Nation! Colbert Interviewed Maurice Sendak!

Two-part installments on the Cobert Report – Best back-and-forth of two word cannons, firing one witty comment after another at each other and the audience.

Watch them

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/406796/january-24-2012/grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt–1

and

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/406902/january-25-2012/grim-colberty-tales-with-maurice-sendak-pt–2

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Re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to make quiz questions. Enjoying it very much. Rowling is quite good at setting up scenes and coming up with surprising turns of events.

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Since I am officially on the 2013 Newbery Committee now, I am going to stop blogging about specific titles I read this year. But, children’s and YA lit news and musings on writing for children and such will start appearing here!

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This morning’s ALA Youth Media Awards Press Conference was fun and full of great titles to cheer and to explore. See the whole list here: http://ala.org/news/pr?id=9108

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Half way through Same Sun Here (having a hard time remembering the title correctly….) and cried on the subway to work today reading the turn of events in the story. There are definitely enough life hardships for both characters to sustain my interest and and the two kids feel authentic and endearing. It also feels like a very good classroom, discussion-generating book. There are the concepts of stereotypes, fear of terrorists, environmental exploitation, illegal activities, illness and death of family members, and I just encountered the word “faggot.” I feel that the authors are courageous and honest — instead of sensationalizing daily life. I am waiting to find out how all these scenario play out in the story.

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Just read this short article on The Guardian and will go and check out the battle between authors/publishers and readers/bloggers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/16/ya-novel-readers-publishing-establishment?newsfeed=true

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Reading Same Sun Here, by Silas House & Neela Vaswani — due out next month from Candlewick. About 1/5 into the book and finding it genuine and nice. Wondering if there will be tension in either of these kids’ lives to carry the reader through the remaining 237 pages. At this point, at least River’s life is going to get interesting with his Activist grandmother’s involvement in the environmental issues in Kentucky. What will Meena’s “problem” be? Does she NEED a problem? Question: How common is it for a young girl of 12 who’s only been in the States for 3 years to decide so easily to break away from the tradition of a matched marriage?

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Finally finished it… and after 545 pages (in the ARC) I want it to keep going… so the wait begins, again, for the next installment.

How does an author touch one’s heart so profoundly? What did she do that’s just right? The pacing is perfect – without much battle or fight scenes. I knew the general direction that the story must follow and felt rewarded, rather than bored, when the story arc falls neatly where I anticipated — but, also surprised along the way with many little bits and pieces that Cashore masterfully inserted into the story to make it even more intriguing and the world even more realized.

The book is, though, filled with so much sorrow that one can almost not bear reading through. I hope young people (14 and up?) will not be as horrified as us older readers by Leck’s astrocity on his victims and his forced accomplices. I am amazed at the sympathy I felt toward him — the pure evil embodiment through the 3 books — and how damaged a mind and what a torture chamber that mind is for himself.

Glad to see the other beloved characters from Graceling and Fire and can’t wait to see what the next, culminating kind of story Cashore will bring us.

And — Kristin, please don’t worry about publishing the next book right away. We can wait. And if you are having trouble telling the next story, go do something else. Go write something else. Go present your insights on Fantasy world building, on character development, on capturing emotional truths, etc. to the world. Thank you so much for a most affecting story!

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Work got in the way from reading a LOT more of the the story that I wished to… I love my job, of course, but at this point, I love the book more! Only one question tonight: why are all three couples in Cashore’s books deal with their relationships in agony, argument, and fights? Simply to keep the tension high or is that something the author believes to be the reality of love affairs between people?

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Following one of the patterns in the book, I am listing a few of my puzzles of Bitterblue’s tale: Does she have a Grace? What is it? I vaguely remember thinking at the end of Graceling that she MUST have a grace (probably MATH?) Do Teddy and Saf know that she’s the Lady Queen? What did Leck ask Thiel to do in the Prologue? Is it to MEND Ashen after he tortured her? Will Cashore set up a Love-Triangle? (Please don’t!) Will I be able to follow the forthcoming Ciphers and Codes or will I be too baffled and frustrated because it’s too high level for me? And —

Is Saf’s name inspired by William Safire who wrote about word origins for the Times Magazine?

