Marvelous Middle Grade Monday -- Season of Secrets: An Open Letter to Arthur A. Levine

Dear Arthur A. Levine,

It happened again. Specifically, it happened on page 73 of the ARC of a book you published, Season of Secrets by Sally Nicholls (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, pub date Jan 1, 2011, for ages 8 to 12).

You already know what the book's about, Arthur, but give me a minute so I can have an excuse for a blog post bring my readers up to date. The book takes place in England. Molly and her older sister Hannah are grieving, each in their own way, since their mother's death. Dad can't cope and has sent them to a small village up north to live with Grandma and Grandpa. Molly, the narrator, tells us they're only staying there until Dad gets things "sorted out."

Molly's an imaginative girl who would live in a book if she could.  One rainy night she runs outside looking for Hannah and sees something incredible: a man being chased by huge dogs and huntsmen on horses.  And the lead hunter has horns growing out of his head. The hunters disappear and Molly tries to help the hunted man. He's injured and seems confused.

When Molly runs back to her grandparents' house and babbles about the man, Grandma goes outside with her, but there's nothing there. They all assume she's letting her imagination run wild.  

Later, Molly's teacher takes the class to a church to do grave rubbings, and Molly sees a statue that's exactly like the hunted man.  Her teacher tells her the legend of the Green Man, linked to the cycle of death and rebirth.  Also called the Oak King, he and the Holly King, the man with horns, fight for dominance of the seasons.

Molly befriends the Green Man, but no one else can see him. The grass around him is greener, and saplings and vines spring up, even though it's autumn.  He makes a flower grow in his hand. If he can bring things to life, can he bring back Molly's mother?

Arthur, I love the book. Don't get me wrong.  I found Sally Nicholls' first book, Ways to Live Forever, touching and beautifully written.  This book is too.  The atmosphere the author created here reminds me of The Dark is Rising, a modern classic also set in Britain.  Could there be some truth to the idea of an Oak King and a Holly King fighting it out every solstice?  It's fascinating to think about.

So what's my problem with page 73?  Well, to be honest, I'm a little upset. It happened in Tangerine.  And now it happened again in Season of Secrets.  A character, in this case, Molly's mother, died of an aneurysm.  Yes, I know people die of brain aneurysms and abdominal aortic aneurysms all the time. Thousands of them.  I know.  Louise Fitzhugh (author of Harriet the Spy) died of a ruptured brain aneurysm at the age of 46. 

Molly says (and I'm quoting the ARC here, so I hope that's okay) "An aneurysm is...where the wall of one of your blood vessels gets damaged, so blood flows into the wall and makes a balloon, which gets bigger and bigger until it explodes inside you and you die."

But not always! You don't always die!

And I'm living proof. Yes, Arthur, I'm a survivor of a ruptured brain aneurysm. And the simple truth, according to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation, is that only about 40% of people with ruptures die. That's less than half.  And with continued research, that statistic should continue to go down.

Is the book still worth buying and reading?  Oh yes, of course.  See that little label down there that says Gem of the Week?  That means I highly recommend the book.  It's lovely and luminous.  The writing is  poetic.  The details are perfect.  Except for that aneurysm thing.

Next time, Arthur.  Next time, you'll know.  Right?


Marvelous Middle Grade Monday is brought to you by the letter M and Shannon Whitney Messenger, who started it.  Click on over to From the Mixed-up Files to see what she's featuring this week.

What Booksellers Wish Publishers Knew: Pop-Up Edition

Pop-up books can be intricate and entertaining.  Kids love grabbing and touching books anyway, so why not give them something interactive, where they can pull a tab or turn a page and a monster pops out or a castle opens up?

From Robert Sabuda's Beauty and the Beast

Try doing that on a Kindle!


The downside of pop-up books is that they fall apart.  If you think your kids are hard on pop-up books, guess what happens in a bookstore?  Aside from collectors, who usually know how to treat a book properly, customers by the hundreds open these works of art and play with them, and they're, well... a mess.

.

Our display copy of Star Wars A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy by Matthew Reinhart keeps bursting open.  Many of the pages are bent or torn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poor Cinderella won't even pop up anymore in this copy of Cinderella: A Pop up Fairy Tale by Matthew Reinhart.  In fact, I think she's about to lose her head!

