By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: February 7, 2012

A Boy Called Dickens

By Deborah Hopkinson; Illustrated by John Hendrix

Reading level: Ages 4-9

Hardcover: 40 pages

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade (January 10, 2012)

Source: Publisher

What to expect: Charles Dickens, London—19th Century, Fiction

In honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth—February 7—Random House Children’s Books has published A Boy Called Dickens by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by John Hendrix.

Deborah Hopkinson has created an incisive and thought provoking picture book that introduces children to one of the greatest and most treasured writers of all time. Although it is fiction, Hopkinson has based the story on real moments from Dickens’ life. The captivating illustrations created by John Hendrix add mystique to the text. Graphite and pen-and-ink provide the gloominess and dinginess of old London, while fluid acrylics add personality to the people and rosiness to their cheeks—the time period in history is captured well.

Illustration copyright © 2012 by John Hendrix

Growing up extremely poor, Dickens had four things going for him: a pencil, a slate, a love of books and a dream to write stories of his own. Even though times were very tough and the young, hungry, penniless Charles Dickens had to work in a rat-infested blacking factory, he still managed to hold onto his dream. It is this theme that makes the story not only interesting, but empowering to young readers. A Boy Called Dickens is a Junior Library Guild selection—if you’re looking for a little slice of history a la mode, you’ll find this book to be delicious.

Add this book to your collection: A Boy Called Dickens

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nina Schuyler, The Children’s Book Review
Published: February 6, 2012

Whatever your view of President Barak Obama, he has breathed new life into the iconic American wish, “When I grow up, I want to be president.” Not a blue blood or an actor or a gazillionaire, Obama has made the desire seem not so crazy.

If you want to inspire your little one, if your kid has a book report due, or if you just want to talk about some of the great men (yes, well, all men) who’ve led this country, there are loads of new books to choose from.

My First Biography: Abraham Lincoln

By Marion Dane Bauer; Illustrated by Liz Goulet Dubois

In simple-to-read sentences, My First Biography: Abraham Lincoln provides an overview of this great man. “A lot of people were surprised when Lincoln won. How could a man born in a log cabin be president?” It’s an art, really, to turn history into something understandable to a kindergartener. (Ages 3-5. Publisher: Scholastic Inc.)

Those Rebels, John & Tom

By Barbara Kerley; Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham

John and Tom are John Adams (2^nd President of the United States) and Thomas Jefferson (3^rd President) and Those Rebels, John & Tom humanizes this duo by comparing them, weaving together biography and history to tell their story. “John liked to talk. And talk.” “Tom was shy, and dreaded speaking in front of crowds.” Despite their differences, they had something in common: they both despised the tyrannical King George of England. With John’s powers of persuasion and Tom’s skill with a pen, the two joined forces to break America free from England. Tom works out the Declaration of Independence, trying to craft “an expression of the American mind.” While John sets out to persuade the naysayers in Congress. Bright cartoonish illustrations take up most of the page, so your young reader is not overwhelmed by text. (Ages 7-10.Publisher: Scholastic Press)

I Grew Up to be President

By Laurie Calkhoven; Illustrated by Rebecca Zomchek

For each president, starting with George Washington and ending with Barak Obama, I Grew Up to be President gives a two-page spread, including when and where the president was born, the name of his wife, children, political party, vice president and when and where he died. To keep things interesting, Calkhoven includes the quirky or odd. By the time George Washington was president, for instance, he had only one real tooth left. When Thomas Jefferson was president, he received an unusual gift—two grizzly bear cubs. Before Richard Nixon got involved in politics, he wanted to be an FBI agent, but his application was rejected. And Obama? He made a small change to the annual White House picnic for the members of Congress—he threw a luau, with flowers, leis, Hawaiian food and hula dancers. (Ages 7-10. Publisher: Scholastic Inc.)

The Handy Presidents Answer Book, 2^nd Edition

By David L. Hudson Jr., JD.

If there’s something you need to know, if you’re selected for a presidential trivia game show, if you want to impress people with White House facts, you want to own this book. Why didn’t Roosevelt win the Medal of Honor? Which of Jimmy Carter’s cabinet appointees became the country’s first African American female to serve in that office? What was unusual about the 1948 election? (If you had the book, you could answer all these and more!) At 501 pages (including the index), The Handy Presidents Answer Book covers all the presidents, detailing their early life and family, early career, political offices, presidency and post presidency. It also includes basic information about the presidency, the parties, and presidential elections. Wisely, Hudson relies heavily on subtitles, which break up the text and highlight key points. (Answer to the last trivia question: The 1948 election was unusual because the newspapers and pollsters wrongly predicted Dewey would defeat Truman). (Ages 9+. Publisher: Visible Ink Press)

Nina Schuyler‘s first novel, The Painting, (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill/2004), was a finalist for the Northern California Book Awards. It was also selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Best Books for 2004 and a “Great Debut from 2004″ by the Rocky Mountain News. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco and is working on a third novel.

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

Have you used this app? Rate it:
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Video courtesy of MobadMedia: 2012 is the Year of the Dragon! Dominic’s proud parents rule the sea and sky, advise the Emperor, and have high expectations for their son. Meanwhile Dom befriends the boy Bo and the other zodiac animals, who wish to paddle a boat in the village’s annual river race. But when other people and Dom’s parents disapprove, what will Dom do? Discover Dom’s ingenious solution in this enthusiastic tale!

Mobad Media transforms Oliver Chin’s fantastic children’s book into an extraordinary 3D experience for the iPad, iPhone 4, and Mac.

This stunning app also makes a great gift for anybody born in 2012 and any of the other Years of the Dragon.

★ 1916 ★ 1928 ★ 1940 ★ 1952 ★ 1964 ★ 1976 ★ 1988 ★ 2000 ★ 2012 ★ 2024 ★

People born in the Year of the Dragon are strong and passionate, as well as idealistic and independent. But they can flare with emotion and be temperamental risk-takers. However, dragons are energetic and shoulder responsibility well, which make them the most reliable companions.

