Further Adventures in Author Stalking

Those of you who actually read my blog (and I guess, if you are reading this now, than I am talking to you) may remember that I wrote about a forthcoming book by the great Lemony Snicket and the Caldecott award winner and honoree Jon Klassen called The Dark.

If you follow me on Facebook, you'd know that Mr. Snicket's representative Daniel Handler and Mr. Klassen were at Hicklebee's this morning and so, therefore, was I.

They presented a slideshow in which they showed pictures from their childhoods and some of the things they've done in their lives before they collaborated (a word which here means 'worked together') on The Dark.  Mr. Snicket's representative explained that while Mr. Klassen wasted his childhood playing on swings and looking at pictures, Mr. Snicket was busy doing research.

Here, Mr. Snicket's representative is demonstrating how he learned to perform the trick pictured in the slideshow.  We also learned that while Mr. Snicket is not afraid of the dark, he is afraid of crabs, and his representative appears to be as well. 

To add a layer of difficulty to the reading, Mr. Snicket's representative tied a blindfold on to Mr. Klassen who continued to illustrate the reading blindfolded.  There was a surprise ending to this but I won't give that away here.  I'll share it at school next week.

Here is the dynamic duo signing my books (one for me and one for Marshall Lane). 

This one proves that I was there.

If you would like the opportunity to meet Mr. Klassen and Mr. Snicket or his representative, depending on who shows up, they will be at the Burlingame Library tomorrow at 4.  It's about a 45 minute drive from here so if you leave right after school, you should be there in plenty of time.  I highly recommend you do this.  Especially if, like me, you love books and you like friendly and funny authors and illustrators.

A singularity of children's book authors.

Some of you may have read on Facebook yesterday that my head had exploded in a fit of squeee.  This is true.

After I posted here yesterday, I went on Twitter to promote my blog post.  While scrolling through my feed, I noticed that Jon Klassen and Lemony Snicket had kicked off their book tour for The Dark, a book I knew was coming. This made me excited and hopeful that they'd make an appearance somewhere in the Bay Area so I could stalk them together, as I've already stalked them separately as evidenced here and on my author shrine wall in the library.

Then someone tweeted that Neil Gaiman had shown up and joined the presentation.  How cool is that? But what was Neil Gaiman doing there?  I know he's pals with Lemony Snicket but is that enough cause for him to pop in on a book tour?  I decided to do a little digging and that's when I discovered that he was there because he is the reader of the audio book version of The Dark! Squeeeesplodey!
So here is a third author - my all time favorite author, no less - that I have stalked separately:

Working in collaboration with two of my other favorite authors on one project!  And they were all in one space for some very lucky children in New York.  You can read about it and see pictures here.

And, of course, I had to have this amazing work so that is when I discovered that the ebook is an enhanced ebook with Neil Gaiman's audio reading built into it so you have Jon Klassen's beautiful illustrations, Lemony Snicket's amazing words, and Neil Gaiman's velvety voice all at once.  This was my bedtime story last night and it made me so happy.

Also, it turns out Mr. Klassen and Mr. Snicket will bringing their book tour out this way on April 29 at  the Burlingame Public Library.  I'm going, who's with me?

Some things that are off topic but mostly things that aren't

I have just enough time to get a post in before January ends so Happy New Year!

I've been procrastinating on my blog posting - obvs! - so I have quite a bit to catch you up on.

I've gotten interested in knit wear pattern design so I've been working on a couple of designs in the last couple of weeks.  One - a pair of fingerless mitts - is currently being tested and the other - a super funky hat - needs to be written so I can get it tested.  It's a fairly time consuming process, I'm discovering.  I come up with an idea and start knitting it.  As I'm knitting it, I have to keep pretty meticulous notes about what I'm doing so I can convert those notes into a pattern.  In the meantime, I'm discovering what works and what doesn't work and then I might have to tweak my design and start the project all over again.  Then I give the pattern to testers and they try it out and find all my typos and math mistakes and provide me with feedback for a final draft.  It's an interesting process and immensely satisfying when it works out the way I want it to.  I will post these projects here once they've completed the testing process.

