Son of the Top Librarian and other stories.

Friday night, Mr. Richards and I drove up to San Francisco to see Neil Gaiman who is on his final book tour for his new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  I got a copy of the book signed and I read it over the weekend.  It was a wonderful read.  Mr. Gaiman has described it as his most personal work and it is dedicated to his wife, Amanda Palmer.
The story is told through the memory of a seven year old boy who, when life gets difficult, escapes into books.  Events from Mr. Gaiman's own childhood are woven into a mythical story starring characters that have lived in his head for a very long time.  The scary things that happen in this book are made scarier because they are happening to the narrator as a young boy and the unsettling things that happen, which are not understood by the boy, are more unsettling as they are remembered by the adult.  It was a very good book and I wish I hadn't read it so fast.  Because now it's over.
But, I get to look forward to his new book for children coming out in September called Fortunately, the Milk.  He read a bit of it Friday night and it sounds like a fun story, like if Douglas Adams had ever written a children's book, it might be like this one.
Here is a picture of Mr. Gaiman signing my copy of Ocean, and a copy of Chu's Day for the library.

And now, back to second grade stories.

This one is untitled and it's by Avalon and Bella and it comes with an illustration.

Once upon a time, there was so much noise in the Marshall Lane School Library that everybody in Marshall Lane needed hearing aids.  Then it got so noisy that the hearing aids broke.  Then the police station shut down the library until the whole school was quiet.  Then three months later, finally the school got quiet.  The police station reopened it.  Then everybody loved the library and they were always quiet when they were in it.

The End

Noise seems to be a recurring theme in these library stories.  That was a short one so lets do another.

The Transforming Mrs. Richards

by Rachel and Lauren

One day in the library Mrs. Richards picked up a book about the desert.  She said the magic word (which is "library") and was transformed into an extra character in the book.  But now she could not get out.  She had to do whatever was happening in the story.

Mrs. Richards was there for one whole night and was getting bored and hungry. Lauren and Rachel happened to come into the library and happened to pick up the book and suddenly, she came out.  Poof!  Now she is careful.

From now on, Mrs. Richards teaches all the students to be careful so that you don't get stuck in books!!!!

The End

I've always loved the idea of being able to actually go in to books.  An idea that I'm sure I got from watching Gumby when I was a kid.  (Kids, ask your parents about Gumby!)

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?

Peace through Catastrophic Sneezing

Last week in the library for storytime I was reading Chu's Day by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Adam Rex.  The target audience of this book is very young but it was universally enjoyed by kinders as well as 4th graders.

The story is about a cute little panda who makes bad things happen with a sneeze, such as destroying a circus.  After reading the story to a third grade class, one boy raised his hand very enthusiastically to make a comment.  I'm paraphrasing here now because it's been a few days but I think it's worth sharing.  He said if he was the author of this book, he would put in an army general and then if there was a war, the general could put Chu in front of the army and blow pepper in the panda's face and then Chu would sneeze away the other army.

I guess it wouldn't take long for the other army to counter with a sneezing sloth or marmoset or something.  And then we'd have to come back with a sneezing lemur and so on because we cannot allow a cute-sneezing-animal gap.  Still, I can't help but think that the world would be a slightly better place if wars were fought with cute sneezing animals.

Ways to tell a story

I'm interested in storytelling in all it's forms.  Verbal, visual, scripted, improvised, static, kinetic, truth, fiction. Everyone has a story to tell and there are so many ways to tell it.

I've been playing around with a new app on my phone called Vine.  It's for making quick and dirty 6 second looping videos.  You can't edit them once they are recorded, you just shoot them and then post them on Vine or Twitter or Facebook. 6 seconds is not a lot of time for a video.  Much of it is pretty mundane but there are master Vine makers already who can tell a complete story in 6 seconds, or a serialized one in 6 second episodes.  They make it look easy until you try it yourself.  And yet you are so inspired by these incredible 6 second videos that you have to keep trying.

By far the best Vines are made by Adam Goldberg.  Do yourself a favor and download this app, follow Adam Goldberg, and watch his vines starting from the beginning.  Using lens filters, camera angles and sound affects, he has created a surrealist documentary of his apparent descent into obsession and madness.  6 second filmmaking at it's finest.

Steve Agee is another Vine master of a different kind.  He is the master of visual one-liners and the 6 second interview show which he calls Hollywood & Vine.  There's been a bit of crossover between Adam Goldberg and Steve Agee as the latter competes with the former for the title of best Vine maker.

The third person you should follow is James Urbaniak.  He is not quite as prolific as the first two, but his stories are fully formed and expertly shot and very funny.

A friend of mine, who is a terrific storyteller and artist, came to visit last weekend with his family and we got to talking about art and creating things and he told me about a project he's been working on, a diorama, and how he's been freeing himself some certain constraints while building it by staying focused on the message he wanted to convey rather than worrying so much about the materials he was using.  Because the story is more important than the medium.  The medium is just a tool for telling the story.  If the story is compelling, it doesn't matter how you tell the story, just that you tell it.

I think we are lucky to live in a time when so many tools are available to allow people to get their stories out in the world.

