123oleary

The Ceeb

2009-12-16T21:16:00.006-05:00

UPDATE: You can listen to the archived CBC Montreal Radio Noon show from today here - click on Wednesday, December 16th and then the book chat starts at about 29:30. Not nearly enough time to talk about all the things I wanted to talk about.

I mentioned the Dame Edna reading of Ian Falconer's Olivia stories. Here's a little teaser....

Thanks to Betsy at Fuse #8 and the lovely ladies of We Heart Books for the heads-up on this one.

Shopping List

2009-12-15T20:48:00.009-05:00

Will be on CBC Montreal's Radio Noon program tomorrow (Wednesday) to talk about children's books and recommendations for holiday shopping. I'm making a list and checking it twice.

Picture Book
Perfect Snow
by Barbara Reid
Scholastic

Audiobook
The Olivia Audio Collection
by Ian Falconer, read by Dame Edna Everage
Simon & Schuster

Pop-up Book
The Incredible Book Eating Boy
by Oliver Jeffers
Harper Collins

Graphic novel
The Chronicles of Arthur: Sword of Fire and Ice
by John Matthews, illustrated by Mike Collins
Aladdin

Steampunk novel
The Hunchback Assignments
by Arthur Slade
Harper Trophy

Fantasy novel
Smudge's Mark
by Claudia Osmond
Simply Read Books

Young adult novel suitable for adults of all ages
The Bride's Farewell
by Meg Rosoff
Random House

Grimble

2009-12-09T20:38:00.002-05:00

We have been reading Grimble and Grimble at Christmas, Clement Freud's outrageously funny stories about a boy named Grimble (just Grimble as his parents didn't think to give him another name), who is "about ten," (his age is not quite certain as his parents can't remember when his birthday might be.) In the first story his parents have gone off to Peru and left him to fend for himself with an oven full of sandwiches and a fridge full of tea. Not only is this great fun to read aloud to one's young offspring, it also creates the illusion that by comparison you are remarkably competent in the parenting department.

In Grimble at Christmas, the poor boy takes on the responsibility for Christmas when he fears his parents will prove inadequate to the task:

That night when Grimble was in bed he started to think about Christmas very seriously. Christmas was a holiday and a time for eating interesting food and giving presents and receiving presents--someone had told him it was more blessed to do one than the other, but he kept forgetting which. Now the reason why children expected their parents to do things for them at Christmas was because parents are better organized than children and parents have more money than children.

In Grimble's case this was only partly true. His parents were not nearly as well organized as he; they kept forgetting to get up in the morning and sometimes forgot to go to bed for days on end and they never knew what time it was.

We were very sorry to read of the death of Clement Freud and realize there will never be any more Grimble.

The original Grimble is very difficult to come by, so may I humbly suggest that you hasten over to McSweeney's where you can purchase a copy of Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things...That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cellphones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn't Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out which includes the original story.

You can read Neil Gaiman on Clement Freud and Grimble here.

Elephants

2009-12-03T21:52:00.010-05:00

Julie Morstad and her brother, Paul Morstad, teamed up for the fantastic animation on this video for Neko Case's "People Got a Lotta Nerve."

I especially love the elephants, maybe because I've just finished reading Kate Di Camillo's The Magician's Elephant which was almost inexpressibly lovely.

And if you don't believe me, you can go and read an excerpt here. I used the opening of this novel as an example for my YA students the other day because it so beautifully and economically does exactly what it needs to do. Illustrations for the book are courtesy of Yoko Tanaka and are very lovely, but I would really like to see Julie and Kate Di Camillo work together one of these days.

You can read Adam Gopnik's fine appraisal of the novel here.

Dickens

2009-12-01T20:16:00.005-05:00

We're going to see A Christmas Carol this weekend. The play this time ... a mercifully Jim-Carey-free zone.

I've just come across this article in the NY Times where you can peruse the actual Dickens manuscript.

There's something weirdly fascinating about seeing the handwriting and the amendations - like seeing a mind at work. And speaking of Dickens, this looks promising, and the first part includes that Micawberism well worth keeping in mind this time of year: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

More Alice

2009-11-27T20:15:00.006-05:00

I checked on the release date for Alice Through the Looking Glass (Simply Read Books) and it is April. That seems like too long to wait, but I'm pretty sure it will be worth it.
Meanwhile, there's this:

UPDATE: Yes, there will be a poster to tie-in with Alice Through the Looking Glass (Simply Read Books). Huzzah! Of course, if you're waiting on the new book, you'll want to be sure you've got a copy of Simply Read's beautiful Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, also illustrated by Iassen Ghiuselev.

How can you resist?

Paper Cuts

2009-11-23T20:59:00.007-05:00

Young son and I are going to a paper cut-out animation workshop at the NFB this weekend. Kind of exciting.

