I’m gonna go ahead and tell you. Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine, & a Miracle holds the distinction of being the only book I’ve ever reviewed that made me cry. Now, I’m not talking the kind of cataclysmic sobbing that makes coworkers edge away, nor am I talking about the ever-disturbing weeping-quietly-into-your-hand variety. I just got a little misty-eyed, that’s all, but for this hardened punk, that’s saying something.

It’s one of my favorite books of 2009. With artful simplicity, it tells the tale of a earless Iraqi mutt whose bond with Major Brian Dennis, an American soldier, compels Nubs to walk 70 miles through unforgiving conditions to find his friend. With its multiple (and often appropriately low-res) shots of both the human and canine hero, the book acts as sort of an annotated album.

The trailer takes this concept literally, placing each still image within picture corners, as if you are browsing an actual photo album. It’s a cute concept, but for such a modern story it feels awkwardly old-fashioned; more likely Dennis would keep his pics on a USB drive rather than mounted scrapbook-style. The muddy sound (and weird volume jump near the end) also adds to the overall rushed feel.

Verdict: Bad Dog! Thankfully, there’s plenty of other videos that bring home the powerful story. Oh, man. Here come the waterworks.

Life Achievement

Ellen Asher and Jane Yolen

Novel

The Shadow Year, by Jeffrey Ford
 
Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan
 
Novella

“If Angels Fight,” by Richard Bowes
 
Short Story

“26 Monkeys, also the Abyss,” by Kij Johnson

Anthology

Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, edited by Ekaterina Sedia

Collection

The Drowned Life, by Jeffrey Ford

Artist

Shaun Tan

The full list of winners can be found here.

Some in the publishing industry say that, thanks to e-readers such as the Kindle, people are reading more books (”E-Book Fans Keep Format in Spotlight,” by Brad Stone, New York Times). Who, exactly, says this? Well, the manufacturers of the Kindle, but that’s beside the point. Given that the average Kindle edition is priced at $9.99, it stands to reason that people might buy more of them than $24 hardcovers. Of course, when you factor in the cost of the e-reader itself, you have to buy a lot of Kindle editions before they become a bargain, which may be why people are buying so many: to save money.

But what’s happening to those $24 hardcovers? They’re being sold for as low as $8.98 by retailers such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target (”In Book-Pricing Battle, How Low Can They Go?” by Motoko Rich, New York Times). The American Booksellers Association has cried foul–indeed, some have wondered how publishing can survive when the biggest sellers are treated as loss leaders, like cans of tuna fish in the grocery store. Then again, it’s the retailers who are absorbing the loss (some in hopes of selling mountain bikes or big-screen TVs) and while some independent booksellers have gnashed their teeth, others have shrugged and said that they don’t sell a lot of bestsellers anyway.

Indeed, some see Barnes and Noble as a perfect storm of unenlightened self-interest: in going head-to-head with Amazon in the e-reader business (with the adorably named Nook), they might just have found the doomsday device to hasten the demise of their 700-plus superstores (”The Nook of Doom,” by Marion Maneker).

In other financial news, Amy Hertz, editor-at-large at Dutton and editor at HuffPost Books–you know, the one who said that “Book reviews tend to be conversation enders“–said, when asked whether it hurts writers to write for free (”A new-media read on books at Huffington Post,” by James Rainey, Los Angeles Times):

“I’m not going to answer that question one way or another . . . I just don’t think it’s a useful question to ask at this point. It’s a new world.”

Let us know when the question becomes useful, Amy, and we’ll ask it again!

However, some book reviewers don’t even need not getting paid as a reason to quit. Jessica Mann has quit reviewing all books, if I’ve read that right, because so many crime writers are jumping on the “sadistic misogyny” bandwagon (”Book reviewer quits over ‘increasing sexist violence’,” by Amy Willis, The Telegraph).

“Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims’ sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit as young women are imprisoned, bound, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or burned alive,” she told the Observer.

And just who does she blame for this disgusting trend? Women, actually. Ian Rankin said something similar a few years back (”Ian Rankin: The singing detective,” by Danuta Kean, The Independent) and took his bows to boos–wonder if Mann will hear from the women as well.

And now for something completely different: Wiley has signed Tony Little, “America’s Personal Trainer,” to write, dictate, or sculpt the body of a motivational business book called There’s Always a Way (”Wiley Signs Tony Little for Biz Book,” Publishers Weekly). It’s scheduled for this December, but if Tony is worried about writer’s block, I have one message: You can do it!