Praise for the hardcover release:

“Favorite Chinese New Year Books for Kids: a planned 12-book series that introduces children to the animals of the Chinese zodiac. Oliver Chin introduces young readers to the characteristics of each zodiac animal through lively stories accompanied by exuberant illustrations.” – China Sprout

“This bright and playful story makes the ancient tradition of the Chinese zodiac accessible to children everywhere.” – Paper Tigers

“Chin continues to creatively reveal the virtues of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac through his series.” – BookDads

“I simply love this book. The richness of the color and the content…The Year of the Dragon is simply fantastic.” – Mike Lee, Tien Wah Press

“Perfect timing with the Lunar New Year.” – Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

“Thanks so much for letting me see your work – it’s really fantastic.” – Samantha Brody, associate editor of Scholastic’s Parent & Child magazine

Features:
• “Read To Me” highlights the words to improve reading skills
• “I Can Read” allows reading at your own pace
• Individual words can be tapped and multiple words selected to hear that section of the story played back
• Interactive surprises and hidden objects on every page
• Original music and soothing narration
• Hints can be turned on to assist in finding interactive thingamabobs
• Auto Play available if you want to watch the story unfold like a movie

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 4, 2012

Maria Tatar

Maria Tatar is Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. Her latest book The Annotated Peter Pan is a glorious celebration of the centenary of the first publication of the novel, originally entitled Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie. It features a splendid array of photographs and illustrations, many reproduced for the first time, including The Boy Castaways of Black Lane Island. The book also includes a compilation of responses from famed artists, including Barrie’s contemporaries such as as Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain, to his work. For more on Tatar’s discoveries and Barrie’s creation of Peter Pan, please read on.

Nicki Richesin: I read The Annotated Peter Pan with such gripping wonder. It’s a marvelous book; congratulations to you. The story of Peter Pan has fascinated readers for generations and even proved a vehicle for a variety of adaptations in film, books, plays, and musicals. After your extensive research on this subject, what do you believe J.M. Barrie would think of its enduring appeal? Why do you believe his story has held such fascination for its audience?

Maria Tatar: Peter Pan started out as a bedtime story and turned into a cultural myth. Barrie knew that he was onto something important, but I think even he would have been surprised that the story has endured as long as it has.  There is more to Peter Pan than fairy dust and pirates.  It’s a story about what it means to grow up—the gains and the losses that we incur when we become adults.  Barrie felt the pain of the process more acutely than most of us do, and he also saw himself as something of a “betwixt and between”—no longer a child yet still not fully adult.  It was more than just the “inner child.”  He was able to go back in ways that few of us can, capturing the sense of adventure and eagerness for experience that is part of childhood desires.

In your “Introduction to J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan,” you write, “We owe it to our children to give them books that do not put a politically correct dot on every “i” and that offer challenges, provocations, and an occasional sting that keeps us alive and thinking about those who lived before us.” You believe this would lead children to learn to search and explore and has been confirmed in your exhaustive study of fairy tales and in your books such as Enchanted Hunters. Could you further explain what you mean by this notion?

MT: I think it was Philip Pullman who told us that “thou shalt not is soon forgotten” and that “once upon a time” lasts forever.  Great writers are above all else storytellers—occasionally even magicians—who give us worlds created by words.  Children quickly grow wise to the ways of fiction and know that there are no easy messages, morals, and lessons in the books they read.  There is no direct path from what is in the book to “truth,” nor is there a hotline to the meaning of life.  When they read fiction, children develop a sense of curiosity about the lives of others (where else can you read minds and learn about what other people really think?), and they use their explorations of fictional worlds, along with their real-life experiences and exchanges, to develop a moral compass.

Peter Pan was my favorite story as a child. I read the edition edited by Josette Frank, beautifully illustrated by Marjorie Torrey, and published by Random House in 1957. We also had an edition illustrated by Arthur Rackham. Which version of this story do you prefer and why?

MT: Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens are exquisite, and I can’t imagine any rivals to those images.  But I also love Mabel Lucie Attwell’s illustrations, although they are for a younger crowd.  I have grown to love F.D. Bedford’s illustrations for the first edition of Peter Pan. At first they seemed fussy and cluttered to me, but now they feel like windows into each of the chapters in which they appear. They have an astonishing depth and texture.  I’m reminded of how much I disliked, as a child, John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Now they seem to capture the essence of Carroll’s story, and I can’t imagine reading the book without them.

You draw an interesting comparison between J.M. Barrie’s relationship with Peter Llewelyn Davies (really all five of the boys) and Charles Dodgson’s with Alice Liddell. Both authors were inspired by their young friends to create Neverland and Wonderland, worlds in which civilized society did not exist and to which children might escape. The two authors were revered and yet rumors were spread by those who frowned on adult men befriending children. Why do you believe both authors were enthralled with these particular children and deeply influenced by their little muses?

Credit: Peter Pan, 1912 (bronze) by Sir George James Frampton (1860-1928) Kensington Gardens, London, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality / copyright status: English / out of copyright

MT: We live in a culture deeply suspicious of anyone who takes an interest in other people’s children.  Both Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie had a deep attachment to children, and they understood, in unprecedented ways, that there is beauty, humor, and poetry in the imagination of children.  They lived in an era that famously developed a cult of childhood, but it was a cult that valued the beauty of children rather than their playful spirit and imaginative energy.  Children were to be seen and not heard.  Both Lewis Carroll and J.M. Barrie listened to the voice of the child and produced works that were, in some sense, collaborations. And, perhaps not coincidentally, both photographed children and appreciated the beauty of children at rest and at play.  There is not a shred of evidence that there was anything improper in Barrie’s relationship to children, and the five Llewelyn Davies boys he adopted were quite firm about the fact that Barrie was a completely generous, benevolent presence in their lives.

While you were studying Barrie’s letters at Beinecke Library at Yale University, you wrote that you became very emotional. Although your response was in large part due to reading more about the boys’ feelings after the untimely death of their beloved mother and father Arthur and Sylvia Davies, I suspect it was deeper than this and due to finally reading about the boy who wouldn’t grow up and lived a life removed from the world. You discovered that few people truly knew Barrie apart from his adopted sons and housekeeper. What did you think when you read Barrie’s note, “May God blast any one who writes a biography of me” in his notebooks?

MT: Barrie described himself once as a shuttered house.  I may have read his letters, notebooks, and diaries, but he remains a mystery to me—in a good sense. There were times when I felt myself to be an intruder in the archives, although there are those who will argue that posthumous papers belong to posterity.  Occasionally I came across documents that seemed almost sacred—George’s letters to Barrie, written from the Western Front, just a few days before his death, to cite just one example.  There was so much joy in Barrie’s life, and so many triumphs, but there is no getting past the tragic deaths of Arthur and Sylvia Davies, or George’s death in World War I, or Michael’s suicide at Oxford.  Barrie was so guarded and private in real life that I felt it doubly important to treat his life with respect.

On your blog Breezes from Wonderland, you track the media and film world’s attempts to reinvent classic and fairy tales in film, music, plays and television. Which recent productions do you believe have been most successful?

