The Reading History Project: "Pedal Pusher" by Mary Boone. Watch Out for Women on Bikes!

Pedal Pusher: How One Woman's Bicycle Adventure Helped Change the World  by Mary Boone with illustrations by Lisa Anchin is a great subject for Women's History Month. For a couple of reasons.

Women on Bikes Were a Big Deal in the Late Nineteenth Century

First off, Pedal Pusher is described as a picture book biography, though it only deals with one period in Annie Cohen Kopchovsky's life. Kopchovsky was the first women to ride a bicycle around the world in 1894-95. Nowadays, this seems like a kind of meaningless stunt. And it may have been a stunt then, too. But bicycling was part of a cultural change for women, giving them more ability to get around and leading to changes in how they dressed, which was far more than just fashion. Kopchovsky represents all that.

I wonder, too, if she represents nineteenth century public relations and self-promotion. Kopchovsky seems to have been very adept at raising money for the trip by signing pictures and giving lectures as she traveled. Boone raises the question of whether or not Kopchovsky was one hundred percent accurate/truthful in her talks. Was she creating an Annie Cohen Kopchovsky for public consumption/sale?  

Which leads me to wonder about another aspect of the Annie Cohen Kopchovsky story. She was a Latvian Jewish immigrant at a time "when prejudice against Jewish people was widespread," as Boone tells readers. Soon after she began her trip, she temporarily changed her name to Londonderry in exchange for a donation from the Londonderry Spring Water Company. She appears as Annie Londonderry in the newspaper quotes Boone provides at the end of the book.

Would public interest have been as great in Kopchovsky if she had used her own name?

Pedal Pusher is a great introduction to its subject. But I want more! I want a movie! I want a Netflix limited series! 

Oh, But There is More

I bought a copy of Pedal Pusher, because I'm interested in the era involved and still have young people around who might read it. But what brought the book to my attention last October was an opinion piece author Mary Boone wrote for The Seattle Times. (I may have stumbled upon it on BlueSky.)

In it, Boone describes how during last year's Women's History Month, the Tacoma Children's Museum invited her to lead two story times about Pedal Pusher. She ran the first program at its downtown location, but the second was going to be held at the museum's site on Joint Base Lewis-McChord. A Federal site. And that one was cancelled four days before the event.

Boone was told "it violated the administration's executive order restricting so-called "radical" Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs across federal institutions." 

Hmm. Could that be Executive Order 14253 Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History she's talking about, since that specifically includes federal sites? The one covered here at Original Content back at the beginning of February? 

I have questions.

• If the story hour was cancelled because of Executive Order 14253 Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, is there a claim here that the book isn't true? Annie Cohen Kopchovsky wasn't the first woman to ride a bicycle around the world? I'm not touching the sanity issue. I don't even know what it means in the context of the executive order.
• Otherwise, what was "radical" about the book? It was about a woman? It was about a Jew? It was about a Jewish woman who did something successfully? 
• Or I could phrase that a different way: It wasn't about a man? It wasn't about a Christian? It wasn't about a Christian man who did something successfully?

The Power of One Voice

I have a long history of obsessing on the wrong point in a story, and I am probably about to do that right now. In her article about the cancellation of her appearance Boone writes, "Someone complained when they saw my story time being promoted."  "... museum staff later suggested the event might have gone forward if it hadn't been advertised." 

This program was cancelled because one person heard about it and complained? Now, on the one hand, that's a very positive thing, isn't it? It suggests that any one of us can complain and have an impact. We can get the ball rolling to take attention away from books we object to.

But doesn't it also suggest that any one of us can have an impact by speaking out in support of and bringing attention to books we appreciate? Which is what I'm trying to do here.

One voice can make a difference. Imagine the kind of difference many voices could make.

Pardon me while I leave to spread the word about Pedal Pusher on Facebook, BlueSky, and Goodreads. 

We Need Diverse Books Day

We Need Diverse Books began in 2014 as a Twitter hashtag and from there became a nonprofit group. In addition to providing books to schools and libraries, it provides support to and publishes marginalized writers. Today they are celebrating the first We Need Diverse Books Day.

To support their effort, here is a list of books dealing with subjects under the diverse books umbrella that I've enjoyed here at Original Content. 

