Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

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.]

This past summer I was lucky enough to get a chance to talk to fantasist-turned-romancer Maggie Stiefvater, whose recent book, Shiver, is providing vampire-addicted teens a welcome dose of literary lycanthropic methadone. But just how did the author of seriously ass-kicking faerie tales (Lament, Ballad) turn up the heat and find herself writing books with actual kissing in them? You’ll just have to watch, and as a bonus you’ll get a super-secret peek inside her sketchbook, as well as a killer anecdote about how animal-themed line work just might be the next big national security threat. Dangerously good times were had by all.

As you might know from reading 10 inches below this post (or, if for some reason you gets infos from somewhere else other than our little Likely Stories, you already know from anywhere else), the National Book Award nominations were announced yesterday. And while the NBAs are no stranger to odd picks, especially in the Young People’s category (am I the only one who thinks this is a weird designation? How about Youth Literature, or anything else a mite less stodgy than Young People’s Literature. I’d even be happier with Youngster’s Literature. It’s not like we’re going to get it mixed up with Young Alpaca’s Literature, and they don’t call the other categories Adult People’s Nonfiction. Ok, enough on that), there’s a doozy of a pickle in this year’s nominations.

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.

Man, where did the year go? Awards season is gearing up again. The National Book Award finalists were announced today:

Fiction

American Salvage, by Bonnie Jo Campbell

Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Lark and Termite, by Jayne Anne Phillips

Far North, by Marcel Theroux

Nonfiction

Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook, by David M. Carroll

Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species, by Sean B. Carroll

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin

The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy, by Adrienne Mayor

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, by T. J. Stiles

Poetry

Versed, by Rae Armantrout

Or to Begin Again, by Ann Lauterbach

Speak Low, by Carl Phillips

Open Interval, by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy, by Keith Waldrop

Young People’s Literature

Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith, by Deborah Heiligman

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, by Phillip Hoose

Stitches, by David Small

Jumped, by Rita Williams-Garcia

Lips Touch: Three Times, by Laini Taylor

Winners will be announced on November 18.

Seven months ago, four Booklist editors were shown up by the book-themed board game It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. Seeing how our scattered egos were approaching reassembly, it was time for another round of humiliation. That’s just how we roll.

Thus: Bookchase. The box claims as its audience everyone from “people who have never read a book” to “literati who may have read too many books” to “people in a hurry who like chasing things.” Clearly, Booklist fits into the third category–oh, man, do we ever like chasing things! Look, there goes a squirrel! So one blustery Friday afternoon, a brave assembly of thing-chasers met at the local pub to roll the bones of fate:

Ian Chipman: Associate Editor, Mime Enthusiast, Wiseguy

Ilene Cooper: Children’s Books Editor, Secretary of State, America’s Sweetheart

Keir Graff: Booklist Online Senior Editor, Former Member of Guns ‘n’ Roses, Common Thug

Daniel Kraus: Associate Editor, Archie Andrews Apologist, Dungeon Master

Bill Ott: Editor & Publisher, Land Speed Record Holder, Berserker

Bookchase, we discovered, follows the Trivial Pursuit model. You roll the dice, fill your teeny tiny book cart as you slug around the board, and depending what space you land on, you answer a multiple-choice trivia question from one of six literary categories. There are also a few chaos elements: a Library Card, which gets you a free book at the Library; vouchers for books at the Bookshop; and other wild cards that can topple your book cart faster than a lumpy rug.

Read the rest of this entry »

The first time I heard about Pride and Prejudice and  Zombies, I reacted just like any other red-blooded American: I giggled like a schoolgirl and geeked out for about 20 hours by incredulously emailing links back and forth with my friends. Is this for real? It is! This is going to be so bad-ass! I know, right?

Then I read the thing and bailed about two-thirds the way through. As a rule, I don’t bail on books (it’s kind of part of the job description). But when I realized I was no longer reading ninja-versus-the-undead passages aloud to my wife, I knew Austen (and Grahame-Smith) had lost me.

Nevertheless, it was a sensation based on premise alone, and for months Quirk Classics’ hype machine prepared us for the follow-up, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about it. Yet the book trailer takes me right back to those innocent days when I had first heard about Zombies and it seemed like the Coolest. Thing. Ever. Actually seeing and hearing the wooing of English-accented dandies (who are standing a little too close to that lake!) is, as Elinor Dashwood might say, ever so much fun!

Verdict: Quirk: 2, Me: 0. But just make the movie versions already, will you?

I recently got one of them there iPod Touches (the less gifted cousin of the iPhone), and after about a minute of playing with the thing it became obvious that this was an ideal platform for comics–it’s essentially a pocketable panel. So off I went in search of comics that have embraced the technology, and came across the delightfully pointless Yon Kuma.

The comic follows Bunyon Paulsen as he wrassles with bears–as the artists themselves state, “YON KUMA is basically and excuse for us to write and draw fight scenes involving a kid beating the tar out of huge bears.” Which he does. Repeatedly. Direct, simple, and awesome.

But does it work on the wee gadget? For the most part, yes, in that most of the panels are a natural fit to the iPod’s screen, though a few of the irregularly shaped ones of course present some difficulties. But, I love the care that the creators took in retrofitting their comic to the mobile device, and it looks like more and more webcomics will employ this platform (the extra-geeky gem Erfworld, which I’ll get around to reviewing whenever I get fully caught up on the story, will soon be joining the fray). I heartily endorse such endeavors on pure neato factor alone.

Previously I’ve talked about how much my family enjoys Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Tomorrow we’ll be able to share the love during Jumpstart’s fourth annual Read for the Record campaign, which encourages adults and children across the country to read  aloud the same book on the same day—this year it’s Carle’s classic picture book.

If you need a warm-up before the big event tomorrow, check out the video of Eric Carle talking about this campaign that supports early literacy.

For more on promoting literacy, check out the October 2009 Book Links article “Family Literacy.”