MT: I rarely meet a fairy-tale revival or reinvention that I don’t like. I am enthralled by Catherine Breillat’s fairy-tale films, but I also find the new crime series Grimm, as well as the series Once Upon a Time, entertaining.  I’m eager to see the three new Snow White films coming out in 2012, and I’m astonished that Hollywood, which has always used fairy-tale narratives as subtexts—is now explicitly reinventing the old tales

A.S. Byatt has written introductions for a few of your books (The Grimm Reader and The Annotated Brothers Grimm) and reviews of your books for The Guardian. How did you first begin working together and do you have future projects planned?

MT: A.S. Byatt has been wonderfully generous in writing the introduction for the Grimm books. Her work is always inspiring, and I am hoping that I will one day have the chance to meet her in person. We correspond from time to time, and I’m hoping to recruit her as a contributor to a handbook on fairy tales that I am editing.

Who do you believe are the most exciting children’s book authors of today and which ones do you think will make the sort of impact that readers will remember and cherish into their adulthood?

MT: I taught the Harry Potter series for the first time this year and was deeply impressed, once again, by the final book in the series—I think I now finally understand horcruxes and hallows, as well as the depth of Rowling’s engagement with the great existential mysteries.  The devotion of my students to that series is nothing short of astounding, and the books have an unparalleled bonding power.  It took me a while to become an ardent fan, perhaps because the books become more sophisticated and adult-friendly over time.  Harry Potter grows up, and so does the generation of children that began reading his story when they were his age.  I’m also a fan of Neil Gaiman, Lois Lowry, and Brian Selznick.  And The Hunger Games is impossible to put down, even if it’s not a book to “cherish.”  Children’s literature seems no longer to be just for children, and, these days, we live in a world of shared electronic media that has knocked down some of the old barriers.

What sort of projects are you currently working on?

MT: I have just finished a Young Adult novel about a boy growing up in Nazi-occupied Greece.  It’s my first work of fiction, and it was inspired by a real-life story of an old friend of mine who lived in Athens during the second World War.  Then it’s back to fairy tales.

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Salon, Daily Candy, and Babble.

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 27, 2011

Angelica Shirley Carpenter

Angelica Shirley Carpenter is the author of many acclaimed biographies written for young people including Frances Hodgson Burnett: Beyond the Secret Garden, L. Frank Baum: Royal Historian of Oz, Robert Louis Stevenson: Finding Treasure Island, and Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass. She also edited In the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Carpenter is the founding curator of the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at California State University in Fresno.

Nicki Richesin: Thank you for agreeing to do this interview. I know our readers will be fascinated by your writing life. You have established an impressive career as a biographer of many beloved and celebrated children’s book authors including Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. Frank Baum, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lewis Carroll. How did you first begin writing your books?

Angelica Shirley Carpenter: I began about 1988 when my mother Jean Shirley retired and moved from St. Louis to live near me in Palm Springs, Florida. Mother had already published several biographies for children and she arrived in Florida with a good idea for a new one, about Frances Hodgson Burnett. Oh, and she wanted us to write this together. In St. Louis Mother had found and read The One I Knew the Best of All, Frances’ autobiography of her childhood, and she thought that it would make a good starting point. I was running a small public library at this time, and I knew that children still read and loved The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, so I agreed that Frances would make a good subject. We established that the only biography of Frances Hodgson Burnett for young people had been written by her daughter-in-law in 1965. It lacked illustrations and, worse, it omitted certain incidents that were embarrassing to Frances’ family, like her divorce and remarriage. So we decided to write a more accurate account of her life and to try to publish it with photographs and illustrations from her books.

Your mother Jean Shirley was your co-author on three of your books. Could you tell us about her influence on your life and how you collaborated together?

Jean Shirley & Anjelica Carpenter

My mother was always a writer. When I was a child, her stories and poems were being published in magazines. She could type faster than 100 words a minute on her manual typewriter. She couldn’t cook very well (luckily, my father did), so our kitchen was always filled with the clatter of typewriter keys and stacks of papers. This all seemed normal to me. When Mother moved to Florida, she founded the first Florida chapter of what was then the Society of Children’s Book Writers. This effort helped her to make new friends of all ages. At first I resisted her efforts to get me involved, or to write with her, but finally she convinced me that Frances would be a fun project.

We collaborated easily because even though I was inexperienced, she let me take the lead. She knew how bossy I was, and I think that she was grooming me to be a writer on my own someday. When we worked together, we would agree on what should be covered in a chapter; then we each wrote our own version. Then we read them aloud and combined the two. Mother taught me all the writerly tips for writing biographies, or anything else, for that matter—observing the rule of three, ending chapters with cliffhangers, arranging quotations to look like dialogue, putting all five senses into every chapter, foreshadowing, replacing adjectives and adverbs with strong verbs—all those important ideas and more, plus she was a living grammar book. I never had to look up grammar or punctuation—I could just ask my mother. We had a wonderful time reading our work together and we discussed every single word. When the books were published, we had fun doing school visits together, too.

Click image to magnify.

You have dedicated a great deal of your professional life to studying Frances Hodgson Burnett. I was surprised to learn, having grown up with great admiration for The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, that Burnett’s novel Little Lord Fauntleroy was her most successful book during her lifetime as Americans were quite taken with its rags to riches storyline. Did this come as a surprise to you when doing your research? Burnett led a somewhat unconventional life by Victorian standards. Were there certain periods of her life that you found remarkable?

It wasn’t just Americans who were fascinated with Fauntleroy—the British loved it, too, and it was read around the world, wherever English was spoken or studied. It was the Harry Potter of its day, made into a hit play and eventually a movie starring Mary Pickford. It was marketed with a lot of tied-in products. I read it for the first time as we worked on the biography, and quite enjoyed it. It was written at a time (in the mid-1880s) when society was changing drastically due to industrialization and new methods of travel. After a hundred years of independence, America had developed a national character that was distinct from Britain’s, and the British were curious about what their former subjects were up to. Frances, who crossed the Atlantic 33 times, wrote from both points of view, British and American, and helped to explain the two societies to each other.

She did live a fast-lane life for a respectable Victorian lady. Mother and I eventually met her great-granddaughter, Penny Deupree, who said that her mother and aunt (Frances’ granddaughters) would never even talk about Frances. They were scandalized by her divorce and remarriage. When I tell children this today, they are amazed. Many of the things that Frances did were unusual then—she dyed her hair, wore makeup, smoked cigarettes, and spent a lot of time unchaperoned with good-looking younger men. She married one of these, Stephen Townesend, her second husband, but when he turned out to be an abusive bully, she left him, too. None of this seems shocking today, but the fact that she left her young sons for long periods, up to a year at a time, does seem hard to understand.

