Click through to see the facebook page for A Wrinkle in Time.
My love of A Wrinkle In Time has been documented before on this blog, and because I love it so much, it is one of those books that I can’t share lightly, and I have to be careful not to put it in the hands of a reader who isn’t ready for it. Usually when I suggest books to kids, it doesn’t hurt my feelings if they decide they don’t want it, but if a kid were to reject Wrinkle, I’d be ineffably sad. (I was recently talking with a parent whose daughter was reading A Wrinkle In Time for a school assignment, and struggling with reading it. I wasn’t sure what to tell her. Every book its reader, and every reader its book; perhaps, sad though it sounds, she just wasn’t one of this book’s many and ardent readers.)
But I have to do something to celebrate this book’s 50th anniversary, so I’m going to throw a big book party. I’m looking to have an event in the fall, maybe October or November, so that the chance of somewhat dark and stormy weather will be increased. I’m thinking this will definitely be a family/all ages event, because I am sure there are some parents and grandparents out there who have some warm feelings about this book.
There will definitely have to be a buffet of all of the different kinds of sandwiches that the Murrays eat in the beginning of the book, and some hot chocolate. I also think having my fellow librarians and volunteers dress in costume as various characters would add a lot of fun to the event.
I want to booktalk Wrinkle and a bunch of L’Engle’s other books, and of course read aloud that first amazing chapter. We could also tie in When You Reach Me, which, as a contemporary Newbery winner, might pull in additional readers to the story. We’ll also booktalk other great fantasy and science fiction titles for kids.
How will you be celebrating the anniversary of this wonderful book?
When I first started this blog, I had no grand aspirations. I am passionate about the library field, child development, and children’s literature, and I wanted to have a place to express my thoughts, and I hoped that I would garner at least a dedicated, engaged readership. Fairly early on, I experienced the Elizabeth Bird bump, and for that I’ve always been grateful. I appreciate my twitter friends for all their conversation and ideas, and frankly, without them I probably wouldn’t be writing much at all.
Looking at my top posts, I realize that people love it when I write about things that a lot of librarians are probably thinking but are too scared to talk about, and my programs for children. I’m going to make an effort to write more about these topics in 2012, and also write more from the gut and the heart, no matter what the topic (my angsty review of Ingenue being an example of this new goal).
Thank you to all my readers for commenting, emailing my posts to your colleagues, and generally being awesome. Let’s do more of this in 2012.
top posts (excluding static pages):
11. Meow Mix. I think this is solely because of the cat picture, although I think my cat who doesn’t know how to meow storytime through line is pretty awesome.
10. Make it Happen: Teen Space. Pretty much an airing of grievances post that also allowed me to congratulate and laud a fellow librarian. Now complete with a comment I didn’t initially approve because it’s super negative, but hey, whatevs. Different strokes for different folks.
9. New Storytime Favorites. Why is this so popular? I dunno. Probably because I mention cats and I’m a librarian. The cat/librarian diagram is so venn it’s almost just a circle.
8. Tales of the Madman Underground: A Love Letter. This was a very personal post and book review, and I almost didn’t publish it. But this book is amazing and I think that librarians—much like teachers—need to fight for the right to be real, flawed, human people with pasts and problems like any other people. Just because we work with children doesn’t mean we’re all Mary Poppins, and we shouldn’t be punished for being real people. But seriously, read that book.
7. The Ethical Librarian. This one is me totally ranting and raving on my high horse while my horse is standing on a soapbox. You might as well call me the Bughouse Square librarian. I took an information ethics class in library school, one of the few actually challenging courses I took, and it ruined me forever. You’re welcome.
6. #makeitbetter. I just hate bad librarians. Sorry if you’re one of them.
And, unsurprisingly, the number one post of 2011 is…
1. Summer Reading, Pain in my a**. So many people enjoyed my rants about the sacred cow of summer reading, which really pleased me. I love when people reassess long running programs with a fresh eye. Can’t wait to see what people do with their 2012 summer reading programs.
I have a new post up over at the BEA Librarian blog about books for gift-giving, which is also kind of my best of 2011 post. Or at the very least, some books I liked a lot.
If you need ideas for holiday gift giving this year, and want to give a book, I highly recommend going over to Mother Reader’s site and utilizing her “Ways to Give a Book” series. Quality stuff, and if you have to participate in the craziness of STUFF exchange, you might as well give a book. Since I never have any extra money, I hardly ever am able to give gifts, but even I will break down and buy a beloved classic at the thrift store to share with my nephew or other children I am lucky enough to know.
