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Johanna Basford Window Display: FoxTale Book Shoppe

I might have been coloring recently . . .

The Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book from Laurence King Publishing on Vimeo.

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Feed Lithographs T-shirt

Every Litographs t-shirt is created entirely from the text of a classic book, and is hand-pressed to order in Cambridge, MA. Our shirts are printed via all-over dye sublimation, which means that the design - the text from each book - covers every inch. Of all the printing methods we've tested, dye sublimation stands out for its resolution, comfort, and durability. Because the collar and seams are thicker than the body of the shirt, some blurring of text in those areas is unavoidable. You may also notice a few small, white voids under the arms, which are not noticeable when the shirt is worn. These are standard features of dye sublimated t-shirts, and each item is unique. Our shirts are made using white, Vapor brand T-Shirts produced specifically for dye sublimation. Vapor tees are made with high-quality, 100% spun polyester to deliver the look and feel of cotton while allowing for full-color, all-over printing. Dye sublimation printing produces vibrant, super-soft, permanent prints that are guaranteed to never shrink or fade. The average Litographs t-shirt contains approximately 40,000 words (about the length of a short novel). Copyright © 2002 M.T. Anderson. Licensed by Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.

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A glorious out-of-my-plane-window shot during the approach to LaGuardia last Thursday. NYC from above. #lifeofasalesrep

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Must-see Candlewick videos

Click here for a previous post about Chris Haughton on A Rep Reading.

My thoughts: A hilarious black comedy about publishing. I started a hashtag, #malpeetvocabularybuilder, for all the words that were new to me. Smart, snarky and reflective of the crazy world of writers, agents, publishers and readers.

Another book by Mal Peet I highly recommend is here. Click on the book image above to read my complete blog post and review of Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Seige of Leningrad.

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See Inside Great Cities

Description

Explore soaring skysrapers, elegant cathedrals, and bustling shopping streets -- from New York to Paris, and Sydney to Shanghai. Lift the flaps to see inside some of the greatest cities in the world.

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— Teresa Rolfe Kravtin (@trkravtinvine) November 16, 2015

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— Teresa Rolfe Kravtin (@trkravtinvine) November 16, 2015

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— Teresa Rolfe Kravtin (@trkravtinvine) November 16, 2015

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— Teresa Rolfe Kravtin (@trkravtinvine) November 16, 2015

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— Teresa Rolfe Kravtin (@trkravtinvine) November 16, 2015

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— Teresa Rolfe Kravtin (@trkravtinvine) November 16, 2015

See Inside Great Cities Rob Loyd Jones EDC Publishing 9780794529697 Board Book $14.99

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Thanks, Riffle!

Check out @arepreading​‘s review of Leo: A Ghost Story on Riffle!

Riffle - just good books and the readers who love them. 

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My Crazy Inventions Sketchbook

Description

Do you have some crazy inventions up your sleeve? This book is jam-packed with Andrew Rae's amazing drawings showing all sorts of real inventions that seem too weird to work. How about a dog umbrella? A submarine that looks like a plane... or even a shark. A swimming machine where you don't get wet? A car wash for people? Someone has even made a device to charge your phone using a hamster! There is plenty of inspiration to get kids' minds going, and plenty of room to add their own crazy inventions to the mix. They can design the best dune buggy ever, create a brand new type of candy to share with the world, or even draw a transformer dinosaur! Includes a patent certificate for their very own crazy invention.

Thanks @Absolutely_mags for recommending 'My Crazy Inventions Sketchbook'- packed with @DrewRae's amazing drawings. pic.twitter.com/NwDjQzcVeM

— Laurence King (@LaurenceKingPub) October 8, 2015

My thoughts: This book sits squarely in the category of books that foster creative thinking. By drawing and imagining ideas as responses to prompts, anyone can enter a timeless zone of creative brain-storming. This book doesn't teach anything and isn't about anything in particular. It mimics the space that is difficult for some to inhabit: a blissful, imaginative, other-worldly dimension of engaging in innovativeness, originality and individuality. No expectations, no grading, and no critiques; just ideas. Sounds like FUN to me! I firmly endorse time spent fostering creativity and there is no one right way to do it. It should be done in every way and as much as possible. Building up our creative muscles means we must exercise our creativity frequently, so it is available to us more readily when we need it, and we can recognize it when it calls out to us. Most importantly, it is a unique reflection of who we are, a journey of self-discovery that can lead us to exciting personal adventures that we might not know otherwise.

