Summer Reading: Alida Allison on KPBS Radio

Professor Alida Allison discussed Summer Reading and Children's Books on "These Days" (KPBS Radio), June 28:

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2010/jun/28/best-new-childrens-books-summer/

New Research on Picture Books & Essay by Carole Scott

From Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer....

For all of you who are interested in picturebook research: an essay collection with contributions by renowned scholars working in this field has been published by Routledge. Title: New Directions in Picturebook Research. Editors: Teresa Colomer, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Cecilia Silva-Díaz Publisher: Routledge (Series: Children's Literature and Culture) For a thorough description, go to:http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/books/details/9780415876902/

and with an essay by SDSU's Carole Scott: "Frame-making and Frame-breaking in Picturebooks"

Boston October 2: Horn Book Symposium

A Unique EventJoin the Horn Book and Simmons College for a unique event for librarians and children’s literature professionals. "The Horn Book at Simmons" is a one-day event discussing and celebrating the 2010 class of Boston Globe–Horn Book Award recipients. Full details of the curriculum and faculty will be announced following the announcement of this year’s winners in early June.

More at: http://www.hbook.com/hbas/default.asp

Neil Gaiman Wins Carnegie Medal

The science fiction and fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman has added the UK's top children's literature prize to his roster of awards, as The Graveyard Book wins the Carnegie medal...

More in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/24/neil-gaiman-carnegie-graveyard-book

Recommended Summer Reads for Kids

From SDSU's News Center...

By Gina Jacobs
School’s out for summer! And what would summer vacation be without a good book?
SDSU’s National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature has new recommendations to help parents pick the best books for kids—ones that will not just sharpen reading skills but keep their attention, too!
What to look for in a good kids' book
Alida Allison, professor of children’s literature, said there are a few things parents should look for when choosing a book for their child....

More at http://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news.aspx?s=72195

Kate De Goldi & NZ Children's Books

Wellington writer, Kate De Goldi has been awarded the $100,000 Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship to research and write a non-fiction book about children’s literature.The Creative New Zealand Michael King Writers’ Fellowship is New Zealand’s largest writing fellowship and supports established writers to work on a major project over two or more years. De Goldi’s project will investigate the extraordinary story of New Zealand historian, writer and researcher Susan Price and her efforts to encourage children to read and cherish the great body of 20th century children’s literature in English. Over three decades Susan Price has gifted many thousands of books to more than 50 children, all books carefully selected according to each child’s age and developing interests. To one child in particular she has sent, between birth and 16 years, more than 6,000 books, effectively contstructing a personal library of great children’s literature. This library and the relationships around it will be the subject of De Goldi’s research.

http://www.booksellers.co.nz/book-news/trade-news/michael-king-fellowship-recipient-announced-thursday-10-june-2010

2010 Boston Globe / Horn Book Awards

The 2010 BGHB winners are:
Fiction and Poetry
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (Lamb/Random House)
Nonfiction
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge (Viking)
Picture Book
I Know Here by Laurel Croza, illustrated by Matt James (Groundwood)

The 2010 Honor Books are:
Fiction and Poetry
The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan, illustrated by Peter Sís (Scholastic)

A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner (Greenwillow)
Nonfiction
Anne Frank: Her Life in Words and Pictures by Menno Metselaar and Ruud van der Rol (Roaring Brook/Flash Point)

Smile by Raina Telgemeier (Scholastic/Graphix)
Picture Book
It’s a Secret! by John Burningham (Candlewick)

The Lion & the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney (Little, Brown)

More at: http://www.hbook.com/bghb/current.asp

Summer Abroad? Reading Tips

Parents who need ideas about how to plan vacations with their children should get Christina Hardyment’s Heidi’s Alp. It’s a wonderful book that I’ve read a half dozen times. Hardyment’s notion was to take her kids around Europe visiting sites associated with favorite children books: to read Heidi in the Alps, Babar in France, Pinocchio in an Italian gondola, and “Sleeping Beauty” when visiting a German fairy-tale castle....

Jerry Griswold on Storybook Travel:

http://www.parents-choice.org/article.cfm?art_id=205&the_page=reading_list&CFID=5585050&CFTOKEN=48417801

The Gary Soto Literary Museum (Fresno, California)

The Gary Soto Literary Museum will open in Fall 2010 at Fresno City College. Soto writes that besides an archive for his materials, the Museum will also serve as "a beacon of literacy" encouraging literacy among young readers in Fresno and beyond.

