To get us all in the appropriate mood for the 4th annual Find Waldo Local kickoff tomorrow, the clever booksellers at the Book Nook in Brenham TX put together an unboxing video of their Find Waldo Local kit when it arrived.
Watch it and be inspired!
The New York Times Book Review has posted a rave review for the new Neil Gaiman book, Hansel & Gretel from TOON Books. And it may well be the best reviewed Gaiman book, from a man who regularly earns rave reviews.
"Written with a devastating spareness by Neil Gaiman and fearsomely illustrated in shades of black by Lorenzo Mattotti, the newest version of “Hansel and Gretel” astonishes from start to finish. It doesn’t hurt that the book itself is a gorgeous and carefully made object, with a black floral motif on its pages’ decorated borders, along with red drop caps and tall, round gray page numbers. (Published by Toon Books, the New Yorker art director Françoise Mouly’s venture into richly illustrated books for children, it comes in two formats, with an oversize one that includes an afterword about the evolution of the tale.)"
“Gaiman, who has won every award a writer with a taste for the dark and fantastical could possibly win (Hugo, Nebula, Newbery), ends on an unequivocal high note, reminding us that horror should always be wielded along with some small possibility of brightness. ”
Standard edition:
Hansel & Gretel by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti | TOON Books / Candlewick Press | 9781935179627 | $16.95 | Cloth
Deluxe edition:
Hansel & Gretel - Deluxe by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti | TOON Books / Candlewick Press | 9781935179658 | $29.95 | Cloth
Candlewick Press announced yesterday that Jon Klassen's two hat-related picture books with – I Want My Hat Back and This Is Not My Hat – have a combined worldwide in-print total of 1 million copies.
As reported in Publishers Weekly, Jon Klassen was grateful to everyone involved:
Klassen is quick to share the credit for his books’ success – and his gratitude. “A huge heartfelt, humbled, amazed, deeply-grateful, crazily-lucky, kind-of-suspicious-it’s-all-a-trick, but-hoping-never-to-find-out thank you to everybody who helped with the making of, the editing of, the distribution of, the promotion of, the displaying of, the talking-about of, the recommending of, the selling of, the buying of, and the sitting-down-and-reading of these books,” he told PW. “I wish we could all go bowling or something together.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in PW today, an interview with W.W. Norton editor Starling Lawrence about the origins of Michael Lewis’ latest nationwide bestseller, Flash Boys – what PW called the country's hottest adult title – as well as the Wall Street reaction to the book’s publication.
Whether you're new to Timmy Failure's ongoing career as Greatest Grade School Detective of All Time, or you're a long-standing fan, you'll want to know that Stephan Pastis always starts drawing Timmy with a small U and then two O's. Watch and learn!
And you can keep on watching – there are also videos for how to draw Total (Timmy's polar bear sidekick), Rollo Tookus, Molly Moskins, and arch-rival Corinna Corinna.
Timmy Failure #2 – Now Look What You've Done came out in February and has been a regular on national and regional bestseller lists ever since.
Timmy Failure #3 – We Meet Again is due out on October 28, 2014.
There was a great profile of Stephan Pastis in PW back in February.
A Monster Calls
by Patrick Ness, inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd
illustrated by Jim Kay
Candlewick Press | 9780763655594 | $16.99 | Sept 2011
I wrote about A Monster Calls in a preview post on my3books.com earlier this year, shortly after I first read it. It's still one of the fall books that comes back to me most powerfully when I tell others about it:
The two authors have created a novel that shares the hallmarks of both their best works: the story goes in directions that are simply not anticipated, and the tidal pull of emotion that hits the reader by the end is out of all proportion to what should be possible.
From the Candlewick Press web site:
At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting – he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd-- whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself-- Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.