Neil Gaiman's A Calendar of Tales is a fascinating example of using social networking tools to inspire storytelling.  Last week, over the course of a 12 hour period, Neil Gaiman would post a question to his Twitter followers pertaining to a month of the year, for example, "What's the strangest thing that ever happened to you in February?" He then selected one reply for each month and wrote a short story inspired by that reply.  Now that the stories are out, Neil Gaiman has asked folks to send in illustrations inspired by the stories that were inspired by tweets, Tossing it back out to the Internet, like storytelling volleyball.  And the stories are beautiful, you should go read them.

So those are my thoughts on storytelling for today.  Tell your story.  In whatever way suits you.  There's no excuse to not do it.

Celebrating Coraline

Neil Gaiman and Harper Collins are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman this year.  As part of the celebration, a 10th anniversary edition of the book has been released.  The graphic novel version of Coraline is a very popular book at the Marshall Lane Library so I thought I'd share this with you.  You can hear and see Coraline being read by Neil Gaiman, Lemony Snicket, Natashya Hawley, Neal Shusterman, and others at MouseCircus.com

In Which Mrs. Richards Hobnobs with Authors

Well, my little blog has seen some action this week.  Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook may have seen that my last post crossed paths with the eyeballs of Mr. Neil Gaiman.  I follow him on Twitter so I know that sometimes he retweets bloggers who mention him or his work in a review or as an inspiration for creative work.  So I thought, what the heck, I'll use his Twitter handle in my tweet about my new blog post and see what happens.  Nothing to lose.  Well, to my utter surprise, less than a half hour later, he retweeted my tweet with a comment:

He said my post was funny!  Which means he read it!  He read my post, thought it was funny and worthy of a retweet!  Then I got all excited and school girly and started screen capturing and humble bragging.  And I forgot to thank him, which I did the next day.  So, Neil Gaiman has more that 1.7 million followers. Even if just a small fraction of those followers click the link and read my blog, that amounts to a lot of people.  Here is screen cap of my Gaiman Bump:

Of the 2,960 hits I've gotten this month, 2,640 are from the Mr. Wednesday Learns to Knit post.  I guess that's my 15 minutes of Internet fame.  

Anyway, back to books.  This one specifically:

You may remember last year I wrote about The Search for WondLa.  Tony DiTerlizzi has written a sequel called A Hero for WondLa with the same glorious, fantastical illustrations as the first book, which I didn't really see because I listened to the audiobook.  I saw Mr. DiTerlizzi at Hicklebee's Bookstore this afternoon. Here's a picture so you know it happened:

Mr. DiTerlizzi said he is a "product of daydreams and boredom."  What he meant is that when he was a kid, he used to doodle a lot while daydreaming in class and one summer, he had nothing to do but stay in his room and draw.  So he filled a note book with drawings that would become the inspiration for the Spiderwick Chronicles.  

He went on to explain how he was inspired to create Eva 9 because he had read books like The Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carol and Peter Pan, by Sir James Barrie as a kid.  He liked the clever and strong female characters who all had the same goal - to find their way home. He also confessed that he didn't always like to read books without pictures until his 5th grade teacher told him he could draw pictures to go with his book reports. He said that teacher changed his life.  He said from that moment on, reading books was like reading instructions and he was finally able to imagine for himself what a scene might look like, rather than depend on the illustrations of other artists.

I realize there is only one week left of library this school year so I'm going to do my best to get A Hero for WondLa shelf ready as quickly as I can.  Come and be the first to check it out!

Mr. Wednesday learns to knit

I was thinking the other day about all the different skills I've learned as a knitter.  I began listing in my head the 8 different techniques I know just to cast on. And I know that there are more ways to cast on that I haven't done yet.  There are also many ways to cast off.  And as I was listing these skills in my head, it reminded me of a scene from one of my all time favorite books, American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, in which Mr. Wednesday lists all the charms he knows.  Then I thought, wouldn't it be funny if Mr. Wednesday learned to knit, and then he could list all the cast ons and other skills he knew.  I decided I wanted to see what that looked like so here is my interpretation of Mr. Wednesday, who has learned to knit, listing all the skills he knows.

     Wednesday said nothing for long enough that Shadow started to wonder if he had heard the question, or if he had, possibly, fallen asleep with his eyes open. Then he said, staring ahead of him as he talked, "I know a cast on that's easy and simple and is good for beginning knitters.
     "I know a cast on that requires a long tail.
     "I know a cast on that is very stretchy and good for 1x1 or 2x2 ribbing.
     "I know another cast on that starts from the middle of a circular piece.
     " A fifth cast on: I can use waste yarn to cast on and then pull out the waste yarn to create live stitches.
     His words were quiet, urgent. Wednesday spoke as if he were reciting the words of a religious ritual, as if he were speaking something dark and scratchy.
     "A sixth cast on: It's like knitting but you put the new stitches back on the left hand needle.
     "A seventh cast on I know: I can use two needles to start a sock from the toe up.
     "An eighth: it's sometimes known as Old Norwegian and is favored by sock knitters.
     "A ninth: I can cast on by putting the needle between two stitches and putting the new stitch back on the left hand needle.
     "Those were the first nine cast ons I learned.  Nine nights I hung out at the yarn store, my thumb pierced by a darning needle.  I swayed and blew in the cold winds and the hot winds, without food, without water, a sacrifice of myself to myself, and the wools opened up to me.
     "For a tenth thing, I learned to use a drop spindle, to spin them around in the air so that the yarn will never unwind again.
     "An eleventh: if I store the yarn properly, the wool will go uneaten by moths or other pests, and will last a very long time.
     "A twelfth thing I know: if I see a knot, I can undo it, no matter how large, and return the yarn to a neatly wound ball.
     "A thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on wool, it will felt.
     "A fourteenth: I know the names of all the breeds of sheep. Every darned one of them.
     "A fifteenth: I have a dream of merino, cashmere, and angora, and I can make people believe my dreams.
     His voice was so low now that Shadow had to strain to hear it over the plane's engine noise.
     "A sixteenth thing I know: if I need yarn, I can spin the fiber of any animal.
     "A seventeenth, that no animal will give its fiber to another.
     "And I know an eighteenth thing, and that thing is the greatest of all, and that thing I can tell to no man, for a secret that no on knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be."