Books to Get
Over and Under the Snow by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal
I hate snow. A fresh white blanket of it only reminds me of The Stuff, and if I have to drive in it–ugh. So much unhappiness.
Yet this book, with a layer of fresh snow at its heart, has managed to win me over. The quiet, simple, understated prose is perfectly suited to the topic of what happens over and under a layer of new fallen snow, and the bold lines and clean images of the art are a perfect complement. This book is an ideal one on one bedtime readaloud during the season, and it would work equally well being read aloud in a science classroom during a discussion of seasonal changes or hibernation. Bringing quality literature into all curricular areas–not just during language arts–is critical if we want to keep kids reading and excited about reading.
This book also presents a conundrum–Baker and Taylor suggests a nonfiction number for it, which I suppose makes some sense, especially with the rich author’s note and further reading suggestions, but I also think it would be better served in a public library being shelved with the picture books. What do you think? Where would you put this book?
The Conductor by Laetita Devernay
Somewhere in my childhood I must have had a book that was tall and skinny like this one, because the shape seems so familiar, but I can’t quite place it in my memory. The story–a wordless one, of a conductor conducting a symphony of nature, transforming leaves into birds and back again–also seems familiar, but I can’t tell you why.
The lines and limited color palette certainly bring to mind Caps for Sale and Edward Gorey, and the environmental slant reminds one of The Lorax, but I think this book reminds me of so many other things because it is just a good book–it knows what its saying, but it is also loose enough to allow for many different experiences while reading it. I think it would be amazing fun to play different pieces of instrumental music while viewing this book, and see how the music changes the way the swooping leaves and birds appear to you.
Both books are review copies kindly provided by the publisher.
So this week on of the books I was using for my outreach storytimes wasn’t quite working for my groups for some reason. It seemed to be missing a crucial action in the text, which made it not quite pop for the children. It was as though there was a three step action sequence missing step two. So the second time I went out with it, I added the text I thought it needed (“and they pulled, and they pulled, and they pulled, but!”), replete with action, and read the rest of the text verbatim, and the kids seemed much more engaged with the story and seemed to understand it more.
I’m always a little conflicted when I do this. Part of me is a text purist, and I try to not abridge or omit if I can help it, because it seems a little bit like censoring to me. But when I’m performing a storytime–and I am performing in the belt it out, jazz hands, shuffle ball step sense of the word–I sometimes feel that to deliver the material well, a bit of improvisation is in order.
So, storytimers, do you do this? How often? And how do you feel about it?
It’s been a dark and stormy week here in a Chicago, which makes it a perfect time to reminisce about this, one of my favorite books of all time.
It was 1988. I was in the fourth grade, I had English class with Mrs. Sandoval. I loved her name–it was pronounced “Sanduhvall” (rhymed with fall)–but when I saw it, I always imagined an oval shaped sand box. I loved her eloquent speeches, her expressive reading voice, her slightly bohemian clothing, and her ginger hair. I loved her classroom, full of books and rich with new ideas and words. One of her rules was to “finish assignments within the allotted time.” I had no idea what “allotted” meant or that it was an actual word, and I, in my over-read fourth grade know-it-all-ness, asked her, “Are you sure you don’t mean ‘allowed’?” She kindly said no, allotted is the word she meant to use, and she gave me the dictionary so I could look it up–and so began my love of dictionaries.
We read so many good books in that class, including A Cricket in Times Square and Charlotte’s Web. Half-way through the year our class reading assignment was A Wrinkle in Time. The edition we read had this amazing, wackadoodle, good show sir worthy cover:Isn’t that insane? It completely blew my nine year old mind. The wings for arms, the creepy red-eyed disapproving turtle face, the mountains…several kids in my class mumbled and groaned their displeasure when they saw the book (actually, they hated every book, and I hated them with equal fervor), but I could hardly wait to start reading.
And that opening line! Who else could get away with using that line outside of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest? Madeline, that’s who.
Here’s a synopsis from the publisher’s page, and the synopsis I remember from my youth, for you sad, sad people who haven’t read this book yet:
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.
“Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I’ll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”
A tesseract (in case the reader doesn’t know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L’Engle’s unusual book. A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newbery Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.
I immediately loved and identified with Meg Murray. Like Meg, I was an ugly duckling who had to protect herself and a younger brother from the cruelty of other children. I admired Meg’s hot-headedness and her willingness to stand up for herself and her beliefs. When I was faced with bullies, I tended to hang my head and wish for them to go away. I wished I had Meg’s foolhardy bravery and determination (I developed it as an adult, much to the chagrin of some of my friends, family and colleagues) instead of my low self-esteem and self-hatred.