I remember reading that Lewis Carroll was inspired by Julia Margaret Cameron’s portrait of Alice Liddell. Some of Carroll’s photographs were considered quite scandalous. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland seems like a psychological study of how children act as adults by playing pretend yet are confused by the narrow rules adults enforce, just as Alice must determine how to navigate Wonderland. Could you briefly explain the role Alice Liddell played in Carroll’s writing and how his photography informed his work?

Alice Liddell was Lewis Carroll’s muse. He met her as he began his career as a mathematics tutor at Oxford University. She was the daughter of his college dean. Oxford in those days was all male, but Dean Henry Liddell was hired, unusually, as a married man with a family. Lewis Carroll, whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, became a family friend. Soon after the dean was hired, Lewis Carroll bought a camera. He learned to use it by taking pictures of the Liddell children in the deanery garden. He told them stories, as he had done for his own ten brothers and sisters. The oldest Liddell child, Harry, was often away at boarding school. Lewis Carroll saw more of the three eldest sisters, Lorina, Alice, and Edith, who were educated at home. The stories Lewis Carroll told the girls were based on incidents from their lives at Oxford—croquet games, boating trips, and tea parties—familiar experiences reinvented with humor and a kind of incomprehensibility that children must experience all the time.

In his youth Lewis Carroll had longed to be an artist, but his talent for drawing was limited. Photography let him express himself visually, using principles he had studied as a would-be artist. Like other Victorian photographers, he sometimes photographed nude children; such photos were considered symbols of innocence in that male-dominated era. Unlike the other photographers, he became a best-selling children’s author and so his four surviving nude pictures are better known. His hundreds of photos of children are now considered the finest ever taken of children in Victorian times. He was a perfectionist in his photography and in his writing, too. Perhaps the earlier control over photography gave him the knowledge and the confidence he needed to exert the same kind of control over his writing and publishing.

You’ve made many literary pilgrimages over the years to Oxford, Kent, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sissinghurst Castle, among many other famous landmarks. Of all the trips you’ve made, which was your most rewarding and/or fascinating for you as a biographer?

It’s hard to say—each trip seems like the best until I start planning the next one. Certainly one of the most exciting days was on my first trip to England, in 1992, when I got to visit the walled garden at Great Maytham Hall in Kent. Frances Hodgson Burnett leased Maytham Hall from 1898-1907. Although she set The Secret Garden in Yorkshire, the garden she wrote about was that garden in Kent. I went there on a dazzling summer day with my husband and daughter, who was a college student at the time. They waited patiently while I ran around crying and taking pictures—I was overjoyed to be there. At the time, Great Maytham Hall had been made into apartments for retirees, who took turns showing guests around the garden. Our guide was Bill Brewin, who became a friend for the rest of his life. We returned several times, but that first viewing was the most exciting.

I had the pleasure of seeing you speak at the Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco a few years ago. For many years, you have organized international conferences through the Arne Nixon Center where you work as the founding curator. Could you tell us about the annual events that you host and any upcoming events you’re planning?

As founding curator of the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at California State University, Fresno, I have gotten to try a lot of new ideas. One goal was to put this new Center on the map by sponsoring conferences, which brought people here from around the world. The first one, in 2003, was a Burnett conference—amazingly, the first one ever held about this famous author. It resulted in a book, In the Garden: Essays in Honor of Frances Hodgson Burnett. In 2004 the Arne Nixon Center hosted the Children’s Literature Association’s annual conference. We have had good luck working with literary societies—the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, the British-based Beatrix Potter Society, the International Wizard of Oz Club, and the Friends of Freddy (the Pig). The Center’s annual event is a Secret Garden Party, hosted by our Friends’ group, ANCA, the Arne Nixon Center Advocates. ANCA held the first Secret Garden Party as a fundraiser for the Burnett conference. People in Fresno have lovely gardens, which they like to showcase. So ANCA planned a party, but kept the location secret until people bought tickets or sponsorships. The idea proved so popular that we kept having Secret Garden parties, changing themes, so that we had an Oz Secret Garden Party, an Alice party, a Cats party (to celebrate the acquisition of a collection of 6,000 cat books), and last year a Centennial Secret Garden Party, with a fashion show commemorating the University’s 100^th birthday. You can see photos from all our events at www.arnenixoncenter.org. The 2012 Secret Garden Party will have a Cuban/Spanish flair because we will be honoring authors Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy.

We just hosted a big conference in October, the ninth United States regional conference of IBBY, the International Board on Books for Young People. This was coordinated with a major exhibition, “Down the Rabbit Hole with Lewis Carroll and Leonard Weisgard.” So we are taking a bit of a breather, and doing some needed fundraising, before planning any more conferences.

Meanwhile we are working to promote our new collection of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning) books, which we think is the largest such collection of these books for young people in any library. My colleague, Jennifer Crow, is developing a traveling exhibition of these books that, with suitable funding, we hope to send out to California high schools.

You’re working on a new biography of Matilda Joslyn Gage for young readers. Why did you choose Gage as a subject and what has proved the most interesting about this project so far?

I found Matilda through her son-in-law, L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books. Mother and I wrote our second biography about him, so Matilda has been on my radar since then. She was a famous feminist and author in her own right, but she is largely forgotten today, due to some skullduggery by Susan B. Anthony. Late in their lives, Anthony ousted Matilda from the organization they had co-founded and co-led for decades, along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Matilda Joslyn Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were the main writers of the women’s movement. They co-authored the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage, still the most important history of the women’s movement in the 1800s, and in 1893 Matilda published Woman, Church, and State, in which she attacked organized religion for oppressing women. So she is an interesting and controversial character, who, after she was widowed, spent winters with her daughter Maud and her son-in-law L. Frank Baum. It is fun to think of Matilda and Frank, writing very different kinds of material under the same roof, and I don’t think that it is a coincidence that, when you look at Frank’s 14-book Oz series, you see that Oz is a paradise ruled by women.

As a biographer, I’m sure you come across many enigmatic and captivating historical figures during your research. Is there one person you hope to write about that you haven’t yet had the opportunity to investigate?

The early feminists are interesting me now—I think that we need to know more about them, and not just about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Recently the literature about civil rights history written for young people has expanded to include new subjects, people like Claudette Colvin and Bayard Rustin. I think that women’s history could use a similar expansion, but I don’t yet have any particular new subject in mind. I have to finish the Matilda book first. I’m calling it The Forgotten Feminist: Matilda Joslyn Gage.

