That was quick

The March book is Looking for Alaska!

NOTE: Be sure to get the copy by John Green, not the book of the same title by Peter Jenkins. You want the book about Alaska the person, not Alaska the great wiiiiide wiiiiild whiiiiiiite way.

ADDENDUM: I just realized this book is set in Birmingham, AL; I'll let you all know if Green's representation of setting is accurate -- ie. sweltering and gross.

I court not the votes of the fickle mob. - Horace

Okay, some explanation is in order.

First of all, Eunice's bribe did not come into my possession by the agreed time. As a result, Criss Cross is not on the list.

Really, though, I thought about it and with all the Newbery hubbubble, figured it would be somewhat difficult to get our hands on copies of the book. Library hold lists are long and even if you wanted to purchase a copy, bookstores are likely to be out of stock (if they carried it at all) and backorders will be in effect. So, I did the drawing as I normally do, no shenanigans, and Criss Cross did not pop up; it will remain on the wish list. Reardless, the books we are voting between look wonderful and I'm having a hard time deciding which to vote for.

Non-Amazon Reviews:
+ An Innocent Soldier at Arthur Levine and The Horn Book.
+ Looking for Alaska at Teenreads.com and at Reading Rants.
+ The Wish List at Bookmunch.

News from Bloomers

Bloomers called me out of the wild blue to ask me to see a play with her, since David skived off last minute. She wanted to prod me on my way to a new job, and we got a chance to talk a little about the ALA committee. She is very excited about Criss Cross. And she has a pair of those ear bag warmer things. I know that's a random detail, but can you see her? Ear bags! She managed the earrings and the ear bags with surprisingly deft fingers.

Two important things to share:

1. She expressed, once again, how much she loved having us Simmons grads in her classes, what a good group we were, etc. She sends her love.

2. She's a Grandma!! At last! Wee Jacob came early, and healthy despite the earliness.

The Winners

Here, find listed all the winners and honor books for the 2006 ALSC Awards. Lynne Rae Perkins (Criss Cross) and Chris Raschka (The Hello, Goodbye Window, written by Norton Juster) got the early Monday morning phone calls this year. Both these books were on Bloomers's list; I wonder if she wanted them to win?

Actually, the Horn Book ALA Awards site has nicer formatting and it explains each medal with a blurb.

Please feel free to add whatever looks interesting to the Wish List. I will set up a poll for March's book later this week.

A new award debuted this year, the Theodor Seuss Geisel Medal. It recognizes the best beginning reader books.

Winner:
Henry and Mudge and the Great Grandpas written by Cynthia Rylant and illustrated by Sucie Stevenson (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

A Hole That Is Black

Ahhh, Black Hole. A black hole, indeed. I found this book disturbing, fascinating, intriguing, and freaky, all at the same time. I couldn’t put it down, but almost in a car-accident-and-I’m-rubbernecking kind of way. This is going to be a diarrhea post. I’m just going to say everything that’s on my mind about the book. Feel free to start your own post if you want to steer the discussion in one particular direction, especially one that I’ve not considered.

