Senor Parrot's Perch

I have the conversation a lot with friends, especially moms, who can’t find books that their boys like too much. These are boys who like to read, and eat their books whole when they find one palatable. It seems they are very hard to find in any great quantity, unlike the seemingly infinite stream of princess girl and friendship girl clones. The difficulty increases as they age.

Yesterday, I actually recommend (more…)

Coffee remains my last principle addiction, having left several others behind as I grew older. I found this passage in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The House of the Seven Gables”, chapter 7. Hawthorne couldn’t have described the brightening qualities of that potent elixir better:

In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance of the yet untasted coffee. He quaffed it eagerly. The subtle essence acted on him like a charmed draught, and caused the opaque substance of his animal being to grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than hitherto.

“More, more!” he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to escape him. “This is what I need! Give me more!”

Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance that took note of what it rested on.

Ah, yes! I love my coffee. (more…)

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, a new young adult novel by Jessica Day George, is a fun book to read. A richly imaginative re-interpretation of an old Norwegian folk tale, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow centers upon a girl, who, through her kind heart, wits, personal sacrifice, devotion and courage, struggles to solve the deep mysteries that have ensnared those she loves most. I admit that I read this mostly out of curiosity, having received an advanced reader’s copy from the publisher. Generally, I avoid this sort of girl’s book, but I found myself very pleased and I recommend it. (more…)

The recent spectacular art heists of paintings by Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Degas and Picasso from collections in Switzerland reminded me of a great kid’s book from a few years ago. Chasing Vermeer, by Blue Balliet, was an great, fun read. Set in Chicago, two young school kids solve the mystery of the theft of a painting by Dutch painter Vermeer that disappeared as it was travelling en route to a Chicago museum. Beside being a fun book full of puzzles, dreams, and codes, the book is a nice introduction for kids to the appreciation of great art. If you haven’t read it, or you know a kid who hasn’t, use the news about art heists in Zurich as bait for this great book.

Here is a link to a Wall Street Journal’s story which also has a nice slide show of the four paintings stolen the Emil George Buhrle Collection in Zurich.

Here is some information about Blue Balliet and her books, including Chasing Vermeer.

Nancy Pearl was interviewing Father/Son writing team Arthur and Alex Dorros on her Book Lust podcast where they talked about their new book Numero Uno. Numero Uno is the tale of two men, Hercules and Socrates, who find themselves in an argument over what is most important: the brawn of Hercules or the brains of Socrates.

The villagers, tired of the continuous argument, devise a clever contest to settle the question of who is n�mero uno once and for all, and the results surprise everyone.

The discussion about this story really caught my interest, Especially since it first took form as a 6th grade writing assignment for Alex. His father, Athur, an established children’s author and illustrator, recognized the excellence of the story and they pursued the published version together.

As I was listening, I thought “Who is this Arthur Dorros?”, not recognizing the name. I found his website and saw that he was the author of When The Pigs Took Over”, a very entertaining tale of two brothers, one of whom always thought more was better. I highly recommend it. Now I’m going looking for Numero Uno, as well.

It’s busy around here. It seems that there is no time for fun anymore. I still read, but only at times when I can, when I really should be sleeping. I just finished Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Yeah, I’m racing right through that series. I want to be ready when the Deathly Hallows comes out. Truth is, it was looking at my daughter’s copy of The Deathly Hallows that spurred me to reading them again.

Last night I started two much smaller books that I picked up at the Midwest Booksellers Association trade show. Both are from Mackinac Island Press. The first is The Adventures of Pachelot: Last Voyage of the Griffon, by Wendy Caszatt-Allen (ISBN-13: 978-1934133088). Pachelot is a dog, quite the talented one, who finds she is able to talk with certain people. Incongruously, she is an Australian Shepherd in North America during the days of the French Explorer LaSalle sometime before 1700. So far, at two chapters in, I give this one a strong recommendation for any boy or girl just beyond the first-chapter book phase. If your kid is reading Nate the Great or Cam Jansen with no problem, hand them this one next.

The second is Secret Sabertooth, the third in the PaleoJoe’s Dinosaur Detective Club series, also by Wendy Caszatt-Allen, along with Joseph Kchodl, the real-live PaleoJoe (ISBN-13: 978-1934133101). I’m one chapter into this, and its got me. But first I had to snatch it back from my daughter, who snagged it the moment she saw it, since she had liked the first, The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue, so much. In chapter one, Dakota has a crazy nightmare that he is plummeting through the air to the ground after sky diving with his backpack instead of his parachute. The PaleoJoe series is very fun, smart, and something to look for. My thoughts on the first one are here and here.