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Salon, Daily Candy, and Babble.

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 24, 2011

Kathleen Krull. Photo credit: Paul Brewer

Kathleen Krull is an award-winning author of many, many children’s books, including most recently Jim Henson: The Guy Who Played With Puppets. She specializes in biographies written especially for children. Krull lives in San Diego with her husband Paul Brewer a children’s book illustrator. She once worked a part-time job at a library and was fired for reading too often. Now she can read to her heart’s content- all in the service of research for her wonderful books!

Nicki Richesin: Jim Henson: The Guy Who Played With Puppets is a brilliant depiction of a man loved by the world for his creative genius. I admired how you followed the trajectory of Henson’s career and the paintings captured the various eras- from his humble beginning in Mississippi to the sweet seventies clothes and hairstyles- to the man himself. What was your approach when telling the story of Mr. Henson’s life?

Kathleen Krull: Thanks for your kind words.  I wanted to shed light on a person who has done so much for children, a modern-day hero, just unbelievably creative.  In his early days, everyone wondered what he was doing, playing with puppets, but he grew into this brilliant magician at making people of all ages laugh.

One of the many things I admired about your book is that you conveyed how Henson continued to pursue his dream of becoming a puppeteer, even when his father disapproved and even when his peers thought it was a little odd. Yet he stayed true to himself and his vision of what he wanted to achieve. I think this is such an important lesson for children, but really for everyone. I understand Henson’s children are running his company now. Do you think they’ve remained true to their father’s unique vision?

The family seems to be quite active in nourishing his reputation, as well as supporting new developments in puppetry with the Jim Henson Foundation, offering grants and other support.

Do you believe Henson’s work bringing Sesame Street to television programming for children revolutionized the way they learn?

I’m a bit past the Sesame Street target audience, but I well remember how progressive this show was when it premiered, how in tune with the spirit of the 60s and 70s.  The idea that TV could be used as a force for good– wow– that laughter could help children learn– this was huge.  It’s now the longest-running TV show for children ever, seen in more than 140 countries, so this is a major validation of his work.

At the end of the book, of course Mr. Henson tragically dies far too young, but for his funeral he requested a giant party with all the mourners wearing bright colors holding butterfly puppets and a New Orleans jazz band playing ‘When The Saints Go Marching In” and parading down the aisle of the church.  I love how you demonstrated that his funeral was a celebration of his life. There seems to be a collective world tribute going on in film and exhibits of his work. What do you think Henson would think of the current fervor for his talents now twenty-one years after his death? Do you think he would be surprised?

Having just been to the ongoing Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of Moving Image in New York, I would say he seems more popular than ever, as more people are realizing his immense influence.  Besides his accomplishments with the Muppets, he was always growing and experimenting– were he still alive, he’d still be at the cutting edge.  I think he would be pleased at the attention being paid to his work today, maybe not surprised (I did sense a strong ego).

You’re married to an illustrator Paul Brewer and have collaborated on three books together. How did your working relationship develop and how do you find working so closely with your husband?

Fartiste illustration copyright © 2008 by Boris Kulikov.

Paul illustrated two of my earlier books (CLIP CLIP CLIP and HOW TO TRICK OR TREAT IN OUTER SPACE), and we discovered that working together is mucho fun.  We have adjoining studios, and he tends to work at night while I tend to work days.  Now we’ve segued into writing together (on FARTISTE, LINCOLN TELLS A JOKE, and upcoming projects), and we like that just as well.  Paul does the bulk of the research, and we take turns polishing the results.

You’ve written some astonishing biographies for children on timely subjects and historical figures such as Pocahontas, Abraham Lincoln, Cesar Chavez, and even A Woman For President on the amazing life of Victoria Woodhull.  You’ve said you’re fascinated by strong women, in particular. Which biography you’ve created has been your most fascinating to work on for you personally?

I always focus on people I think are fascinating, so it’s a tough call.  I do prefer the dead– we have more perspective on them, and there is usually more material to work with.  The more contemporary the person, the more nervous I am.  Will the person turn out to have a secret life, perhaps as a serial killer, will living relatives hate the book.…?  I really have to be interested to tackle a live person.  Hillary Clinton = very scary.  (Fortunately, she liked the book– Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight.)

What advice would you give aspiring writers?

It’s all there at www.scbwi.org – the best place to start.  Their conferences are excellent.

Which books are you currently dreaming of and writing?

Dreaming of many books, currently working on the seventh book in the GIANTS OF SCIENCE series (on Benjamin Franklin) and the eighth book in the LIVES OF series (on scientists).  I recently joined Facebook to post news, rant, and have more fun than I expected.

Thanks for your thoughtful questions, Nicki, and your interest in this book.

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Salon, Daily Candy, and Babble.

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 19, 2011

Gloria Spielman

Gloria Spielman is the author of two picture books Janusz Korczak’s Children and Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime which has been awarded a Silver Medal in the 2011 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards in the category of Non-Fiction Picture Book. A former high school English teacher, Gloria has also written English teaching books and contributed to multi-media English courses. She has many more wonderful books in the works that we can look forward to reading soon.

Nicki Richesin: Congratulations on your lovely Marcel Marceau: Master of Mime. It’s a beautifully compelling book about his legendary career and how he brought the world’s attention back to the ancient art of pantomime, but it’s also the story of how he survived World War II. What inspired you to create this well-deserved homage to Mr. Marceau?

Gloria Spielman: Thank You, Nicki. I always enjoy reading The Children’s Book Review; it’s such a terrific resource for anyone in the world of children’s books, so I was thrilled to talk to you.

I’d much rather tell you what inspired me to write my first book, Janusz Korczak’s Children, it’s a far better story. My then third grade daughter had to do a project on Korczak for Holocaust Memorial Day, and that got me reading and thinking.

The truth is, the original inspiration for Marcel Marceau actually came from my friend Mandy. She was looking at Janusz Korczak and said “You know, you should write about Marcel Marceau. He was really interesting.” She told me of his work with the resistance and after she left I did some reading. Mandy was right. I started to imagine the pictures. I often imagine a picture book in pictures as well as words. My editor agreed. So did the publisher. And I started to write. I wish could say I saw a wonderful mime performance when I was a child and fell in love with it, but that would be a lie.

I was astonished to learn that Marceau was a part of the French resistance. He bravely smuggled Jewish children through the forests to safety and entertained allied troops. He led such a fascinating life. Did you discover anything that surprised you when doing your research?

