An Aldous Huxley children's book

The Crows of Pearblossom, written in 1944, has been out of print for years. Now republished with new illustrations by Sophie Blackall, it gets a great reading from Daniel Pinkwater and Scott Simon from NPR.

Best books for babies

We firmly believe (and the numbers back us on this) that reading when you're young leads to a lifetime of benefits. Best Books for Babies goes right to the beginning, and provides an annual list of great books for infants through 18-months, an age group not so easy to find books for.

The list for 2011 is available at Welcome to Best Books for Babies 2011.

Children's books just right for you

Here's a quiz for kids to help them pick the books they'll like the most. You have to answer questions like what superpower would you like to have and how you would change the world. Then tot up your answers and a vast list comes up, sorted by age.

Give it a shot: Quiz: find the right books for your personality.

Why we love Eeyore

He may be the most gloomy character in the Winnie the Pooh universe, but he is also a great favorite. Yesterday was his birthday, and it won't be long before he's seen on-screen again in a new Disney film. So what is the attraction of this almost tragic figure?

Chris Cox discusses it on Guardian's Book Blog:

"In literary terms, Eeyore is the archetypal outsider. The other animals – Pooh, Piglet, Owl and the rest – dwell happily within Hundred Acre Wood, knocking on each others' doors, having tea and embarking on adventures. But not Eeyore. He lives on the other side of the stream in his Gloomy Place – marked on the map as 'Rather Boggy and Sad.' Rather than venture out to see others, he waits for them to pass through his field, which doesn't happen often. 'I have my friends,' he notes ruefully. 'Somebody spoke to me only yesterday. And was it last week or the week before that Rabbit bumped into me and said "Bother!" The Social Round. Always something going on.' "

Read the whole article, Eeyore: Literature's archetypal outsider.

Move Your Body

I just caught up with this, an initiative to get middle school kids up off their seats and dancing around, in aid of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! Initiative. With over 4 million views, a lot of people have enjoyed this already, and maybe as more kids watch it, they'll get the idea that movin' it is a lot better than sitting around lettin' it gain weight. (I will vouch for the fact that my cafeteria was nothing like this when I was that age.)

The Art of Racing in the Rain for kids

Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain has been a publishing phenomenon since day one. If you haven't read it, do so. The odds are that you will love it. If you're a dog person, I guarantee that you will love it: it is narrated by a wonderful dog named Enzo. Like most books for adults, though, it has language and situations in it not suitable for kids, although the content is otherwise very kid friendly. Now Stein has brought out a version of the book for junior readers ages 9-12, which is a great idea. And he encourages families to read it together, and to talk about it:

"I think it's important, when discussing a book, that we recognize every opinion is relevant. We all read a book differently, though our own values, experiences, and thoughts, and so we all identify with different parts of a book. With kids, especially, we have to understand that they may not have the same life experiences as an adult, so they will see different things. But most of all, when discussing a book with your family, be sure to follow Enzo's advice and LISTEN!"

Get all the details and read an interview with Stein at BookReporter.com.

"A spaceship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the universe."

I'm seriously in love with the Letters of Note blog that I talked about yesterday. Listen to this. When a new library opened in Troy, Michigan, in 1971, the children's librarian solicited letters from notables extolling the virtues of such a place. One letter was from Isaac Asimov:

"Dear Boys and Girls,
Congratulations on the new library, because it isn't just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse you and console you---and most of all, a gateway, to a better and happier and more useful life."

For more letters from more extraordinary people, including Dr. Seuss and E.B. White, check out the article, A library is many things

Peter and the Wolf

How many kids' first introduction to classical music is Peter and the Wolf? It seems as if everyone under the sun has recorded the narration for it, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Sharon Stone to Captain Kangaroo. My favorite version as a kid, narrated by Sterling Holloway, was Walt Disney's. I love this video of the maestro casually banging out all the themes:



The background story of the piece is fascinating. As Sara Fishko writes on NPR.org/music:

"Although the story sparkles with innocence, the times in which Prokofiev wrote it were far from cheerful. It was 1936, and the composer had just decided to move back to Moscow after spending years abroad in New York and Paris. Harlow Robinson, Prokofiev's biographer, says it was an uneasy time, as Stalin's purges and the show trials of the early Bolsheviks were about to begin. The atmosphere was already changing in 1936, and that was something obviously Prokofiev was not counting on or thinking about when he went back."

Read the whole story at 'Peter And The Wolf' Turns 75.

Writing site for teens

The headline says it all.

From Publishers Weekly: Inkpop had a soft launch in late 2009 and currently boasts more than 10,000 members ages 13 and up, and 11,000 written submissions, which include novels, short stories, poetry, and essays. An editorial board of Harper editors will review the top five member selections each month, offering feedback on their work as well as, potentially, the possibility of publication. As the inkpop community develops, Harper plans to announce partnerships for the site and expand options for teens whose creative interests might include video, photography, or other media. More...

Children's Books Prize Winners

The Newbery Medal winners, profiled in the NY Times. Link.