Picture Books

 A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin by Jen Bryant and Melissa Sweet

Fancy Party Gowns by Deborah Blumenthal and Laura Freeman

Bad News for Outlaws by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson and R. Gregory Christie 

Company's Coming by Arthur Yorinks and David Small  

Middle Grade

Figure it Out, Henri Weldon by Tanita S. Davis

Don't Hold Me Back by Winfred Rembert

March: Book One by John Lewis, Andrew Ayden, and Nate Powell      

Finding Langston by Lesa Cline-Ransome

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Jasmine Toguchi, Mochi Queen by Debbi Michiko-Florence and Elizabet Vukovic

Strange Fruit by Gary Golio and Charlotte Riley-Webb

YA

Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler

Mare's War by Tanita S. Davis

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager by Ben Philippe

Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

The Hired Girl by Laura Amy Schlitz

Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices, Mitali Perkins, editor

A Sitting at St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia

Adult Books

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell                                              

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty

Once Again, Sometimes Social Media Works

 I don't actually know Jolene Gutierrez, but she is a Facebook friend. Recently she posted that her book, Too Much! An Overwhelming Day (illustrated by Angel Chang) had reached a couple of milestones...200 reviews at Goodreads and100 at Amazon. Well, we have a little person in our family who can suffer from overwhelm, and probably a couple of big people, too. So I immediately got a copy on one of the ebook apps I use and gave it a look. 

It's a lovely book, without an overwhelming amount of text. Illustrations work fantastically. Speaking as someone who has a family member with some sensory issues and not others, I can easily imagine reading this with him and picking and choosing things. I may have a chance to do so next weekend.

Social Media Keeps Working

Now I've given Too Much! some attention here. I'll review it at Goodreads, and I'll do an X...whatever we call what we do at X...to promote this blog post, which will then promote this book. And that will provide some opportunities for more people to discover Too Much!

Some New Picture Books Coming In Two Good Series

 Facebook friend Valerie Bolling has two new picture books coming out in August. Here's an appreciation of two of her earlier books that suggest the new ones are something to look forward to.

The first new book is Bing, Bop, Bam, Time to Jam, illustrated by Sabrena Khadija. It's part of Valerie's Fun in the City series. The first offering in that series, Ride, Roll, Run, Time for Fun, also illustrated by Khadija, is about a diverse group of kids who have been released from school for the day. It is time for them to have fun. We're talking minimal words here with some eye-popping artwork. I don't know enough about art to be able to define or label it, but maybe that's just as well. It's terrific. 

Valerie's second book coming out next month is Together We Swim with illustrations by Kahlani Juanita.  This title is the second in her Together Series, the first being Together We Ride, also illustrated by Juanita. Together We Ride is another beautifully illustrated book, though in a very different style. It also has little text, though there's a narrative story here told between word and picture, while Ride, Roll, Run, Time for Fun! is more experiential.

We still have very young children in our family, and I'm a much bigger fan of books that can grab and engage that age-group's minds with story, words, and images than I used to be. I was very taken with these books and look forward to the next books by this author and these illustrators.

The August, 2023 Books And The Book Launch

A book launch celebration for both books will be held on Saturday, August 12 at 10 AM at the New Canaan Library in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Joe Cepeda Has A Book Out This Month. Hey! I Know Him!

I was checking out some book events at the Once Upon A Time Bookstore in Montrose, California, when I saw that Joe Cepeda is making an appearance there next month for his book, Rafa Counts on Papa. I thought, I know that name. It's from...it's from somewhere in my past.  

Indeed it is! Joe Cepeda illustrated my last two books, A Girl, a Boy, and a Monster Cat and A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers.

Check out his incredible studio.

Congratulations on the new publication, which looks and sounds wonderful.

Julia Child Is Everywhere This Spring

Julia Child is having a moment, due to the pretty terrific Julia showing on HBO Max right now.

It looks like pie, but it's cake!

Speaking of which, for Easter I made a gluten free version of the Queen of Sheba cake she makes in the first episode. Except for the no gluten and baking it in a pie plate instead of a spring form pan and using vegan margarine instead of butter, it was just like Julia's.

And speaking of Julia Child, over the last couple of weeks while watching the show about her, which has inspired many, many articles on-line, many of which I have read, I have been thinking about a lovely 2012 picture book by Susanna Reich about Child's cat, Minette. So, as part of my Original Content anniversary observance, I am republishing my post about it. It appears to be available as an e-book. I believe I still have my hard copy.

