The State of the Picture Book

Holly wrote a post a while back reacting to an NYT article that suggested that picture books are in decline.

Well, my friend Gwyneth alerted me to a rebuttal in Publisher's Weekly that really made me feel better about the whole picture book thing :) The article goes through the assertions made by the New York Times to support their theory and pretty effectively relieved my concerns about the loss of picture books. They're here to stay!

Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt

What an extraordinary first novel. Rebecca Hunt has taken an audacious, ambitious premise, and executed it in an insightful, rich way. Winston Churchill is a well-known depressive who referred to his sometime companion as The Black Dog. Hunt has personified The Black Dog with Mr. Chartwell, the new (canine) boarder at the home of librarian Esther, who is a widower. His presence is entirely unwelcome, yet strangely irresistible. Esther allows him to move in, but resents his presence. He has moved to be conveniently situated near Winston Churchill, who is reflective on the eve of his retirement from Parliament, but he has other jobs as well. This novel really should have been a disaster with this premise. A dog who walks on two legs and affects human manners (though not so well that he can resist chomping on a bone in the hallway) sounds laughable, and not in a good way. But Hunt approaches the subject of depression with sensitivity and deep understanding, and "Mr. Chartwell" embodies it nobly, with messy rudeness and plaintive pleas for understanding.

Hunt's language reveals a sensitivity to the nuances of depression, as well as an elegant precision. Churchill says that "the prospects of retirement could not yet be fully contemplated, being too full of awful passion. It churned the heart with thistles."*** Esther feels that "...the weeks of her life had drifted past as ghosts. There was the rare bump of pleasure, perhaps from a meal out or a visit to the cinema, but it was brittle and shattered under the lonely monotony of the ghost days." But she doesn't immediately recognize that her relationship with "Black Pat" is much more complicated than that of a landlord and boarder. He explains his "job" to her, nicely summing up the symptoms of depression: "With Churchill we know each other's movements, so we have a routine, I guess. I like to be there when he wakes up in the morning. Sometimes I drape across his chest. That slows him down for a bit..." Churchill speaks to Black Pat with familiarity, even affection, but also with bitter resentment. He always knew that Black Pat would return for Churchill's retirement, and he reluctantly accepts the presence.

Hunt's Churchill is fully believable and complex, a great man plagued by doubt, dreading retirement. Esther represents a different stage of visitation by depression, still adjusting to Black Pat's charms. She is also a well-developed character in her own right; a young widow still mourning her husband and coming to terms with loss while attending to new and old friendships and her job, which eventually leads her to Churchill's study to take dictation. Their encounter is the crux of the novel, beautifully exquisite and surprising.

I fully expect this to be my favorite novel released in 2011. Hunt's writing is utterly inventive and surprising, her story told with wisdom and sensitivity.

***All quotations are taken from an uncorrected proof and should be checked against a final copy, tentative publication date 2/22/11.

FTC Source Disclosure: I received an Advance Reader's Edition from the publisher.


An interesting discussion of Churchill's history with depression can be found here.

Superheroes: A Pop-up Book

I was absolutely delighted when I received a box in the mail from Little Brown and Company! It had some fun stuff inside that I hope to review in the next couple months. But there was one treasure in there that could not wait! I had to get this up, and it would have been posted sooner except I had to take photos of this AMAZING book!

Now, let's preface this by saying, I don't know the first thing about superheroes aside from watching the first couple Superman movies back in the day and the first couple Batman movies in the '90's. Oh, and I did happen to watch reruns of the original Batman television show when I was a kid in the summer when I visited my dad. I suppose, I might have a few Wonder Woman episodes stored somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind. Heh....maybe, I actually have more Superhero knowledge than I thought! ;-)

But now, I have a son. And I do feel like I will eventually have to be up on my Superhero speak. This book will certainly send me on my way!

There are about 6 or 7 different pop-up pages, each featuring a superhero. For instance, the first page is Superman.Each page contains smaller pop-ups on the side discussing various villains and superpowers. Here's an example:
The details in the pop-ups are incredible. Here's the Wonder Woman page and a detail:

Her lasso is made out of gold cord! This is the detail that really blew me away! I will admit, I'm relatively new to pop-up books so maybe many of them have real 3-dimensional details out of materials different than paper. But I couldn't believe it when I opened this page.