And that's based on a scene from Chapter 10 of American Gods, a book I highly recommend you read if you haven't already.  If you have read it, I hope you enjoyed my little parody.

  If there are any kids reading this, I recommend that you wait until you are an adult to read American Gods and in the mean time, you should read lots of mythology books.  Especially Norse mythology.  And fairytales, folktales, and legends.  And about world religions. This will get you ready to read American Gods so that you understand all the references.

And thank you for your indulgence.

Spinning Yarns

I have just enough time to get a post in before the end of April.  I've been knitting like crazy this month and while I was knitting, I listened to a couple of books.  I listened to the Wizard of Oz read beautifully by Anne Hathaway.  I had never read the Wizard of Oz before, though I loved the movie as a kid.  It was fun to compare the book to the movie and, of course, a lot more happens in the book.  I really enjoyed the story.  I wish I had read it as a kid though.  One's perspective is so different as a kid and I wish I had read this book with a kid's perspective.  It's a wonderful fairy tale adventure and deserves a place in a young person's psyche.

Another book I listened to was Among the Hidden by Margaret Haddix Peterson.  This is a distopian novel, a genre much requested by the 5th graders at Marshall Lane, and the first in its series.  I'm interested in getting them as many distopian books as I can but I feel I need to read them first.  Distopian fiction tends to be a bit depressing but also presents the reader with an interesting thought experiment.  Take a flaw from current society, magnify it, and follow it through to its worst case scenario conclusion.  Could this really happen?  What would the world be like if it did?  Anyway, it was an interesting story but it lacks conclusion because the first book is a set up for the rest of the series.

I'm currently listening to Fablehaven by Brandon Mull.  I like the story but I don't care for the reader's voice so it's a bit distracting.

And here's what I've been knitting:

I finished a pair of sweaters for Ms. Wright's twin boys who will be joining the world soon.

I also made this sweet little doll inspired by the book Coraline by Neil Gaiman.  The book is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and it's one of my favorites.  Here Coraline is wearing her blue coat with a hood, her red scarf and her yellow Wellington boots.  She's holding the seeing stone given to her by Miss Spink and Miss Forcible and she's ready to go exploring.

Also, you might have heard that I bought a spinning wheel.  Here is some of the yarn that I've spun on my spinning wheel.  (The big lumpy one is my very first skein!)

In other knitting news, last week was the last meeting of the Sticks and Strings knitting class.  Miss Colleen has done a very nice write up of it here.  I'm going to post the coin purse on Ravelry soon, I'll let you know when I do. 

So that's my kidlit and knitting news.  

All Hallow's Read

I've spoken here before about All Hallow's Read. Here's a video of Neil Gaiman explaining what All Hallow's Read is about (click here if you can't see the video or it doesn't work properly):



So in the spirit of All Hallow's Read, here are some books that can be found in the Marshall Lane library that can be checked out and shared with a reading buddy.

Story Collections:

Half Minute Horrors, edited by Susan Rich

Don't Open the Door After the Sun Goes Down, by Al Carusone, illustrated by Andrew Glass

The Dark-thirty, by Pat McKissack, illustrated by Brian J. Pinkney

Things That Go Bump in the Night, edited by Jane Yolen and Martin H. Greenberg

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, collected and retold by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen Gamell

Tales for the Midnight Hour, by J. D. Stamper

Troll's Eye View, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

Picture Books:

Night of the Gargoyles, by Eve Bunting, illustrated by David Wiesner

The Dangerous Alphabet, by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Gris Grimly

The Wolves in the Walls, by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean

There's a Nightmare in my Closet, by Mercer Mayer

Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, by Adam Rex

The Spider and the Fly, by Mary Botham Howitt, illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi

Novels:

The Seer of Shadows, by Avi

The Light, by D. J. MacHale

The Ghost Road, by Tony Abbott

Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow, by James Howe, illustrated by Eric Fortune

Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

The Blue Ghost, by Marion Dane Bauer

The Ghost of Crutchfield Hall, by Mary Downing Hahn

Dying to Meet You, by Kate Klise

There's a Dead Person Following My Sister Around, by Vivian Vande Velde

Graphic Novels:

Babymouse; Monster Mash, by Jenifer L. Holm

Coraline, by P. Craig Russell and Neil Gaiman

Ghostopolis, by Doug TenNapel

Goosebumps; Creepy Creatures, by R. L. Stine

Murder & Myster, by Mike Vosburg

Classics:

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories of the Supernatural, by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Raven and Other Poems and Stories, by Edgar Allen Poe

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving

The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells

War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells

Eight Tales of Terror, by Edgar Allan Poe

Some of these books are already on display in the front display case in the library. Come in a check some out. There are even more scary books in the library than what's on the list above. Ask me where you can find them. And share a scary story with a loved one today!