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Bitterblue has four PARTS: Stories and Lies; Puzzles and Muddles: Ciphers and Keys; Bridges and Crossings — so you can see, it is a book that’s full of puzzles, riddles, bafflements, hidden dangers, foggy agendas… EXACTLY what I thoroughly love! Getting to half-way point and even though everything is still so “muddled,” my interest remains strong and my enjoyment of the chapters remains high.

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Finished making questions for Prisoner of Azkaban. I cried at the last couple of pages — just because Sirius is such a sincere and loving and misunderstood character. (And Gary Oldman definitely makes him even more dear to my heart!) I guess my favorite character in the entire Harry Potter series is Sirius Black. Wondering what the top three characters dear to everyone’s heart are! Sirius, Fred/George, and Luna are probably mine.

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Bitterblue (in ARC — the book will be out by May, 2012) by Kristin Cashore starts off exactly how and where I like it: full of intriguing political underhandedness that I’m as baffled by as the main character. The short prologue, still featuring Lech, sets the stage well and feels like the book is totally connected to the previous titles and world. The “sneaking out of the palace to mingle with commoners by the royalty” plot device never grows old for this reader. Only 10% into the book and hoping for the rest 500 pages to be as delicious as the first 50 odd pages.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

I absolutely enjoyed the many separate pieces in the book — thinking that each chapter can be treated as a short story since there is always a beginning and an end and not too much set up is needed to comprehend most of them. There are some really intensely gory and cringe-inducing scenes and a couple tales border on horror. Some are heart-warming, too.

One thing that I couldn’t quite get over, though, was the unevenness in keeping to the rules that the author set up for himself: That, supposedly, each piece in the book is a “translation” of something the “narrator” gathered from a massive electronic archive with audio, video, text, etc. — recorded history of various participants in the Robot Uprising and the global warfare afterwards. However, instead of using a 3rd person, observational tone, Wilson chose to tell many of these heroes’ stories from a first person point of view — EVEN if the recordings themselves are from an exterior angle. (And I just noticed that the first few stories are more in keeping with this framework — some stories are from a third person viewpoint while others are supposedly “narrated” by the participants themselves as interviewees or writers, etc. — but that consistency gradually fell apart and at the end there is a lot of “I” and how “I” felt even though the gathered records couldn’t have provided those perspectives.) And some of the voices are not quite in keeping with the characters themselves — or at least, not quite distinctive to be discernibly different from each other, even though some of these characters are drastically different in backgrounds and should probably have different tones. — Although I guess I can accept it because many of them are told from the reporter/archivist’s “voice.” (However, then why are they told from the “I” perspective?)

Still, I can see many readers enjoying the stories and gobbling up the scenes with relish!  And, I am so enamored with the cover design!

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Since I already forgot to post yesterday, I have to post at least 2 entries today. Sitting on my table is an advanced reader’s copy of Cashore’s Bitterblue. It’s much thicker than Graceling (545 pages.) I am eager to start it and apprehensive, too. I really want it to be GREAT!!!

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Re-reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to make quiz questions for the students. Loving the quiz-making part, but not too wild about how excessively JK used adverbs. I do enjoy comparing the book’s details against the movie’s.

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One of a few new year’s resolutions:

Post here every day about the books I’m reading. Buckling down now to start reading as many 2012 American children’s books as possible for my second assignment to the Newbery Committee.

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Hoping to finish listening to Legend in a day or two. Although the major plot twist is not a surprise to me, the story still holds enough unknown next steps to keep my interest high. June and Day are both solidly drawn likable characters.

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I’m currently being thrilled and disturbed by the many gory scenes in Robopocalypse.