A.D. NEW ORLEANS AFTER THE DELUGE

This is an adult graphic novel but it's perfectly appropriate for teens. I love it. It tells of the New Orleans disaster in a simple way, with amazing pictures. I follows several different groups of people--one group stays to watch their store, another leaves and wonders what happens to their home and belongings, another goes to a shelter, while the 4th entertains guests in the French quarter. The novel alternates in different colors so that it's easy to switch from person to person. I have to admit that I'm much more interested in the disaster now that I've read this book. It made it more personal for me.




















This comic started as a web comic. You can read it here:

But I suggest you go out and buy the book!

A REALLY BIG BOARD BOOK

Thanks to my friend Sheila, who works at B&N and has been cultivating a wonderful kids' book table on the second floor in the kids' department, I discovered this book:






This YouTube video gives you a good sense of the book:



As you can see, there are no words! There are just a lot of fun pictures and little details to look at. On each page, for example, there is a frog and he is always eating something silly... and growing in size as he does! There is a woman looking for a her son... and a boy reading a different book on every page... The board book is a lot of fun. Who needs words! This book will keep a child occupied for a while.

This is what their bio says on Amazon: "Germano Zullo and Albertine are the author and illustrator of numerous popular children’s stories and comics. In 2003 the Swiss duo won the Canal+ prize for their short animated film The Ravioli Box Genie. Germano is a writer and a poet. Albertine is an artist and professor at the School of Visual Arts in Geneva, Switzerland."

I'm interested in seeing what else this duo does.



If you're in the NYC Union Sq area stop by and say hello to Sheila Seward. She's been bringing in some cool books and a lot of stuff that's been out of print and re-printed. Go Sheila!

THE BAD AND THE UGLY HAVE MET BORDERS

Say goodbye to the Borders chain. It's over. “I think it’s horrible that Borders is closing,” said a customer from Naperville. “It’s a sign of the times that video games and electronics are taking precedence over books in our culture." That is a scary thought, isn't it? What does this mean for B&N? No competition? I read that employees are not allowed to discuss when final sales will occur. Almost 11,000 people will lose their jobs, which is a sad thing. How did B&N survive when Borders failed? NPR suggests that one reason may be that BN put its money into digital investments. While B&N was busy building its website, Borders outsourced its online sales to Amazon. That was a huge mistake, as this customer explains: "I'll go to Borders to find a book, and then I'll to go to Amazon to buy it." Borders hadn't made a profit since 2006 says NPR. NPR concluded with this interesting theory: "With Barnes & Noble staking its future on digital technology, Raff says, it's likely the big bookstore will only live on in big cities."

SORE LOSER

heh.

SOME WORDS FROM SENDAK

What makes a good kids' story?
Sendak: How would I know? I just write the books.

The monsters (in Wild Things) were based on adults, right?
Sendak: The monsters were based on relatives. They came from Europe, and they came on weekends to eat, and my mom had to cook. Three aunts and three uncles who spoke no English, practically. They grabbed you and twisted your face, and they thought that was an affectionate thing to do. And I knew that my mother's cooking was pretty terrible, and it also took forever, and there was every possibility that they would eat me, or my sister or my brother. We really had a wicked fantasy that they were capable of that. We couldn't taste any worse than what she was preparing. So that's who the Wild Things are. They're foreigners, lost in America, without a language. And children who are petrified of them, and don't understand that these gestures, these twistings of flesh, are meant to be affectionate. So there you go.

Sendak: I remember I was having fights with my editor about this book.

What were the fights about?
Sendak: Well, I'll just give you a silly example. The entire staff at the publishing house were keen on my changing the word "hot" to "warm" on the last page. Because "hot" meant "burn ...." It was going to burn the kid. I couldn't believe it. But it turned into a real world war, just that word, and I won.

How did you win?
Sendak: Just going at it. Just trying to convey how dopey "warm" sounded. Unemotional. Undramatic. Everything about that book is "hot."

Do you think Disney is bad for children?
Sendak: I think it's terrible.

What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?
Sendak: I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate.

Because kids can handle it?
Sendak: If they can't handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it's not a question that can be answered.

Yeah, Sendak can be a bit bold and grumpy sounding... but I got these bits from an interview about his movie that was a few years back from NEWSWEEK. It's pretty interesting. Read the whole thing here.

I have to admit that I didn't like the movie. I really liked the way the monsters looked but my liking of things ended there. I remain a huge fan of the book. I have yet to see a good rendition of a picture book. I don't think it's possible.

E BOOKS - CHANGING THE DESIGN

You might see a trend here, with the whole me posting pictures of bookshelves thing. I played with all of the Nooks last week. Or should I say Nooks. There's no "the." I don't know why. Anyway, one thing that really bothers me is that you can change the type on them--meaning you can change the font size and color and the paragraphs around so that they're really skinny and so on. I understand that making fonts really big is great for people with vision problems... but I think it just goes way too far. We book people -- illustrators, designers, etc., work really hard to make the books look nice! Within seconds this can all be destroyed. There was a giant pit in my stomach the minute I found out that the reader could do this with the devices. The reader can BUTCHER a book! Ugh.

Just one more sad thing about where things are going. Plus... you can't hang dozens of multi-colored e-books from your ceiling. Keep that in mind.

UNIQUE WAYS TO CONTAIN YOUR BOOKS

VICTORIA REICHELT - PAINTINGS

I stumbled upon this painter. If you love books you'll love these paintings! I'd really like one for my wall.