Eight Days Gone

by Linda McReynolds
illustrated by Ryan O'Rourke
Charlesbridge | 2012

The simple, sparse rhyming text in this picture book about the first American landing on the moon in 1969 is utterly perfect for the littlest readers. It tells the entire story of the Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin's successful trip. The clean, clear illustrations are a brilliant complement to the story. McReynolds and O'Rourke are a fantastic team on this one.

An excerpt:

Swiftly speeding.
Earth ahead.
Ship arriving.
News is spread.

Ocean splashdown.
Heroes seen.
Helicopter.
Quarantine. 

This is another great holiday season buy. Everyone loves the moon!

The Boston Book Festival Preview

October 27, 2012 will mark the fourth annual Boston Book Festival (since its re-emergence). Visit here for all the info you need to plan your day. Just click on the session and you'll get info about each speaker/program/presentation. Everything happens in and around Copley Square, it's entirely free, and there's something for everyone in the family.

As a volunteer, I'm producing one of the YA panels entitled: Overcoming Adversity. It is moderated by Amy Pattee, a professor of library science at Simmons College and the three authors who will speak are Barry Lyga (Boy Toy, Fan Boy and Goth Girl, I Hunt Killers), Jo Knowles (Jumping Off Swings, Pearl, See You at Harry's), and Kate Burak (Emily's Dress and Other Missing Things).

All three of these authors take on controversial and compelling issues in their stories. Lyga's most recent book, I Hunt Killers (Little, Brown 2012), is about the son of a serial killer attempting to carve out an identity for himself in his small town where everyone thinks they already know him. I reviewed it here.

Knowles's latest, See You at Harry's (Candlewick 2012), offers a family with four kids that owns a restaurant. When a tragedy befalls them, they each fall apart in different ways and have to figure out how to stitch their family back together.

In Burak's debut novel (Roaring Brook 2012), she writes about Claire, who is spending her second senior year of high school in a new town far away from all the mess she left behind, but trouble seems to follow her.

All three are excellent and I'm interested in what these three talented authors will have to say on October 27. Join us!

No Crystal Stair

subtitle: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller
by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
illustrated by R. Gregory Christie
Carolrhoda Lab/Lerner Publishing Group | 2012

This 2012 Boston Globe Horn Book fiction winner presents fantastic information about Lewis Michaux, the founder and proprietor of the National Memorial African Bookstore in Harlem from 1930 until it was shut because the building was taken via eminent domain in 1974. People like Nikki Giovanni, Malcolm X, and more visited the store and spent time with "The Professor" as Michaux was called. Life for many "ain't been no crystal stair" as Langston Hughes wrote and Michaux was one.

The bookstore

Nelson, the author, began researching her family history, including the store many years ago. She remembered visiting it as a child, but as more and more people mentioned the impact her great uncle had had on them, the more curious she got. Soon, what she thought was going to be a biography took on a life of its own, and she found herself wanting to include more and needing to use conjecture about some things. And so this "documentary novel" was created.

There are millions of pockets of history in the U.S. that so many have no idea about. I, for one, did not even know this bookstore existed, let alone the very important role it played in Harlem. I am thankful to authors like Vaunda Nelson who bring me these forgotten moments through books.

Get this one for your history class or social studies class. Invite your students to learn something they won't otherwise encounter. Do the same for your children. This book is a fantastic place to start.

A Sick Day for Amos McGee

by Philip C. Stead
illustrated by Erin E. Stead
Roaring Brook Press/A Neal Porter Book | 2010

Amos goes to work each morning at the City Zoo, where all his friends wait for him. He plays chess with the elephant, runs races with the turtle, reads with the owl, and more. Then one day, Amos McGee has a cold and takes a sick day. Soon, all his friends have hatched a plan and spend the day with Amos after all.

This absolutely beautiful book, written and illustrated by the Steads, who are husband and wife, won the 2011 Caldecott. It's a quiet story. It's a perfect story. It's one of those classics that will be around when my 2-year-old niece is old and gray and people will still read it to their kids.

Erin's artwork is exquisite. She cuts woodblocks and prints the colored layers of each illustration. Then she draws with pencil on top. I was recently at a conference and got to see her wood blocks--they are so cool!

Pick this one up for all the kids on your holiday shopping list. They'll love it (and you will too)!

This is Not My Hat

 written and illustrated by Jon Klassen
Candlewick Press | 2012

Get your pre-order in now for this awesome follow-up to I Want My Hat Back, Klassen's 2011 Geisel Honor winning, hilariously subversive picture book. The book comes out October 9 and everyone's already excited.

This time around, rather than someone (or something) losing a hat, someone (or something) steals one. And he's pretty darn sure he's going to get away with it handily. As you can imagine, he--well--he doesn't. (It doesn't help that the one guy he sees along the way doesn't hold up his end of the criminal accomplice bargain.)

I won't say anymore, lest I ruin it completely, but suffice it to say this book is as fun and irreverent as Klassen's first. The art is fantastic as usual, in Klassen's signature style, which breaks some rules of picture books (backwards flowing action for instance). And the greens and blacks are as dramatic as the browns and reds were in Hat Back. Klassen's second book is bound to be a winner in many other people's books. 

Keesha's House

by Helen Frost
Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 2004

This middle grade/YA novel written in verse brings to light the struggles of teenagers displaced from their parents and living together in the home of a neighbor who is willing to provide a safe space. The house is technically Joe's, who was taken in by his aunt when he was a teen, but it's become known as "Keesha's House" because she is so good with sussing out who needs what and when.

Stephie is pregnant; Jason, her boyfriend is the star basketball player whose plans are going to be derailed; Carmen has been caught drinking yet again; Harris is gay and his father is less than thrilled; Katie's mother married a man who has less-than-innocent interest in Katie; Dontay has been in a number of foster homes; and Keesha's mother died and her father is an alcoholic and failing at raising her and her brother. Some heavy stuff to all be in the same book, but Frost handles it deftly, softens it appropriately, and the form--poetry--makes it less intense than it sounds.

Awarded a Printz Honor in 2004, this book is lovely. And its author is lovely (I've met her). It is not easy to write a novel in verse that doesn't feel forced, yet Helen Frost does it time and time again (see also Diamond Willow, Crossing Stones and more).

Little (Grrl) Lost

by Charles de Lint
Viking | 2007

Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth is a Little. You know, those tiny 6-inch-tall people that you know from The Borrowers or The Littles books. She lives in the walls of fifteen-year-old T.J.'s house with her family until the day she runs away, right into T.J.'s room. All she has is a tiny dufflebag full of clothes and her attitude. She intends to make her way in the world.

Two weeks later, T.J. discovers Elizabeth in the garden shed, as far as she's made it in the wild world of the Bigs, rife with dangers such as cats and birds and other animals. Elizabeth reluctantly moves into T.J.'s room and they become fast friends.

In order to learn more about the Littles's heritage and to help Elizabeth trace her relatives (for her own family has fled the walls of T.J.'s house after Elizabeth exposed them), the girls decide to go to a reading of an author of children's books featuring Little-like people. But on the way to the bookstore, they are interrupted, separated, and both injured.

What follows is a fantastic story of two girls' journeys, told in both their first-person voices in alternating chapters. The others they meet will stay with you as reader for a long time and the choices each girl makes and how she makes them will leaving you wondering about and respecting each as a open-minded thinker.

This is one of the best books I've read this year (and considering I've read over 150 books so far in 2012, that's saying a lot). Fantasy and realism fans alike will love Elizabeth and T.J. and Charles de Lint's writing. I promise (and that's a big deal--it's important not to make promises in fairyland).