Friday, May 04, 2012 Blog Tour: "Minette's Feast" As Creative Nonfiction

If you're looking for Day Five of the Minette's Feast Blog Tour, you're in the right spot.

Minette’s Feast by Susanna Reich, illustrated by Amy Bates,  is a lovely picture book with a Parisian setting and a charming story. A woman living in Paris and studying French cuisine adopts a cat, Minette, that far prefers the results of her own food prep—hunting for birds and mice—to the cassoulets, soufflés, and pates her owner makes. She is finally won over, at least temporarily, by the leftovers from a dish that had taken three days to marinate.

The descriptions and illustrations of home, cooking, and food, food, food give Minette’s Feast the potential to become a comfort book, so it doesn’t matter that many young readers won’t know who the woman referred to in the book’s subtitle —“The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat”—is. Furthermore, Minette holds her own as a character. She does, after all, turn up her nose at meals prepared by a student at “Le Cordon Bleu, the famous cooking school.” Whether or not she will be won over to fine human food provides the narrative drive for this sweet piece of creative nonfiction.

That is what Minette’s Feast seems to be to me—creative nonfiction for kids. Creative nonfiction, as I first saw it defined years ago, is nonfiction that reads like fiction. It is written using  “elements borrowed from fiction to tell true stories,” as nonfiction children’s writer Melissa Stewart wrote earlier this year.  Descriptive language (“Julia and Paul were charmed by Minette’s delicate whiskers, her superior nose, and her quick little paws.”), dialogue (“Une maison sans chat, c’est la vie sans soleil!”), and the use of scenes (“And every time they went out for a walk, they enjoyed a fine, fine meal. They nibbled croissants in cafes where cats curled on chairs…”) are all examples of writing elements usually associated with fiction that a writer of creative nonfiction may choose to use.

In fact, in Lee Gutkind's collection of essays by writers of creative nonfiction, Keep It Real, scenes are described as the building blocks of creative nonfiction. They then need to be placed in some kind of order, or frame. In the case of Minette's Feast, Susannah Reich uses a traditional story frame to organize her scenes. A story is an account or retelling of something that happened told in a way that expresses meaning. That's why a beginning, middle, and end are so important to stories. We see the world of the story in the beginning, then a change or disturbance to that world in the middle, and the result of that change or disturbance in the end. We see what happened. Minette's Feast does read like a story--it's an account with a beginning, middle, and end of something that happened to Julia Child or to her cat, depending on which character you prefer to see as the protagonist. We also understand its meaning. This cat wouldn't eat Julia Child's cooking, for crying out loud!

Complete little stories turn up in all our lives (the story of how our parents met, the story of how we wrecked our new bikes, the story of how we came to settle into a career), but they aren’t always easily recognizable. And they don’t necessarily have any great significance or meaning beyond what happened to us. Creative nonfiction writers who choose to use a story frame have to recognize the potential for story while they are doing their research.  In her author’s note to Minette’s Feast, Susanna tells of having wanted to write about Julia Child for children “but I could never figure out how to make the story interesting to children.” She read Child’s memoir, My Life in France, “and discovered Minette, who inspired Julia’s lifelong love of cats. As a cat lover myself, I knew I had finally found my story.” 

Susannah’s story was actually Julia and Minette’s story. Through the use of creative nonfiction techniques, Susannah turned it into Minette’s Feast.

The Minette's Feast Blog Tour continues on Sunday at Great Kid Books. The earlier tour stops were:

Booktalking

Books Together

Tales from the Rushmore Kid

The Fourth Musketeer

After Sunday, the tour continues on Monday at Shelf-employed and Tuesday at ReaderKidZ 

Uni The Unicorn Is A Thing

Once again, my writers' group colleagues are being all creative. At Christmas one of them made several pocket pillows for children in her family. Basically, they are pillows with a pocket for carrying things, primarily books. I thought, Hey, I can do that. I should be able to do that. Can I do that? 

It turns out, I can. In two and a half months, I've made one pocket pillow, purchased three more pillow forms, and material for one more pillow. If you do the math, you might be able to figure out that I plan to make four pillows. And I want to have them done by the end of the summer. That's another five and a half months. In two and a half months, I've only made one. If you do the math, well...don't.

Why Are You Telling Us About This, Gail? Oh! A Book Connection!