Interestingly, another hair-rific figure is putting Little’s own considerable work ethic to shame: Frank McKinney, “Daredevil Real Estate Artist and Bestselling Author,” has three–count ‘em, three–new books out: The Tap, Burst This! and Dead Fred, Flying Lunchboxes, and the Good Luck Circle. It’s hard to imagine his appeal on the page being any greater than it is in person.

You know what? Little and McKinney need to form a band. And to complete their band, they need–you guessed it, Sammy Hagar. Thank you, everybody, and good night!

You probably know all this. But maybe you’re like the old me. Either way, I can assure you that romance fiction is a thoroughly enjoyable subject to talk about.  It’s full of surprises; it’s always evolving, and romance experts are, well, passionate. I hope you’ll join us on November 12, 2009,  from 3:00 to 4:00 pm Central Standard Time for the first Booklist romance webinar.

I’ll be the moderator for a terrific group of presenters. Two of our romance reviewers and feature writers, John Charles and Shelley Mosley, will be talking about what makes the romance genre so enduringly popular, and about new trends. Participants will get an early look at forthcoming romance titles both to read and to listen to from Kayleigh George from HarperCollins and Cheryl Herman from Books on Tape. And best-selling romance writer Madeline Hunter, author of The Romantic, The Rules of Seduction, and Secrets of Surrender, among many others, will talk about the vital connection between romance writers and libraries, and how romance writers are partnership with libraries through the Romance Writers of America.

It’s free; it’s bound to be fun. Please join us. Just click the Webinar button on Booklist Online and register today!

While dabbling with various other mobile comics readers (Panelfly and iVerse get silver and bronze, respectively, to comiXology’s gold) I came across a startling bit of news that just seemed too perfect to be true. The title story in Will Eisner’s A Contract with God (collected with two other books in The Contract with God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue), considered by those who consider such things to be the daddy of the modern graphic novel, is available for the iPhone from Genus Apps. It’s weird to read such a venerable work, and one that had so much impact on the graphic format, on a mobile device, but it’s also kind of great and proves that the delivery device is far less important than content. Is it as good as reading it as a book? Who cares? It’s all good.

So, it’s all supergreat and now I’ve found a way to read in those tiny slices of time when I’m not reading, but things should really get cookin when our Apple overlords unveil their hyper-anticipated tablet device next year (which will likely be some kind of lap-sized, roided-up iPhone). See ya, Kindle. Hope you like the taste of iDust.

Best Mystery Novel

Where Memories Lie, by Deborah Crombie

Best First Mystery

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

Best Nonfiction/Critical

African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study, by Frankie Y. Bailey

Best Mystery Short Story

“The Night Things Changed,” by Dana Cameron from Wolfsbane & Mistletoe

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery

A Royal Pain, by Rhys Bowen

As the movie settled down from a wild rumpus to a study of child emotions and kid logic (who knew there was so much human drama where the wild things are?), I took a moment to glance around the theater. My young companion was riveted, and so were the teenagers and adults sitting behind us. I wondered, had all these adults (especially the ones without children) been touched by book as kids? Was it read to them, or did they discover it on their own? Had they yearned through the years to join Max in his sailboat, and live amongst the wild things? Or, were they too wooed by the moving trailer and perfect soundtrack?

I worried during the first viewing that I’d miss some profound message or deep connection that others carried away. But I found myself fighting tears at the end, and I’m happy to say that the second viewing has the same emotional impact. The kid? He was fine; in fact, he made fun of me a little for “welling up.” But still, as Gillian pointed out, this is not the kind of film one parks their kid in front of, à la Madagascar 2. Children might need some soothing afterward, or at least some quiet one-on-one time.

Do I recommend this film? Yes; it is wonderful and so is the cast. The young star, Max Records, is unbelievably good in every scene. Should you read the book before hand? Yes.  Come on! It’s a classic and only ten lines long. The movie-going experience can only be enriched by reading the original.

I’d like to know, when and where did you first encounter Where the Wild Things Are?

The 2009 Guardian Children’s Prize went to Exposure, Mal Peet’s update of Othello.

