So, for all of you in my neck of the woods - a reminder that this weekend is the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the UCLA Campus. I look forward to this event every year as an opportunity to hear authors lecture and read their own work…and for kids in particular there is a huge lineup of great programming and performances. It’s also exciting to be surrounded a HUGE literate crowd - there because they love books. (happy sigh)
And my favorite neighborhood children’s book store Every Picture Tells a Story will be there with a huge exhibition space (Booth 513) featuring amazing children’s book illustration art, books (of course) and a groovy 40th Anniversary limited edition print celebrating Eric Carle’s Hungry Little Caterpillar.
Every Picture will also be hosting a whole lineup of authors and illustrators - with a range that will appeal to smaller kids and young adult readers alike. Here’s the run down:
It’s likely you’ve visited the little town of Chewandswallow during nightly bedtime stories and fans of Judi Barret’s absurdist tall-tale Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be interested to know that Sony Pictures Animation has just released the trailer for their movie adaptation. It’s always hit and miss with pictures adapted from literary favorites and I was a little disappointed to see that there was no reference to Ron Barrett’s great book illustrations - but nonetheless, you’ll probably find me in the audience this September. Check out the full length trailer below or view it here.
And what’s a meatball without some spaghetti? I came across these fantastic 1957 pictures and film footage from the BBC of that year’s Swiss spaghetti harvest. Check out the video from the news show Panorama below or view it here. Read more about spaghetti harvesting here.
While I certainly had heard about Pluto’s demotion from planet to member of the Kuiper belt, it wasn’t until I heard this story on NPR last month that I became aware of the turmolt this reclassification had caused…especially among grade school kids. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York has been widely cast as the villain in this controversy.
Well the folks over at the cool kids retailer Olliebollen have recently launched the Pluto Fan Club, a place for your little astronomer to launch a formal complaint by filling out their download-able protest letter. While there, read up on the misaligned now dwarf planet by checking out these books: The Kid Who Named Pluto (an 11 year old girl named Venetia Burney!), and When is a Planet not a Planet? You can also join their cause on Facebook.
I think if there were a 12 step program for book fanatics my friends and family would probably stage an intervention and force me to attend. Last summer the book population in our home swelled to the point where all shelves were double stacked and I had moved on to building little literary towers along the walls - a crisis situation that forced me to fill several give-away boxes. If time allowed I’d probably set up weekend book adoptions allowing me to interview potential readers before gifting them with the appropriate volumes. But instead I sent book packages to my siblings and then loaded up the trunk and gave the rest to my local library.
Depending on the age of your kids and the frequency of play dates in your home, you may actual feel like you’re running your own lending library. One way to encourage the return of Junior’s books is to label them. But rather than allowing him to scrawl his mark across the cover, consider some of the lovelies from this bookplate round-up.
Mother and pediatric occupational therapist Jennifer Hallisey recently featured a post on her blog The Write Start about creating writing rituals for younger kids. Her son Jack who is a ‘pre-writer’ has started sitting down in the evening with a blank journal and a jar a colored pencils to document the ‘color’ of his day. It’s a great idea and I encourage you to check out the full post.
Should you be looking for some great handmade kid-friendly journals, check out the comic-covered, button-bound versions at Bombus. Gorgeous.
And as we pursue our literacy badge I want to make you aware of Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord’s site Making Books with Children. This author, instructor and bookmaker has a great tutorial section with several free and fun bookmaking projects to tackle with your kiddo.
I love a good pop-up book and Parisian designer Marion Bataille has created a beautiful one. She is a widely published graphic artist and illustrator who also works for the Pompidou Centre, Le Monde and all the best French Publishers. While not slated for release until October of this year, her publisher Roaring Brook Press has provide a fun preview video - see below. You can also view the video here. ABC3D is available for pre-order on Amazon - only $14. hardback!
There are so many great bloggers who have recently parlayed their special talents into print. And always striving to adhere to the universal rules of the playground I want to take the opportunity to share (which is rule #2, preceded only by rule #1 which is ‘play nice’) a few great new books and perhaps introduce you to some wonderful new blogs in the process. Given the context of the Junior Society I’ve selected this particular group because their ‘how-to’ books have kid-applicable content with either projects to create with your kids or for your kids. So go do a little exploring and then do a little shopping, adding great volumes to your shelves and supporting these creative ladies in the process.
It’s not unusual to find Burgin Streetman scouring San Antonio’s Goodwill, library and yard sales for those few vintage children’s books that have managed to allude her. A weekend hobby? Please. The woman is a pro and that means making the rounds at least three times a week to add to the hundreds, nay thousands of classic kiddie lit titles already on her shelves. Obsession? Let’s call it a passion. A passion we can thankfully all benefit from as Burgin reviews a new vintage book almost every weekday on her blog Vintage Kids Books My Kid Loves. After ten years in the New York publishing world, she’s relocated to her husband’s native Texas where she writes freelance and raises a very literate three year old.
Ok, bad pun title I know, but blame it on Warner Brothers…it’s from one of my favorite old school Bugs Bunny cartoons Hair-Raising Hare. For those of you old enough to remember watching Merrie Melodies on Saturday mornings, this cartoon features the first appearance of the big red monster in sneakers Gossamer. No? Not ringing a bell? No worries, it’s honestly not the focus of this post anyway. With Easter this coming Sunday I thought it might be fun to do a little rabbit roll-call with some of my favorite bunny themed products on the web:
Avid birder and National Audubon Society member since the age of eight, Roberta “Bobolink” Beyer has recently launched a beautiful online shop call The Fat Finch. As I understand it, Roberta created her web store as a companion to her brick and mortar store Bobolink (a type of bird and her nickname since childhood) to reach a wider audience of birding enthusiasts. But quite honestly you don’t need to be a ‘wake up before dawn and sit in a thicket with your binoculars’ type to enjoy the offerings of The Fat Finch.
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Wrapping paper resembling vintage paint-by-number birds. $2.95 per sheet.
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Birding lends itself to all variety of involvement, the simplest of which may be simply setting up a birdhouse, bird feeder or bird bath with your kids. I’m awful partial to the Barnhouse Birdhouse below, and it’s functioning doors allow you to either leave them open with birdseed inside or keep them closed during nesting and then open them for easy cleaning in the off season. $64.95
Tangent that leads somewhere, I promise: When I was a kid, probably eight or nine, I decided I absolutely and irrationally needed a multi-tiered, pagoda-like bamboo birdhouse that I found in a shop or catalogue. Immediately began the Christmas campaigning, and apparently my pleading worked as I later found out my poor father was up till all hours Christmas eve assembling the crazy, complicated thing. It sounds horrible when I say it, but in retrospect the idea of having a pet bird was really secondary to owning that cage. I did select a green parakeet and named him Pistachio who was a poor housekeeper and continually generated a two foot circle of feathers and seed shells around his cage. And I confess to completely panicking when he was let out of his pagoda and flitted insanely around my room. Admittedly not the most successful pairing of pet and kid. All of this to say that the adorable motion-sensor chirping birdies might be a good test run if you’re thinking about a caged bird of your own. $14.95 each.
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There is also a small but fine selection of avian themed books, from classics like Owl Moon to more contemporary stories. Various prices.