• The characters seemed pretty consistent. I felt for Keith and his earnestness.
• I wanted more of a story that followed the beginning, middle, and end rules. Is the ending of Keith’s story (cuddling with Eliza in the motel, exchanging “I love you”s, and then he says “I’m gone”) and Chris’s story (floating in the water, alone on the beach) copouts for Burns? Do the endings mean anything? Do the readers deserve more? Do we deserve to know more about what happens to these two, what decisions they make regarding their future? They are both in limbo, in an unstable state, when we leave them. That might be purposeful (their whole lives are unstable), but I was curious to know more, to know how they survived and how they lived.
• The story jumped around a little too much. I think we could have seen some of the flashback scenes as they were really happening, instead of as they were remembered in a character’s mind. I think I could definitely tell that this was pieced together over a time period instead of written from beginning to end, as most novels. Also, looking back, I’m a little confused about the order of events. In the second “chapter,” Keith finds a female skin in the woods. In the third chapter, Chris appears to be living in the woods already and sheds her skin. But those events seem totally out of order (in the next chapter or two, Chris goes skinny dipping and doesn’t even realize she’s showing symptoms of the bug). Is this just a result of the piecing-together, or did I miss the significance?
• Even though it’s a graphic novel, it still needed to be proofread. There were misspellings (Rob’s last name is spelled two different ways), misplaced commas, missing commas, incorrect possessives (“it’s” instead of “its”), etc., that I found a little distracting.
• The whole book was extremely sexual, with all the vaginal imagery and the actual sex scenes. Even the slit in the frog’s body at the very beginning was extremely sexual. I’m sure the significance of the imagery is that “the bug” was passed through sexual contact, but is there more significance than that? Just that everything comes back to sex, to intimacy, to the human body? There was some phallic imagery, too, if I recall, but certainly not as much as the vaginal stuff (the cut on Chris’s foot that keeps coming back).
• Did Keith know what he was doing when he slept with Eliza? Did he realize that her tail was a symptom of the bug, or did he just think she was “different”? Was he so desperate for love/affection/belonging/getting laid that he willingly “caught” the bug?
• When Eliza was telling Keith how she came to live with those guys in the house and then have her artwork trashed (which she did herself), she was saying how she couldn’t bear to live with her stepdad for another year. So we hear about the different options she tried, including sleeping in the woods with friends. And then one frame shows her come across a guy strung up on a tree, dead (leading to her decision of not living in the woods). What was the significance of that? I had thought all the weirdness of the skeletal figures was that one guy (Rick – and they were probably harmless?) and all the murders were Dave. So did that murdered guy in the tree mean anything? Also, at the beginning of the book, the people around the campfire are talking about how that one girl Lana disappeared and how Roy found that arm. But that was before Dave was obsessed with Chris, so were there really other murders going on in the woods? If there was more than just what Dave did, I felt like I didn’t know enough about it and I was cheated a little bit.
• I found the AIDS metaphor pretty real and current today, with the alienation, the thought that it could never happen to you (the way Keith’s friends are making fun of the yearbook they find), the need to escape but yet not really being able to... Did it simplify the disease at all?
• Was the love between Chris and Rob real? Was the love between Keith and Eliza real? Were they all just desperate to find someone who would accept them, someone who would love them, someone who was also sick, someone who wouldn’t judge them, someone with whom they could escape?

I know that’s a lot to muddle through, but this book is a lot to digest. So I’m just throwing it all out there. Anyone care to pick up a topic and discuss?

Go Bloomers, go!

Here's the booktalk list. She must have listed them in the order she presented them, which must have been nice for her audience. Of course, one can only wonder what her segues could have been, because this list doesn't seem to have a useful order.
Enjoy, dears.

Transformations in Style and Content: Selected Children’s Books of Distinction in 2005

Banyai, Istvan. The Other Side. Chronicle.

Juster, Norton. The Hello, Goodbye Window. Illustrated by Chris Raschka. Hyperion.

Myers, Christopher. Lies and Other Tall Tales. Collected by Zora Neale Hurston. HarperCollins.

Grey, Mini. Traction Man is Here! Knopf.

Meddaugh, Susan. The Witch’s Walking Stick. Houghton.

Philobolus. The Human Alphabet. Photos by John Kane. Roaring Brook.

Woodson, Jacqueline. Show Way. Illustrated by Hudson Talbott. Putnam.

Lester, Julius. The Old African. Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. Dial.

Lester, Julius. Days of Tears. Hyperion.

Nelson, Marilyn. A Wreath for Emmett Till. Houghton.

Barbour, Karen. Mr. Williams. Holt.

Sidman, Joyce. Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems. Illustrated by Beckie Prange. Houghton.

Rosen, Michael. Michael Rosen’s Sad Book. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. Candlewick.

Poole, Josephine. Anne Frank. Illustrated by Angela Barrett. Knopf.

Muth, Jon. Zen Shorts. Scholastic.

Say, Allen. The Kamishibai Man. Houghton.

Young, Ed. Beyong the Great Mountais: A Visual Poem about China. Chronicle.

Shulevitz, Uri. The Travels of Benjamin Tudela. Farrar.

Bartoletti, Susan. Hitler Youth. Scholastic.

Erdich, Louise. The Game of Silence. HarperCollins.

Lanagan, Margo. Black Juice. HarperCollins.

Zevin, Gabrielle. Elsewhere. Farrar.

Gerstein, Mordecai. The Old Country. Roaring Brook.

Birdsall, Jeanne. The Penderwicks. Knopf.

McKay, Hilary. Permanent Rose. McElderry.

Yancey, Rick. The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp. Bloomsbury.

Perkins, Lynn Rae. CrissCross. Greenwillow.

Lynch, Chris. Inexcusable. Atheneum.

Partridge, Elizabeth. John Lennon: All I Want is the Truth. Viking.

Marsalis, Wynton. Jazz ABZ. Illustrations by Paul Rodgers. Candlewick.