Anyway, the first pillow was for a very young woman who is  fond of unicorns. Being an extremely open-minded person who doesn't impose her will on others, I went looking on-line for unicorn fabric instead of using some of the little girl scientist fabric I'd bought just to have on hand, for sewing emergencies, I guess. I found some material at my go-to-fabric spot, and it was called Uni the Unicorn. What's more, the site had other Uni the Unicorn fabric that coordinated with the first item I wanted. So I bought a yard of three different types.

Thus I knew I was buying Uni the Unicorn material, I just didn't know what it meant until I was pressing it after washing it. (Always wash your material before sewing, people.) That's when I noticed that the border was stamped with a 2020 copyright "Estate of Amy Krouse Rosenthal Art/Illustrations c 2020 Brigette Barrager" Also "Published by Random House Children's Books."

Well, it didn't take much sleuthing to find that Uni the Unicorn is a character in  a series of books written by the late Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Brigette Barrager 

I got very excited when I found out about this, because that meant my pocket pillow was going in my blog!

The Results

The pocket pillow wasn't that difficult or time-consuming to make, once I had a Saturday to do it. Finding the material, the pillow form, and iron-on interfacing actually took more effort.

I'm including two books with each of these pillow gifts. For this one I chose A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni, because I'd read it with another family member and liked it.

I also took a look at the first Uni the Unicorn book. Though I'm not a fan of those fantasy creatures, this story had a twist I liked, so that book will be part of this gift, as well.

I have the material for the next pillow (theme--cats) and am still looking for rainbow material for the third one. Don't have a clue what the fourth pillow theme will be.

If it's related to a book, you'll hear about it.

Another Writers' Group Member With A New Book

Another one of my writers' group colleagues has a book publishing, this one today. If You Were a Garbage Truck or Other Big-Wheeled Worker! by Diane Ohanesian with illustrations by Joey Chou is a rhyming story that puts "preschoolers in the driver's seat as their favorite vehicles reveal the ups and downs of being a busy truck." It sounds as if it might be described as the inner lives of trucks.

Diane is the author of several other picture books. Two years ago, she did an impressive presentation for her lovely book, Snuggle Down Deep, that I was able to cover here. To help mark the publication of If You Were a Garbage Truck, as well as observe Original Content's twentieth anniversary, I'm rerunning it below.

 

Saturday, January 19, 2019 An Author Does Story Hour At A New Bookstore

Human children and animal babies all go to sleep. That's the entry point that makes Snuggle Down Deep by Diane Ohanesian with illustrations by Emily Bornoff work. Each section involves both some light factual material with the "snuggle down deep" repetition. The book combines nature, poetry, and...sleeping. It's a lovely book with an ecological thread.

The Event

Cookies A Work Of Art

This morning Diane Ohanesian did what could be called a master class in how to do an author story hour in a bookstore. She had an audience of close to a dozen kids from around two-years-old to maybe six or seven. Yes, she brought cookies, which made a much nicer impression than I would have expected.

Making The Story Interactive

What was really impressive, though, was the way she got control of her group with the first words she spoke. In a whisper, she asked her audience to do something and they did it.  She kept control with a terrific board kids could interact with as she was reading. She finished up with a simple art project that went over extremely well, probably because of the great box of supplies she brought with her. She had brand new packages of paper!

Treasure!

Watching Diane illustrated why new writers should take advantage of opportunities to see writers experienced with speaking and dealing with the public.

 

 

 

The Venue

Diane read at the new River Bend Bookshop in Glastonbury, Connecticut. It's a nook and cranny independent bookstore, the kind where browsers can get a sense of the intellect curating the offerings. I "have a bookstore" in Stowe, Vermont I go into once a year and walk around until something jumps off the shelf and tells me to take it home. River Bend

Children's Nook

could be that kind of place.

Of course, today I bought Snuggle Down Deep.

River Bend is hosting writers and other literary events. 

The Weekend Writer: An Opportunity For Unagented Picture Book Writers

I learned about the 2022 PBParty Annual Contest at my writers' group Tuesday night. It's an opportunity for unagented picture book writers and writer/illustrators to make a submission to a pool from which a group of projects will be drawn for the agents and editors connected with the event to read. Some of whom may ask to see more of a particular author's work.

Note, this is not a Twitter pitch. You will need a query and 60 to 70 words of a completed, ready-to-submit manuscript. You will have two windows on March 1 to submit your material via a Google form, a link to which will be provided. 