It was all fascinating.  But there is only so much that can go into a 32 page book. One anecdote that would have made a great picture book illustration is when Marceau came face to face with the man he called his creative father, Charlie Chaplin. He told Chaplin how he paid tribute to him in his American performance and began to imitate him in the middle of Paris airport. Chaplin joined in and the two men were miming Chaplin right there in the airport. I have shared another anecdote on my website about Marceau being stopped by the police who wanted to see his papers during the war.

Illustration copyright © 2011 by Manon Gauthier

Marceau was quoted as saying, “People think that when we are silent, you have nothing to say. But you can make people laugh and cry through the tragedy and the comedy of life. During the war I was in the French underground, and I survived. I think very often about this: People who were 20 years old died in the war. Maybe I’m a spokesman because I am a witness of my time.” In our modern world, where life is super-fast and often overwhelming, do you agree with this notion that we can still communicate through silence as Marceau famously did?

The feeling of being overwhelmed is a feeling that many people share. The myriad of ways (Facebook, cell phone, SMS, etc) we can communicate or be communicated with can give a feeling of overload. I actually touched on this last month when writing in The Forward.  So many people told me they shared my irritation of the insidious piped music heard everywhere these days.  A. P. Herbert writing in The Living Age feels very strongly the effect of “modern nuisances” as he describes the new communications technology. He talks of inventions that are “one more nail in the coffin of privacy and quietude” and “the end of civilization.” I don’t know that I’d take it that far, but it is interesting to note Herbert was writing in 1920. That nail in the coffin was just a wireless opera concert broadcast and the threat to civilization, referred to the then new wireless telephony. You can guess what he would have to say about Facebook, cell phones and Muzak.

Silence can be uncomfortable or even threatening. Think how we scramble to ‘fill in the blanks’ when there’s a lull in the conversation. We panic when we can’t find or don’t even know the right words. We read negativity into silence. Conversational lulls are often filled with nervous chatter. We all know that sinking feeling when we have to comfort a mourner. We’re wrack our brains, wondering, “What on earth do I say to him/her?” Jewish tradition acknowledges this beautifully. When a close family member (parents, sibling, spouse) dies the family remain at home for seven days and are visited by friends and family. The custom is to enter silently, sit close, and say nothing to the mourners unless and until they choose to speak. If they choose not to speak, that’s fine. You came. Sometimes, that’s enough. And the visitors are often relieved too, “Phew, so it’s really ok not to say anything?”

Can we communicate through silence? We tend to pay far more attention to what people say but so much can be conveyed without words. Faces in particular show myriad nuances. Think of a smile. It can be ironic, sly, approving and more. “He smiled ironically” just doesn’t have quite the same effect, does it?

I am developing school presentations on exactly this idea and the many ways we communicate.

Marceau is said to have inspired Michael Jackson’s moonwalk with his act “Walking Against the Wind.” His childhood idol was Charlie Chaplin, but he brought a new spin on Chaplin’s little tramp with his character Bip. Why do you think through this particular character he was able to engage and connect with his audience and express himself so vulnerably and deeply?

He’s a humble character this fellow Bip with very human characteristics we can all relate to.  It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do or where you live: Who hasn’t dreamt of adventure, struggled to find his or her place in the world, felt powerless against forces greater than themselves. Marceau said, “Bip is a romantic and burlesque hero of our time. His look is turned not only toward heaven, but into the hearts of men.”

Could you tell us a bit about your collaboration with Manon Gauthier on her beautiful illustrations for Marcel Marceau Master of Mime?

The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, aren’t they? But I’m afraid there was no collaboration between myself and Manon. She worked with the publisher’s art department. I only saw the illustrations when I received my author’s copies and I loved them right away. They were different to what I’d been imagining. I love the marriage of the writer’s and artist’s vision you get in picture books.

Illustration copyright © 2011 by Manon Gauthier

I understand you have five children and teach high school English. How do you balance your busy life with your writing life?

There are three answers. It depends on the day.

1)  The Practical: When the children were young, I snatched writing time after I’d taken the older kids to pre-school and kindergarten while the baby slept or between 11 pm and 1 am. About 13 years ago we got rid of our TV, which meant so much time saved.  I’m also very lucky to have a very encouraging husband, who is a competent, efficient housekeeper and Master of Laundry. He helps me find pockets of time, between the day job, the house and the kids and doesn’t allow me to give up. He has an unconventional work schedule; he works evenings, so is available during the day to take care of these things. I also teach very little now; the children are much older now, they’re all teenagers and are very respectful and considerate. I’m very lucky.

2)  The Philosophical. Balancing your life is not really about getting up early to write or staying up into the wee hours, or taking a notebook wherever you go or even having a considerate family. No time in the world will help if you don’t really want to do it. Finding time is really about finding your passion, an obsession really. It’s about finding the thing you can’t not do. The thing that you can’t wait to come back to. That thing could be writing or painting, fixing old cars or running. It’s the thing that beckons you when you’re doing pretty much anything else. Along with the passion comes an obsession for finding at least some of the time. If you have the passion, time will come. So, I suppose you could say, I find the balance, because I’ve found the thing I love to do.

3)  The Grumpy. I don’t. Not really. It’s so hard to find time. There’s never a moment of peace and quiet. There’s always someone at home. So many distractions. My day job writing EFL materials has to come first. If only I had a noise-proof, air-conditioned writer’s shed in the garden and a few more hours a day.

Would you like to tell us a bit about your current projects?

I have three picture books ready and looking for a home. I have two works-in-progress, a humorous young adult book in progress with a teenage boy who believes blood is thicker than water, a mother who disagrees, new families, genes, genealogy and one boy’s quest for a father.  I’m also working on an adult novel, set in and around the old London library of my childhood.  It’s about living on the margins of society.

Both of these novels are transporting me quite far from my writing comfort zone. It’s a challenge I’m enjoying immensely. Until now, I’ve written either picture books or texts for learners of English as a foreign language.  Both genres involve paring a tale down to its bare bones, without losing its essence, while preserving its essence. It’s so different from writing picture books and EFL materials. It’s a liberating experience to have such a wide repertoire of words and syntax at my fingertips.

For more information, visit: http://www.gloriaspielman.com/

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Salon, Daily Candy, and Babble.