I've been listening to podcasts mostly while doing all this knitting.  Mostly comedy for grown-ups type podcasts which led Mr. Richards and I to spend this past weekend in San Francisco for Sketchfest. Sketchfest is a festival of comedy and features stand up performances, sketch comedy, improv, and storytelling.  We stayed in the city because we had tickets for 7 different shows, several of them were live versions of some of the podcasts I listen too, including The Thrilling Adventure Hour.  This is a fantastic show that is usually performed monthly at Largo in L.A., recorded, and the segments are released as a weekly podcast.  They're tagline is 'The new time podcast done in the style of old time radio."  The show contains a serialized segment that's basically a western on Mars, and 3 other non-serialized segments.  It is delightful and funny and family friendly and I highly recommend it.  Getting to see it performed live this weekend was so much fun!

So that's what's been going with me, now some news!  The American Library Association announced the winners of they're big awards this week, specifically the Caldecott, Newbery, Geisel, and Sibert awards.  I'm particularly excited about the Caldecott medal as the winner is a Marshall Lane favorite as are several of the Honor books.  The winner is that hilarious follow up to I Want My Hat Back, This Is Not My Hat, by Jon Klassen.

This makes me very happy!  Another thing that makes me very happy is that Extra Yarn received a Caldecott Honor.

I just adore this book and its author and illustrator.  I look forward to seeing more of their work and as a matter of fact, Jon Klassen is collaborating with Lemony Snicket on a book called The Dark which will be released in April!  I may lose my mind from the happy!

In other news, we've begun reading the California Young Readers Medal nominees.  I have to keep them in the library until voting is over but I'm sure you can find them at the public library or at Amazon.  The Primary (grades K-2) nominees are:

 And the intermediate (grades 3-5) nominees are:

Finally, all the new books from Book Fair have been processed and are now in circulation and many of them are circulating very well.  My shelves are looking pretty full so I'm going to have to start weeding out some of the older, worn out and poorly circulating books to make room for all these fabulous new titles.  

Well, that's all and enough for now.  Come by the library and say hello and tell me what you are reading!

Did the crab do the right thing?

I've been reading my new favorite book to the K through 3rd grade classes that have been coming to the library this week - my new favorite book being This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen - and I've stumbled upon an interesting discussion question.  In my last post, I described a little of what this book is about; a small fish steals a hat from a big fish and the big fish gets his hat back in the end. At one point in the book, as the little fish is swimming towards his hiding place, he swims past a crab and he tells us that the crab knows where he - Little Fish - is going but promised not to tell the big fish.  Well, big surprise, the crab rats out the little fish.

The first class I read this to was a kindergarten class and I just out of the blue asked if they thought the crab did the right thing and to my surprise they all said 'no.'  When I asked them why, they said because the crab had lied to the little fish.  So I said 'but what about the fish? Did he do the right thing?' And, of course, they said 'no, he's a stealer.'  So then they decided it was okay for the crab to have told, even though he said he wouldn't.

I found this so interesting that I decided to ask all the classes if the crab did the right thing and a lot of the kids say 'no' because he lied.  In the older grades, more of the kids start out with a 'yes' because what the fish did was worse.  Then there were the few kids who said the crab had to tell because the big fish is so big that he scared the crab into telling.

It's been really fun to see their gears turning as they weigh Crab's moral dilemma.  And so unexpected! I thought we'd be talking about Little Fish's fate - just like Rabbit's in I Want My Hat Back.

This is not my hat

I have to thank Hicklebee's for making it so easy for me to stalk authors.  Today Jon Klassen was there for his new book This Is Not My Hat, a follow up, nay, a companion piece to his first, best-selling book I Want My Hat Back, which I wrote about here and here.  I loved I Want My Hat Back so much that I was inspired to make Bear's hat.  Now I am working on a hat for Little Fish so he won't have to steal Big Fish's hat anymore.  Sadly, I didn't think about doing this until last night and couldn't finish it in time to give to Jon Klassen.

Here is the book trailer for This Is Not My Hat

You can probably guess that everything will not be fine for this little fish.  Whereas in the first book, we shared in Bear's pain and anguish at the loss of his hat, the horror of discovering that it had been stolen by some one with whom he was acquainted, no less, and the needling self-doubt as he ponders his ultimate course of action; in this book, we are privvy to the thief's tale.  And he nearly convinces us that what he's done is not such a bad thing, but in the end, the bigger animal always gets his hat back.