My Crazy Inventions Sketchbook Andrew Rae and Lisa Regan Laurence King Publishing/Chronicle Books 9781780676111 Paper $15.95

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Woody Allen: A Retrospective by Tom Shone

Description

Woody Allen: A Retrospective is the first complete, film-by-film overview of Woody Allen's entire career, up to and including the 2015 release of Irrational Man. In this illustrated biography, renowned movie critic Tom Shone traces Allen’s entire professional life as an entertainer and director, weaving in archival and original interviews, as well as more than 250 curated photographs, movie stills, and posters.

From slapstick films to romantic comedies to introspective character studies and crime thrillers, Allen’s output has always been prodigious; with nearly 50 movies to his credit, he’s made more or less a film a year since the early 1970s. This fitting tribute to one of the masters of modern cinema covers all of those films, including contemporary classics such as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Midnight in Paris, with wit and insight.

This is the definitive illustrated monograph on one of the major writer-directors of modern cinema, celebrating Allen’s fifty-year career and published to mark Woody Allen's eightieth birthday. With the help of comments contributed by Allen himself, Shone’s well-informed commentary makes this book an essential read for Woody Allen fans and film aficionados.

My thoughts: My husband is a major Woody Allen fan, and he devoured this book from beginning to end this week. "It's excellent. I really enjoyed it.", he said. So although I don't have my own personal review to share yet, you have my husband's ringing endorsement.

“… Shone’s prose has a beauty of its own, abounding in nonchalantly exquisite turns of phrase: I especially love his description of actress Dianne Wiest’s face as “[seeming] always to photograph in soft focus”. Allen may not read criticism, but the writer in him would surely approve.’” — The Guardian

Interview: Woody Allen A Retrospective Author Tom Shone

It is a big year for Woody Allen, as he is about to celebrate his 80th birthday, and 50 years of making films. In 2015, he remains a vital person in popular culture, and as busy as ever. Film critic Tom Shone knows more about that vitality and long career than most people, both from his day job and being a big fan of Allen’s work. Which is probably why his publisher thought he’d be the guy to write Woody Allen: A Retrospective. Like the title suggests, it is a career spanning look at the auteur. It follows Shone’s previous book about Martin Scorsese. The big hook of the book is the many unreleased photos from every era of Allen’s career, covering up to last year’s Magic In the Moonlight. Throughout the book there are Shone’s writings, reflecting on Allen’s work, with plenty of great insights and stories. We spoke to Shone about his history with Allen, how he has been picked by Allen as an interviewer of choice, and asked him to pick some favourites as well. Do you remember when you first heard of Woody Allen, and watching your first Woody Allen film? The earliest Woody Allen film I can remember seeing was Love And Death. I must have been about 8 and it was around a friend of my parent’s house so I only caught half of it. The main thing I can remember is loving his cowardly Bob Hope impression, though I didn’t know it was borrowed from Hope at the time, just that it was very funny and also the fact that he died at the end of it. That blew my mind. That a comedy could end with someone dying. I still thing it’s very radical. Love And Death is my favorite of the early films before Annie Hall. It’s Woody Allen doing what Woody Allen was set on earth to do. You interviewed Allen for the first time in the 1990s. How did that interview happen? Woody Allen doesn’t like meeting strangers, so interviewing him is a little awkward. I first met him during the European press tour for Deconstructing Harry in Paris in 1997. He had just started throwing himself into his European tours a little more enthusiastically, I think as an escape from the custody battle he was having with Mia Farrow at the time. He seemed miserable to be away from his children. But he perked up when I started talking about his work for The New Yorker and how it set the stage for all the high-low swaps of register in his work, and when he next came to London requested me as an interviewer. So I guess he liked me. I certainly liked him and felt a little protective of him, as I’m sure many people do, I’m sure unnecessarily. Underneath the schlemiel act and the weak handshake and everything else he gives the impression of enormous inner strength and resilience — the kind that comes from disappearing into your head for hours, days, weeks, months at a time. The imagination is a muscular thing.