Wrapping Up the Weekend.

Well, tomorrow took longer to get here than I thought! In fact, it took almost a week! But here I am to finish the story. Let's see, I left off after seeing the amazing William Joyce. I had one more goal for the day but I was getting pretty tired from standing around in lines and hiking around the enormous convention center. Have I told you how enormous the convention center was? One attendee joked on twitter that not only did the exhibit floor have its own time zone but the exhibitor directory had its own gravitational pull! This is only a small exaggeration! The place is large. I couldn't help but think of all the money going into and circulating around this convention, which is a definite boon to the New Orleans economy. In fact, this is the second ALA conference to be held in New Orleans since Katrina. ALA was the first organization to hold a conference at the convention center in New Orleans after the devastating floods caused by Katrina, which contributed significantly to the city's recovery. Yes, librarians rock.

So, by this time I was getting tired and actually debating whether or not I should I just go back to my hotel or wait a bit longer and get one more book signed. Well, I thought about that book, and the author and illustrator who would be there to sign the book, and I thought of the Marshall Lane kids and knew I had to stay. The author and illustrator were Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter and their book is '17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore,' a favorite read aloud at Marshall Lane. It was a good thing I stayed because, as it turns out, there is a sequel to the book called '11 Experiments That Failed' and it's equally as hilarious! The book was hot off the presses. So hot, in fact, that the creators hadn't seen it yet in it's final form. The book is due to be released in September and the publisher had brought their first batch of books to the conference and I bought the first one so that makes the first person in the world to own this book! (I bought it for the library though, so the library is first!) How special is that? Here is a picture of the author and illustrator. I'm not in this picture because by this time I was too tired and wilted to bother.


So that ended my day. Mr. Richards and I went out for some delicious food and then I went to bed. The next day, I had just two objectives and, again, I showed up early so I could get a good spot in line. And again, Success! Can you guess who I'm with in this picture?If you guessed Judy Blume, you'd be wrong, oh so wrong. If you guessed Mo Willems, you'd be right! Yes! That's me (again with the squeee! face) and Mo Willems! He was signing his brand new book, 'Should I Share My Ice Cream?' a Gerald and Piggie book and it's just as delightful as you would expect. And look who else I got a picture with! Yes! It's Gerald and Piggie! Who were at least as popular as Mr. Willems himself, if not more.

Now, all this time on the exhibitor floor added up to me having a lot of books and stuff to take home with me, which I wasn't thinking about as I was collecting all this stuff. How was I going to get all this stuff home on the plane? Well, lucky for me, they had a post office set up right there on the exhibitor floor! So that was my second objective, I packed up all my swag and mailed it home! And as you can see in the picture below it all arrived safely! Mr. Richards and I spent the rest of the day together enjoying food, the sights, and some music. Then Monday morning we flew home without incident.

That same Monday night we drove to Berkeley to see Neil Gaiman interviewed by Mythbuster Adam Savage for the 10th anniversary of Mr. Gaiman's groundbreaking novel American Gods. Remember lat year, I went to an American Gods gathering at The House on the Rock. Thanks to more standing in line for ages, we got a front row seat! To celebrate the anniversary, a new edition of the book was released with some material added back into it, so now it's longer! As far as I'm concerned, you can never have too much Neil Gaiman!

So that was my Book Geek Weekend, spent chasing down authors like they were rockstars because they are rockstars! Mr. Richards might call this stalking, but I disagree! The reason I do this is because when I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. But then I decided I didn't have the talent for it, but I still love stories. And I hope that, in some small way, this little blog might encourage one or more of our students to pursue their dream of being a writer, or an illustrator. Not because crazy ladies will stalk you like you're a rock star, but because stories are important. In all their forms. Storytellers tell us the truth in fiction, they preserve our culture and histories, they frighten us and take us places, stretch our imagination and challenge our intellect. And I'm going to stop now, before this becomes a giant tangent. Next time, I will update you on my Nerd Wars tournament.

Free books, author on the bus, CBLDF poster

Day 2 New Orleans. The exhibits at the American Library Association conference officially opened today. The convention center in NOLA is so huge that someone tweeted this morning that "not only does the east end of the convention center have its own time zone, but the conference directory has its own gravitational pull!"

Anyway, for me there wasn't much going on at the conference today so Mr. Richards and I strolled around the french quarter and had some food. Then we napped because that's what food and strolling will do to you. At 5:30 the exhibit floor opened. I've already spoken of the hugeness of this thing right? Well, it's huge. I'm a newb at this kind of thing so I kind of wandered around with my mouth agape and watched other, more savvy librarians grabbing all the free stuff. But I caught on pretty quickly and nabbed some goodies for our library. Mostly posters and book marks but also some free books. Tomorrow there will be authors signing books in the exhibit hall and I have a plan.....

Speaking of authors, I happened to sit next to one on the shuttle bus back to my hotel this evening. I can't remember her name at the moment, but she is a retired teacher librarian who now writes children's books. She's going to be signing books tomorrow, I'll try to stop by and say hello to her again if I can. Other authors I will be trying to see tomorrow include Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), Jack Gantos (Joey Pigza), Dan Gutman (My Weird School), Jennifer Holm (Babymouse), and Jenny Offill (17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore), all Marshall Lane favorites.