I loved other characters, too: Charles Wallace, Mrs. Murray, the Ws, and I loved loved LOVED Calvin O’Keefe. What dorky, awkward girl didn’t love charming, awkward Calvin? He’s like the proto-Rory* (maybe that’s why I love Rory so much…) I loved to hate IT and its creepy, pulsing brain-ness, and the man with red eyes. I loved how Mr. Murray was real and flawed and yet Meg still loved him. (I myself had a real and flawed father who was proving to be less and less loveable every day, but that’s another story for another time).
I wanted to live in that rambling old farmhouse and eat tomato sandwiches and have an attic bedroom and a dog named Fortinbras. I was fascinated by how they made hot cocoa with milk, since I was used to powdered hot chocolate made with boiling water, usually in the microwave. I was as amazed at the mundane day to day details as I was at the time and space traveling aspects. This book was everything I needed and wanted.
I loved this book so much that not even hearing my fellow students reading aloud in their plodding monotones could hurt the story. While they stumbled along I was reading ahead, silently, desperately wishing to reach the end while simultaneously wanting the book to go on forever.
I cried when Meg saved her brother by loving him. I had never felt love like that from anyone, and I didn’t think I ever would. I couldn’t think of anyone in my life who would risk so much to save me, and I felt miserable, yet strangely elated—if brassy, bitchy, mousy, insecure Meg could find love, didn’t that mean that someday I could, too? I wished, that when I was cold and alone and scared, that I could crawl into the warm, loving arms of an Aunt Beast.
When I re-read this book, I experience my own wrinkle in time. I am simultaneously an adult, identifying a bit more with the adult characters in the novel, finding myself somewhat exasperated with Meg’s behavior, and a child, thrilling to the romance, danger, and overwhelming love of the novel the same as I did the first time I read it.
Someone recently told me that they’ve never read Wrinkle, yet they really enjoyed When You Reach Me. I said, I’m glad you enjoyed the book, but you only had half the experience.
You should fix that. Right now.
Especially if it’s a dark and stormy night as you read this.
I’m not gonna lie, I’m a word nerd, so when A Zeal of Zebras: An Alphabet of Collective Nouns arrived in my mailbox (1) I literally (2) squealed with delight. Beautifully illustrated examples of wackadoodle collective nouns? Yes, please.
This book is visually gorgeous: I’d be happy to have any of the pages reproduced as a poster for my walls. It’s a wonderful browse and look type of book. There’s not a narrative, just an alphabetic sequence of collective animal nouns, and small blurbs that go with each one. For an Unkindness of ravens, we are told:
There are always six ravens living at the Tower of London, a tradition that started in the nineteenth century. Legend has it, if the ravens leave, the great White Tower will collapse and a terrible disaster shall befall England.
There’s no source for this little tidbit, though, so I wouldn’t necessarily use this book for fact finding; however, as a gorgeous introduction to some wonderful, perhaps underused parts of the language, it’s aces.
1) I don’t actually have a mailbox where I have books sent. It’s more of a shelf.
2) I want the wherewithal to beat, with a stick, anyone and everyone who misuses “literally.” Actually, let’s just put the word away in a drawer until people have forgotten about it, and we can reintroduce it into the wild when people have a renewed respect for it.
Reviewed from a copy provided by the publisher, Chronicle Books.
I once likened ALA as to being summer camp for book nerds (because at camp, you’re sort of supposed to WORK and edumacate yourself and stuff). Now I shall assert that Book Expo America is like Disneyland for book nerds.
I wasn’t able to attend BEA this year * but my most excellent coworker Stephanie did, and here’s her summation of the wonderfulness:
Though the audience is more diverse, Book Expo is really like any other library conference: it is like going to an amusement park. The day is mostly standing in lines, but instead of waiting for a ride, it is waiting for an author. In both cases, the main goal only lasts seconds long, with a thrilling high that is quickly lost once it is realized that another line a waits. The cycle then repeats itself until you find yourself leaned up against a wall with a heavy bag and aching feet in the late afternoon (not that I speak from experience). My first time at BEA occurred weeks ago, and here are some interesting things I learned:
1. Food is optional. This is new for me, since I live to eat. I found myself not caring for food, at least while I was at the Javits, unless it was to get a whoopee pie from Sarah Dessen. It was all about waiting in lines and chatting up fellow book lovers.
2. A strong bag is a must. Though shuttles to hotels were offered, traffic in New York City is horrible and by foot seemed to be the best (since no subway lines run that close to the Javits Convention Center). Not only were books received in autograph lines, but also when visiting the publishers’ booths. Which brings me to my next point . . . .