Then the grand finale of the book:
A collage of all the superheroes on one page, complete with little numbers and a legend identifying each character.

Still have a little boy to buy a gift for this week? This would be PERFECT! Run out and get it NOW! :-)

Source disclosure: Received unsolicited from the publisher: Little Brown & Company.

Teaser Tuesday - Mr. Chartwell

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser is from Mr. Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt:

Churchill stared out of the window at the green slopes below..."I've wondered on occasion whether you were there, waiting to stake your flag from the moment my soul entered the world."

"I didn't come until sent for." Black Pat's eyes were like leeches on him. "But I've been a companion to others around you, so I've never been far away." (ARC, p. 149)

The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor

The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor: Set a potboiler in 1786 Cambridge, and it instantly has more credibility as literature than say, The DaVinci Code. Funny how that works, that the "historical" classification adds gravity. The Anatomy of Ghosts is a historical potboiler, and a good one, but it is not transcendent literature. It is, however, a fun read, and a pleasant way to while away a couple of hours. John Holdsworth, a washed-up bookseller, is nursing the loss of his son, who drowned in an accident, and of his wife, who committed suicide after losing significant amounts of money to a "medium" who claimed to be in contact with the son. He is in dire straits when Lady Anne summons him to perform two jobs for her: to inventory her late husband's book collection and to bring her son, Frank, a Cambridge student, back from the insanity that claimed him after he supposedly saw a ghost. She feels Holdsworth is uniquely qualified to go to Cambridge and debunk Frank's "haunting" because the angry widower Holdsworth had written a scathing debunking of the spirit world called The Anatomy of Ghosts.

When Holdsworth arrives at Cambridge, he finds a strange array of clues in Frank's room, and Frank's roommate is missing. To complicate matters, a secret society called the Holy Ghost Club doesn't want Holdsworth (or anyone else) to find out what happened at Frank's "initiation" into their society the night before he went mad, the night an orphan girl and the wife of the master both died. Is one of these women haunting Frank? Or is something else afoot? What really happened the night Sylvia Whichcote died? What sort of depravity does the Holy Ghost Club get up to? Why does Frank insist on quacking? Throw in all this intrigue with a completely unbelievable "romance" (that, far from being romantic, was creepy and rather off-putting), and you have all the ingredients for a bestseller. Though I saw for the most part where the plot was going, I kept turning the pages to find out who really killed Sylvia Whichcote, and for Taylor's rich, lovingly described 18th-century Cambridge campus, whose narrow lanes and lush quads are the most realistic part of the novel. Taylor has a gift for evoking a time and place in the past, using language, descriptive passages, and perfectly phrased details to bring his setting to life.

Fans of historical settings will love Taylor's masterful depiction of Cambridge, and lovers of potboilers will enjoy the suspense, twisting plot, and depraved young men that populate it. All in all, a fun read.

FTC Source Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher.

The Joy of Spooking + contest winner

Some of you may recall that I reviewed The Joy of Spooking: Unearthly Asylum. And then I disappeared from the face of the blog-world. I am going to cite "personal reasons" and get on with a long overdue contest announcement!

I know there are those who swear by random number generators, but I am old-fashioned. I have yet to embrace Kindle or Nook, and I prefer pulling a slip of paper out of a hat. Actually, I have Lilah pull a slip out of the hat, a task she takes very seriously.

The winner is...drum roll...JenL! Thank you very much to all who entered. This is a delightful series. The third book, SINISTER SCENES, comes out next year, and I can hardly wait.