And there's no way we can sell books that have suffered this kind of abuse.

My solution?   

Every pop-up book needs to come with a display copy.


Perfumes and lotions have testers.  Why not pop-up books?


Let customers open the display copy all they want. The copies for sale should be double-shrinkwrapped so they can't be ruined.  Sadly, only a handful of pop-ups, usually from the major publishers, come with an extra copy (at no charge to the bookstore) for display.  If there's no display copy, inevitably customers will ask me to open one. Or they'll just go ahead and help themselves. 


This DC Super Heroes pop-up came with its own cardboard stand and a free display copy -- and in a clever move, the publisher included sticky tape on the spine so it's a permanent part of the stand and can't be taken away.

What do you think?  Are pop-up books just for collectors?  Have you ever purchased a pop-up book?  Did your kids get enough enjoyment out of it before it fell apart?  And when e-readers become the norm, will pop-up books still be published?  Would you miss them if they weren't?

Giveaway Winner!!

At last, I've figured out how to use randomizer.org and the result is in!  The winner of the hardcover giveaway of the autographed copy of Please Ignore Vera Dietz

AND a copy of After Ever After, 

(the contest otherwise known as Award-Winning-Authors-From-Pennsylvania-Giveaway)

is (ta-DA)

IVALICE ALLIANCE

Congratulations!  Expect an email from me, asking for your mailing address in *gulp* the Philippines.  

If I don't hear from you, I may be forced to award the prize to someone else!

Thanks for playing, everyone who entered!  And we'll return to our regularly scheduled program in a few days.  In the meantime, have you checked out this post?  

Spoiler-Free DARKEST MERCY Review

Reading Darkest Mercy is like huddling before a roaring fire on a cold, snowy day and listening to an old friend tell a tale.

In this case, the old friend is Melissa Marr, and she's woven a rich, dark and beautiful tapestry in Darkest Mercy (HarperCollins, Feb 22, 2011, $16.99, ages 12 and up), the final volume in the Wicked Lovely Series.

If you love the urban faerie world that Marr created starting with the first book, you will love the way she brings it all together in this volume. Finally, you will learn what happens to Ash, Seth, Keenan, Donia, and Niall. That may seem like too many points of view to handle, but Marr's sure hand never falters as she weaves together threads from all the previous books and interlaces each of the five main characters' stories. How she manages to make you care about all of them, I'll never know.The pacing is perfect, the atmosphere is dramatic, and as always, the writing is gorgeous.

Can't say much about the story without spoiling the plot.  But I can tell you this: War is coming.  Bananach, the Faerie of Discord, is gaining followers, and attacking other faeries.  Can the Summer Queen, the Summer King, the Winter Queen, the Dark King, and Seth, newly-turned fey, find a way to work together to defeat her?

Titles I'd Like to See

Titles and brief reviews of three books I'm sure will never be published:

Tattle Tails

Revealed at last: the deepest, darkest secrets of picture book characters!  What are those scandalous creatures up to?  Learn all the inside scoop on who has something to hide, including:
  
Olivia shipped off to fat farm!!  

The Hungry Caterpillar's binge and purge routine!

Why is Fancy Nancy hiding behind those sunglasses?  
Is rehab next?

Is Pinkalicious really a porn star???  Her parents' secret shame!

"I am Curious George/yellow; I am Curious George/blue"  --  Ever wonder why some Curious George books are yellow

 and some are blue?  

 





 This book reveals the shocking truth!!  Guaranteed to knock your socks off!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *    *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

 The Annotated Guide to Celebrity Picture Books:

The Definitive Edition

Learn the hidden meanings and deep philosophical truths behind such timeless classics as If Roast Beef Could Fly by Jay Leno, The English Roses by Madonna,  Mr. Chas and Lisa Sue Meet Panda by Fran Liebowitz, High in the Clouds by Paul McCartney, Jag by LeAnn Rimes, and much much more!  The spiritual concepts behind these books are explained in detail, along with the logic paradoxes and quantum physics underlying the plot and themes of these complicated volumes.