Sabuda, Robert, and Matthew Reinhart. Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs. Candlewick.

Seeger, Laura Vaccaro. Walter Was Worried. Roaring Brook.

Jenkins, Emily. That New Animal. Illustrated by Pierre Pratt. Farrar.

Best, Cari. Are You Going to Be Good? Illustrated by G. Brian Karas. Farrar.

Bee, William. Whatever. Candlewick.

Agee, John. Terrific. Hyperion.

Girmay, Aracelis. changing, changing. George Braziller.

Votes are In

...or at least six of them are, and that's a great turnout!

February's book is Full Service by Will Weaver, one of The Horn Book's Best Books of 2005.

Embarrasingly, the only other book on the list I've even looked at is Prehistoric Actual Size by Steve Jenkins, though I plan to read Hilary McKay's third Casson family book Permanent Rose and The Minister's Daughter by Julie Hearn. I may add one of those to the Wish List...

My copy of Black Hole arrived yesterday (along with the ReadyMade book, hooray hooray) and that is one solid chunk of a tome! Not as thick as Blankets but quite substantial. Can't wait to start.

Aack!

It IS January (!) so we need to get a February book chosen ASAP! There are eleven books on the wish list. The three that were randomly pulled (see here):



To offset the Amazon bent, here are some other blurbs about the books from Teenreads.com:

+ Full Service
+ Going, Going
+ Zazoo

I'm looking forward to the new year and chatting books up with our two new members! (Can you introduce yourselves?)

Any thoughts on the best book we read this year? I have to say Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place and So B. It top my list.

Voting time - Autobiography of My Dead Brother

(Lingo taken from Slang of the Fifties.)

Boyz in da hood

Alright, y'all are slow. I finished this book a week ago, and I was waiting for someone else to speak up, but I'm just going to bite the bullet.

I was surprised to like this book. I can't say I enjoyed it because it was painful to read about these boys. But that made it a good read. I was able to connect to Jesse (not so much Rise or Mason) and even his parents a little bit. I realized at the end that CJ and Rise are like Jesse's conscience, pulling him in either direction. And I liked that the whole time I knew which was the right thing to do, and I kept rooting for him and pleading for him not to go where Rise invited him. I like that I was able to connect with the characters, despite my complete removal from their situations.

I have a question: What was the purpose of the girl? (Was it Tania?) Character development? Attraction to the Rise course of action?

Should be a comment but it deserves its own post...

For more Goodnight Moon hilarity, click here.

I tried to use bugmenot to bypass NYTimes registration (no, I was not already registered, and yes, get off my back), but that page "wasn't found." So I registered anyway, and it was quick and painless (and free!). Worth the read.

Meet Lisa

I invited Lisa (FlyGirl) to join the rumpus because of something I learned about her almost three years ago. On our way to look at the apartment where we now reside, she asked, "What would you be if you weren't a scientist?" Interestingly, I already had an answer: librarian. (But I couldn't decide what kind of librarian, so here I am in grad school.) Amazingly, Lisa said, "Me too!" and started talking about her love for books, especially childrens' books, and her lifelong goal of reading all the Newbery books, and the Excel spreadsheet she uses to keep track of them, and so forth.

I also invited her because we live in the same house and it would be easy to share the books.

January --

The votes are in and counted and the January book is Black Hole by Charles Burns -- the compilation. Make sure you get the book and not just one of the issues.

If you are using a library (and several of the systems Hedgehogs use own copies) get yourself on the hold list soon! Or track down a new/used copy through Bookfinder, Froogle or Amazon. Or, if you are lucky enough to live in a place with half decent bookstores, go buy one at your local independent!

Discussion begins January 15th and hopefully we will have some new voices!

Feelin' Newsy --

Here's a new blog: AS IF - Authors Support Intellectual Freedom. There's the Geography Club article and some other things I've seen elsewhere, but I like the idea. Check the member list on the sidebar. Very impressive!

You'll need to spend some time there after visiting Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools out of Kansas. Yeah, because I always longed to teach How Green Was My Valley instead of dirty books like Fallen Angels. We don't want them reading ANYTHING interesting. Show me a kid who can make it through Moby Dick and I'll eat my hat. They also list Bartelby [sic] the Scrivener.

It strikes me as odd that Middlemarch is on their Best of the Best List (AKA: A whole lotta old, boring books) (okay, not ALL of them). It's on my to be read shelf -- and has been for YEARS; that is a brick of a book; I can't imagine assigning it -- but I watched a BBC version and I remember a lot of lustful glances artfully displayed.