While I was checking out all the booths, I came across the booth for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I made a donation and got a poster signed by Neil Gaiman. CBLDF does important work protecting First Amendment rights for comic book writers, illustrators, publishers, and readers. Here is a particularly chilling story illustrating the importance of their work.

It's late now and I have to get up early and hunt authors tomorrow. I'll let you know how that pans out.

Closing for the Summer

The book shelves are getting pretty tight as all those fabulous books are coming back to the library to hibernate for the summer. I'm going to miss my little library regulars but I'm sure they'll be enjoying plenty of books over the summer. In fact, the Saratoga Library children's librarians came to Marshall Lane today to present their Summer Reading Program. You can find out more about it here. If you click on the orange "kids" button, you can find lots of ideas for what to read next. There are lists by grade level or you can subscribe to Next Reads to get recommendations by email. Another great place to find out about books is Kidsreads.com. At Kidsreads, they have a team of reviewers reading and reviewing lots of new kids books. They keep archives of their reviews so you can read about older books. They also have author interviews, previews of coming releases, plus contests and giveaways.

As for what I'm doing this Summer, I'll be heading to New Orleans to attend the American Library Association's annual conference later this month. There will be some authors there (Jeff Kinney!), so I'm hoping to add to my author shrine and get some books signed. Then, as soon as I get back from that I'll be heading up to Berkeley to see Neil Gaiman on his American Gods 10th anniversary tour. Last fall I went to an American Gods event at the House on the Rock in Wisconsin. You can read about that here and here. And you if haven't read American Gods yet, grown ups, I highly recommend it.

The last Harry Potter movie will be coming out in July so I'm kind of nerding out over that. In fact, I'm participating in a knitting challenge on Ravelry.com called Nerd Wars. I'm on Team Dumbledore's Army and I'm currently working on knitting a year one Gryffindor house scarf for the team spirit challenge. If you want to learn more about Nerd Wars, you can read about it here. And, of course, while I'm doing all this knitting in anticipation of HP7P2, I'll be listening to books 1-7 on my nano.

Finally, I'm thinking of another project for the Summer, having to do with books, but it's kind of super secret right now. If it gets off the ground, I will let you know and share it with you, but if not, I will let you in on my failure. In any case, getting it out of my head and into other people's expectations will surely motivate me to act on my idea.

Well, Mr. Richards just told me it sounds like I'm writing a paper over here so I must have written enough by now. One more quick thing: the Fabulous Room 3 is working on a 90 Second Newbery film of Charlotte's Web! They have been working very hard and I can't wait to see the results!

Have a great last 3 days of school! Don't forget to check the blog over the summer, I'll be here!

Right. Back to books.

Whew! I feel like I'm consuming a lot of media these days. But there are so many great stories being told!

I found out that a Judy Moody book is coming out this summer so I decided I had better read the book since I've been meaning to for so long. I read it on the Kindle app on my iPad, it was on sale for $0.99! I enjoyed it. It was cute story and Judy Moody is quite a character. If you like Judy Moody (by Megan McDonald), you might also like Clementine by Sara Pennypacker, Moxy Maxwell by Peggy Gifford & Valorie Fisher, and Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry. All funny girls with unique perspectives.

I want to tell you about my new favorite book to read aloud. It just came from Junior Library Guild today and it's called Press Here by Herve Tullet.

This is an interactive book that seems almost magical. On the second page, the reader is asked to press a yellow dot. On the next page, a second yellow dot appears. Press the dot again and a third dot appears on the following page. Gently rubbing the dots changes their colors and shaking the book scrambles the dots. So far, I have read this book to kinder, 2nd, and 3rd classes and they all delighted in it equally. I can't wait to read it to the rest of the classes this week!

Another book I've been reading, well, listening to, is A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz. This book is not yet in the Marshall Lane Library, I wanted to read it first because I'd heard that it's pretty dark and grim. I'm about half way through it and I'm finding that it's not so much grim as it is gruesome. This is in keeping with the original Grimm's fairytales, which were not actually meant for children. They were grown-up tales, some of them pretty horrific, that were sanitized or 'bowdlerized' for children. I tend to think this book would fit better in a middle school library. Though, if you are a 5th grader with a taste for blood, you can check it out from the public library. I would recommend reading it rather than listening to it. I don't care for the reader of the audiobook, I think the voice in my own head would sound better. Um, I think you know what I mean here.

Other stories I've been enjoying: Doctor Who. If you aren't watching this series (Saturdays on BBC America), you must start now! Last Saturday's episode was written by my favorite author Neil Gaiman, I may have mentioned him before in this blog. You may also have seen a picture of him signing a copy of the Graveyard Book on my Author Shrine in the library. If you are a Doctor Who fan and haven't read anything by Mr. Gaiman, you need to pick up a copy of The Graveyard Book or Coraline immediately! I've also been really enjoying Game of Thrones which is based on a series by George R. R. Martin and it's Totally Not For Children so I won't discuss it here. In comics, I'm still working my way through Sandman, Walking Dead, and Transmetropolitan. These titles are also Totally Not For Children, but I still check in with the Comix for Kids app to see if anything interesting pops up. I think I'm going to pick up Atomic Robo and see how that goes.

And finally, while I've been doing all this media consumption I've been working on a baby blanket for a dear friend's first baby. Here is a picture:

Lastly, you should follow Adam Rex (Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, The True Meaning of Smekday) on Twitter. Today he tweeted a really funny poem about a smelly elephant in an elevator. Well, that's all I have to say for now. The library will be closing soon but the blog will continue on through the summer like it did last year. If there is anything you think I should read, tell me about it!

