01 December 2009 THE BEST OF 2009
"Everything's gonna be alright
Everything's gonna be alright
Everything's gonna be alright
Everything's gonna be alright
No woman no cry
No woman no cry
I seh little darlin'
Don't shed no tears
No woman no cry"
It's been a good year and a tough year. I was talking with publishing friends while we were all in Philadelphia last month for the NCTE annual convention, telling them how I have hard-working friends who have ended up losing their homes in the worst economic meltdown since my mom was a kid. The publishing friends with whom I was conversing might not have personally known someone who was losing a home, but recent downsizing throughout the publishing field means that most everybody knows people who have lost jobs. I expect that we will be seeing the pain of this economic situation reflected in a fair number of tales that are published for children and young adults in the coming years.
Being that I'm a natural pessimist like my mom was, and thus am feeling little reason to assume a quick rebound in the economy and job markets, I am concerned that the new old issue of blaming immigrants and other "outsiders" for our problems will be increasingly echoing in the real world, giving us yet another reason for badly wanting our children, students, patrons, and young neighbors to all be practiced and critical readers.
Spending nights at a hostel while in Philadelphia, and chatting with Europeans visiting the States, I did sense that a measure of good will toward the U.S. has been building over the past year. (I pause to contemplate how the tides of history could have, instead, sent Barack running around the country doing the big book tour...and I then begin thinking how wonderful it would be if all our amazingly talented children's author and illustrators were earning some of the big bucks that somehow -- thanks to the inherent wisdom of our economic system -- flow, instead, to the best-selling author from Alaska.)
"Good-o," as Sammy Tillerman might say. Now that the moon is full, my list is painfully pared, and I've guaranteed some grouchy emails to listserv administrators, here are my favorites of 2009:
As anyone whose had to listen to me lately knows, my book of the year is WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/WHEN-YOU-REACH-ME). I live for finding one like this, a book filled with wonder and possibilities that is crafted so well that my enjoyment steadily increases with each rereading; a book that makes my heart repeatedly melt when I recall such details as the photo under the mailbox.
Another book with which I am seriously in love is POP by Gordon Korman (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/POP). Korman has written a lot of great, typically humorous, stories. POP is a standout -- a great sports story, a great guy story, a significant story for middle school kids about "the long run"; an absolute gem of a book that ranks right up there with the very best of Spinelli and Hiaasen.
Kekla Magoon should handily win the William C. Morris YA Debut Award for THE ROCK AND THE RIVER (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/THE-ROCK-AND-THE-RIVER), a powerful and complex historical novel which, audience-wise, comfortably straddles the children's and YA (ALSC and YALSA) overlap. Set in the tumult of 1968 Chicago, Sam Child's coming-of-age story provides readers a real understanding of the Black Panther Party that I wish I had found a long time ago.
Helen Frost is so amazing in how she builds an engaging and well-researched piece of historical fiction through poetry in THE CROSSING STONES (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/CROSSING-STONES). We talk about trying to do cross curricular stuff with poetry. It would be great to take this into American history classes paired up with Ann Bausum's nonfiction work WITH COURAGE AND CLOTH.
Then, turning to YA, I begin with the breathtaking time-ticking-down tale of THE ORANGE HOUSES (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/THE-ORANGE-HOUSES) in which Paul Griffin creates three equally powerful young characters on the margins of society who each serve as selfless catalysts in forever altering the lives of the other two. As with his first book, TEN MILE RIVER, I love the counterbalancing here of grit and heart, of predators and nurturers.
MARCELO IN THE REAL WORLD by Francisco X. Stork (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/MARCELO-IN-THE-REAL-WORLD) deserves all the positive attention that it is receiving. I love the legal intrigue and quest for justice, the friendship that develops between Marcelo and Jasmine, and the fact that Jasmine's character is as fully developed as is his.