There's lots of information on this event at the link above. Check it all out.

I must add that networking about events like this is another benefit of belonging to a writers' group, particularly one with trained, active writers who are pursuing study and submission.

Environmental Book Club

Copy provided by NetGalley

Publication Oct. 12, 2021?

According to NetGalley, Busy Spring, Nature Wakes Up by Sean Taylor and Alex Morss with illustrations by Cinyee Chiu publishes the week after next. However, looking around on-line, including at the publisher's website, it appears to have come out this past March. That makes a great deal more sense, a spring book publishing in the spring, not in the fall.

Whenever it became available, Busy Spring is an excellent selection for our Environmental Book Club. It's a beautifully illustrated story about a boy and girl who go out to work in the garden with their father, just because it is spring. They ramble about, doing a number of things in the yard, while Dad explains various things in a nonscientific way. "The spring sunlight is nature's alarm clock. Life's waking up. Plants are racing to get more light." A better than adequate explanation for young readers of what's happening in springtime.

The illustrations and layout of this book reminded me of The Ox-cart Man by Donald Hall with Caldecott Medal winning illustrations by Barbara Cooney.  Both books also deal with nature, by way of the changing seasons. Ox-cart Man is about what the ox-cart man does over the course of the year, while Busy Spring is about what a family does in spring time.

Busy Spring has several pages of back matter, including a lengthier poetic explanation of spring and then a section on what is going on with plants and animals at that time. But, really, the main text about the family working together is enough. 

Taylor, Morss, and Chiu have an earlier book, Winter Sleep, A Hibernation Story.

Environmental Book Club

I wish I could recall why I requested Outside In by Deborah Underwood from my library's e-book service. Was it on one of my 2020 monthly book release posts? Deborah Underwood and I follow each other on Twitter, so I may have heard about the book there. Or, since it appears the book has picked up a number of awards, it may have crossed my psyche in other ways. For instance, it's a Caldecott Honor Book for illustrator Cindy Derby's moody artwork, which really melds with the moody text. Since I read library e-books on my iPad and not on my ancient Kindle, I was able to enjoy said artwork.

Putting aside the mystery of how I found this book, reading it was a true experience. I was not terribly impressed with the first line. "Once we were part of Outside and Outside was part of us." Then came the next two. "There was nothing between us. Now sometimes even when we're outside...we're inside." With a perfect illustration.

It was at this point that I felt the top of my head come off, so to speak. If you are knowledgeable about Emily Dickinson, which I'm not, or have been watching the TV show Dickinson, which I have, you may be familiar with Dickinson's definition of poetry. If she is reading a book, she said, and "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

I don't want to claim this book is poetry. I don't know enough about poetry to do that. I've seen nothing to indicate Underwood considers herself a poet, and her attitude is the all important one. But last year I developed a modest interest in prose poetry, and that's how I read this book--as a prose poem expressing a specific thought in an intense way.

Maybe that was because I had that top-of-my-head-off feeling while reading it.

Why Is This An Environmental Book Club Post, Gail?

Well, Outside In, is, I think, a description of how we live with the outdoors even when we don't know that we're doing it. I wrote off the first line as just the beginning of another cliched nature tale, about how humans have lost nature. But "Once were were part of Outside and Outside was part of us" isn't a lead in to that kind of story at all. Because what I think Underwood is saying here is that Outside has come in with us. That's how we live now with the Outside In with us.

Back on Earth Day, I wrote (twice) "In environmental children's literature, the environment is something that's not part of our general day-to-day life." This led, I believed, to A. Children needing to learn a lot of facts about the environment so a lot of children's environmental books are nonfiction; and B. Children needing to fight evil corporations in environmental fiction, needing to do something about some Other that's causing problems.

But Outside In most definitely is about day-to-day life and how we live with the outdoors now. It doesn't require readers to do anything. They don't have to learn anything. They don't have to become outraged about a bad guy. They are just led to see.

Who Would Like This Book, Gail?

The publisher describes this book as being for ages 4 through 7 and grades Pre-K through 3. I tried reading it to a nearly 4-year-old whose tastes run to Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and Pete Oswald's Hike. In spite of the multitude of mini-hikes he did during the pandemic, Outside In was lost on him. Keeping in mind that one is not a statistically significant number, perhaps this book would be better for the readers on the older end of this age range.