Marc Brown at Hicklebee's

If you don't know who Marc Brown is you probably have not had a kid or been a kid or been around kids in the last 35 years. Marc Brown is the author and illustrator of the Arthur books which have been made into a long running TV show on PBS. And because I like author mash ups, especially when they involve Neil Gaiman, here is an episode of Arthur in which Neil Gaiman makes a guest appearance and we hear the line "Neil Gaiman? What are you doing in my falafel?"

So anyway! Marc Brown has written a new Arthur book - the first in 10 years! - called Arthur Turns Green. You've probably already guessed it has an environmental message. Hicklebee's was packed to the rafters with kids of all ages eager to meet such a beloved author. He drew Arthur twice, the original long nosed version and the newer rounded nose with glasses version. He talked about how he was inspired to give Arthur glasses when one day, while visiting a school, he saw a boy with lose shoe laces dash into the bathroom. After a bit of screaming, the boy exited the bathroom, which he then realized was actually the girls bathroom. Embarrassed, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his glasses, put them on, and then went, correctly, into the boys bathroom. He also drew a picture of D.W. and their baby sister, Kate. He then read Arthur Turns Green to an attentive audience, although, as one child pointed out, he didn't even have to look at the words on the page to read the book!

Naturally, I bought the book for our library and took a picture with Mr. Brown, which will be added to my author shrine as soon I get it in the mail.

Celebrating stories.

Today Mr. Richards and I went to WonderCon in San Francisco. It's a big media convention - mostly comics - held at Moscone Center. It was a three day event but we just went up today specifically to see the Doctor Who panel, more specifically because Neil Gaiman was on the panel. I don't think it's any secret that I'm kind of a Neil Gaiman fan. I'm also a Doctor Who fan. So when Neil Gaiman writes an episode of Doctor Who, well that's just a perfect storm of fandom. This is a picture of me waiting in line for the panel this morning; I brought a sock to work on in case we had to wait for anything. There was a very large crowd for this panel. And it was very cool - we got a free t-shirt - and interesting but it's not the main thing I wanted to talk about here. I went to two other panels which were more academic in nature; the first was about female spies and private eyes in comics and their evolution, and the second was about comics for kids. Now the interesting thing about this topic is that I think most people would say, "aren't all comics for kids?" And the answer is no, in fact, most comics now days are for grown ups. The people who used to be kids and loved their comics so much that they wanted grown up comics to read when they grew up are now writing, drawing, and painting them. They spent a decade or so convincing the public that comics were not just for kids and not all comics were about costumed superheroes. So the comic book industry grew up and kind of left the kids behind. And now the publishers think that the only people buying comics are adults and teens, according to the panelists, one of whom was Jennifer Holm of Babymouse fame. Babymouse is very popular now but it took several years to get the first one published, she said. This challenge is added to the "not real reading" attitude that many parents still hold about comics. Yet time and time again, when I listen to authors and illustrators speak, many of them talk about how they were inspired by the comic books they read as kids. At the Doctor Who panel I mentioned earlier Toby Haynes, director of the first two episodes of season 6, spoke of his dyslexia and said that the first book he every finished reading without help was a Doctor Who comic book. The stories spoke to him and inspired him and kept him reading.

Something else the panel discussed was writing for children in general. They came to the conclusion that while it is more difficult to write for children, stories that are written with a specific audience in mind tend to feel inauthentic. So again, it comes down to story. Is it a good story? Do I care about the characters? Do I want to know what happens next? A good story will appeal to all kinds of people - male, female, young, old, whatever.

And speaking of good stories, I happened to read the graphic novel Ghostopolis by Doug TenNapel yesterday. I know that this book has been getting lots of good reviews and is landing on a lot of top ten lists so I thought I'd give it a looksee. It is a fantastic book. Frank Gallows is a sort of hard boiled ghost hunter whose work is a bit sloppy. Garth Hale is a kid who's been diagnosed with an unnamed terminal disease. Their paths cross when Gallows accidentally sends Garth to the afterlife with a captured ghost. While Frank must find a way to get Garth back to the living world, Garth discovers he has powers in the after life and uses them to battle the evil ruler of Ghostopolis, and free the city of the dead from his reign of terror. Although this book is at a second grade reading level, the subject matter puts it at no less than a fifth grade interest level, in my opinion. The story is very well written and it only feels a little bit like a book written for kids, it certainly doesn't read like a second grade book! The pictures are dark and edgy and would definitely appeal to the older kids. I was raving about it to Mr. Richards and now he's reading it himself!

So, to wrap up this whole thing, as Mr. Richards and I talked about the day, we came away with the feeling that the thing that everyone at that convention center had in common was the love of a good story, whether it was the people writing episodes for a popular british science fiction TV show, people drawing pictures for comic books, or the people who dressed up as their favorite characters, everyone was celebrating stories and storytelling. We felt pretty lucky to have been a small part of that today.

