May 2010 Calendar / News & Notes / Awards / Children's Choice Award / Beatty Award / Jane Adams Award / Board Books / Program Ideas MARK YOUR CALENDAR Upcoming Events for Children's Librarians

25th Annual Bay Area Storytelling Festival:
: May 22 & 23, 2010 are the dates of the 25th Annual Bay Area Storytelling Festival, being held at Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area in El Sobrante, California. Aside for the featured stage storytelling performances, there will be workshops, a kids concert, story swaps, and a variety of musical performances. Featured tellers include Willy Clafin, Ben Haggarty, Syd Lieberman, Diane Ferlatte, Connie Regan-Blake, and Kealoha. For more information, prices, and registration, go to www.bayareastorytelling.org or phone 510-869-4946.

Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona to be a feature film:
Libraries may want to stock extra copies of Beverly Cleary's "Ramona" books in anticipation of the film Ramona and Beezus, out July 23. Although the movie title bills Ramona first, the book series should be easy for kids to find who want to read it before or after seeing the film. It stars teen actress Selena Gomez as Beezus.

Linden Tree Books Have New Owners:
Best wishes to Dianne Edmonds and Jill Curcio, the new owners of independent children's bookstore Linden Tree (www.lindentreebooks.com). They took over the store, which is located in Los Altos, in May 2010. Special thanks and good luck to former owners Dennis and Linda Ronberg who founded the shop 25 years ago. Dennis and Linda were ACL members and often were our booksellers at the ACL Institute.

Newbery Award Medalist Sid Fleischman Dies:
Author Sid Fleischman died March 17 in his home in Santa Monica, Calif., at the age of 90. Fleischman won the Newbery Medal in 1987 for his novel The Whipping Boy, and wrote more than 50 books for children, as well as screenplays and adult fiction and nonfiction. His first children's book, Mr. Mysterious & Company, was published in 1962, and his most recent was The Dream Stealer (Greenwillow, 2009). Fleischman was a National Book Award finalist in 1979 for Humbug Mountain. He also received a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and was a finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Fleischman's biographies for children--The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West and Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini--also drew acclaim; a third, Sir Charlie: Chaplin, the Funniest Man in the World, will be published by Greenwillow in June.

Fleischman is survived by three children (including his son, Paul, also a National Book Award finalist and Newbery Award Medalist) and four grandchildren.

Patricia Lauber Dies:
Patricia Lauber, a well known author of children's books, died at her home in New Canaan on March 12, 2010. She was 86 and wife of the late Russell Frost III. She is survived by her sister Nancy E. Lauber of Little Egg Harbor, N.J. She wrote more than 125 books for young readers, many of them in the field of science. She was committed to the belief that non-scientists should be literate in science and tried in her books to make the ideas of science accessible and interesting. Reviewers often cited her clarity and strong narrative drive. Her subjects ranged from earthworms to earthquakes to Earth as seen from space, to ecological niches. Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens was a Newbery Honor Book. Her work has also been honored by, among others, The New York Academy of Sciences, The American Nature Society, The Washington Post Children's Book Guild, Central Missouri State University, the Kerlan Collection, the National Forum on Children's Science Books at Carnegie Mellon, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was also the recipient of the Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award.

John Schoenherr, Children's Book Illustrator, Dies at 74: John Schoenherr, a Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator who for a half-century produced painterly, exquisitely detailed images of creatures from this world and others, died on April 8. He was 74 and lived in Delaware Township, N.J. His death, in a hospital in Easton, Pa., was from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his son, Ian, said. A highly regarded nature artist, Mr. Schoenherr illustrated more than 40 children's titles. He won a Caldecott Medal in 1988 for Owl Moon (Philomel, 1987; text by Jane Yolen), the story of a father and daughter who go looking for owls on a cold winter's night. Presented annually by the American Library Association , the medal honors the best illustrations in a book for young people.

Mr. Schoenherr had a parallel, equally prominent career as a science-fiction illustrator. He was the first artist to depict the world of Frank Herbert's "Dune" stories, with its vast windswept deserts and huge menacing sandworms. In 1965 Mr. Schoenherr won a Hugo Award , presented by the World Science Fiction Society, for his artwork for Dune, which first appeared as a serial in Analog. Mr. Schoenherr's first children's book illustrations were for Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era (Dutton, 1963), by Sterling North, about a raccoon. His art for children centered often on the natural world and in particular on mammals. Mr. Schoenherr was especially partial to bears, in all their dark-brown density. His other children's titles include Julie of the Wolves (Harper & Row, 1972), which won a Newbery Medal for its author, Jean Craighead George; and several he wrote himself, among them The Barn (Little, Brown, 1968) and Bear (Philomel, 1991). Besides his son, Ian, who is also a well-known children's book illustrator, Mr. Schoenherr is survived by his wife, the former Judith Gray, whom he married in 1960; a daughter, Jennifer Schoenherr Aiello; three grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Patricia Wrightson Dies:
Patricia Wrightson, the internationally acclaimed Australian children's author who attracted praise-and then criticism-for entwining Aboriginal mythology into her writing, has died at age 88. In 1986, Wrightson was awarded the biennial Hans Christian Andersen Medal-the highest accolade for a writer of children's fiction-given by the Swiss-based International Board on Books for Young People for an author's body of work. Maurice Saxby, author of History of Australian Children's Literature, described Wrightson and Ivan Southall, who died in 2008, as the pioneers of modern Australian children's literature. "Her contribution was immense," he said. The four-time winner of Australia's top award for children's literature was born on a farm near the New South Wales town of Lismore in 1921. She moved to Sydney to work in a munitions factory during World War II. She wrote the first of her 27 books, The Crooked Snake, by watching her children's reaction to pages read by her father as soon as they were typed. That book was named the Children's Book Council of Australia's Book of the Year in 1956. She first found large audiences in the United States and Britain with her 1968 book A Racecourse for Andy, which was published in Australia under the title I Own the Racecourse! Her books have been published in 16 languages.