At the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, winners were announced in eight categories for the 2009 Anthony Awards:

Best Novel

The Brass Verdict, by Michael Connelly

Best First Novel

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

Best Paperback Original

State of the Onion, by Julie Hyzy

Best Short Story

“A Sleep Not Unlike Death,” by Sean Chercover, from Hardcore Hardboiled

Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel

The Crossroads, by Chris Grabenstein

Best Cover Art

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, designed by Peter Mendelsund

Special Service Award

Jon and Ruth Jordan

Last but certainly not least, ten finalists have been named for the £15,000  T. S. Elliot prize. The winner will be announced Jan. 8, 2010.

Max is crowned king

In an essay entitled “The Splendors of Crap,” published in his new book Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon, shares his distaste for contemporary kids’ movies:

“The new studio-made CGI products are like unctuous butlers of the imagination, ready to serve every need or desire as it arises; they don’t leave anything implied, unstated, incomplete. There is no room in them for children.”

If this description fits many recent kids’ releases, it’s certainly not true of Spike Jonze’s beautiful film adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, in which everything is left implied, unstated, and incomplete. Jonze and fellow writer Dave Eggers have stretched Maurice Sendak’s picture-book text into an intense, psychological dream that is more meditative than manic. Like the original story, the film bypasses cozy clichés and taps right into the unsettling wildness of human feelings.

I loved the first scenes at home, when Max feels ignored, and the camera angles and music (and even the great title font) expertly capture his volatile, furious moods, which ramp up to an epic tantrum. This isn’t just a shouting match; Max, in a perfectly designed wolf suit (ratty, well-loved, identical to Sendak’s original drawings), sinks his teeth into his mother’s arm in a pure white rage and flies out into the night, where his imagination sends him to the Wild Things. The slippery shifts between the human and beasty qualities in all of us is a big part of the story, and all of the actors who lend their voice to the Wild Things expertly animate their characters with aching, real emotions. The action is also close to a kid’s real world: rather than car chases and explosions, the most frenetic scenes involve fort-building (and fort-smashing) and dirt-clod fights.

I loved the raw honesty in every scene, especially those between Max and his mom (the wordless ending is wonderful), and the script that, like the book, jumps right into primal issues that therapists talk through with adults every day. The movie leaves plenty of room for viewers to connect the melancholy story to their own feelings and experiences, and the effect is powerful. But, as I watched, I wondered how kids would respond. Would the comparatively simple plotline keep their attention? Would all the complicated emotional dynamics among the Wild Things puzzle them to the point of boredom? Then, towards the end of the movie, any worries that I had about kids connecting with the film were totally erased. From the back of the theater, we heard a young person’s sob, followed by a single wail of “MAAAX!” 

Stay tuned for a response from my movie partner, Booklist staffer Courtney Jones, and let us know what you thought about the film. Its release was a year later than expected; was it worth the wait?

You may recall that, way back in the middle of last summer (or thereabouts), Time Out Chicago hosted a book launch party for Bill Ott’s new book, The Back Page. Well, Daniel Kraus, whose fingers must be smoking from all the videos he’s been editing of late, put together a nice overview of the event. Unfortunately for him, all he had was my decidedly amateurish video to work with. How hard is it, you ask, to push a single red button and hold a cigarette-pack-sized camera steady? Harder than it looks, apparently. And I don’t even have a typical book-launch-party excuse to fall back on, either: this public event was decidedly dry. (The blurry part is due to the digital zoom, I swear.)

Anyway, as I was transported back to that magical night across from the Harold Washington Public Library and under the El tracks, I was tempted to write a rollicking account of the proceedings, until I remembered that someone had already written one: the author himself.

So, if you like, cleanse your palate with my Story behind the Book by a Booklist Author, and then sip and savor Bill’s first-hand account (”You Ain’t No Koontz“) of the events of July 12, 2009. And then watch the video. (Click here for higher resolution.)

Oh, admit it, you already watched the video, didn’t you? Well, then, follow the links already.

In honor of Ian’s great interview with Maggie Stiefvater, I bring you a very special episode: A Tale of Two Trailers.

First up is the more-or-less “official” trailer for Stiefvater’s werewolf romance Shiver. The content portion of this video is barely 30 seconds and constrains itself to elements found on the book jacket. Not especially ambitious, eh? Thankfully, Shiver has the kind of book jacket that does - even if only momentarily - hold a few secrets. At first I didn’t even notice the wolf behind those snaky tree limbs. And how about that splotch of blood that dots the “i”?  I also appreciate how the video’s opening lines of standard bad-boy fluff (”He’s not what he seems . . . but he’s everything she wants.”) is followed by far more elusive text (”Her yellow-eyed boy. His summer girl.”).