3. The power of asking. I hate asking for things; I don’t know why, I just do. So, when a kind blogger told me all I had to do was ask for a book, and I might get it, it was nerve wracking. So, I had to do the thing I hate the most, initiate conversation with the purpose of getting something; this then had to happen over and over again throughout the day. The worse thing that happened, and it did, was being told that the book was gone or not available. The best, receiving books that I would never get, like Fateful by Claudia Gray, featuring…wait for it . . . .werewolves on the Titanic (yes, I did just let out a squeal).
4. Maureen Johnson is awesome. Granted, if you followed her twitter page, you would know this. But, she actually takes time to talk to her readers, no matter how long the line is. Granted, all the authors I met were awesome, but only Maureen discussed the right time to squeak a toy horn with me.
5. I am addicted. Granted, on the first day, I was feeling down about the conference. New York City was hard to navigate, and I did not know how the conference worked. By Thursday, not only did my friend and I figure out the subway system, we became autograph line pros. Now, I cannot wait to go back next year. We met great people, whether they were book fans, book sellers, authors, or bloggers, and could not get over how much New York City had to offer.
So, if you ever get the chance to check out any author event, I would recommend that you do. Be sure to wear your nerdfighter gear, jump and down, and do not worry about saying something foolish . . . because you will (I did tell once Sara Rees Brennan that my twitter icon was Leslie Knope eating a pancake; I still don’t know why). Happy reading!
*So even though I wasn’t able attend in 2011, I will definitely be attending in 2012, since I just learned I’ve been chosen as the Official BEA Librarian Blogger for 2012!
Once upon a time there was a girl who was special. This is not her story. Unless you count the part where I killed her.
Sixteen-year-old Alison has been sectioned in a mental institute for teens, having murdered the most perfect and popular girl at school. But the case is a mystery: no body has been found, and Alison’s condition is proving difficult to diagnose. Alison herself can’t explain what happened: one minute she was fighting with Tori — the next she disintegrated. Into nothing. But that’s impossible. Right?
Read this book immediately if:
You like unreliable narrators, like Liar by Justine Larbalestier
You loved Girl, Interrupted, either the movie or the book.
You loved One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, either the movie or the book.
You loved the book A Wrinkle in Time
You like tall, gangly, awkward boys/young men. Faraday, a young scientist who begins working with Alison, the main character, is like Calvin O’Keefe to the nth degree: super smart, super sensitive, and super sexy. Also, he has (at least when Alison looks into them) violet eyes.
You were ever jealous of that perfect girl in your class that always got everything you ever wanted
You’re interested in rare diseases. Alison, the main character, has (among other issues) a condition known as synesthesia, which is a disorder which can cause a person to strongly associate numbers with colors, or perceive sounds as having colors (hence Faraday’s violet eyes).
You loved Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlen.
You love a wrenchingly romantic final line (which I will not give away here, but damn, that was a good ending).
I was sent a complimentary copy of this book from the great folks at Lerner Books/Carolrhoda lab in return for identifying a reference to a review of Lolita and I am so glad they sent it to me; it’s totally one of my favorite books of the summer.
Dorje’s Stripesby Anshumani Ruddra, illustrated by Gwangjo and Jung-a Park
These two titles both address the topic of extinction, and in each title it is the artwork that most strongly pleads the case. In Can We Save the Tiger?, Vicky White’s pencil drawings are sparingly augmented with color. In a time when high quality photos of animals are relatively easy to take and distribute, there is something about illustrations that gives these animals the charming wonder of storybook characters, and may perhaps make a certain kind of child connect with them even more strongly than they would if viewing a photograph. White’s dodo could be cousin to Tenniel’s Dodo from Carroll’s Alice books, and her sleeping, lurking tigers bring to mind the great feline Aslan from the Narnia books. Yet this book is decidedly non fiction, and it includes an index and a list of more resources for readers to peruse.
Djore’s Stripes covers much the same territory via an original narrative that reads much like a fairy tale or fable. Each of the stripes on Djore, a tiger who lives with monks, represents a number of tigers. As tigers disappear, so do Djore’s stripes; as the population slowly recovers, Djore’s stripes follow in kind. The watercolor artwork by Gwangjo and Jung-a Park illustrates this beautifully, with the washes of color giving the story a haunting loveliness that goes beyond the text.
Can We Save the Tiger? reviewed from a library copy; Djore’s Stripes, publisher review copy.
Click through to see the facebook page for A Wrinkle in Time.