Hans Chrisian Andersen Award:
The International Board on Books for Young People have just announced that Author David Almond (UK) and Illustrator Jutta Bauer (Germany) are the winners of the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award!

Children's Choice Book Awards:
The Children's Choice Book Awards, the only national award chosen by children, were presented by the Children's Book Council in a ceremony on May 11, 2010 in New York City, hosted by Mo Willems.

Winner-Books for Older Children:

Honor Books-Books for Younger Children:

Honor Books-Books for Older Children:

BayNews needs you! BayNews welcomes any articles, news, ideas on storytime or programs, etc. Just send any articles as a Word attachment to email, to Penny Peck at [email protected]. Thanks!

Stickland, Paul and Henrietta. Dinosaur board books series. Sterling, 2009. $5.95 each:
Dinosaur Colors ISBN 9781402764806 .
Dinosaur Shapes, ISBN 978140276586 .
The Sticklands have produced several popular dinosaur picture books, including Dinosaur Stomp!, Ten Terrible Dinosaurs, and Dinosaur Roar! They use several of their popular dinosaur characters in these two colorful board books that teach shapes and colors. The cartoon dinosaurs are not too scary for toddlers, and the brief text often consists just of the word for a color or shape, with a sentence at the end of each book. The artwork, set on white backgrounds, makes it very easy to pick out the color or shape being discussed, so these are very good learning tools and should please dinosaur fans.

Lin, Chris. Mandy and Pandy series. Illus. by Ingrid Villalta. Mandy and Pandy LLC 2007-2008. $12.95 each, with CD in each book:
Mandy and Pandy Visit China, ISBN 9780980015621 .
Mandy and Pandy Play " Let's Count," ISBN 9780980015614 .
Mandy and Pandy Play Sports, ISBN 9780980015638 .
Mandy and Pandy Say " Ni Hao Ma?" ISBN 9780980015607.
For those of us with Mandarin-speaking families, these board books will serve both toddlers and preschoolers. The texts are in English, Chinese, and Pin Yin (the English phonetic spelling of the Mandarin words). The CD reads the story out loud in English and in Chinese, which will help those learning either language with the proper pronunciations. Each story features Mandy, a Chinese-American preschooler and Pandy the Panda bear. The cartoon illustrations are colorful and clear, depicting what the text is describing. These can also serve as "easy readers" for those learning English or Mandarin.

Gunzi, Christiane. Who's Hiding? series. Illus. by Paul Calver. Barron's, 2010. $5.99 each:
Who's Hiding? At the Beach,, ISBN 978076416316.
Who's Hiding? On the Farm,, ISBN 9780764163142.
Who's Hiding? In the Garden,, ISBN 9780764163159.
Who's Hiding? In the House,, ISBN 9780764163173.
In these colorful photo-collage board books, each opening has a hinged page on the right that opens to reveal "Who's Hiding?" Because the flap is also made of the cardboard, these should be quite sturdy and hold up to library circulation. Each book asks the reader to count the hidden items, such as five butterflies or four kittens. Photos of common household items or animals are set on brightly colored backgrounds, to make it easy to count the items. In each book, the final hidden item is a mylar mirror, so the toddler can see himself. Sure to be popular, these are a great combination of concept book and format for the toddler audience.

O'Keefe, Susan H. Hungry Monster ABC. Illus. by Lynn Munsinger. Little Brown, 2009. $6.99. ISBN 9780316016674.
Originally published as a picture book in 2007, this alphabet book features Lynn Munsinger's delightful cartoon monsters. One distinguishing factor is the die-cut "bite" taken out of the corner of the book. In the rhyming story, ten monsters learn the alphabet, with common words like Apple and Book. The story seems better suited to preschoolers and not toddlers, so the picture book version is preferable. Also, the details in the illustrations are quite small in the board book edition.

MEDIA CONNECTIONS

Kinney, Jeff. The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary: How Greg Heffley Went Hollywood. Amulet, 2010. $14.95. ISBN 9780810996168.

Although this is the same size as one of Kinney's Wimpy Kid novels, this is actually a nonfiction account of how the books were turned into a feature film. Filled with color photos of the actors, on-set action, and stills from the film, the text is in the same hand-lettered format as the novels, too. Libraries are most likely to shelve this in the J791.43 section, where the books on film are kept, so readers will need to be led to this.

The book begins with an autobiographical sketch of the main character Greg Heffley, and the actor who plays him. Then the book describes how the director, main cast members, and other participants in the film were chosen. Fans will get an idea of how a film gets made, without too much detail to turn off the young reader. For example, we hear how costumes were chosen to be true to the characters, and how props were made to look appropriate for a middle school setting. We even find out that the cheese in film version is not real cheese, but synthetic and "aged" for the "cheese touch" moment in the film.

The number of color photos and the inclusion of many cartoon drawings really add interest. Unfortunately, the film was not a hit, so there may not be much interest in this "making of" account, even though this book is well made.

See if you can schedule a visit from the local members of the 501st Legion (the bad guys) and the Rebel Legion (good guys) in full costume! Check it out--members do not charge to visit libraries: rebellegion.com or www.501st.com

You could also publicize a costume contest, so most of the attendees will dress as their favorite characters.

Submitted by : Penny Peck, San Leandro Public Library

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