From Wikipedia.org:

Virginia Woolf described Middlemarch as, "one of the few English novels written for grown up people"

So there, Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools! Virginia knows what she's talking about!

Sleep Right!

I don't know how many of you heard about how HarperCollins erased Clement Hurd's cigarette from the wraps of Goodnight Moon, but here's a washingtonpost.com article with a rewritten text, for every child's protection. (click title)

Place your bets -

STEP ONE: THE PLAYING FIELD

---> Books #1-8 as taken from the Wishlist.

STEP TWO: THE POT

---> Stir thoroughly.

STEP THREE: THE WINNERS

I thought it would be a good idea to pull three instead of four to ensure that the winning book does so by more than one vote; it all depends on how many people voice their opinions. We'll see how it goes and change it if we need to, okay?

Polling stations are open as of NOW and will remain so until the end of Saturday, December 3rd.

Vote now! Vote once! Click on the title to find out more about the books.

Clarification

Now that the Hedgehog wish list is going strong, how are we going to use our powers for good?

In other words, how can we choose the January book? (January?! We've been around for a year now!) Pick a random sampling from the list -- maybe, four books? -- and vote on those? Take the two highest voted books and have those for the next two months?

That's what came to my mind. If you have another idea or agree with this one, please insert your assent/dissent here.

Have a delightful Thanksgiving!

Ladies! It's that time again!

Le Club de Geographie

Okay, I'll start.

I found this book enjoyable. Somewhat. To a point. Kinda.

I found the premise pretty interesting. A gay guy who thinks he's all alone. A group of pretty likeable gay/bisexual high schoolers who want a support group. The dynamics of high school (and you couldn't pay me to go back there).

But the book was just trying too hard for me. I don't mind that Russel is telling us the story—although truthfully I find that a little tired—but there were things that just seemed to be forced. "That's the principal, in case you don't remember." etc etc. He was too cutesy, too geeky but hip-geek, too cheeky with the reader, too I-don't-know-but-it-started-to-bug.

Things happened a little too quickly, without me as the reader seeing enough of the build-up or background. Russel's relationship with Kevin—I had no idea if they had met just that one night at the stinky picnic gazebo or every single night for weeks. I knew that Russel really liked Kevin, but I wasn't sure what was between them and how intimate—emotionally, physically—they had gotten. I wasn't too sure about Kevin in general. What was he really like? He seemed too stereotypical in the two faces he had—sweet when he was alone, a jerk when he was with "the guys." Also, when Russel admits to Brian Bund that he really is gay, I thought Russel was a little too comfortable with that. I didn't get the feeling that he was ready to be out, even if only to one person who was a social outcast.

I was also bothered how the book went to so much trouble to "foreshadow" the bad things that were going to happen. We were hit on the head with it, with the "and I didn't know how bad it would get" kind of idea. It's like we were set up for the fall, and then it happened in small annoying increments (the first time it was the article in the school newspaper, which didn't seem that bad). But the drama in the narrative was too much for me. And if that was because it was Russel saying it, then it's a little too stereotypical (gay drama queen) for me.

I liked that Hartinger picked geography for the club, given what he said about that on his website (the landscape of social groups in high school, all the different "lands"). But I did get a little sick of how everything fit so neatly. All the talk about the "Borderlands of Respectability" and the "Land of the Popular" and so on. I get it. Don't spell it out for me too much.

I picked up volume three of Michael Cart's Rush Hour (called Faces), and Hartinger has a story in there (I think it might be an excerpt, not a short story). I wasn't able to finish it, but it seemed very different from this narrative voice. Wasn't trying as hard. Has anyone read that or anything else by Hartinger?

So I have to say I wasn't overly impressed. Yeah, it's a good idea, and we need more literature out there addressing gay teens, but I just didn't think it was terribly well written. A fine effort, especially for a first novel, but I wasn't bowled over.

Thoughts?

Igor, go fetch --

Brent Hartinger has quite a website!

The little photos to the left of the column ("inside" the lobes) are hilarious, plus read the bottom of the Where I'm Going lobe.

He's also got a LiveJournal.

Bookslut covers his books (including Geography Club and the sequel The Order of the Poison Oak) here.

*** Just to share my pain, my sad local library "system" has three copies of The Order of the Poison Oak. This sounds good, but someone please explain why they have NO copies of Geography Club and my book had to come from a university library three and a half hours away!