JUMPING OFF SWINGS by Jo Knowles (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/JUMPING-OFF-SWINGS) is a solid contemporary movingly-edgy-on-an-eighth-grade-sort-of-level tale, told in turn by four teens who have grown up together in the neighborhood. It is a story about family dynamics, friendships, thoughtlessness, acceptance, and (relating also to MARCELO) to the lost innocence of childhood.
Two picture books in which the main characters don't speak -- at least not our language --really stand out this year. In my book, THE LION AND THE MOUSE by Jerry Pinkney (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/THE-LION-AND-THE-MOUSE) is the numero uno picture book of the year. But that takes nothing away from my love for OTIS by Loren Long (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/OTIS). OTIS is an outstanding picture book tale of two farm friends -- the little, old tractor and the little brown calf -- that playfully alludes to some of the most famous picture books of generations past. I've had very enthusiastic crowds of kids doing Otis's "put-put-puttedy-chuffing" in unison as I've read the book aloud.
There are plenty of other exceptional picture books this year. A second pair of award-caliber favorites not to be missed are:
Bouncing like a Baryonyx (BARE-ee-ON-icks) down to the nonfiction, I always find it exciting to learn from some great, new kid's book (such as DINOTHESAURUS) about stuff from the past that I'd missed out on knowing all these years.
Since reading THE GREAT AND ONLY BARNUM: THE TREMENDOUS, STUPENDOUS LIFE OF SHOWMAN P.T. BARNUM by Candace Fleming (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/THE-GREAT-AND-ONLY-BARNUM), I'm able to draw a straight line between this guy's bag of tricks and so many tools still employed in advertising and show business in the twenty-first century. And then, we are left with such a conundrum regarding the exploitation of circus animals -- the reality is that we hope that such exploitation will actually lead to public sentiment rallying for saving endangered mammal species in distant places. It's a tough and relevant issue.
The most exciting piece of nonfiction writing I experienced this year was CHASING LINCOLN'S KILLER by James Swanson (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/CHASING-LINCOLN'S-KILLER). This is an adaptation of his adult book MANHUNT, but I never even hear about, no less read, adult books, so this was all new to me. It is superb storytelling -- an absolute thriller of a tale -- and, once again, I just cannot believe that nobody taught me this stuff when I was growing up.
Okay, I take that back. Technically, I did read one book that was published for adults, being that Norton does not have a children's division. (But it could have as easily been published by someone's teen division.) In either case, I was jumping up and down when the National Book Award judges named STITCHES by David Small an NBA finalist (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/STITCHES%3A-A-MEMOIR). This is the graphic novel of the year and my favorite one since Craig Thompson's BLANKETS.
And the final one brings me back to the song at the beginning of this piece. I AND I: BOB MARLEY is the exceptional and beautiful picture book biography in verse by Tony Medina and Jesse Joshua Watson (http://richiespicks.pbworks.com/I-AND-I%3A-BOB-MARLEY) that I was turned onto by my library school students last summer.
I would like to conclude with a tribute to the late Karla Kuskin who died earlier this year. I devoured and reread Karla's earlier books of poems in the mid-Sixties as a young reader. Then, when I was enrolled in Early Childhood Education classes in the late-Eighties and needed to visit the library and compile a box of poems for circle times, I once again -- to my everlasting joy -- rediscovered Karla's poetry. Here is one of her poems that I first read as a nine-year-old and later shared with kids throughout my years at the childcare center:
"Where Would You Be?" by Karla Kuskin from THE ROSE ON MY CAKE (Harper & Row, 1964)
"Where would you be on a night like this
With the wind so dark and howling?
Close to the light
Wrapped warm and tight
Or there where the cats are prowling?
Where would you wish you on such a night
When the twisting trees are tossed?
Safe in a chair
In the lamp-lit air
Or out where the moon is lost?
Where would you be when the white waves roar
On the tumbling storm-torn sea?
Tucked inside
Where it's calm and dry
Or searching for stars in the furious sky
Whipped by the whine of the gale's wild cry
Out in the night with me?"
With wishes for peace and happiness in 2010.
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