Jon Klassen has long ago given up being coy about what happens to hat thieves in his books but I prefer to leave it ambiguous.

Last time I saw Jon Klassen at Hicklebee's, I gave him the pointy hat I had made.  This time, I gave one to Miss Valerie, the co-owner of Hicklebee's because I didn't want her to feel left out.  Here's a picture of her wearing the hat:

And here she is with Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett who showed up for the heck of it:

Thanks again, Hicklebee's!!

Three books and a weird knitting project.

I have some catching up to do!  I've been busy knitting and listening to audio books and they are starting to pile up in my mind so it's time to put them to blog page.

You may remember a few weeks ago I saw Tony DiTerlizzi at Hicklebee's for a book signing.  He was promoting his new book A Hero for WondLa, which is the sequel to The Search for WondLa, which I read last year.  I was so excited about this book that I bought one for the library, then I bought the ebook for my iPad, then I bought the audio book so I could knit while listening to it.  The story picks up right where the previous book leaves off; Eva Nine and Rovee are on their way to New Attica to find a new home for Eva Nine.  However, New Attica is not all it's cracked up to be and while in the city, Eva learns more about her past, the planet's past, and the terrible future plans of the city's leader.  This felt very much like a bridge book.  Some questions from book 1 were answered but more questions arose.  The main conflict in the book is resolved however, the larger conflict of the story remains to be dealt with in the next book.  I liked this book, but not quite as much as the first one.  It was worth buying the ebook for the illustrations.  Beautiful!

The next book I listened to was Cold Cereal, by Adam Rex.  Adam Rex is a fantastic author and illustrator.  He wrote one of my very favorite books The True Meaning of Smekday and wrote and illustrated Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and Frankenstein Takes the Cake, both very funny books of monster poems.  In Cold Cereal, fairy folk and mythical creatures are popping up in the real world and an evil cereal company is trying to exploit them for their magic. There is a lot of spoofing of real life cereals and their commercials in this book.  If you like Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books, or Tony DiTerlizzi's Spiderwick Chronicles, or J. T. Petty's Clemency Pogue books, I think you'll like this book as well.

Finally, I just finished listening to The Mysterious Howling; Book 1 of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place series by Maryrose Wood, illustrated by our old pal Jon Klassen (I Want My Hat Back). This audiobook had been sitting on my iPod for quite some time.  I don't even remember when I downloaded it.  The first time I tried to listen to it, it just didn't grab me.  I couldn't get into it.  But having finished Cold Cereal, I was looking for something else to listen to.  There are several audio books sitting on my iPod that I plan to revisit because they didn't hook me the first time.  So I finally gave this book my attention and found that it's delightful!  The story takes place in England in the mid 1800's, a time when wealthy families hired governesses to care for and educate their children.  Penelope Lumley is a young lady, newly graduated from the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, who has accepted a position as governess at Ashton Place.  What she doesn't know is that the children who will become her pupils were found roaming the forest completely naked and obviously raised by wolves.  Undaunted, Penelope accepts the challenge with all the pluck she can manage.  This book is the first in the series and so the mystery of the children is not wrapped up at the end.  I have book 2 queued up and ready to listen to.

As to what I've been knitting all this time, well, I've been doing some test knitting for a sort of crowd sourced design project.  I've talked about Nerd Wars here before, I'm pretty sure.  The nerd warriors are designing a scarf.  Each team that participates in Nerd Wars was asked to design a 6x6 inch square - both knit and crochet - to contribute to a larger project, the scarf.  The design of the square is supposed to represent your team's theme or nerdery.  I helped design the knit square for our team, Team Macabre, which is the eyeball you see to the left.  Once all the teams had their designs submitted, the designs needed to be tested, to make sure the patterns were written clearly and that the square would turn out as written.  So I've been testing squares for the last week or two.  Some of them are so creative and fun to knit!  The next picture is one designed by Team Fraggle who are muppets fans.