This lengthy and scholarly tome also delves into the origins of each of these wonderful stories. Discover how these gems came to be! Historical context is explained. Includes footnotes, original drafts of each book, editing notes, correspondence between the author and editor, second drafts final drafts, Swiss bank accounts author contracts.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   * 

They Came From Beyond the Grave

"Dead men (or women) tell no tales."  

Or do they?

Richard Scarry, Dr. Seuss,  H.A. Rey, Margaret Wise Brown, Shel Silverstein, 

Roald Dahl, Matt Christopher, V.C. Andrews  -- their books just keep selling and selling and selling.  And they're all DEAD.  Kinda sends chills up your spine, doesn't it?


But there's more!  As gruesome as it sounds, sometimes NEW titles magically appear in bookstores and libraries, even though the author's been dead for YEARS.  Gertrude Chandler Warner wrote 19 Boxcar Children books and then died in 1979.  So what's with the other 101 102 103 104 105 106?

What funny titles can YOU come up with? And did I miss any dead children's authors who are still selling?


Reminder: My giveaway goes until 11:59 pm EST on Sunday January 23.  Only a few days left to enter! 

The Four Stages of Writing from Debbie Ridpath Ohi

Thanks to the giveaway, I seem to have attracted some wonderful new followers.  Welcome, fellow bookbrains!  If you're also a writer, as I suspect most of you are, this comic from Debbie Ridpath Ohi is for you:

If you haven't yet discovered InkyGirl, otherwise known as Debbie Ridpath Ohi, run over there and check out her website.  She has an entire section dedicated to comics for writers!  She posted the above comic at Writer Unboxed. She was one of my first followers, for which I'll be eternally grateful.

Debbie's also illustrating a picture book by writer/comedian/actor Michael Ian Black, due to come out from Simon & Schuster in early 2012. Congrats, Debbie!

What do you think?  Doesn't this comic get right to the heart of what we go through?

Words in the Dust - another Marvelous Middle Grade Monday

Yes, it's another Marvelous Middle Grade Monday (started by the inimitable Shannon Whitney Messenger).  Also check out Shannon O'Donnell's post here.   And Myrna Foster talks about another middle grade novel in this post.

WORDS IN THE DUST, by Trent Reedy (Scholastic, January 2011, ages 9 to 13), is a debut novel written by a former soldier who served in Afghanistan.  Usually I shy away from books about another culture which are written by Americans, but I'm really glad I opened this one.  It captivated me from the first page.  The writing is clear and authentic, with great respect for the culture. The main character seems like a real girl, living in the wind and dust of Afghanistan, her chador wrapped around her face.

Zulaikha longs to be normal, to be able to eat and talk like other children.  She's tired of being called "Donkey-face" and chased by Anwar and his friends. She also yearns to go to school and learn to read. Her mother started to teach her, but then died. And Zulaikha's stern stepmother thinks women should only cook and clean.  So Zulaikha and her older sister Zeynab do all the chores while their little brothers play.  Their stepmother sends Zulaikha to the market because Zeynab, now of marriageable age, is too pretty to be in the streets alone. Out on yet another errand, Zulaikha meets a woman named Meena who knew her mother. Meena offers to teach her to read.  Can Zulaikha keep these tutoring sessions a secret?

Her father and older brother are welders, and Baba is excited because the American soldiers have arrived in their small village to build a new school, which means the promise of more work for Baba. 

Then one of the soldiers notices Zulaikha's cleft palate.  The Americans insist they can help Zulaikha.  There is an operation that will fix her, but they would need to take her far from home in a helicopter. 

Should Zulaikha dare to hope? 

Includes: Introduction by Katherine Paterson, Pronunciation Guide, Glossary, Author's Note and Bibliography.  If you liked Shabanu by Suzanne Staples or The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis, this book is for you.  Teachers and librarians, you'll definitely want to buy this one.  (Note to teachers & parents: there is one gruesome incident toward the end of this novel that may be too intense for the youngest readers; the publisher says 9 to 13, but discretion is advised for younger or more sensitive readers.)

I've already started my ongoing list for next year's possible Newbery winners. And this is the first book on it.   What marvelous Middle Grade book have YOU read this month?