See: http://www.garysoto.com/museum.html

Program for 2010 ChLA Conference

The Program for the 2010 Conference of the Children's Literature Association (June 8-11, Ann Arbor, Michigan): http://chla2010.emuenglish.org/ProgramChLA2010.pdf

SDSU is well represented there. Faculty member June Cummins and Joseph Thomas will talk about their in-progress biographies. A number of students (past, present, & adopted) will also be making presentations: Naomi Lesley, Sean Printz, NaToya Faughnder, and Kate Slater.

"Lost" (the TV Series) & Children's Lit

Maria Tatar on the conspicuous references to Children's Literature in the television series "Lost":

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tatar/2010/06/06/lost-childrens-literature/

UK: Hay Festival: Audiocasts

Keeping up with the UK at the Hay festival, children's authors Mal Peet, Kjartan Poskitt and William Nicholson, while Julia Eccleshare assesses the longlist for the Guardian children's ficton prize. See the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/jun/03/hay-festival-children-literature

Belgian Illustrator Wins Astrid Lindgren Award: Video

Illustrator Kitty Crowther received the world's largest children's literature award in a ceremony on 1 June. The 5 million SEK (approx 490,000 EURO) Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award was presented by H.M. Queen Silvia of Sweden in the presence of the Swedish Minister for Culture. On receiving the award, Kitty Crowther comments: "This is a huge honor. I think of this award as a huge tree, covered with spring flowers, with its roots in Sweden." . . .

More at: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/video-from-synaptic-digital-and-the-astrid-lindgren-memorial-award-belgian-illustrator-receives-worlds-largest-childrens-literature-award-95457089.html

Whatever Happened to Reading for Fun?

From Words Alive: www.wordsalive.org

Fewer adults and children are reading for pleasure than ever before even though those who read less, don’t read as well and have lower reading proficiency scores. That may not be surprising, but current statistics also show that those who don’t read for fun do poorly in every academic subject. How serious are the effects of this drop in pleasure reading? By conventional standards, less than one third of all high school seniors can now read proficiently. Click here to read “Whatever Happened to Reading for Fun” by Jerry Griswold, Professor, National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature, San Diego State University.

Interview: Natalie Merchant: Children's Poetry & Children

Video interview of Natalie Merchant by Granta Magazine... on children's poetry and children:

Interview: Natalie Merchant Online Only Granta Magazine

50th Anniversary: To Kill a Mockingbird

All summer “To Kill a Mockingbird” will be relived through at least 50 events around the country, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of a book that became a cultural touchstone and an enduring staple of high-school reading programs...

More in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/books/25mock.html

Five Grad Students Present at Oz Conference

from Alida Allison...

Desiree Sullivan, Diana Ferrell, Rebecca Hershberger Howat, Sean Prinz, NaToya Faughnder, and me--all six of us from SDSU at mid-May’s “Oz: the Books” Conference at CSU Fresno thoroughly enjoyed mixing with long-time members of the International Oz Club for three days of illuminating talks, imaginative events, food and conversation, memorabilia tables, and songs from various Oz productions. There were even bulging lunch pails hanging from the trees (as in Ozma of Oz) at CSU Fresno’s president’s house when we all went there for dinner. Our five graduate students shared the stage with faculty from across the country and Oz experts whose knowledge of everything from L. Frank Baum’s mother-in-law, Matilda Jocelyn Gage, to biography and bibliography was a treat. Speakers included Gregory Maguire, Michael Patrick Hearn, Eric Shanower, and Michael Cart—but the star of the weekend was CSU Fresno’s Special Collections Librarian Angelica Carpenter, to whom we all send our gratitude.

Martin Gardner, the Nerd's Hero

Puzzles, math, Alice in Wonderland, origami, wrote for both Humpty Dumpty and Scientific American... Martin Gardener dies May 22, 2010.

More in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/us/24gardner.html

Some 1200 books on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Martin+Gardner

L.A. Museum Exhibit: "Monsters and Miracles: Jewish Picture Books"

from Vanessa Chalmers...

Came across this interesting little event in the AAA magazine and thought it might be cool to share on the Child Lit blog if you want: "Monsters and Miracles: A Journey Through Jewish Picture Books," Los Angeles. Original illustrations and texts from picture book classics and popular favorites by such artists and writers as Maurice Sendak, Francine Prose, Lemony Snicket, and Marc Chagall. Skirball Cultural Center. (310) 440-4500; http://www.skirball.org/ Through August 1, 2010.

2010: The Summer of Peter Neumeyer

What will I be doing three, four months from now? I haven't thought in such organized fashion in 15 years.
I know I'll continue working with Pomegranate Press, publisher Katie Burke, on an edition of the Gorey - Neumeyer correspondence, scheduled for publication in 2011. We do that with the blessing and encouragement of Andreas Brown, executor of the Gorey estate. Pomegranate seems to have a near monopoly on all commercial Goreyana nowadays.
My reading is about as eclectic as ever, an autobiography of Isadora Duncan, early Michael Pollan, Wm. Hensley's extraordinary memoir growing up Inuit and becoming a Native nationalist (Fifty Miles from Tomorrow-)--the whole book worth if for the extraordinarily moving and convincing Epilogue.
Summer travel as yet undecided, but I'm reading a fair amount of Darwin (actually) and some secondary material, in case.
Peter

2010: The Summer of Chandra Howard

I look forward to presenting a paper on Sherman Alexie's teen characters at the American Literature Association conference in San Francisco at the end of May. In June I will work my usual carnie gig in San Diego and then teach in UC Riverside’s composition program in August. Will simultaneously be studying for my qualifying exams in the fall, advancing to candidacy by year’s end. Dreaming of watermelon-juice reveries in Mexico City for July...

2010: The Summer of Kate Slater

I’ll be completing my doctoral qualifying exams on June 3rd, earning an M.A., a C.Phil, and advancing to candidacy in UCSD’s Literature department. In June, I’ll be presenting at ChLA in Michigan, and then returning to San Diego, teaching a course on creative writing for Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth during June and July. In August, I’ll be at the Dickens Universe in Santa Cruz as UCSD’s representative. I also plan to visit friends and family in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley and Seattle, as well as rediscover that elusive creature known as “free time.” Hiking and camping trips to Idyllwild and other mountainous areas in Southern California are at the top of my to-do list.

At some point this summer (after a nice post-qualifying break), I plan to begin work on my dissertation on regionalism and children's literature, which will examine the ways in which the literary child constructs, resists and/or problematizes the geographic and discursive local.
My article “'The Other Was Whole’: Anne of Green Gables, Trauma and Mirroring” will shortly be published in The Lion and the Unicorn 34.2.

2010: The Summer of Stephen Potts

I will be heading to Italy in June to visit Rome, Florence, the Umbrian and Tuscan countrysides, and the Ligurian and Amalfi coasts. After plenty of Tuscan sun, Mediterranean waters, historical sites, and slow food, I return in July. Most of the rest of summer I will be working to finish off the lengthy and thorough revision of my book on F. Scott Fitzgerald and the magazines of his time, The Price of Paradise. Finally, before the academic year begins in August, I hope to head to Colorado for a week of backpacking and river-rafting with my son, who turns 30 that month.

2010: The Summer of Kathy Shumate

My summer will begin with a long-planned trip to Scotland, the other land of my ancestors. Some friends and I are taking a Rick Steves tour in order to get the general lay of the country.

Since this is the first summer since 1994 that I do not have any work (thank you budget cuts), I am taking it as a sign that it’s time to get back to some serious work on my poetry manuscript. I will also be preparing to teach 308W at SDSU for the first time. I’ve decided to use Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre, so rereading and restudying literary theory is in order.

In the beginning of July, my nephew, who is a European Studies major at SDSU, will be returning home from his year studying abroad—in Paris—after taking the opportunity to visit some other countries. We are anxiously waiting to hear more about his adventures and experiences.
At the end of July, my niece from St. Louis is coming to visit before she embarks on her last two years of college—for some reason, she wants to be a teacher!

On the home front, I really need to get out in my yard, especially my front courtyard that looks like it is the secret garden gone wild. I hope to do some painting and redecorating in the house, take lots of walks with my poor dogs who are so neglected during the semesters with my crazy schedules, and put the cats on diets. And—sometime in between all that—catch up on some reading for fun: Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes books (the last two), the latest No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book, and whatever else comes my way.

2010: The Summer of Linda Salem

I'm excited to travel to San Francisco in May for the American Literature Association conference where I will chair a session for the Children's Literature Society. The session, "Children on the Margin: Changelings, Vampires, and Werewolves," includes: SDSU's own Emily Thomas who will present "The Changeling and the Search for Identity: Abjection, Oppression and Otherness in Eloise McGraw's The Moorchild,” Kathleen B. Nigro from University of Missouri, St. Louis will present "No Enlightenment in Stephenie Meyer's Land of the Midnight Sun," and Jennifer Moskowitz of Morningside College will present “Weres or Vamps—What’s a Girl to Do?: The Homoerotic Triangle and the (Re)entrenched Nineteenth-Century Heroine in Adolescent Popular Vampire Fiction.”

This summer I'll curate the Gorey personal library here at SDSU and promote the journal International Research In Children's Literature. I'll continue to develop the Children's Literature Reading Room on the 4th floor of Love Library. And as always, I'll be writing short stories, hosting read and critique groups, and keeping track of the comings and goings of literary magazines. Best wishes to all for a great summer!

Linda Salem