When did the idea of the book come to you? And how does it relate to your previous book, Scorsese: A Retrospective? The idea came from my publisher, as did the Scorsese, which is not to say that I don’t love both filmmakers and was delighted to write about both of them. I was struck by the similarities between the two — their identification with New York, primarily, though they make films about very different parts of the city — Woody uptown, Marty downtown — but also their sense of humor, and love of great talkers, of street-corner spiel. They’re both very New York in that regard. To have mapped out such instantly recognizable and utterly different versions of the same city speaks, I think, to their vision as filmmakers and the question of the auteur. Both directors conducted the same experiment to see whether a European-style, director’s career was possible in Hollywood and both came to the same conclusion: no. Scorsese took nine years to find that out, Allen one. Both then fought for their independence, Allen more successfully than Scorsese because his films costs so little. In many ways he is the auteur of auteurs — the one guy, the whole fabulous, furry, freakazoid auteurist experiment of the seventies really worked out for. He’s still making films the same way after 50-odd years. Amazing. The great thing about the book is the hundreds of unreleased or rare photos from Allen’s career. How did you go about choosing which photos made the book? I didn’t make the original choice — that was my publisher, the estimable Colin Webb — but I got to oversee which ones went in and nixed a couple I thought were too well-known. As with the Scorsese wanted to give the reader a sense of being invited behind the scenes, and seeing unexpected angles on well-known films. The main challenge with Allen is: everyone knows and loves those films. So you want to jog their memory about the things they love, but also surprise them, somehow. I think we got there.

Revisiting Allen’s long cinematic history over a short period – did you find anything new, or see anything that you hadn’t noticed before in Allen’s filmmaking? This time around I noticed a few dating tips I hadn’t seen before: like how his heroes are always using culture to pick up girls, whether it’s art galleries or books of poems by e e cummings. It always spelled doom for them in the end: they play Henry Higgins for a bit, and impress the girl with their cultural references but then the girl grows confident and smart enough to leave them. That’s the story in film after film. It’s Pygmalion, basically. It occurred to me that Allen’s career has a lot to do with the educational advances made by feminism in the late sixties and early seventies; if you look at the graphs for higher education for women it goes on this steep climb at the beginning of the seventies. That’s Annie Hall, right there.

The general school of thought is that Allen’s best film is either Annie Hall or Manhattan. If you had to choose between the two, what would it be? Annie Hall. For the reasons stated above. Although I love Mariel Hemingway’s performance in Manhattan — one of the few convincing portrayals of virtue in a Woody Allen film, and it elicits from him some of his best acting, particularly in that last scene. She raises his game. So gentle and affecting. Manhattan is Allen’s Catcher in The Rye — and Tracy is his Phoebe. There are 43 other films to choose from. Trapped on a desert island, which one would you choose? The Purple Rose of Cairo or Bullets over Broadway. The two great farces about the imagination — Allen’s great subject it seems to me, pursued in film after film — so either would be great to while away time on an island. Bullets might just get the edge, because of Dianne Wiest, my favorite Woody Allen leading lady of all time. Don’t speak. You can find more on Tom’s work at his website or follow him on Twitter, @tom_shone. -- The Woody Allen Pages, September 23, 2015 · by William Miller

Woody Allen: A Retrospective Tom Shone ABRAMS Books 9781419717949 Cloth $40 Pub Date: 10/20/2015

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Celebrate 5 Years of Carolrhoda Lab

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The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Astor by Scott Wilbanks

Congratulations @scottbwilbanks! We have sold over 100 copies of THE LEMONCHOLY LIFE OF ANNIE ASTER from @Sourcebooks pic.twitter.com/tyeG7g5CpK

— FoxTale Book Shoppe (@FoxTale) October 14, 2015

@FoxTale @Sourcebooks @SBKSLibrary This is my "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!" face. pic.twitter.com/dVRwvAnlRo

— Scott Wilbanks (@scottbwilbanks) October 14, 2015

Sourcebooks News:

FoxTale Book Shoppe Creates a World of Magic for The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster

Debut Novel Becomes an Indie Store Favorite What happens when Karen Schwettman, one of the “Foxes” (a.k.a. friends and cofounders of award-winning indie bookstore FoxTale Book Shoppe), falls in love with your book? You get invited to visit their store in Woodstock, Georgia, for a fabulous event—complete with a dazzling window display and a magical recreation of one of your chapters in the store.   Scott Wilbanks, author of The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster, was absolutely blown away with the scene that met him when he stepped inside FoxTale for an event in August. (Below left: Scott Wilbanks, Below right: Scott, right, with Mike and Karen)   The Foxes had set up an antique red door that serves as the time travel portal in the novel as part of the author signing table. Other elements featured in the book, such as a brass letter box, were prominently displayed in the store window.     “If you ever get the chance, stop by the store and shoot the breeze with Karen. You’ll thank me. She’s pretty marvelous, folks,” says Scott. Wilbanks’s event was packed, and included old friends, enthusiastic fans, and new friends, including Karl Camp, who posted on Facebook: “My family and I had a wonderful time meeting Scott and Mike at the book signing event for The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster at Foxtale Book Shoppe in Woodstock. I just finished reading the book. Thank you, Scott. It is masterfully written. Please keep writing! Such literary gifts are exceedingly rare and always a jewel to discover.” The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster is also November’s FoxTalk Book Club pick! Thank you to FoxTale Book Shoppe for the amazing hospitality and for making an author’s dream come alive! Description: Annabelle Aster doesn’t bow to convention—not even that of space and time—which makes the 1890s Kansas wheat field that has appeared in her modern-day San Francisco garden easy to accept. Even more peculiar is Elsbeth, the truculent schoolmarm who sends Annie letters through the mysterious brass mailbox perched on the picket fence that now divides their two worlds. Annie and Elsbeth’s search for an explanation to the hiccup in the universe linking their homes leads to an unsettling discovery—and potential disaster for both of them. Together they must solve the mystery of what connects them before one of them is convicted of a murder that has yet to happen…and yet somehow already did. The Lemoncholy Life of Annie Aster Scott Wilbanks Sourcebook 9781492612469 Paper $14.99

Previously on A Rep Reading:

FoxTale Book Shoppe Woodstock, GA, March 14, 2013 FoxTale Book Shoppe website

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Hungry Tomato: Mythical Beasts

Mythical Beasts

This high-interest series takes a celebrity-profile approach to the mayhem-causers of ancient myth. Drawing on tales from around the world, each book ranks a motley crew of legendary monsters to see who's the most dangerous. Each legendary figure receives points for skills, strength, and general repulsiveness—and readers collect myth-based advice on how to defeat it. Find out about each monster's features and skills, where in the world they come from, how they rank compared to one another, and how you might defeat them if you ever strayed into their remote realms. Fast Facts, Full-Color Illustrations, Index, Original Artwork, Table of Contents

My thoughts: It's October, and this new series from the Hungry Tomato imprint of Lerner Books is perfect for the run up to Halloween, and as a supplement for the mythology hungry Rick Riordan readers. Each book is available in paperback and is $7.99.

In ancient mythologies, many of the gods created all-powerful predators that unleashed panic on the human world. These horrors could be either beast or human—or even both. But who would come out on top in a fight? Which one is the most powerful of all? (9781467776547) Meet the ten weirdest, strongest, and nastiest of these mythical beasts, including: ● Charybdis, who swallowed ships in one easy gulp ● Ammut, devourer of the dead ● the elephant-snake Grootslang ● the nine-headed Hydra

Supernatural fiends and fire-breathing tormentors loom large in myth and folklore, grabbing animals and people to satisfy their huge appetites. They turn the world of humans topsy-turvy with terror. But who would be the hardest to defeat in battle? Which one reigns supreme? (9781467776516) Meet the top ten most powerful and fearsome of these mythical beasts, including: ● a seven-headed dragon ● the fire-breathing son of a dwarf king ● disembodied heads that haunt graveyards ● a giant snake-woman