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: October 24, 2011

Jeanne Walker Harvey

Jeanne Walker Harvey is the author of a fascinating new children’s book My Hands Sing the Blues which traces the childhood migration of young Romare Bearden as he leaves his grandparents in Charlotte, North Carolina and then moves to New York City to eventually become a great painter during the Harlem Renaissance. Her remarkable book is filled with striking collages and poetic, jazz-inspired lines that mimic perhaps what influenced Bearden most as an artist: his childhood home and music. Harvey is also the author of Astro the Steller Sea Lion and she blogs about children’s narrative nonfiction books at True Tales & A Cherry on Top. She lives in Marin County, California with her husband and an adorable black Lab who sleeps at her feet while she writes.

Nicki Richesin: Congratulations on your exquisite children’s book My Hands Sing the Blues. I fell in love with the dreamy artwork and your rhythmic poetic telling of Romare Bearden’s childhood story. I read that you were first inspired by Bearden’s paintings while working as a docent at the San Francisco Museum of Art. What about his artwork captivated you and moved you to create your book?

Jeanne Walker Havery:  Thank you so much, Nicki, for your kind words.  It’s truly been an amazing experience to be part of this creative journey.  And I really appreciate the opportunity to be interviewed by you as I think The Children’s Book Review is a terrific site and resource for families, teachers, librarians AND writers!

Yes, my docenting work at SFMOMA is exactly what inspired me to write this book.  I was giving tours to school groups of the comprehensive Romare Bearden’s exhibit organized by The National Gallery when I fell in love with his art.  As a teller of stories, I loved that his paintings told stories, especially the stories of his childhood in Charlotte, North Carolina.  I found that I could hardly get the students to move on to the next painting in my tour because they were so engaged and drawn to his art, especially the huge vibrant collages.  That’s when I decided that I would love to write a picture book about Bearden and the “people and the places” of his Charlotte childhood which he said was such an inspiration for his art.

Although Romare Bearden worked in different media, how important was it to you that the illustrator Elizabeth Zunon’s collages reflect his artwork? Some of the illustrations, where she inserted lilies and daisies growing from “roots sunk deep in my childhood long past,” reminded me of his painting “Madeline Jones Wonderful Garden.”

I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to open the envelope from the publisher with the proofs and see Elizabeth Zunon’s illustrations.  I feel they are truly stunning! I think Liz not only paid homage to Romare Bearden’s art and style, but also brought her own incredible talent and creativity in the interpretation of the text.  For example, on the last spread of the book, I was moved by the way she drew Romare walking along leaving behind his footprints or his “track” which reflects (in a way I hadn’t thought about) the words, “When I put a beat of color on an empty canvas, I never know what’s coming down a track.”

Illustration copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Zunon

And yes!  I hadn’t thought of the comparison before, but you’re absolutely right.  Liz’s vivid collage flowers of varying sizes and intensity do echo “Madeline Jones Wonderful Garden” in her unique style.

In your author’s note, you write that Bearden was heavily influenced by jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. On the dedication page, you include a quote from Bearden, “You put down one color, and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody.” Did this line inspire you to employ repetition in your verse within the book?

Yes. That line and several other quotes by Romare Bearden discussing the importance of jazz and blues music as inspirations for his art.  Jazz and blues music were not only important to him because of the content, the social and historical significance, but also the method of creating the jazz music, the improvisational aspect.  I read that he was good friends with the modern artist, Stuart Davis who was also a jazz fanatic, and together they would visit NYC jazz clubs and talk about art.  Or they would go to baseball games together and talk about the connection of jazz and art.  And I loved learning that at one point Bearden painted in a space right above the Apollo Theater in Harlem and could hear live jazz from his window.

How much research did you do on Bearden’s life as you were working on the book? Did anything surprise you about his past?

I tried to read everything I could find about Bearden’s life, and in particular the books by Ruth Fine (curator of modern art at The National Gallery), Myron Schwartzman and Kevin Brown were invaluable.  I also attended lectures by the staff of SFMOMA when the Bearden exhibit was exhibited.  And luckily, Bearden participated in many interviews and wrote articles so I was able to read his comments first hand which is always the best research, I think.

Lots of things surprised me about him.  For one thing, he worked full-time as a social worker in New York for a good portion of his adult life while he painted in the evenings.  Also, he didn’t have a degree in art. He graduated from NYU with a degree in education, and had previously studied mathematics. But he was always attending art classes, in college and places such as the Art Students League in NYC.  He also studied extensively on his own, not only world art, but music, history and literature, the influence of all of which can be seen in his paintings.  My favorite Bearden photo is the one of him smiling and standing in front of shelves and shelves of books with his big cat perched on a ladder.

Also, for several years, Bearden wrote song lyrics, but his friends guided him back to painting. And he was also a great athlete.  He played baseball in college and pitched for a semipro team in the summers.  But professional baseball at the time was still segregated.  He was offered a major league contract if he was willing to pass as white, but Bearden refused.  He was truly a man of many talents, but I’m glad he focused on his art.

You were recently a featured speaker at the Family Fun Day at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina (Bearden’s hometown and the setting for your book). What were your impressions of the exhibit and the community of Charlotte?  Did you feel as if you were channeling Bearden’s spirit by being there?

I’m so glad you asked me about my visit because I want to sing the praises of the stunning new Uptown Mint Museum and Charlotte.  Everyone I met was so welcoming and interested in the book.  The museum staff made me feel like royalty (or a rock star, as my son said) for the day, and the audience was very engaged and enthusiastic.  It truly was a thrill to be in Charlotte, Romare Bearden’s birthplace and the setting of my book, and to meet people who lived there.  During my reading, I was very excited to say the words “Today my memory whirls back to my North Carolina past,” and I couldn’t resist asking the Charlotte audience to join in the refrain. I also had a chance to visit the incredible exhibit of Bearden works on paper at The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American  Arts + Culture across the street from The Mint Museum.

Before my talk, I spent a few hours soaking up the Mint Museum’s amazing “Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections” exhibit that includes about 100 collages, paintings and watercolors, including the painting that I saw at SFMOMA which inspired me to write this book, “Watching the Good Trains Go By.”  Truly wonderful!  I’m so in awe of Romare Bearden that I wish I could say I was able to channel his creative spirit there, but I certainly thought about him constantly.

Illustration copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Zunon

What projects are in the works for you now?

I’m working on several different picture book projects, all narrative nonfiction and focusing on creative people.  The books are in varying phases, and pretty much put on hold right now as I savor promoting and sharing My Hands Sing the Blues.

It’s truly a dream come true for me to have this book published that not only focuses on this amazing artist and his creative process, but also the importance of the connections we all have to the people and places in our lives.

Thanks very much for interviewing me, Nicki.  And good luck with your books!