Advice to parents: read aloud to your kids

Katherine Peterson, author of Bridge to Tabitha, will be the new national ambassador for young people’s literature. (We didn't even know such a position existed.) Her mission is to get kids to read. Her message is that you should start them on that road yourself.

From the NY Times: The main advice she’ll be giving adults: Read aloud to your children. “You can read out loud, and if you’re exhausted or crying so hard because you know that Charlotte is going to die in the next chapter,” she said, “you can turn it over to the kid to read the next part.” (That’s “Charlotte’s Web,” she’s talking about, of course.) More...

DisneyDigitalBooks.com

From the NY Times, an announcement of Disney's latest foray into books, this time online.

NYT: The Walt Disney Company hopes an ambitious new digital service it plans to unveil on Tuesday will transform how children read its storybooks. In what it bills as an industry-defining moment — though rivals are sure to be skeptical about that — Disney Publishing plans to introduce a new subscription-based Web site. For $79.95 a year, families can access electronic replicas of hundreds of Disney books, from “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too” to “Hannah Montana: Crush-tastic!” More...

L. Frank Baum biographies

A profile of the creator of Oz, derived from some recently published biographies, over at Slate. This strikes a chord with me personally. When my daughter was young, I read every single Oz book aloud to her (including Oz books not by Baum, and a lot of other non-Oz Baum books as well). I enjoyed every minute of that experience.

Slate: The story of the orphaned Dorothy Gale, whisked by a tornado away from gray, impoverished Kansas to the magical land of Oz, captured the hearts of children and adults who had lived through an economic crisis but saw all around them the thrum of invention and change. As a young country abuzz with "progress," the United States needed a different kind of fairy tale. A truly American myth could not merely invoke Celtic wraiths or Bavarian dark forest goblins. It would have to include the drive to innovate that launched the Gilded Age and made America the archetypal modern industrial nation during the very decades when Baum's imagination was formed.... More.

SparkNotes

Publishers Weekly reports that Barnes and Noble has relaunched its SparkNotes study guide site. We took a quick look and found, among the expected book material, a blog that looks interesting for teens. You might find it worth checking out.

Kid's stuff

If you're interested in kid's books, you should probably follow Amazon's blogs directly to get their Kid-Lit Roundup. If you're not already familiar with it, here's a link.

Where the Wild Things Are: The movie

The NY Times profiles director Spike Jonze this coming Sunday. We've seen the coming attractions of this film of Sendak's classic, and we were intrigued. Reading this piece, we're even more intrigued.

NYT: Most kids’ movies are brightly, mouthwateringly colorful; Jonze favored a mushy-vegetable palate of greens and browns. Most kids’ movies have a clearly defined plot and an unambiguous moral lesson; Jonze’s film has about as much plot as an episode of “Jackass.” Most kids’ movies crackle with one-liners; in “Where the Wild Things Are,” the characters talk over one another and spend a lot of time stumbling over their own words as they try to articulate their feelings. Jonze told me that one of his models for the dialogue was the work of John Cassavetes... More.

Kids reading, a different perspective

This is an interesting follow-up, also from the NY Times, to our last post. What's wrong with teachers just getting kids to read? Beats kids not reading, right? Whether or not kids should read the classics (or maybe we should say "classics") is an interesting point, but just having kids read has to, at some point, be the priority.

NYT: The approach Ms. McNeill uses, in which students choose their own books, discuss them individually with their teacher and one another, and keep detailed journals about their reading, is part of a movement to revolutionize the way literature is taught in America’s schools... Starting this fall, the school district in Chappaqua, N.Y., is setting aside 40 minutes every other day for all sixth, seventh and eighth graders to read books of their own choosing... More.

Reading for points

This is a rather disturbing article in the NY Times, about how kids get points for reading books. Nothing wrong with kids reading books, but the question is raised about the quantification of the process. Gossip Girl = 8 points, Hamlet = 7 points?

NYT: Accelerated Reader, introduced in 1986, is currently used in more than 75,000 schools, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. The Web site for Renaissance Learning, which owns the program, describes it as a way to build “a lifelong love of reading and learning.” As a novelist and mother of three passionate readers, I’m all for that. But when I looked closer at how the program helps “guide students to the right books,” as the Web site puts it, I was disheartened... More.

The American McGirl

The American Girl book series seems to have a girl for everyone. We love any series that gets kids reading, so even though the following story may not be to our personal taste (I haven't had a McDonald's meal since 2008, and then there was the one before that in 2007...), it's fine with us.

Amazon Daily: With so many great restaurants, coffee shops and bakeries in Seattle, my family rarely visits fast-food chains. But there I was, yesterday, in the McDonald's drive-thru, ordering a Happy Meal. Not for the Chicken McNuggets, mind you, though it was lunchtime. The real reason we were in line was for the American Girl toy... More.

We Make Stories

Actually, that's wemakestories.com. We found this via Boing Boing. It's a tool for kids to tell stories, mixing audio, comics, treasure maps. Very creative, and there's samples to check out. It's worth a look.