Teaser Tuesday - holiday murder mysteries

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Kensington has a brilliant marketing strategy for their cozy mysteries. At the holidays, they release a hardcover collection of three short mysteries, one each from Joanne Fluke (the Hannah Swenson mysteries), Laura Levine (Jaine Austen), and Leslie Meier (Lucy Stone). Fans of each series will pick up the volume for their personal favorite sleuth, then get hooked on the two with which they're less familiar. I've sometimes read the Meier series, but I've read every Fluke and Levine. The Fluke entry was rather perfunctory this time, but the Levine is quite funny. My teaser is from the Laura Levine story/novella in Gingerbread Cookie Murder:

"Then, before I knew it, Edna grabbed the sparerib out of my hand and hurled it across the room at Preston, hitting him on his forehead, somewhere around his brow lift. As much as I hated to lose that sparerib, the guy had it coming." (p. 151)

Mystery Monday - Arnaldur Indridason

I received Arctic Chill, the fifth book in Arnaldur Indridason's mystery series set in Iceland, featuring Inspector Erlendur, as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer selection, and had no trouble jumping right in. The fifth was so well-written that I immediately snagged the first four in the series. I'm not going to do full-on reviews of the first four books; I just wanted to mention them to anyone needing something to fill the void left by the end of the Stieg Larsson trilogy! Though the books are very different, they seem to me likely to appeal to fans of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The forbidding landscape, insular culture, and twisting mysteries are satisfying additions to my mystery shelf (shelves...who am I kidding?).

My review of Arctic Chill is right here.

Here are the first four, in order. The sixth is out in hardcover, and is called Hypothermia.

Jar City
Silence of the Grave
Voices
The Draining Lake

My overview of the series: These are excellent police procedurals, strongly rooted in solving the crime (the way I like it!), but with compelling police officers who become more nuanced with each entry in the series. Erlendur has two children, estranged until recently, and a tragedy hidden in his past that haunts him. Indridason's Iceland is bleak, insular, forbidding...and strangely captivating. When issues of racism related to immigration arise, I wondered what on earth would possess anyone to move there. Erlendur refers to "the usual Icelandic disappearances;" i.e., suicides in a casual fashion. Murders are rare and easily solved...but this series tests Erlendur's sleuthing abilities with more complex murders. Stark realism and nuanced characterization make this series stand out from a sea of procedurals.

A New, Spookier Deadline!

I was in a car accident this week, and am therefore spending my free time car-shopping. With that in mind, I've extended the deadline for the JOY OF SPOOKING giveaway. Creepy Halloween entry deadline: 11:59 pm EDT on Sunday, October 31! Retweet or post the new deadline on your own blog for an extra three entries!

Link to the contest!

How To Get Boys To Read

An interesting article on getting boys to read. Getting me to read was never my parents' problem; that would be getting me to stop! I do remember my mom struggling to find books that engaged my little brother so that he would love reading, too. Nowadays, he's a huge reader, so it must have worked, but back when he was little, there was a sense of desperation in the air.

Teaser Tuesdays - Silence of the Grave

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I'm reading SILENCE OF THE GRAVE, the second in the Reykjavik thriller series by Arnaldur Indridason. The first line:

"He knew at once it was a human bone, when he took it from the baby who was sitting on the floor chewing it."

The Joy of Spooking: Unearthly Asylum by P.J. Bracegirdle

Sequels are tricky things, what with the balancing act of preserving what made the first book good while creating a fresh story. The more I enjoyed the first book in a series, the more anxious/hopeful I feel as I approach the second. A good first book could be a fluke, after all. As you can see here, I loved the first book in the Joy of Spooking trilogy, FIENDISH DEEDS. I will not keep you in suspense: the second book more than realizes the potential of the first to kick off a fantastic trilogy. Now I'm conflicted, because I can't wait for the third book, SINISTER SCENES, in Summer 2011, yet that will be the end of the series!

In FIENDISH DEEDS, we met Joy, a morbid yet likable young denizen of Spooking, her decaying hometown perched on a hill outside the perfect, cookie-cutter suburb of Darlington, where she attends school with the insufferable Darlings. Joy adores everything about Spooking and is convinced that her favorite horror writer, E.A. Peugeot, was writing about Spooking in his chilling tales. When the presumed bog of his stories is threatened by the ambition of the mayor's assistant, Octavio Phipps, she springs into action. In UNEARTHLY ASYLUM, Joy is out of sorts because her little brother/sidekick is occupied with a new friend and her mission to prove that Spooking was the home of Peugeot runs into a major obstacle. Meanwhile, Phipps has a new plan to destroy Spooking, involving the creepy old asylum (the possible setting for Peugeot's story, "The Asylum"). When her beloved pet frog turns up on the wrong side of the asylum wall, Joy mounts a rescue operation. Will she make it out in one piece? Will she find proof of Peugeot's presence in Spooking? Will she uncover the secrets of the strange asylum? Good heavens, you don't really think I'd answer these questions, do you? Go read the book.