Cute, huh? So I ended up testing about 12 squares out of 24.  Now they are working on designing the border and how to connect all the squares together.  Once that is done, they'll need test knitters to try that out.  I'll be on the knitting team that will be testing the final scarf pattern so I'll be working on that this summer.  It's going to be epic!  I'll keep you apprised of my progress.

That's all for now.  The library is closed for the rest of the year but you can still leave book reviews by logging in to the library catalog from home.

"I have seen my hat." - Bear

You may remember back in January, I wrote about a new book called Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen.  It is such a delightful book and has become a big hit in the knitting community, especially among knitting librarians.  The library will be getting a copy from Junior Library Guild this month.  Actually, I will also be donating my old copy to the library because now I have a new copy signed by both the author and the illustrator!  Mr. Barnett and Mr. Klassen visited Hicklebee's today.  They took turns reading books and holding books.  Mr. Barnett read his hilarious book Guess Again!, then Mr. Klassen read I Want My Hat Back (squeeee!), and finally Mr. Barnett read Extra Yarn.  Here's some pictures of the action (you can see Miss Valerie in the first picture):

After the reading, Mr. Barnett explained how books are made.  It was very enlightening!  I had no idea that pirates and fire breathing sea monsters were involved in the book making process.  We also learned that the Pacific Ocean is made of Mac Barnett's tears.  Later, while taking questions from the audience, Mr. Klassen revealed the true fate of the rabbit in I Want My Hat Back.  But I won't say it here because that's not my question to answer.  All I can say is that your worst fears have probably come true.

Afterwards, Mr. Barnett and Mr. Klassen signed books and I had decided - as soon as I found out they were coming to Hicklebee's - that I would bring them a gift made from some of my extra yarn.  So last night I made them each a finger mustache.  Here's a picture:

You may also remember how I was inspired to make Bear's pointy hat.  Well, I also decided it would be fun to give that hat to Jon Klassen to thank him for writing such a fun book.  Also it would be fun to see it on his head:

Turns out is was super fun!  I'm absolutely delighted! Thanks again, Hicklebee's!  And thank you Jon Klassen and Mac Barnett for writing and illustrating (not respectively) such wonderful books!

Hey kids!  Be sure to check out the Brixton Brothers mysteries by Mac Barnett at the library.  They are hilarious!

Mythology and Fairytales

I'd like to tell you about two books that I've recently finished.  The first is The Underneath, by Kathi Appelt. This book was a Newbery Honor book for 2009.  It is the story of a hound dog who is chained to the porch of his sociopath owner's run down shack and befriends and protects a cat and her newborn kittens.  Alongside this story, we learn the mythology of Grandmother Moccasin who lies imprisoned in a clay jar for 1000 years.  The stories intertwine throughout the book and finally intersect at the end.  I don't want to give too much away because the unfolding of Grandmother Moccasin's story is far more interesting than the story of the animals under the porch.  The story of tragedy of the pets of cruel masters has been told and retold but here, with the added flavor of myth, the story is given more depth.  I thought the book was good, though I didn't love it.  It seems like the kind of book that librarians would want kids to read.  Even I want kids to read it but I fear it will have little appeal for most kids.

This next book I finished this morning.  It's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin and it was a Newbery Honor book for 2010.  As The Underneath was steeped in mythology, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is steeped in fairytales.  This is a wonderful book about a girl who seeks the Old Man of the Moon to ask him how she can change the fortune of her family.  Along the way, she meets a variety of people and creatures, all of whom share their stories with her.  Each story she is told provides her with important information to help her on her quest.  In fact, it is the stories her father tells her that propel her on her journey in the first place.  As in fairytales, her cleverness, kindness, selflessness, and thankfulness earn her her good fortune in the end. I enjoyed this book very much.

Mythology and fairytales are very important to fiction, which is like saying water is very important to fish.  It's pretty obvious.  And while I didn't love The Underneath, I do appreciate the way that mythology was used to tell the story, to create parallels and symbolism.  I love that in fairytales, kindness, cleverness, and bravery are always rewarded and this holds true in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

In other news, some author appearances of note: Kevin Henkes will be at Hicklebees on February 28th and Jon Klassen (I Want My Hat Back) and Mac Barnett (The Brixton Brothers Mysteries) will be at Hicklebees on March 6 for their new collaboration Extra Yarn.  The library will be getting a copy of Extra Yarn from Junior Library Guild in about a month or so, but I plan to have a signed copy for the library before then!  (Squeeee!  I'm so excited!)

