almost better than the work itself is the comic afterword by editor Paul Karasik, "Whatever Happened To Fletcher Hanks?" in which he recounts his pursuit of the renowned but forgotten outsider artist behind these obscure comics.

A panel from "De Structo & the Headhunter."

P.S. Speaking of short, satisfying reads, I should also mention my favorite zine of 2007: Man Why You Even Got to Do a Thing (hopefully already known to other fans of the Ignatz-winning Webcomic Achewood). --Paul