Or how about:

• Using this book as a classroom read aloud?
• Using this book as part of a classroom unit on nature?
• Using this book as part of classroom unit to encourage writing about nature?
• Using this book as part of a nature writing workshop for adults?
• Giving this book as a gift to an adult outdoorsperson?

Yeah, I'm kind of enthusiastic about this one.

 

 

Book Shopping For Easter

I was almost into the third week of March when I realized that Easter is the first weekend of April this year. I still haven't gotten over the shock. Fortunately, I can't have guests, so I don't have to deal with a holiday meal, though I am overwhelmed with cupcakes I've been making to take to a member of our pod.

The thing I really needed to hustle for was ordering Easter presents for the littlies. Easter presents chez Gauthier are books. I had titles in mind for a couple of the kids, though I forgot them. Then I remembered them. Then that left just two more books to find. 

In the end, River Bend Bookshop ordered two of the books and mailed them to the appropriate family members and already had the other two there in the store for me to pick up. 

Gauthier Easter Gift Books

From Here to There: Inventions That Changed the Way the World Moves by Vivian Kirkfield with illustrations by Gilbert Ford. The 8-year-old I got this for may be on the young side of the age-range for this book. However, it looks as if the pages offer a variety of reading options for him to pick and choose from. Additionally, he's being home schooled this year, and I'm hopeful this will fit into history or social studies for him.

 

 

The Bear Went Over The Mountain by Jane Cabrera  I liked the repetition in this classic story as well as what was, for me, a surprise at the end. I found out about this book while watching a virtual library story hour with the three-year-old in our pod and bought it for his three-year-old cousin. I mention this, because it's an example of a library generating a book sale.

Hike by Pete Oswald. I got this book for a three-year-old who walks/hikes with us. I stumbled upon the ebook edition through my library, so this is another example of a library generating a book sale. It's a wordless book with a strong visual story line. 

Up Cat Down Cat by Steve Light  I needed a board book for a one-year-old and just searched on-line until I found this one about opposites with art work I loved. Well, it turns out I've met Steve Light. We walked out to the parking lot together after his appearance at a Connecticut Children's Book Fair a couple of years ago. (I can think of a few other authors I met in parking lots or hallways before or after appearances. Hmm.) At that time, I was so taken with his book Builders & Breakers that I bought a couple of copies for gifts. One of them was for the older brother of the little girl for whom I bought Up Cat Down Cat. You can't make this stuff up! Well, you can, but I didn't.

You never know how gifts will go over, especially books. But at this moment, I'm very happy with my Easter selections.

Attending My First Virtual Book Launch Of 2021

On Saturday afternoon I attended a book launch sponsored by The Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Massachusetts for The Leaf Detective: How Margaret Lowman Uncovered Secrets in the Rainforest by Heather Lang with illustrations by Jana Christy. The event was an example of the things virtual author events can do that in-person ones can't.

1. The author, the illustrator, and the subject of the book were all in attendance from different locations. Even during normal times, I don't think that kind of thing happens very often at a bookstore. Bookstores provide space and time for author events and take care of ordering and selling books. But they can't pay authors for their time or travel expenses. Unless the people involved all live near one another and have a local bookstore to host them, I think this kind of gathering is rare in the real world.
2. The Leaf Detective is a picture book and Lang read it, something that often happens at an event for a picture book. But instead of us watching her read and having her hold the book up periodically so an audience can try to see some illustrations, each page was on the screen so we could see the whole thing as she was reading it. This is a huge improvement over a traditional reading.
3. One hundred people had registered to attend this virtual gathering. Seventy-one had shown up when it began. This is a much larger crowd than I've seen at most of the traditional book launches I've attended. In fact, I think a lot of bookstores wouldn't be able to provide space for this many people. Not every virtual book launch attracts this many people. But the potential is there, because people can watch from everywhere, and not just show up because they're nearby. I, for instance, was almost two hours away.

About The Leaf Detective And The Launch

Margaret Lowman, the subject of The Leaf Detective, is one of the first scientists to study the canopy in the rainforest. Her personal story involves both her work in the rainforest and her life as a woman in a field where there weren't many of them. She also spoke about being shy as a young person, something she has overcome. She's a very engaging speaker. 

Author Heather Lang is a nonfiction writer for children. She talked about how she decided to write The Leaf Detective, which sounds like a method for picking subjects for any nonfiction writer.