The fiercest, most strangely shaped figures of mythology look like you might find them in a zoo—if any zoo could hold animals this dangerously powerful. These supernatural creatures can challenge the gods or reign supreme in the sky and the ocean. But what if they had to challenge one another? Who would win in a standoff? Which one is the most powerful of all? (9781467776523) Meet the top ten most terrifying and grotesque of these mythical beasts, including: ● Typhon, who had the body of a giant and a hundred dragons' heads ● Garuda, part human, part fearsome bird of prey ● the disfigured monster Grendel ● the massive sea-snake Leviathan

They're big, mean, and shudderingly horrible—and that's about all that the giants and trolls of mythology have in common. Some have several heads. Some have only one eye—or lots of eyes! You wouldn't want to cross paths with any of them. But what if they crossed paths with each other? Who would win in a battle? Which one is the strongest of all? (9781467776530) Meet the ten most ferocious and gruesome of these mythical beasts, including: ● the three-headed warrior ● colossal cannibals ● the frost giant ● human-eating trolls

Related Reading:

Hungry Tomato: Real-Life Monsters, September 23, 2015

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MARTians by Blythe Woolston

MARTians from Blythe Woolston on Vimeo.

A Publishers Weekly 2015 Best Book for Young Adult Description: Last girl Zoë Zindleman, numerical ID 009-99-9999, is starting work at AllMART, where "your smile is the AllMART welcome mat.” Her living arrangements are equally bleak: she can wait for her home to be foreclosed and stripped of anything valuable now that AnnaMom has moved away, leaving Zoë behind, or move to the Warren, an abandoned strip-mall-turned-refuge for other left-behinds. With a handful of other disaffected, forgotten kids, Zoë must find her place in a world that has consumed itself beyond redemption. She may be a last girl, but her name means “life,” and Zoë isn’t ready to disappear into the AllMART abyss. Zoë wants to live.

Reviews:

Zoë’s flattened narration reflects the disjointed, disconnected nature of her existence, and while Woolston keeps the focus on Zoë, offhandedly mentioned details about her world (“I’m not an Otakusexual—although I respect toonophilia as a sexually responsible choice”) and chilling corporatespeak (“Your smile is AllMART’s welcome mat”) will set imaginations spinning. It’s a terrifying extrapolation of the here-and-now and, like much of Woolston’s fiction, far too close for comfort. -- Publishers Weekly starred review Woolston, author of the Morris Award–winning The Freak Observer (2010), does a superb job creating a world that is part Kafka and part Orwell, while the regular integration into the narrative of quotes from Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles further lends an otherworldly quality. Told in Zoe’s flat, affectless first person voice—one that is beautifully articulated—the novel has an increasingly ominous tone that invites anxious speculation about the future of the three young people in a soulless world. The one is both haunting and unforgettable. -- Booklist starred review Subtle callbacks to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles enhance the mood of eerie devastation for those who catch the references but don't detract for those who don't. Cheery commercial scripts, news transcripts, and other ephemera of this plastic society punctuate Zoë's narration, bearing witness to her grim environment, which, heartbreakingly, has no defeatable villain. A gorgeous and gut-wrenchingly familiar depiction of the entropic fragmentation of society. -- Kirkus Reviews starred review

My review: Laser focused text portrays a story that while sleight in length, is powerful and imaginative. Depicting an alternative reality of the near future dominated by mass corporate culture, where everything is sacrificed for the retail economy, the reader is drawn into a teenage girl's attempt to best the system. What happens to her and how she finds her way to her own future, rather than accepting the one that is predetermined makes for compelling reading. There is much here for lively discussion.

Blythe Woolston As a child, I was born in Montana. My dad was a logger and my mother worked as a cook. They tell me that I was a difficult baby: slow to talk, indifferent to affection, and attractive to rattlesnakes. Maybe that was true, but I talk way too much now and haven’t seen a rattlesnake for several years. As an adult. I was the first person in my family to go to university; I really had no choice because I was a book-loving day-dreamer who was unable to do useful stuff like cutting down trees. Even though I always liked to read, writing books was never my goal. I worked in libraries, taught school, and wrote indexes for books about history and science. In fact, I only started writing books because I wanted something to read one day, but I didn’t have a book like the one I wanted to read. As it turns out, writing fiction is very much like reading – at least the way I do it, which is without an outline or any idea how things will end. As a writer, I’m not picky about where and when I write. If I were, I’d never get anything done. My life is very chaotic– or at least unpredictable. MARTians Blythe Woolston Candlewick Press 9780763677565 Cloth $16.99 Pub Date: 10/13/2015