If you watched the Booklist Online interview,  you’ve seen proof of Stiefvater’s drawing chops. She puts those artistic talents to work with her own cut-paper, stop-motion book trailer. It’s far more low-fi and impressionistic than the “official” video (no surprise there), featuring not a whit of concrete exposition. Instead, we get jittery trees and meandering leaves, and a moment between a woman and wolf-man that is drawn out for so long that it reminds us how seldom we see real stillness anymore.

Verdict: The first trailer probably sells the book, but it’s the second that will make you want to read it again.

Author E. Lockhart isn’t afraid of a good argument, as she made clear in her acceptance speech for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks at the 2009 Michael L. Printz Awards (administered by ALA’s Young Adult Library Services Association and sponsored by Booklist).  Readers have had wildly different responses to the book’s title character, a prep-school sophomore who uses her own secret, guerilla tactics to infiltrate an all-male secret society. Lockart said:

Nothing has pleased me more than to receive mail denouncing Frankie as a borderline psychotic and other mail lauding her as a feminist heroine.

Lockhart explained that for her books, and for all books, she feels that “there is no right reading.” And she spoke out against the notion of YA novels as billboards, or “moral lessons cloaked as entertainments.”

Books are meant for complicated responses . . . They are meant to be argued over, unpacked, disagreed with, loved and hated simultaneously, and reread at different times of life for different meanings.

We’d love to hear from you, our Likely Stories readers, about your own ”complicated responses” to Frankie, and, while you’re at it, don’t miss the rest of E. Lockhart’s speech, in which she talks about the eclectic influences, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s stories to the real-life San Francisco Suicide Club, that helped her shape her Printz Honor Book.

[The Printz Award speeches appear on Booklist Online with the permission of YALSA.]

There’s going to be no small amount of a tizzy over the fact that David Small’s outstanding graphic memoir Stitches got nominated in the Young Human’s Literature category, despite the fact that it was published by Norton as an Old People’s book. Apparently, it doesn’t matter to the committee who a book was published for, but only what category the publisher submits the book for nomination. Via Mediabistro:

 ”There was a question among the judges [in the young people's literature category],” Harold Augenbraum, the executive director of the National Book Foundation, told us when we called asking about the nomination, “but it ultimately depends on where the publisher nominates the book, and this is where [Norton] nominated it.”

There’s a couple of thorny issues here. The underlying assumption is that a graphic novel, even one expressly published for adults, wouldn’t be able to compete in the oldster’s categories, and thus needs to be entered into the youth category, because, you know, comics are for kids. The other problem is that Stitches has, deservedly or not based on pure artistic merit, edged out a spot that should by all rights be occupied by a book that was expressly written for children or young adults (and there’s certainly no shortage of such worthy children’s books, coughWhen Your Reach Mecough, or even children’s graphic novels, ah Ah AHThe Storm in the BarnCHOO!). I almost feel sorry for Stitches now, because if it ends up winning, no one’s going to be happy about it, even though it’s a deliriously good book that deserves all kinds of recognition. Anyway, going to be very interesting to see how this all plays out, and what effect it has on other youth-related awards this season.

Nothing new here. Just a proof of the old maxim “less is more.”

It takes only 36 seconds (22 if you don’t count the closing information!) for this video to perfectly encapsulate Liz Garton Scanlon’s All the World. It’s simple: if you like this trailer, you’ll like the book, and in that respect it’s hard to conceive of a more effect digital missionary.

I’m seeing more and more of the effect that involves disassembling a book’s artwork and reassembling it in such a way that different layers can be manipulated to affect a kind of motion.  (See the trailer for Leviathan for another great use of this technique.) It works splendidly here, with Marla Frazee’s warm depictions of waves churning, dogs playing, and kids scampering becoming somewhat more sophisticated without losing their innocent charm. The real-kid voice-over, imbued with just the right mix of satisfaction and melancholy, sells it pretty well, too: “All the world is you and me / everything you hear, smell, see. / All the world is everything / everything is you and me.” Even the informational screens are models of efficiency: author/illustrator (making sure to mention her Caldecott Honor!)/website/book jacket. Exit. Applause.

Verdict: A. It’s like a press release that you actually want to read.