Back to Kidlit and knitting

Well, looks like February has been a slow blogging month. But I have passed the 2,000 pageviews mark, which is kind of exciting. It's good to know that someone out there is reading what I write here. Hopefully, it's not the same person reading it 2,000 times. That would be worrisome. I've been on a graphic novel kick, but they are not graphic novels for kids so I didn't want to talk about them here. I want this blog to be about books you can find in the Marshall Lane library. I have been growing the graphic novel collection, though, because I'm a convert. There are some really good stories out there in graphic form. When I first started buying graphic novels for the library a few years ago my intention was to bring more boys into the library. I bought a few Star Wars comics and the boys flocked to the library. Those books never make it back to the shelves. They are always on hold and fall apart by the end of the year. Then I started buying Babymouse for the girls and they flew off the shelves as well. Then I noticed that some girls were checking out Star Wars and some boys were checking out Babymouse. So I decided to throw my gender biases out the window and started buying a variety of graphic novels based on quality and interest. I don't have a huge collection but they are hugely popular. And what I've noticed is that while the boys, generally, keep checking out mostly the Star Wars books, the girls are reading everything else. Which is interesting. Not sure what it means. Except that maybe my purchases are still biased towards what girls like. Perhaps I should start buying superhero comics. Well, I've waxed on about this more than I intended. Let's get back to kidlit.

I read - or rather, listened to - The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, which was the Newbery Medal winner in 2008. The story centers around Lucky, a ten-year-old girl living with her guardian in a very small town in California. Lucky's mother has died and her absent father has brought is ex-girlfriend Brigitte over from France to be Lucky's guardian. Lucky worries that Brigitte, who is homesick for France, will abandon her also. Lucky feels sure that if she could just find her higher power, a term that she overhears the 'anonymous people' use, her problems would be solved. I liked this book. But this is one of those Newbery books that doesn't really appeal to most children. And, in fact, this book has not circulated well in my library. But it is a good story and I would encourage people to give it a read. I read it because my friend Mrs. Freeman recommended it. She's reading her way through all the Newbery books and she told me it was a good one. I trust her judgement. She told me that Al Capone Does My Shirts was good and I agree with her. I pointed her towards Odd and the Frost Giants when The Graveyard Book was unavailable and she liked that. So, the point is, get a book buddy. They help you to read things that you might not normally pick up off the shelf.

I've also just finished Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer. This is the third book in the series and I'm really enjoying it. I was going to just stop at the first one but I'm kind of sucked in now. If you don't like series books, don't worry, these books read well as stand alone titles with recurring characters. The stories are a great blend of fantasy and high-tech thrillers. Action, intrigue, and fairy magic. Even though the main character is not always a good guy, he is likable. If you like the Alex Rider series or the Percy Jackson series, I think you'll like Artemis Fowl as well.

Well, I think I've gone on long enough. Looks like it's feast or famine here at the old Marshall Lane Library Blog. I'll close with some pictures of what I've been working on whilst listening to books:

A dear friend of mine and his wife are expecting their first baby so I knitted her some tiny shoes and a blueberry hat to go with the book Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman.

The object in the last picture is a Cthulhu. A cuddly one. If you don't know what Cthulhu is, you need to brush up on your H.P. Lovecraft. That is all.

Items of interest

I have no review this week, I've been reading grown up things lately but I'll get back to the kidlit soon. In the meantime, if you are looking for something new to read there is a great website called kidsreads.com. They have a whole team of people there who read and review books. There are reviews on new books every month plus you can see what's coming soon and they have author interviews as well. It's a great place to find new things to read.

Also, I saw this on my Twitter feed this week. It's called the 90 Second Newbery Film Festival. It's a contest! James Kennedy is challenging kids to make a 90 second film of their favorite (or least favorite, or most forgotten) Newbery winner (or honor book). Here is an example:

"A Wrinkle In Time" In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy on Vimeo.

Pretty funny, huh? Neil Gaiman also tweeted that he would give a signed copy of The Graveyard Book to his favorite 90 second version of his Newbery winner. Does that get your creative juices flowing? It does mine!

House on the Rock, Day 2: And then what happened?

Saturday was a big day! My friend and I were very focused on winning a ride on the World's Largest Carousel That No One Is Supposed to Ride. There three ways a person could win a ride: you could win by raffle, by winning the costume contest, or by winning the scavenger hunt. We bought raffle tickets the night before, we had costumes but felt the competition might be pretty stiff, so to up our chances, we decided to complete the scavenger hunt. They had given us the clues the day before so while were waiting for the reading to begin, we worked out almost all of the clues. When we got up Saturday morning, we were ready! Most of the clues led us to locations in Spring Green and all we had to do was collect a stamp from each location. We had to go to three other nearby towns to complete our card.

The first town we went to was Gotham where we had to go to the Bat Cave to collect a stamp. We didn't know what to expect but the bat cave turned out to be a lounge with a Batman theme. And Gotham in this part of the world is pronounced Goh-them rather than Gah-tham. Here is a picture of me in front of the Bat Cave.

Next, we went to the town of Muscoda, pronounced Musk-uh-day to get a stamp from Culver's. Finally, to the Carousel lounge in Richland, pronounced Richland, for our last stamp. We finished in two hours. We pit stopped at our hotel room, added some finishing touches to my friend's costume, packed up our costumes and headed back up to the rock to tour the house.

"Where's the rock?" asked Shadow.

"Under the house," said Wednesday.

"Where's the house?"

Wednesday put his finger to his lips, and they walked forward. Farther in, a player piano was playing something that was intended to be Ravel's Bolero.

The place seemed to be a geometrically reconfigured 1960's bachelor pad, with open stone work, pile carpeting, and magnificently ugly mushroom-shaped stained-glass lampshades. Up a winding staircase was another room filled with knickknacks.