I expect both of these books to be well worth the time. I’ll say more about them when I’m done.

I’ve also been reading randomly from Meticulous Attachment, a book of poems by Mary Logue which won Honorable Mention last year from the Midwest Booksellers Association. It was a book I picked it up at the trade show last year, and inexplicably put away in a box. Late the summer I was cleaning up and opened the box, found this, along with many other excellent books, and began reading it. It is very good. I have it sitting on top of a pile on my desk where I can grab it and read and re-read her poems. Go out and find it. This year I picked up two more books by Mary, both detective novels. They’re upstairs, so I don’t have the names handy. One she co-wrote with her partner Pete Hautman, author of Rash, a sort of distopic view of our risk averse society. I met them both briefly at the trade show, where they were signing books. Good fun and nice folks.

Everything else is programming. I don’t really have anything to recommend here, though the books I’m working with are generally good and helpful. You’d think that I’d get my website in shape, but I’m working on too many things at once. My wife and I are still working on establishing our store, and I’m doing much of it myself. I’ve broken down and decided that I’ll have the actual site done by professionals, but I still have much to do myself. Along the way, I’ve improved my skills with Dreamweaver, CSS, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks, along with SQL, Apache, PHP and MySQl, but all my work is still sitting safely on my home server. And my desks, both at home and at work, are piled with software manuals. Senor Parrot remains ignored for now, along with my pile of books.

Jan Brett’s new book, The Three Snow Bears (Penguin Young Readers Group, ISBN-13: 9780399247927) is bound to please her fans, new and old. This story is a new twist on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and set in the frozen north. The young Inuit girl, Aloo-ki , is searching for her lost sled dogs when she comes across the empty igloo of the three snow bears. This is a perfect wintry-tale for snuggling and reading with a young child.

Every fan of Brett’s will recognize her book immediately. If you’re not a fan yet, you will be soon after opening it up. The illustrations are classic Brett. Each page illustrates the main story and the side pictures animate the back. This signature formula of Brett’s is a wonderful invention for adding detail that excites a child’s imagination and stimulates their own story-telling abilities, so important when they learn to read.

Here are some more pictures from the book.

What’s your favorite by Jan Brett? Mine is her illustrated version of Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussycat.

PaleoJoe is Joe Kchodl, a real-life paleontologist and author of the Dinosaur Detective Series. I wrote about the first of these books, The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue,�just the other day. PaleoJoe has his own website�where you can find out more about�his other books,�or even buy trilobite fossils.�

I liked this one: A Pictorial Guide to North American Trilobites which

“… provides basic information the beginning enthusiast needs to start collecting and identifying Trilobites. It also serves as an excellent reference guide to these wonderful creatures.”

On the night of July 3, in a heavy rain, I was in a two-car/one semi wreck on Interstate 90, just east of Madison. The cause? A single sheet of cardboard, carried by the water running along the side of the road, blocked a storm sewer inlet, flooding the east-bound lanes of the interstate. I lost control, the car behind me managed to keep from hitting me, until the semi behind her smashed into her car and drove it into mine.
Well, that got me thinking. Literature is full of stories where weather is behind scores of wrecks and tragedies.

Two of my favorites are The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger and The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin are two of my favorites. Both are non-fictional accounts of real events that still reverberate today in the lives of many people. Both books have this in common: solid and detailed research, and moving depictions of the lives of the people swept up into the events.
The Perfect Storm tells the tale of the men aboard the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing vessel, that was caught in the killer storm off the coasts of New England and Canada. The Children’s Blizzard is the story of the late wave of prairie settlers isolated in the harsh extremes of the northern Great Plains, caught in the worst blizzard in memory.

The events of weather in themselves can be fascinating, but what makes these books excel is their clear explanation of the catastrophic impact weather has on our lives. It is the struggle real people, brought to vivid life in the pages of these books, against the incredible power and capriciousness of changes in the weather and their environment as they seek their livelihood and fortunes.

Both are excellent reads for older kids. For myself, I’m guessing that I would have enjoyed them as early as the age of 13. I would enjoy them at the age of 93, as well. Look for them in your library or bookstore and get ready to lose yourself in another place and time.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a new book by J.R.R. Tolkien will be released next week. J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkein has been diligently piecing together notes and manuscripts of an unfinished book, titled The Children of Hurin, for the past 30 years, and its set for release next Tuesday, April 17, 2007. In the process he has apparently been able to deliver a book that is in fact completely written by his father, with the exception of minor tweaks on grammar, such as verb tense. This is great news for those of us that can’t get enough of Tolkien.

Publisher Houghton Mifflin has more information on its web site.