Jana Christy did a very good presentation on how she illustrated the book, showing the different types of work she did on one two-page spread.

Remember, I saw all this from my office, after a tiring Saturday of cooking and cleaning. I could not have spent the afternoon driving back and forth to a Massachusetts bookstore. If you have an opportunity to attend a virtual book event, I suggest you grab it.

I've Done 48 Hikes This Year! And, Yes, That Does Relate To Children's Books

I am not a major fan of wordless picture books. But I definitely enjoyed Hike by Pete Oswald, possibly because I've been out for minor hikes one to two times a week this year. (I prefer to call them walks, truthfully, because the longest was only 4 miles, but that wouldn't work in this blog post, would it?) .  A number of the shortest hikes were with a very small person suffering from being housebound these many months.

That's what Hike is about--a hike with an adult and child, in this case a father and a young one who I think could be of either gender. The illustrations are terrific and carry a very coherent and simple story line regarding the characters' day trip. There's plenty to talk about on most of the pages, especially with a little listener who has been out on trails.

Oh, and this is a 2020 book! A pandemic book about my major out-of-house pandemic activity.

Book Launch For "Seven Golden Rings"

While putting together the second post for October's book releases, I discovered that author Rajani LaRocca was having a book launch last week for her new picture book, Seven Golden Rings. You all know that when a virtual book event catches my fancy, I am in. So I did, indeed, register to attend. And showed up on time.

This was an excellent event on a couple of different levels.

As A Virtual Book Launch

Zoom event vs. webinar. Another book launch I attended this past summer was a traditional Zoom event, with the people attending showing up in the Zoom boxes a la The Brady Bunch. However, the Seven Golden Rings event, as a staff member from the bookstore sponsoring the launch (The Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Mass.) explained, was a webinar. The people running it could not see or hear the attendees, nor could any of us see or hear anyone else.

This means, folks, that not only did I not have to dress up for this thing, I could have washed my hair and sat there with it drying, as I would have if I'd known how this was going to go down. Seriously, not only do I not want to have to drive to go anywhere ever again, I don't want to have to get dressed or comb my hair while I'm taking part in it from home. 

By the way, 100 people registered to attend. By a few minutes after 7, when the show got on the road, 60 of us had shown up. More could have come later. But, you know, 60 people. Good work.

Interviewer and interviewee. So the bookstore staff person turned everything over to LaRocca, who was seated in what looked to be a whole lot better home office than I have, and the person who was going to interview her, author Hayley Barrett, who was somewhere else, since we're in the midst of a pandemic and all. Barrett and LaRocca are critique partners and have known each other for some time. A situation like that has the potential to go really badly, with all kinds of inside jokes and drifting off to their shared interests that listeners couldn't care less about. But au contraire. Barrett had the inside dope on what happened while this book was being written and knew just what to ask to get that information out.

The reading. LaRocca did a reading of the book. She did not just awkwardly hold the book open in front of a camera and turn the pages. She had her book loaded onto some kind of techie thing that kept it open and turned the pages. I don't know what it was, but it was terrific. 

A surprise guest. LaRocca's son turned up, coming to us from his dorm room. It made sense why he was there. I once had two college-age boys. They are terrific, too.

A model. I think this was an excellent model for how a virtual book launch can operate so it isn't just the author talking. Bring in your own, prepared interviewer. Have some good technology. Bring in a guest. 

As Exposure To A Lovely Book

I have now actually read Seven Golden Rings while it was being read to me by its author and have seen every page. It's a terrific story centering around a math/logic issue that I was actually able to understand. The illustrations by Archana Sreenivasan are wonderful. It's very, very possible that someone in my family is going to receive a copy of this book for Christmas. I will then share with him all the insider info I have about it, because I attended this book launch.

"Dragons Love Tacos" Is Talk Of The Town

A couple of days ago, someone on my town's Facebook page was looking for a copy of Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin with illustrations by Daniel Salmieri. Her daughter had made a costume based on one of the characters and the mother just realized the girl needed to bring a copy of the book to school as well as the costume. 

Well, I had never heard of Dragons Love Tacos, though it appears to be kind of a big deal, but other people on that Facebook page had. Not only are there several copies in town for the original poster to borrow, someone has two.

I don't think I've ever seen any book talk at all on our town page, so congrats for attracting such attention, Dragons Love Tacos, an eight-year-old picture book that is still generating buzz in central Connecticut.