"They say this was built by Frank Lloyd Wright's evil twin," said Wednesday. "Frank Lloyd Wrong." - American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.

Here is me at the end of the Infinity Room. It's a long pointy room that juts out over the gentle hills and valleys around the house. That thing that looks like a platform that I'm standing in front of is actually a window. The wind was blowing pretty good on this day which made the whole room creak a little bit. Which was a little spooky. After this room, we entered the Attraction.

The Attraction is like nothing you've ever seen in your entire life. It is a collection of antiques, cheap fakes, and oddities that have really no common thread. There are vast collections of model ships and airplanes, dollhouses, firearms, armor, and things for which I don't know the names.

One of the most amazing and head scratching features is the Whale Room. Here is a picture of a diorama of a giant squid and a whale locked in mortal combat. If you look close, you can see a little row boat inside the whale's mouth. This display was probably about 6 feet long and 3 feet high. This alone was pretty impressive. And then you turn the corner. And slowly, you realize that the enormous thing you are looking at, the ginormity that is filling the room, was the diorama that you were just looking at. The diorama was the miniature and the actual thing is 3 stories high!
With my little point and shoot camera, it was impossible to get a decent picture between the poor lighting and the hugeness of it. There was a ramp to walk up that spiraled around the structure and in the walls were more displays of stuff. The picture of the whale's mouth was taken from the third story and you can just see in the lower left corner of the picture a person standing on the second floor to give you an idea of the scale of the thing. But I really can't tell you what the point of it is. Because I don't know.

As you are working your way around the whale room, there are other little rooms that break off on each floor, I guess so you can get a break from the overwhelmingness of the big whale. This is where you will see displays of Christmas decorations, Santa Claus mugs, and a Christmas town constructed of plastic canvas and craft yarn. ???

Throughout the house and attraction are rooms that contain mechanical bands and orchestras, ranging from just a player piano to entire orchestras peopled with mannequins. Neil Gaiman describes the cacophony that emanates from these rooms as 'discordant.' Here is a definition of 'discordant:' 2 discordant sounds: inharmonious, tuneless, off-key, dissonant, harsh,jarring, grating, jangling, jangly, strident, shrill, screeching,screechy, cacophonous; sharp, flat.

And here is an illustration:

This is the Mikado room. I recorded the sound for these separately but the files were corrupted and they didn't make it. The song that plays in the Mikado room is Danse Macabre. Beautiful!
This is another room full of mechanical instruments, including jugs and glass jars. There were many more of these musical rooms and they were all coin operated. To hear them play, you had to put two tokens into a machine to start them up. We walked through room after room of these discordant mechanical bands, some with animatronic characters and all in terrible lighting until we were on sensory overload.
And then we entered the Carousel Room. I wish someone could have filmed me as I entered that room for the first time. I was like a child. Like one of those kids from the old Willy Wonka movie walking into a room and looking all around with my mouth agape and eyes wide open, not knowing what to look at first. The Carousel was spinning and the music was playing, not as discordantly as the previous rooms but nearly, and there are 20,000 lights on the thing and no one is riding it. The creatures on the Carousel are the most bizarre collection of myth-colliding characters you could imagine. Most of them are part horse and part something else but there are no horse heads on any of these creatures.

The next thing you must do is look up. Because there is - what would you call it, a flock? of angels hanging from the ceiling. But they are just department store mannequins with wings slapped on their backs! It's just so weird and so wonderful! But it's not the end of the tour, more wonders await! To leave the Carousel room, you must walk through the gaping maw of some kind of monkey monster and that leads you to the organ room. The organ room is full of giant pipe organs with a twisty elevated path that winds around through the room. There are also 3 foot high beer steins in this room.
And also this giant sized chandelier that is made up of smaller chandeliers, the same ones that illuminate the Carousel.
Finally at the end of the organ room is this mechanical orchestra of static mannequins and the pianist has no legs. But there was still more to see. The doll houses and the armor and the lovingly displayed fake crown jewels. And the miniature circus, and the miniature of the miniature circus. It just went on and on until finally I reached my absolute threshold of sensory overload and I could not take it anymore. I stopped taking pictures and made a beeline for the exit. The air outside was crisp and refreshing so we bought some coffee in the gift shop and sat outside for a while to calm down.
After our break, we changed into our costumes and enjoyed the costume party. Sadly, we did not win a ride on the carousel but we still had a grand time. We were allowed to roam the house and the attraction in our costumes and that made it truly surreal! There were some really amazing costumes at this party.

Then we stumbled into the Carousel room again and saw Neil Gaiman riding the Carousel That No One Is Allowed to Ride. I just managed to get a picture before the end of his ride and then my camera battery died.
This picture came from my friend's camera. My friend is dressed as a cuddly kraken and I'm the raven Munin. And yes, that is Mr. Neil Gaiman between us. My daughter says I look like a teenage girl meeting Hannah Montana in this picture. That's pretty much how I felt. Like a giddy little school girl. I almost chickened out and missed the opportunity but my friend reminded me that we would have no regrets on this trip, and she was right and I thank her for it. I'm also grateful to Mr. Gaiman's assistant Lorraine who made sure we weren't holding our drink cups in the picture. Once we got this picture, the day caught up to us. We were totally exhausted and totally happy so we went back to our motel room and collapsed. The whole weekend was such a terrific adventure, I will never forget it!