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Paper Zoo by Oscar Sabini

Description:

This ingenious and charming activity book makes it possible for anybody, ages three and up, to create colorful animal collages. Young artists tear apart decorated sheets of patterned paper, either their own or those found in the back of the book, paste them onto blank cards, also provided, and then slip them into the book's cleverly designed paper pockets with eight different animal-shaped windows, including a roaring lion, a splashing hippo, a colorful toucan, a trumpeting elephant, a snapping crocodile, a naughty monkey, a dashing bear, and a group portrait!

My impression: What fun! I don't think I've ever seen a book quite like this. An all-in-one collage tutorial with guaranteed results. Once again, a book that is consumed, and might cause challenges in the classroom or library, but a great inspiration for imaginative, creative, visual, tactile play.

More from Princeton Architectural Press: Sabini's inspirational collage illustrations, shown on each spread of the book, are fun to look at in their own right and serve as inspiration for combining shapes and colors. Collage illustrations, such as the work by Eric Carle and Lauren Child, continue to be popular with children, who respond well to the style and also enjoy making collage pictures themselves. The approach of Paper Zoo is innovative, and the bold, colorful collages it makes are instantly gratifying. Unlike most children's activity books, Paper Zoo can be used over and over to create characterful new animals with different colored papers.

A look inside “Paper Zoo,” an activity book by Oscar Sabini from Princeton Architectural Press on Vimeo.

With no words at all, Italian illustrator Oscar Sabini teaches you how to create a colourful and crazily cute collage of a toucan -- from the Guardian Click on the image for the entire article online:

Would you like to make a collage of a beautiful toucan? Italian illustrator Oscar Sabini teaches you how in this step-by-step guide, using no words at all! The pictures tell you all you need to know.

Oscar Sabini Children's book illustrator and paper collagist. Organizes creative workshops for children and adults. Lives and works in Venice, Italy. On Instagram, Facebook, tumblr, blog. Paper Zoo Oscar Sabini Princeton Architectural Press/ Chronicle Books 9781616894399 Cloth $19.95

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Keep UNC Student Stores University owned and operated

We are petitioning Chancellor Folt and the UNC administration to request that UNC Student Stores remain a University operated campus store, accountable directly and only to the University, and managed and staffed by University state employees. UNC Student Stores is completely self-sustaining and has been serving the campus community for 100 years. It does not receive any University or state funding. All staff and student salaries, related benefits, University fees, building improvements, occupancy expenses, and debt maintenance are paid from store revenues. UNC Student Stores donates all residual funds to UNC academic scholarships and has established a permanent endowment. To date, the store has donated over $27 million to student scholarships. If Student Stores is leased to a corporate bookseller, the campus and its students risk losing the excellent customer service and specialized services that only a campus operated store can offer. UNC Student Stores supports and provides a variety of merchandise and services to the campus, not because of their impact on the bottom line, but because they are important to the students, faculty, and the University. Store services that are directly at risk if the store is outsourced:

The Bull’s Head Bookshop, which has been serving the campus for 90 years

The Campus Computing Initiative (CCI) fulfillment program, managed and distributed by the Student Stores Tech Shop

Student Stores Printing, which recently replaced Xerox as the printing services resource for all of campus

Student Charge Accounts, allowing students to pay for course materials and charge them to their University "cashier" accounts

The Student Stores USPS contract station, the only US Post Office on campus

The Daily Grind Espresso Cafe, who has contracted with Student Stores for over twenty two years

Most importantly, we believe that privatizing the campus store operation will result in the loss of a great and historic campus institution, a loss of service and connection to the campus community, and the loss of the dedication and knowledge of forty nine state employees, who collectively have over 640 years of state service. The primary mission of UNC Student Stores is to serve the students at Carolina. The mission of a private corporation is to serve the company and its bottom line. A private corporation is always going to act in its own best interests. Student Stores has always, and will always, put students and the University first. Sign the petition at Change.org.

