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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books The Baby in the Hat Allan Ahlberg , illus. by André Amstutz. Candlewick , $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-7636-3958-7 Ahlberg and Amstutz (previously paired for The Shopping Expedition) overlook few opportunities for humor in this tall tale (even the copyright includes jokes), which gains extra punch from the narrator's repeated insistence that the story is a true one.
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Fiction Reviews
All the Living C.E. Morgan . Farrar, Straus & Giroux , $23 (208p) ISBN 978-0-374-10362-0 Morgan's enchanting debut follows the travails of a young woman who moves to Kentucky with her bereaved lover in 1984. Aloma, herself an orphan from a young age, leaves her job at the mission school where she was raised to help her taciturn boyfriend, Orren, with his family farm after his family is k...
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When the Gift is a Graphic Novel
This year's crop of graphic novels comes in editions from bare bones to deluxe, but there's something for everyone on your list. Collected editions of the medium's historical best—Bill Mauldin and Osamu Tezuka—bump up against clever collage and pop-up books, and oddities like a Japanese Batman manga.
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Nonfiction Reviews
Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love Myron Uhlberg . Bantam , $23 (232p) ISBN 978-0-553-80688-5 In this memoir about growing up the son of deaf parents in 1940s Brooklyn, Uhlberg recalls the time his uncle told him he saw his nephew as “cleaved into two parts, half hearing, half deaf, forever joined together.
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Cornelia Funke 'Inks' Her Final Chapter
This month sees the release of Inkdeath (Scholastic/Chicken House), the third and final book in Cornelia Funke's Inkheart trilogy, which began in 2003 with a book of the same name.
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A New Stage for Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg steps into a new role next week, when Disney’s Jump at the Sun imprint publishes the debut novel in her first chapter-book series, Sugar Plum Ballerinas.
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Portrait of an Artist by a Like-Minded Artist
As a child, Deborah Kogan Ray read Millions of Cats, Wanda Gág’s 1929 Newbery Honor Book, as well as her other picture books. Several years ago, she came across excerpts from Gág’s diaries and immediately recognized a kindred spirit. That inspired Ray to create a picture-book biography, Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw, out this month from Viking.
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A Book (and Contest) for ‘Wimpy’ Fans
Last week, the latest addition to Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Do-It-Yourself Book, went on sale with a 500,000-copy first printing.
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Q & A with M.T. Anderson
M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume I: The Pox Party (Candlewick, 2006), about the coming of age of a young, classically educated slave at the outset of the American Revolution, received both a National Book Award and a Printz Honor. The sequel, The Kingdom on the Waves, is in bookstores.
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The Joker's On Azzarello
This month writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo return to the DC Universe with Joker, an original graphic novel that turns its spotlight on Batman's archnemesis.
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Win, Lose or Draw: Political Comics and Campaign '08
The 2008 presidential campaign has been historic and gripping in a multitude of ways, and with the fast approach of Election Day, politics are seeping into many corners of popular culture, including comic books.
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Comics and Classics: Two Stores in One
“My philosophy is good stories and good art,” says Kimberly Johnson, co-owner of Comics and Classics, a 1500 sq. ft. hybrid bookstore, comic shop and art gallery in Jacksonville Beach, Fla., which she and her husband, Percy, started in October 2007. Originally the two were planning a space that would fit the tagline: Where Spiderman Meets Shakespeare. Now she prefers to think of the year-old store as a fusion of art, fiction and comics.
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Books About Comics: From Zap To Tintin
It has been forty years and two generations since Robert Crumb published Zap Comix #1 in 1968, the first major event in the underground comix movement. Marking this anniversary, Patrick Rosenkranz’s Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution—1963-1975 (Fantagraphics Books, $34.99 paper) serves as a comprehensive and invaluable history of this groundbreaking period in American comics.
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More Signs of Financial Trouble at Platinum Studios
Three Platinum Studios employees—including president and chief operating officer Brian Altounian—are selling off more than 21 million shares of their stock in the company, a move financial analysts said could indicate that Platinum is moving closer to insolvency.
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Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 10/13/2008
Friedman returns! Plus: five reasons not to dread the future, death of a Great Books series salesman scheme, awaited memoirs from a rambunctious Louisiana shrimper and a long-time indie music darling, post-Katrina high school football underdogs storm the state champs, another attempt to nail down time and two general purpose category-killer cookbook/references--one focusing on science, the other on dogma. Also: true stories of cancer survival, baby procurement and bad dogs.
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Hoberman Picked as Poet Laureate
As part of its fifth annual Pegasus Awards, the Poetry Foundation has selected Mary Ann Hoberman as Children’s Poet Laureate. Hoberman inherits the two-year position, which comes with a $25,000 prize, from Jack Prelutsky.
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Turning Make-Believe into Real Success
Though the books might be about dolls, the creation of the Doll People series has been anything but child’s play. The Runaway Dolls is the third book in Ann M. Martin, Laura Godwin and Brian Selznick’s well-received series that began with The Doll People in 2000.
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Q & A with Neil Gaiman
Children's Bookshelf spoke with Neil Gaiman about his new novel, The Graveyard Book (HarperCollins).
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‘City of Ember’ Premieres in Manhattan
City of Ember, a film based on the book by Jeanne DuPrau, opens in theaters this Friday. The book's agent, Nancy Gallt, attended its premiere.
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Sheff Takes His Drug Recovery Public
Nic Sheff’s bestselling memoir about methamphetamine addiction, Tweak, landed on bestseller lists earlier this year. Now, a new blog by the author, New Dawn Transmission, has quickly found a strong following.
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