Me And Mother Jones, We've Got A Thing Going On

Until this spring, all I knew about Mother Jones was that it was the name of a magazine I'd never read and didn't know anything about, though I can tell you now that it does investigative journalism. Then this spring,  I was reading A People's History of the United States, and the author, Howard Zinn, starts in about "Mother Mary Jones, a seventy-five-year-old white-haired woman who was organizer for the United Mine Workers of America," I thought, Aha! That can't be a coincidence. And it wasn't. The magazine was, indeed, named for Mary Jones, known as "Mother" during her later activist years.

Stick With Me, Folks. There's A Mother Jones Childlit Connection Coming

A couple of months after reading A People's History, I'm reading the March/April issue of The Horn Book and what do I see but a review of Mother Jones and Her Army of Mill Children by Jonah Winter with illustrations by Nancy Carpenter! The book deals with an incident that appears in both the AFL-CIO bio of Jones and the Mother Jones magazine material about her in which Mother Jones organized child workers in a march from Philadephia to President Theodore Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay, New York.

Two Points

• I love it when something new to me repeats in my life, the way Mother Jones did in the Zinn book and this picture book review. I'm sure I've written about this before here. And I'm guessing there is a word to describe this experience. Not deja vu, since that deals with the experience of feeling you've been somewhere before or lived an experience before. Perhaps the Germans have a word for this, since they are quite good at coming up with words for odd experiences.
• Though I have not read Mother Jones and Her Army of Mill Children, the set up for this book sounds like a classic way of introducing children to a historical figure we wouldn't necessarily expect them to connect with. The author finds something about the subject children should be attracted to, in this case, other children. That aspect of the book reminds me of Susanna Reich's Minette's Feast, in which child readers are introduced to Julia Child by way of her cat. 

 

Oh, And Since We're Discussing Introducing The Young To Adult Subjects...

 

A family member who is a middle school librarian brought  A Young People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn with Rebecca Stetoff  to my attention. It's a young adult edition of Zinn's original book. I would not say that this is the only history of the United States a young person, or anyone else, should read, but it certainly will give someone who already knows something about American history something to consider.

When You Have To Read Something Over And Over And Over Again

You have not seen me here this past week, because I just spent three-and-a-half days with a two-and-a-half-year-old boy who has a new baby sister coming home soon. I made pumpkin custard, blueberry babycakes, and  two batches of cupcakes, because I made the first one with the two-year-old and may have left out the baking powder. I  did crafts and learned how to find Little Baby Bum and Super Simple Songs on YouTube.

I  also read What the Dinosaurs Did At School by Refe and Susan Tuma before every nap and every bedtime. And maybe once in the middle of the night. The kid couldn't get enough of it. I liked it a great deal, too. Thank goodness.

I was very grateful whenever I read this book, because there was another one our little guy liked a lot that was a long, heart-tugging poem. He thought the cover illustration for that one was of him and his mother. What the Dinosaurs Did At School, on the other hand, is a very clever and amusing story told totally for laughs. The amount of text is great. The narrative drive is good.

I'm not sure what a two-year-old sees in it, though, because I think to get the jokes and really appreciate the whole situation, you may need to have some knowledge of school. I was concerned I was going to have to do a detailed explanation about the section regarding ventilation, for example, but it didn't come to that. I just had to answer the question "What that dinosaur doing?" a lot.

The illustrations are photos of plastic dinosaurs posed as if they are behaving very, very badly. The combination of the reality of the photos and the dinosaurs raising hell may be an irresistible draw for tiny listeners. 

April 7 Book Release: Remembering Ethan

Remembering Ethan, a  picture book by NESCBWI colleague Leslea Newman, releases today.

Remembering Ethan, illustrated by Tracy Nishimura Bishop and published by Magination Press, deals with a child grieving the loss of an older sibling.

Leslea Newman is the author of sixty-five books (if I've counted correctly), thirty-six of them picture books, and her work has been included in nine anthologies. In addition to Remembering Ethan, two other Newman books are publishing this year, Welcoming Elijah (January) and Song of the Coquis/Cancion de los Coquis.

She is also the author of Hachiko Waits, which I heard her speak about many years ago. Because evidently I just keep almost running into this woman. But that's New England childlit for you.

I apologize for not knowing how to insert symbols into Blogger text, so I can't spell Leslea's first name correctly. Here is a sound file on how to pronounce it.