The snappy dialogue and clever wit of FIENDISH DEEDS continue in the second book. I was delighted to find that Joy was not only as delightful as she was in the first book, but Bracegirdle has added new dimension to her character. In the first book, her loyalty to Spooking was unwavering; in the second, she begins to see that decay may also have a downside. She also considers the possibility that she might be mistaken about Peugeot having lived in Spooking. Phipps, Joy's nemesis, is also fleshed out further. We learn more about his past and the source of his hatred for Spooking. His interaction with Joy is a delight. As Joy's mother decides to send her to a psychiatrist, attitudes toward mental illness are touched on.

A sample of Bracegirdle's witty phrasing: "Her already excitable character had become impossibly effervescent, and like a shaken pop bottle, she seemed about ready to explode." (p. 158)

For more information about UNEARTHLY ASYLUM, now available in hardcover, see P.J. Bracegirdle's website
Like P.J. Bracegirdle on Facebook!

Source disclosure: I received a review copy of this book.

You want to read this book, don't you? Of course you do! Here's how to receive your very own, brand-new copy of UNEARTHLY ASYLUM (and since I expect you'll love Joy as much as I do, I feel moved to throw in a paperback copy of FIENDISH DEEDS if you haven't yet read it):

1. For one entry, comment on this post and tell me whether you've read FIENDISH DEEDS and/or your favorite mystery/horror story/novel.
2. For three entries, "Like" P. J. Bracegirdle's page on Facebook and post below that you did (yes, I WILL check, and I will be annoyed if you try to put one over on me).
3. For three entries, follow my book musings on Twitter and tell me that you did.
4. For three entries, follow this blog and tell me you did (or already do).
5. Come back every day this week and comment on posts - each genuine comment (no, "I'm commenting!" does not count; say something insightful or, at the very least, entertaining) will add one entry.

Yes, you CAN win with only a comment on this post...but don't be shy about upping your odds.

UPDATE! I was in a car accident this week, and am therefore spending my free time car-shopping. Therefore, you now have an extra week to enter the contest. Creepy Halloween entry deadline: 11:59 pm EDT on Sunday, October 31! Retweet or post on your own blog for an extra entry. Don't forget to include some way of contacting you.

Twitter

I have finally found a use for my long-neglected Twitter account. I often think I would post more often to this blog, but I never think my random book-related thoughts, news items, etc. really warrant a one-line blog post. Twitter is the perfect place for this sort of thing. Follow me by clicking here. Let's be ambitious - Follower #100 will get...something. Some kind of exciting book-related package.

Randomness for the day: Picture Books in Decline

Get ready....ahem...stepping up on soapbox now. Shelf Awareness published an article this morning discussing the decline of the traditional children's picture book. Oh, how this makes me sad! And makes me want to keep up the Picture Book Thursday post all the more! Also, makes more sense to me why Penguin has sent me picture book after picture book to review on here.

I can't even imagine a world without children's picture books. There are pictures books from my childhood etched into my brain forever, I remember them fondly and have shared many of those with my own children. I hope they will grasp onto a few books they love and share those with their children. How can parents go from board books to chapter books? Makes no sense! I know there's pressure for children to read at a younger age. But come on! Let children take the time to enjoy the wonderful illustrations and stories in picture books. Let them develop their reading skills by looking at the pictures and have them tell YOU the story. Just because kids CAN read chapter books, doesn't mean they SHOULD read them. We already schedule our children's activities to the hilt. They already learn things in kindergarten I didn't learn until first or even second grade. And now, we're pushing picture books out of the way. No wonder our children are blowing through childhood and growing up so much more quickly! I imagine if a child is destined to get into Harvard, it's probably going to happen regardless of what they are reading at age five. *stepping down from soapbox*

Here's the Shelf Awareness article:

Notes: Picture Books in Decline

Has the golden age of the picture book for children passed? The New York Times reported that the "picture book, a mainstay of children's literature with its lavish illustrations, cheerful colors and large print wrapped in a glossy jacket, has been fading.... publishers have scaled back the number of titles they have released in the last several years, and booksellers across the country say sales have been suffering."