Books! Books! Books!

Two days ago, the Newbery Award Winner was revealed.  So I promptly downloaded the audio version of Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos.  I finished listening to it today and I believe it is well deserving of the Newbery Award.  The story is based partly on the author's own childhood growing up in Norvelt, Pennsylvania in the 1960's.  Grounded for the summer, Jack spends his time reading books about history and helping an elderly neighbor write obituaries for the local newspaper, all the while battling his "nose problem".  But things are changing in the little town of Norvelt.  The Hell's Angels have come to town and the little old ladies of the town are dying off.  Could these two events be related?  Jack Gantos tells his semi-autobiographical tale with great humor and reverence for history.  Several times I laughed out loud while listening to the audio book, which, by the way, is read by the author.  Incidentally, the books that Jack reads in the book are from the Landmark series which were published in the 1960's.  When I first started working at Marshall Lane, the library had many Landmark titles from the 1960's on the shelves.  Our library has been updated quite a bit since then.

 The next book I want to tell you about is The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester, by Barbara O'Connor.  Barbara O'Connor is the author The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis which I wrote about here.  This adventure is slightly larger than that of Popeye and Elvis.  One night, while lying in bed trying to fall asleep, Owen Jester hears the distinct sound of a large object fall off a train.  The adventure begins when Owen and his friends search the nearby railroad tracks for the mysterious object.  What they find brings even more adventure.  This was really a delightful story.  I highly recommend it.

This next book is not yet in the library, but I hope to get a copy soon.  I had to buy this one for myself.  Extra Yarn was written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen, who you may remember as the author and illustrator of one of my new favorite books I Want My Hat Back which also earned a Geisel Honor.  Anyway, I follow both Mac Barnett and Joh Klassen on Twitter and was alerted that they had this book coming out so I pre-ordered it immediately, sight unseen, because it's called Extra Yarn.  The story is about a little girl  who finds a box of extra yarn and puts it to good use, but the box never seems to run out of yarn!   I have a box of extra yarn and it never seems to run out either!  It's a sweet story and our old friend Bear makes a cameo in the illustrations.

Well, that's all I've got for now.  There's a pile of new books waiting for me to finish processing them tomorrow.  Yay new books!

Happy New Year, I want my hat back.

I hope everyone enjoyed their time off for the holidays. It already seems like it was ages ago, now that we are back in the swing of things. I had lots of people coming and going at my house so I was pretty busy cooking food and cleaning up messes and having fun with the people. But now I'm back to work and have books on my mind and knitting needles in my hands.

    This is the book that has been on my mind. It is my new favorite and I have enjoyed reading it to all the classes so much. It's called I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen. It's about a bear who has lost his hat and no one has seen it ... or have they?

I love the deadpan expressions of the animals in the book. I love how the color of the words match the animals who are speaking. I love the dark humor and the mystery of what may have happened to the rabbit. I use a croaky voice for the frog and a slow, deep voice for the turtle and the kids crack up! I love my job! I'm so obsessed with this book that I decided that I needed to make a hat like Bear's for myself. So, I did. Here's a picture:

    I made this hat by first knitting a very large pointy hat out of 100% wool yarn. After it was all knitted, I put it in the washing machine with a pair of jeans and some very hot water for about 30 minutes. Then I switched the machine to rinse and spin and when the cycle was done, my hat was finished! This process is called felting. People make hats and slippers and coats out of felted wool. Here is a picture of the hat before I put it in the washer:

    As you can see, the hat was much larger before it shrank in the wash. Here it measures out to about 14 inches in height. After felting, it measures about 11 inches tall. I created the pattern for this hat myself, so there was a bit of trial and error before I got it right. Here is a picture of the first one I made, which is not quite right:

If you'd like to try making this yourself, I created a pattern which you can download here.  If you have trouble downloading the pattern, leave me a comment or DM me on Ravelry and I'll email you the PDF.
And here's a book trailer for the book: