Movie Night: Miss Minoes

Milly and I would like to recommend for your viewing pleasure Miss Minoes (2001), a Dutch film based on the children's book Minoes by Annie M.G. Schmidt (published in the United States as Minnie; Milkweed Editions, 1994). I love the premise--a cat turns into a young woman, instead of the other way around as so often happens in fantasy books. And I love Miss Minoes's green fur-lined coat.

But back to the premise. It's a fun one for cat-lovers in particular, as Miss Minoes retains a lot of her feline qualities: she climbs trees, rubs noses, hides under the table, sleeps in a box. She purrs even! There's a plot, too (it involves a shy newspaper reporter), but it's the cat-as-young-woman part that makes me want to track down the book, which is bound to be better than the movie. And to ask about other children's books featuring animals that turn into people (not just anthropomorphic animals, which are a dime a dozen). I know there must be lots.

Cybils Season

The Cybils are the Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards, and this is the fourth year I'll be a first-round panelist in the Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction category. I love being a panelist: our job is to read widely from among the nominated books and, after lots of discussion, come up with a shortlist (that's last year's) of five to seven titles that combine literary merit and kid appeal. Congratulations to this year's Cybils panelists and judges across all categories, but especially those in mg sff: I"m looking forward to a fantastic fall!

Nominations for the Cybils don't open October 1, but I've already started ramping up my reading--with well over 100 mg sff titles nominated each year, it's the only way to come close to reading them all. I have some favorites, and some fall books I'm eagerly anticipating; for now, I'm keeping track of my reading on Goodreads (please look for me over there).

I'll continue posting about all sorts of books here, though!

Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month

September 15 to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month, when the Library of Congress officially recognizes the "histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America." The dates are a little awkward: most of us know that February is African-American History Month, and May is Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, but Hispanic Heritage Month is half-September and half-October. Maybe it's a metaphor?

Anyway, I'll be celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month(s) here with reviews of children's books by authors and illustrators whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America (see above). One book I'm especially looking forward to writing about in this context is Marisol McDonald Doesn't Match/Marisol McDonald no combina by Monica Brown (illustrated by Sara Palacios; Children's Book Press, 2011). Marisol is actually Peruvian-Scottish-American, mismatched and marvelous.

Just like last year, I'll also be hosting a National Hispanic Heritage Month roundup of reviews, author interviews and more on October 3. I'd love to get lots of participation, so please send me your links or leave them in a comment on this post or on the roundup post in October. Recommendations and requests are also most welcome. ¡Muchas gracias!

Princess Academy of Art

Anticipating the August release of Princess Academy: Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, 2012), I recently read the first Princess Academy, a 2006 Newbery Honor book. I wonder why I hadn't read it before, because it's just the sort of book I like, and probably would have loved as a ten-year-old girl: it has a classic feel and an ordinary-girl heroine in Miri Larendaughter, it's set in a village on a snowy mountaintop--beautifully evoked throughout the book as well as on the original cover, shown here--and there's a boarding school. Where you have to study to be a princess. After learning to read (no one in Mount Eskel knew how before the princess academy), the girls study Danlander History, Commerce, Geography, and Kings and Queens. And then there are the "princess-forming" subjects: Diplomacy (which proves useful on more than occasion), Conversation, and Poise. I want to go to princess academy!

I also want to add Princess Academy to the Middle Grade Gallery (where I think about how paintings work in fiction), even though Art isn't one of the subjects the girls have to study. But one winter morning, their tutor Olana shows the girls a painting; like the silver princess dress they've already seen, it's meant to make them work harder at their studies, to remind them of their goal:

Olana removed the cloth and held up a colorful painting much more detailed than the chapel's carved doors. It illustrated a house with a carved wooden door, six glass windows facing front, and a garden of tall trees and bushes bursting with red and yellow flowers.
"This house stands in Asland, the capital, not a long carriage ride from the palace...It will be given to the family of the girl chosen as princess." [87]

And the painting does its job: Miri, for one, spends hours imagining her family inside the house and garden, so different from their mountain home.

At the end of the book, Olana reveals the truth about the painting, and gives it to Miri. Spoiler alert (after seven years, I don't think I'm spoiling anything, but just in case): the house never existed. And Miri doesn't marry the prince (although she is academy princess). It's not until Palace of Stone that she goes to the capital at all. I wonder if she will remember the painting when she gets there?

The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau was a toll collector for the city of Paris when, at the age of 40, he decided to become an artist--a famous artist. Michelle Markel's picture book biography The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau (illustrated by Amanda Hall; Eerdmans, 2012) begins with that surprising decision. Her precise and poignant text balances Rousseau's love of nature and growing confidence in his own work (he was self-taught) with his lifelong desire for critical recognition.

Poor Henri! No sooner does he paint something we might consider a masterpiece(The Sleeping Gypsy, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, and The Dream are referenced in the text or in Hall's illustrations) than the experts say mean things about it: "They say it looks like he closed his eyes and painted with his feet."

But Rousseau keeps painting. Eventually, near the end of his life, younger, more well-known artists befriend him. One of them, Pablo Picasso, even throws a banquet in his honor (that's Picasso with Fernande Olivier on the right; a key at the back of the book identifies the other historical figures in the illustration below).

At last, and over one hundred years later, Rousseau's paintings hang in museums around the world. [There are three on view at the National Gallery; I'm excited to see them after having read the book.]

Amanda Hall's illustrations, rendered in watercolor and acrylics, really capture the feel of Rousseau's work, from the lush foliage and flowers to the faces of people and animals. In an illustrator's note (there's also an author's note, but sadly no sources), Hall writes that she "decided to break the rules of scale and perspective to reflect [Rousseau's] unusual way of seeing the world. For some of the illustrations, I drew directly on his actual paintings, altering them playfully to help tell the story." My favorite example is this image of a tiger literally crawling out of the canvas as Henri paints:

The understated text reads, "Sometimes Henri is so startled by what he paints that he has to open the window to let in some air."

Aside: Kids might be interested to know that the jungle in the computer-animated movie Madagascar was inspired by Rousseau's work. My own kids were also interested to know that I had a cheap print of Sleeping Gypsy in my college dorm room.

It's still my favorite Rousseau.

Welcome to Nonfiction Monday

Welcome to Nonfiction Monday! This week, I'm starting a new series featuring nonfiction about artists, including lots of picture book biographies. First up, a review of The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau by Michelle Markel (illustrated by Amanda Hall; Eerdmans, 2012). Sneak preview: I loved it. That's Hall's illustration of the self-taught Rousseau at the top of this post.

Please leave a comment with a link to your Nonfiction Monday post (and a brief description if you'd like). I'll round up the posts here throughout the day. Thanks for participating in this edition of Nonfiction Monday!

Early birds
Tara at A Teaching Life has a review of A Strange Place to Call Home--all about some animals who call dangerous habitats home.

Laura Salas has a review of Jeanette Winter's The Watcher.

A handful of reviews of The Giant Who Humbugged America by Jim Murphy (Scholastic, 2012), at Ms. Yingling Reads, Shelf-employed, and The Nonfiction Detectives.

Mid-morning
Jennifer at the Jean Little Library reviews a classic Jim Arnosky guide, The Brook Book.

Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect is sharing a review of Planting the Wild Garden.

Sue at Archimedes Notebook is interrupting her compost-turning to review Yucky Worms by Vivian French--with lots of hands-on explorations for young naturalists.

Margo at The Fourth Musketeer has a review of the new biography The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne by Catherine Reef. It will be released next month.

Jeanne at True Tales & a Cherry on Top features Play Ball, Jackie by Stephen Krensky.

Noontime
Shirley of SimplyScience reviews Animals: A Visual Encyclopedia from DK.

Abby the Librarian has a review of Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers.

Roberta's cat reviewed Minette's Feast by Susanna Reich and gave it four paws at Wrapped in Foil.

Holly has a fun book called Poopendous! by Artie Bennett at Bookscoops this week.

Tammy of Apples with Many Seeds is looking at Popville today.

Evening edition
Bookends is reviewing Jim Murphy's Invincible Microbe: Tuberculosis and the Never-Ending Search for a Cure.

All About the Books with Janet Squires features Space, Stars, and the Beginning of Time: What the Hubble Telescope Saw by Elaine Scott.

Self-identified science geek Wendie Old features a newspaper article about the people who drive the Mars Rover, Curiosity, at Wendie's Wanderings today.

At Booktalking, Anastasia Suen is reading The Everything Guide to Study Skills: Strategies, tips, and tools you need to succeed in school! by Cynthia C. Muchnick.

Fairies and changelings

I'm currently reading (among other things) Some Kind of Fairy Tale, a grownup fantasy by British author Graham Joyce (Doubleday, 2012). It's not a changeling story, at least not so far, but a kidnapped-by-the-fairies one, in which teenaged Tara Martin disappears into a dense forest known as the Outwoods, only to return twenty years--or is it six months?--later.

Forests are my favorite magical places (castles or old houses are a close second), and Tara's description of the forest on the day she disappeared is especially evocative:

After a while I found a rock covered in brilliant green moss and orange lichen. I sat among the bluebells and put my head back on the mossy pillow of the rock.

The bluebells made such a pool that the earth had become like water, and all the trees and bushes seemed to have grown out of the water. And the sky above seemed to have fallen down on to the earth floor, and I didn't know if the sky was earth or the earth was water. [42]

Then a man on a pretty white horse appears, and you know that boundaries are going to be crossed. As it turns out (I'm on page 132), they are crossed in ways I'm not so interested in reading about. Instead I'm rereading my favorite Zilpha Keatley Snyder book, The Changeling (Atheneum, 1970): "I am a princess from the Land of the Green Sky," Ivy said. "I have discovered the Doorway to Space."

The Changeling isn't a fantasy book, although Snyder did eventually write the Green-Sky Trilogy (beginning with Below the Root; Atheneum, 1978) based on the Tree People game that Martha and Ivy play in Bent Oaks Grove. But Ivy herself is such a magical character, I almost believed that she was a changeling. And that I was, too.

[Why, why is The Changeling out-of-print? I'm adding it to my list of books to reprint when I start my own small press.]

Martin de Porres, the rose in the desert

I wish I knew what drew Gary D. Schmidt, better known for realistic middle grade fiction such as The Wednesday Wars (a 2008 Newbery Honor book) and Okay for Now (2011), to the story of Martin de Porres, the first black saint in the Americas (actually, Schmidt tells us, Martin was the son of an African mother and a Spanish nobleman, born in Lima and educated by his father in Ecuador). The author's note at the back of Martin de Porres: The Rose in the Desert (illustrated by David Diaz; Clarion, 2012) is no help.

Schmidt's text, however, emphasizes Martin's humility and service to the poor as well as his love of animals (the note does tell us that Martin is patron saint of, among other things, social justice, public education, and animal shelters). And David Diaz illuminates Martin's story with his distinctive mixed-media illustrations, in what the Horn Book calls "Latin American hues [?] of red, turquoise, gold, and brown."

My favorite image is more subdued: It's night. Martin, in his black-and white Dominican habit, carries a basket of bread. He has a brown dog at his heels. Two silvery angels guide his way.

Listen to Origami Yoda, you should

Not the finger puppet that counsels students at McQuarrie Middle School (although you could do worse than follow his advice), but the audio of Tom Angleberger's The Strange Case of Origami Yoda (Recorded Books, 2011; Amulet, 2010). We listened to Origami Yoda (and its sequel, Darth Paper Strikes Back, which is even better) while on vacation last week and highly recommend it to everyone who loves Star Wars and has ever been (or will ever be) in middle school.

Origami Yoda has some of our favorite audio features--namely multiple narrators, only one of which we didn't like, and an episodic plot (we were mostly making short trips in the car). Bonus: it's funny. And for a couple of hours, the kids only argued over who got to read The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee first when we got home (I won).

The Lonely Book

I'm pretty sure that the lonely book on the cover of Kate Bernheimer's The Lonely Book (illustrated by Chris Sheban; Schwartz and Wade, 2012) would actually have been published by Floris Books:

It was a green with a yellow ribbon inside to mark its pages. On the cover was a picture of a girl in the forest under a toadstool.

Maybe Elsa Beskow wrote it?

Floris, a small publishing company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, publishes a lot of international picture books and nostalgic classics in translation; in addition to Swedish author Beskow, their list includes picture books by Astrid Lindgren (also Swedish) and Sybille von Olffers. Floris books are beautifully made, too: ours don't have ribbon markers, but they do have bookcloth bindings.

Bernheimer's The Lonely Book (published by Schwartz and Wade; an imprint I also like, but for different reasons) has a nostalgic feel of its own. It's about loving a library book and later, rediscovering it (at the library book sale, no less). I think we can all relate.