For more information, visit: http://www.jeanneharvey.com/

Add this book to your collection: My Hands Sing the Blues: Romare Bearden’s Childhood Journey

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Salon, Daily Candy, and Babble.

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: October 10, 2011

In recognition of Columbus Day …

My First Biography: Christopher Columbus

by Marion Dane Bauer (Author), Liz Goulet Dubois (Illustrator)

Reading level: Ages 4 and up

Paperback: 32 pages

Publisher: Scholastic Inc. (August 1, 2010)

Source: Publisher

Publisher’s synopsis: Christopher Columbus dreamed of adventure and discovery. He sailed across an ocean to an unknown land. He showed the way. Many others followed. With simple, lyrical text and bold, kid-friendly illustrations, this book introduces Christopher Columbus to the youngest readers and inspires them to follow their dreams.

Add this book to your collection: My First Biography: Christopher Columbus

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.

Author Showcase

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: September 30, 2011

F. Isabel Campoy

F. Isabel Campoy is a scholar devoted to the study of language acquisition. She is a well-known author of numerous children’s books in the areas of poetry, theatre, folktales, biographies, and art. She is the recipient of many notable awards, including the Reading the World Award 2004, for “Cuentos que contaban nuestras abuelitas;” and the Junior Library Guild Premier Selection Award, 2006.

TCBR: As a writer, you have a strong focus on the culture and civilization of the Hispanic world. Can you share a little on your background and how you became a children’s book writer?

F. Isabel Campoy: I cannot remember a time in my life in which I wasn’t part of the world of children’s literature. As soon as I learned to read I became the person that teachers chose to read out loud to the rest of the class while they did art, or sewing. I had a good voice and I couldn’t hold a thread and needle for more than two seconds, so it was a perfect match to keep everyone busy. That practice stimulated the writer in me and when I was eleven-years-old I published my first tale in a local magazine. I continued writing throughout my childhood. When I came to the U.S. for the first time at age fifteen in 1963, writing kept me alive through the difficult moments of missing my family (I was here as an AFS exchange student), and conquering my fears after the tragic assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November of that year.

My first job after college was as an assistant editor in Madrid. I applied to the position because it was my way to be part of the publishing world. Later I was offered the opportunity to co-author with Phillip Locke a series for the teaching of English, my responsibility being to provide the literary texts. I left publishing many years later. At the time, I was a Senior Acquisitions Editor for College publications in a company in Boston. I realized then that the joy of publishing others was hiding my fear to publish my own manuscripts… so I finally quit everything and became a full time writer.

I love to travel. I am interested in the places, the people, and their histories. When I began writing for children I wanted to contribute to present the cultural richness of Latino history, art, and literature for readers in this country. There is much to be written about our culture.

Tales Our Abuelitas Told: A Hispanic Folktale Collection is one of the many books you have written with Alma Flor Ada. Why do you think so many readers are drawn to your retellings of these particular folktales?

Authors love all their books, but there are some that connect with you in a very personal way. “Tales Our Abuelitas Told” was published the year I lost my mother. She was the greatest storyteller, imaginative, soft spoken, and these were tales she had told us growing up. I wrote some of the stories for this book by her side. At the time I was the one who would read to her, to make her forget pain, to keep a smile in her beautiful face.

I remember each line in that book and how she reacted to my reading of the stories I was writing. Because she knew the storyline so well, she would frequently interrupt me to say: “That is not exactly how I told you that story” …when I was using some literary freedom in my re-telling. Those moments are my greatest treasure of her memory, now.

I have given readers the echo of my mother’s voice through the beauty of our folklore. I am sure she is enjoying the success of her tales…now in a fourth hardcover reprint.

Does there appear to be a favorite folktale amongst the readers of your book?

I could probably say that all of them, but “The Story of the Not-So Small Animal” is one that I like to tell when I visit schools because I love the landscape and the people of the Basque country. I tell children how so many of them brought their skills as shepherds to the mountains of Idaho. I like this story also because it is one in which the little creatures, together, win the battle against the big animals. I like that!

Four leading Latino artists created the stunning artwork in the book: Felipe Dávalos, Viví Escrivá, Susan Guevara and Leyla Torres. How do you feel about the illustrations and the extra dimension that they bring to the tales?

Our friendship with these artists has created more than one collaboration that resulted in great published books. But here they are all together, each one bringing their talent, point of view of the story and energy, and the result is magnificent. It is an honor to have them all in here.

Viví Escrivá has been a frequent collaborator with us. Together we published “Pio, Peep! and !Muu, Moo!, two of our first Nursery Rhyme collections with HarperCollins. Felipe Dávalos put wind underneath important books such as “The Quetzal’s Journey”, “On the Wings of the Condor”, and “Eyes of the Jaguar”.

You have many published books. Which book from your own esteemed list of published titles would you consider to be the most personally rewarding?

I love art, sometimes I try my hand at painting and sculpting, and having had the opportunity to present to children the richness of Hispanic art has given me great satisfaction. “ Blue and Green”; “Brush and Paint”; ”Artist’s Easel”; and “Canvas and Paper” are four of our art books (written with Alma Flor Ada). But I find writing biographies a very special challenge that I welcome. When I fall in love with a character, I want my readers to love him/her too. For that to happen, every word must be chosen carefully. In our series “Gateways to the sun” we wrote about twelve very special personalities from the world of science, leadership, media, art, and literature.

Alma Flor Ada and yourself have a forthcoming book Yes! We Are Latinos, which combines free verse portrait of Latino and Latina children of very different backgrounds living in different parts of the country. When should we expect to see this book on the shelves?

It is in the hands of the illustrator. The publisher’s goal was 2012. I hope we make it on time!

That is an important book in our careers. We opened our heart and we wrote with passion about who we are, all of us, Latinos in this country.

Which books from your own childhood have most influenced your life?

I continue to find “Platero y yo” by Juan Ramón Jimenez a source of inspiration. I go back to its pages when I want to remember my childhood.

I never understood “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes until I grew up, but when I did, I realized I have been Don Quixote half of my life and Sancho Panza, the other half.

Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

I want to express my gratitude to them. I wrote a haiku to say precisely that:

Gratitude is a golden bird

Perched in the branches of your heart

May its voice be heard!

Add this book to your collection: Tales Our Abuelitas Told: A Hispanic Folktale Collection

For more information, visit: http://www.isabelcampoy.com/ and  http://almaflorada.com

The Author Showcase is a place for authors and illustrators to gain visibility for their works.Learn more …

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.