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More Russia . . .

As a follow-up to my blog post of Tuesday about M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, I offer books below with a nod to all things Russian.

Inside the Rainbow reprints for the first time in English a unique compendium of Soviet-era picture books from the 1920s and 1930s--a high point in the history of children's literature. In the dark and dangerous world of revolutionary Petrograd, some of the greatest Russian poets and artists of the century came together to create a new kind of book for children, one that reflected the endless possibilities of a brave new world. Managing for a time to escape the scourge of state censorship, these books became a haven for learning, poetic irony, burlesque, and laughter. Showcasing more than three hundred brilliant examples from this golden age of illustration and design, Inside the Rainbow also includes translated poems, stories, and key texts by those who bore witness to the Russian revolution.

Introduction by Philip Pullman, a giant in young adult literature known for the His Dark Materials trilogy, which includes the bestseller The Golden Compass

Inside the Rainbow is an extraordinary compilation, a treasure-house, a monument to the free imagination and to a brief time when the avant garde and the playful were one and the same." --The Guardian

The early Soviet period was a miraculously rich time for children's books and their illustration . . . a glimpse into that astonishing world. -- The Guardian

What’s most striking about these vibrant, colorful, exuberant images and verses, however, is their stark contrast to the cultural context in which they were born — alongside them we find grim photographs of desolate little faces in shabby schoolrooms, the faces of a generation that would be soon engulfed by communism’s dark descend. And yet these children’s books, Pullman marvels, emanate “a lovely primary-colored geometrical wonderland-light sparkling with every conceivable kind of wit and brilliance and fantasy and fun” — a light at once heartening as a glimmer of generational hope and bittersweet against the historical backdrop of the oppressive regime that would eventually extinguish it as communism sought to purge the collective conscience of whimsy and imaginative sentimentality. -- an excerpt from Brainpickings review which can be read in its entiriety here.

A picture book biography of Anna Pavlova, a young Russian girl who overcame adversity to become the most famous ballerina of all time. See my full blog post and review here.

Two girls switch identities while colliding with Baba Yaga and the Firebird in Czarist Russia. An ambitious, Scheherazade-ian novel, rather like a nesting-doll set of stories, that succeeds in capturing some of the complexities of both Russia and life itself. -- from the Kirkus review

I found Egg & Spoon to be a richly woven fable that was thoroughly enjoyable on many levels. The language was exquisite, the storytelling expert, with echoes of history, faraway lands, magical creatures, and folk legends balanced against the realities of human experience. See my blog post from 2014 here. A nonfiction picture book that reveals how The Nutcracker, the famous Russian ballet by Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, became a holiday tradition in the United States. My full blog post is here.

Set at the crossroads of Turkish, Persian and Russian cultures under the red flag of Communism in the late 1970s, The Orphan Sky reveals one woman’s struggle to reconcile her ideals with the corrupt world around her, and to decide whether to betray her country or her heart. Leila is a young classical pianist who dreams of winning international competitions and bringing awards to her beloved country Azerbaijan. She is also a proud daughter of the Communist Party. When she receives an assignment from her communist mentor to spy on a music shop suspected of traitorous Western influences, she does it eagerly, determined to prove her worth to the Party. But Leila didn’t anticipate the complications of meeting Tahir, the rebellious painter who owns the music shop. His jazz recordings, abstract art, and subversive political opinions crack open the veneer of the world she’s been living in. Just when she begins to fall in love with both the West and Tahir, her comrades force her to make an impossible choice. See my complete blog post here.

What are your reading recommendations? Leave your suggested titles in the comments below.