"So many of them just die a sad little death, and we never see them again," said Terri Schmitz, owner of the Children's Book Shop, Brookline, Mass.

Justin Chanda, publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, observed: "Parents are saying, 'My kid doesn't need books with pictures anymore.' There's a real push with parents and schools to have kids start reading big-kid books earlier. We've accelerated the graduation rate out of picture books."

At Politics and Prose bookstore, Washington, D.C., children's department manager Dara La Porte said, "They're four years old, and their parents are getting them Stuart Little. I see children pick up picture books, and then the parents say, 'You can do better than this, you can do more than this.' It's a terrible pressure parents are feeling--that somehow, I shouldn't let my child have this picture book because she won't get into Harvard."

Picture books have earned their place in children's reading lives. Karen Lotz, publisher of Candlewick Press, suggested that, "To some degree, picture books force an analog way of thinking. From picture to picture, as the reader interacts with the book, their imagination is filling in the missing themes."

And Kris Vreeland, a book buyer at Vroman’s Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif., noted that "Some of the vocabulary in a picture book is much more challenging than in a chapter book. The words themselves, and the concepts, can be very sophisticated in a picture book."

The Times reported, however, that over the last three years, Scholastic has published 5% to 10% percent fewer hardcover picture books and Don Weisberg, the president of the Penguin Young Readers Group, "said that two and a half years ago, the company began publishing fewer titles but that it had devoted more attention to marketing and promoting the ones that remain. Of all the children's books published by Simon & Schuster, about 20% are picture books, down from 35% a few years ago."

Picture Book Thursday: How to Raise a Dinosaur by Natasha Wing

I was so excited about this picture book when I opened its envelope! Doesn't the cover just make you want to look inside? My 8-month old will love this as he gets bigger.

Natasha Wing seems to be most known for her "The Night Before" series of books: The Night Before Kindergarten, The Night Before Halloween, The Night Before Valentine's Day, etc. How to Raise a Dinosaur is a very different book from these! And a fabulous entry to her lists of books!

In the beginning, a young boy asks if you're thinking about getting a pet. Then he proceeds to "sell" you on a dinosaur complete with instructions in care, housing, and commands you should teach your dinosaur. On the last page of the book, he even suggests that you "Above all, give your dinosaur lots of love...or it will eat you!" :-)

This is absolutely adorable! And if I saw this laying on a bookstore table, I would snap it up immediately. Even more interesting than the text, the illustrations by Pablo Bernasconi make this fabulous. They are so rich in color and texture, they are sure to keep your child interested as each page is turned. The book also contains various flaps for further entertainment value.

This book is very HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

About the Author:
Natasha Wing has been writing children's stories since 1992 with her first publication, Hippity Hop, Frog on Top. She has also been published in children's magazines such as Highlights, Babybug, and Ladybug. After the first publication of The Night Before Easter in 1999, Wing was asked to make The Night Before into a series. Since then, the series has sold more than one million copies. As a girl, Natasha visited the Peabody Museum of Natural History and was fascinated by the dinosaur exhibits. She doesn't have a dinosaur for a pet, but does have a calico cat, Jemima, who shares a home with Natasha and her husband Dan.

About the Illustrator: Pablo Bernasconi has been published in many newspapers and magazines like the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Rolling Stone and Time. He has published seven children's books that he authored and illustrated, which have been translated into eight different languages.

Source Disclosure: This book was sent to me unsolicited by the publisher Running Press Kids.

Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason

Arctic Chill is the fifth in Indridason's Reykjavik Thriller series, but it is the first I've read. Before I had even finished reading this book, I had placed an order for the first four. This novel has much to offer the mystery aficionado: a well-crafted police procedural, an unflinching indictment of modern culture, and a glimpse into Iceland's racial tensions and changing demographics. Erlendur and his two detectives, Elinborg and Sigurdur Oli, investigate when a young Thai boy, Elias, is found stabbed to death, his blood freezing his body to the ground outside his apartment complex. Elias's mother, Sunee, had been brought to Iceland as a bride in a marriage that ended in divorce, partly because of Sunee's insistence on bringing her older son to Iceland as well. Niran's difficulties in adapting to Icelandic culture provide the backdrop for a fascinating discussion on assimilation versus preserving one's own culture. Was this crime racially motivated? There is an abundance of liberal Icelanders whose hackles have been raised by the influx of immigrants who don't learn Icelandic and whose children scoff at learning Icelandic history in school. One of Elias's teachers is full of hateful rhetoric about "those people." Hints of a possible pedophile in the area, tensions between Icelandic and immigrant children at Elias's school, the disappearance of Niran, and whispers of a boyfriend for Sunee complicate the investigation.

Iceland itself is almost its own character in this novel. This is not a culture with which I was terribly familiar, and the insight was fascinating. In Iceland, disappearances are accepted as part of life in a country with an astronomical suicide rate. The Icelanders are welcoming of immigrants, but fear losing their dwindling culture. The climate is forbiddingly harsh, and it makes me wonder what keeps people there.

Subplots supplemented the central murder investigation. A second mystery, the disappearance of a woman, slips into the storyline as Erlendur receives strange phone calls. Erlendur broods on the disappearance of his brother decades before while awkwardly dealing with his son and daughter turning up, and his mentor is on his deathbed. The plots altogether added up to one of the bleaker mysteries I've read, but even a clunky translation can't diminish its compelling appeal.

Source disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Picador through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer Program.

Banned Books Week--Article

Lauren Myracle had a really good article posted on Shelf Awareness this morning. She discussed the issues behind two of her books and why they receive flack from people who want them censored. But the greater part of her article was very self-reflecting in how she is against censorship, but knows that she censors herself. And how she needs to work on that. Good stuff! You should read it!

And just as an added plug, here's a link to my review of Luv Ya Bunches from last year. I really enjoyed her book and thought it was very reflective of today's society.

Picture Book Thursday: Back to School!

Unfortunately, this feature is becoming more of a monthly item. But I'm hoping as the school year gets underway that I have a bit more time and can post more often. I have three books today that could fall into the "Back to School" category.

This School Year Will Be the Best! by Kay Winters is a fun little book perfect for the start of school! This one might be especially good for early grade teachers to read for story time. The children in one classroom each tell what they hope for the school year. Some are realistic things like getting a good report card, kicking the soccer ball into the right goal, or winning the science fair. And others are a little more far-fetched: hoping there is a chocolate water fountain or having a skateboard day. At the end, the teacher's hope is that she gets to know each one of the students. A great book for discussing YOUR child's hopes for the upcoming school year. And very fitting, my homework assignment this week for my first grader is to write down what our hopes and dreams are for her for first grade. :-)

David Milgrin's How You Got So Smart starts with a baby learning about everything by observing his/her world, then exploring it and tasting it bit by bit. Then, moves on to children making friends, asking questions, expressing themselves, and being confident in who they are. This book might actually be more appropriate as an end of year book. It could even be a graduation present a la Dr. Suess' Oh, The Places You Will Go. However, I'll feature it here because I think kids need to be reminded at the start of the year about everything they have learned and done so they can continue to be confident. Each year brings new challenges and if they are reminded of all the past challenges they've conquered, then maybe facing the new ones won't seem so hard.

Dewey: There's a Cat in the Library! by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter isn't really related to back to school, but it's about books and therefore, relates to school for me. Okay, that was a stretch but go with it! ;-) This is a cute picture book showing how Dewey tries to help people because he's a Library Cat. He helps shelve the books, helps read stories to the children and helps a sad little girl smile again. If your child is a big fan of cats/kittens this is a perfect book for them with highly realistic illustrations by Steve James.

Have you read any great books for back to school with your children? I'd love to hear what you've been reading! Happy New School Year!

Source Disclosure: This School Year Will Be the Best and How You Got So Smart both came to me from the Penguin Group. Dewey arrived via Little, Brown and Company.