Inside the Rainbow, Russian Children's Literature 1920-35: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times Julian Rothenstein and Olga Budashevskaya Princeton Architectural Press 9781616893781 Hardcover $35 Swan: The Life and Times of Anna Pavlova Laurel Snyder and Julie Morstad Chronicle Books August 2015 9781452118901 Cloth $17.99 Egg & Spoon Gregory Maguire 9780763672201 Candlewick Press Cloth $17.99 The Nutcracker Comes to America: How Three Ballet-Loving Brothers Created a Holiday Tradition Chris Barton and Cathy Gendron Millbrook Press/Lerner Publishing Group 9781467721516 Cloth $19.99 Pub Date: 9/1/2015 The Orphan Sky Ella Leya Sourcebooks 9781402298653 Paper $14.99

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Hungry Tomato: Real-Life Monsters Series

New Hungry Tomato™ Imprint from Lerner Publishing Group Showcases High-Interest Nonfiction Series

New Hungry Tomato™ Imprint from Lerner Publishing Group Showcases High-Interest Nonfiction Series Lerner Publishing Group is pleased to introduce Hungry Tomato™ as its newest addition to its stable of imprints. Hungry Tomato™ is Lerner’s 14th imprint and the first dedicated to high-interest nonfiction series with titles that will inform and enthrall middle-grade readers. Each book will be available in library binding and in trade paperback. Hungry Tomato™ titles incorporate the most up-to-date scientific and historical research to bring exciting places, times, and events to life. Experienced and award-winning authors and artists from around the world use cutting-edge design techniques to create attention-grabbing titles that offer lively windows into science, history, and more. Written at a fifth-grade reading level, these high-interest books will engage, inspire, and educate. Seven new series with four books each will be available in bookstores and libraries this fall in both paperback and library bound formats. The topics span from tricky puzzles in Brain Benders to frightening animals in Real-Life Monsters to engaging stats in Infographic Top 10s. All readers are sure to find a series that keeps them turning the pages! -- Reuters, August 20, 2015

Description:

They're creepy, ugly, and dangerous...and they also happen to be real. Get an up-close-and-personal look at some of nature's most monstrous creatures from around the world. Find out where they live, what they do, and what might happen if you run into them! Readers will be able to compare and contrast the traits of various animals and distinguish what makes each one seem so frightening.

In today's post I'm featuring the Real-Life Monsters series, one of the new series from the just launched Hungry Tomato Imprint from Lerner Publishing. These paperbacks are dynamic nonfiction books filled with attention-grabbing photography and fascinating facts. Readers are sure to learn something new, with each book as interesting as the next.

"In one of four titles launching the Real-Life Monsters series, Rake rates 10 ocean-dwelling animals with extreme characteristics according to size, power, strength, aggression, and deadliness. In last place, the lowly blobfish earns only six points ('The blobfish's saggy, droopy flesh means it doesn’t have much muscle'), while the fabulously named 'sarcastic fringehead' (after the Greek word sarkasmos) transforms from a mild-looking fish into a viperlike horror, earning 10 points for aggression alone. Photographs of each animal fill the pages, augmented with occasional diagrams—readers won't soon forget the terrifying, gaping jaws of creatures like the anglerfish and goblin shark." — Publishers Weekly

"Ten of nature's little horrors, presented in a gallery of close-up photo portraits with all-too-detailed commentary. From the evocatively named tongue-eating louse to the green-banded broodsac, which moves between hosts by crawling up inside a snail's eyestalk to mimic a caterpillar so that a bird will eat it, these 'tiny terrors and mini-monsters' are well-chosen to give even the most hardened browsers the heebie-jeebies. Mendez's dramatic photorealistic portraits and more schematic views of each parasite or predator in action join a selection of close-up stock photos, and Rake describes behaviors or symptoms with indecent relish. 'One [Indian red scorpion] sting can cause humans excruciating pain, vomiting, breathlessness, convulsions, and sometimes major heart problems. Oh, and if that isn't enough, it can also turn a victim's skin blue and make them froth at the mouth with pink, slimy mucus.' The co-published Creatures of the Deep offers like delights for 10 sea creatures, from the goblin shark to the blobfish and the sarcastic fringehead (yes, really!). Each volume closes with a summary 'Rogues' Gallery' and further notes on selected entries. Browsers' delights, but definitely not for the squeamish." — Kirkus Reviews

Creatures of the Deep Matthew Rake and Simon Mendez Lerner Publishing Group 9781467776431 Paper $7.99 Pub Date: 11/1/2015 Creatures of the Rain Forest 9781467776448 Creepy, Crawly Creatures 9781467776424 Scaly, Slippery Creatures 9781467776455