Mystery Monday - Donna Andrews

Stork Raving Mad is the twelfth mystery in Donna Andrews's Meg Langslow series. Meg is eight months pregnant...with twins. But her home is in more chaos than just the usual visiting family members; Caerphilly College's heating plant has failed, and she's offered up her large house as a barracks for the displaced students. When her husband asks if she minds another houseguest, Meg assumes she won't notice one more. But Senor Mendoza, an elderly Spanish playwright, has come to visit Caerphilly because one of Michael's drama students is writing his dissertation on and staging a performance of one of Mendoza's bawdy plays. A pair from the college's administration turns up, accusing the student, Ramon, of having failed to complete the requisite paperwork for his dissertation topic. The more unpleasant of the two turns up dead. If all this sounds convoluted...well, it is. The premise isn't the best in the series, and the resolution of the mystery is a bit tedious. But after twelve books, Ms. Andrews is entitled to a weaker entry, and there is still plenty for fans of Meg and the Langslow clan to enjoy. The pregnant Meg on her constant search for a snack or a place to rest, is constantly sidelined by having to investigate. Rose Noire is taking her role as caregiver extremely seriously. I enjoyed her presence in this entry, including a key plot point. While Rob was absent, some of his employees were on hand, using Meg's basement as a place to test their new software. The students added an interesting dynamic as well. In all, a fun entry in one of my favorite series. Start with the first, Murder With Peacocks.

Source disclosure: I purchased this book.

Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd

As I read Murder at Mansfield Park, I experienced the full range of emotional responses: I nearly flung the book across the room, I chuckled at Shepherd's mastery of Austen-like humor, I flipped back in frustration to the pages establishing the revamped relationships among characters. As I read, my star rating vacillated wildly. I have finally settled on three stars, which feels a bit like a copout. But this is really two separate projects shoehorned into one, and ultimately, I'm not convinced they coexist well.

Those unfamiliar with Mansfield Park will miss a huge chunk of the fun here. In Austen's original, three sisters marry with varying degrees of success. Lady Bertram married well up and produced three children, Tom, Edmund, Maria, and Julia. Mrs. Norris did just fine, marrying the parson of the estate, and is now widowed with no children. The third sister married imprudently for love and produced a passel of children they can ill-afford, among them Fanny, the oldest girl, Susan, the next oldest, and William. Fanny is closest to Susan and William and misses them the most when she is sent to live with the Bertrams as a money-saving measure, where only Edmund treats her with kindness. Sister and brother Mary and Henry Crawford come to live in the parsonage. Henry begins a flirtation with all the girls, while Mary has her sights on Edmund. Shepherd interferes with the relationships and status of Austen's characters. Now Fanny is a spoiled orphan heiress who comes to live with her socially inferior cousins, the Bertrams, Edmund is Mrs. Norris's son, Henry Crawford has a profession, and Mary Crawford is a virtuous girl. This is the first reimagining of the novel. The second turns Mansfield Park into a Regency crime novel when Fanny turns up dead and Mr. Maddox is summoned to get to the bottom of the matter. This second approach has a number of effects: the servants figure more prominently, since they are a great source of information to Mr. Maddox, Mr. Maddox himself adds a wrinkle into the class portrayals, and much of the social commentary is redirected into the murder investigation.

I found a great deal of enjoyment in this novel, but I felt it was overly ambitious. Either of the two premises would have been sufficient, but both crammed together seemed excessive. Either shed light on class divisions by turning the relationships on their head or reimagine the novel as a murder mystery, but both is too much departure from the original material. Austen's own words are incorporated extensively, but Shepherd's prose blends almost seamlessly. She has an impressive command of Regency language and of Austen's brand of humor. Ultimately, there is simply too much going on here to really shed light on Austen's original, and the reader has far too many departures of which to keep track. I kept forgetting that WIlliam wasn't Fanny's brother in this interpretation, the class change for Henry was a sticking point, Edmund as Mrs. Norris's son...all this and more AND with a murder mystery thrown in. While there were fun, insightful parts, the rest was chaos.

An overly ambitious reimagining of Austen, but one with plenty of enjoyable moments.

Source disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.