I couldn't quite picture what paper cut-out animation could mean. Think Terry Gilliam, said young son.

And then I stumbled on this trailer for There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (Chronicle Books) illustrated by Jeremy Holmes.

And here's the very cool looking book.

Passing the Torch

2009-11-22T07:01:00.000-05:00

When We Were Small
By Euan O’Leary

Henry is a boy who is always curious about his mother and father's past. One day Henry asked, “tell me what life was like when YOU were small.”

“Well,” said his father, “when we were small, everything was in black and white, including Dalmatians, which never got rid of the power so they could be red and green.”

“Oh, yes!” said his mother, “Now I remember! When we were small, we had to play dodge-chicken at school, for balls hadn’t been invented.”

“Right,” said his father, “NOW I remember! When we were small we couldn’t watch television. Instead we had to watch paintings. I must admit, the programs got a bit boring now and then.”

“AH!” said his mother, “How did I forget? When we were small we spent every night dreaming of something we never knew would be so good. And now we have it.” Said his mother looking down at Henry.

“When we were small,” said his father, “We lived in a county that was missing from the world. We still live there, but it's not missing since we had you.”

“And when we got big,” added his mother, “we were still small enough to make our parents happy as a fish in water.”

Beautiful Things (Alice)

2009-11-18T20:19:00.008-05:00

Was talking to a student today about the Alice Through The Looking Glass coming soon from Simply Read Books and now see Steph Aulenback talking about beautiful Alice images over at Crooked House.

So, I ask you. Is this not the most beautiful thing? (Note: click through for full effect.)

Through The Looking Glass as imagined by the brilliant Iassen Ghiuselev (dear lord! spelled that right on my first try!).

I really, really need a poster of this!

O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!

2009-11-15T18:08:00.007-05:00

Robert Louis Stevenson is 159 years old. Or he would be, were he still with us.

Here he is, about 154 years ago:

And there is now a fabulous online archive of his work (ta to Maud for the link). You can read any number of things here including Child's Garden of Verse right here. You can actually flip the lovely, lovely pages one by one. There must be more beautiful editions of this book out there than practically any other.

My son used to go to sleep at night to this CD in which Ted Jacobs set some of the poems from Child's Garden of Verse to music. (In our house "The Lamplighter" always ran "O'Leary light the lamps again.") You can listen to the songs by scrolling down the Amazon page. I dare you to find a better bedtime album.

Henry on Facebook

2009-11-11T18:23:00.004-05:00

I'd kind of forgotten that I'd made a facebook page for Henry awhile back. Just had a little look at it and see that he has friends that I don't even know. There's something rather touching about this.

Younger son and I had a long discussion the other day about whether he would ever sell the rights to Henry to the Disney Corp. (not that they've been banging the door down). We agreed that it really wouldn't be worth it ... particularly if they painted him orange and made him wear a shirt with his name on it.

Roald Dahl to Philip Ardagh

2009-11-10T20:30:00.003-05:00

The Roald Dahl Funny Prize has gone to Philip Ardagh for his book Grubtown Tales. That was for the category of books for children ages seven to fourteen, while in the category of books for children six and under went to Sam Lloyd for his Mr Pusskins Best in Show.

My older son reviewed one of Ardagh's books for the Vancouver Sun a few years back (or at least helped me to review it) and we were both chuffed to meet Ardagh at a reading at the fabulous Kidsbooks ... I think he's one of the funnier people I've ever met and it's nice to see that publicly recognised and rewarded.

Gumby Does Dickens

2009-11-08T08:59:00.004-05:00

Lately, my son and I have been very interested in the subject of adaptation.
Here is one of the odder Christmas Carols we have stumbled across:

What the Dickens

2009-11-04T19:11:00.009-05:00

We want one of these:

And we are considering whether to go see the new film of The Christmas Carol and watching the Alastair Sim version while we consider.

We found the figure on the Archie McPhee site which boasts the slogan: "Slightly less disappointing than other companies." The Dickens figure comes with a quill pen and removable hat. He is also exactly the right size to go with the Christopher Eccleston Doctor Who figure and recreate "The Unquiet Dead" episode.

Update: We are now watching the episode of Doctor Who (favourite line by Dickens: "What the Shakespeare!") and bemoaning the fact that we can't get these figures shipped to Canada!

Of course it's scary

2009-11-03T14:46:00.003-05:00

A very good piece about how scary children's books should be by Sam Leith in the Guardian:

Fear in children's books is more open, more ambient. Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is a good example. It's unsettling rather than scary: it exists in its own world. The sound of it is spooky – those pregnant breaks that give its opening sentence the strangeness and gravity of poetry: "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind . . . and another . . . " And that's even before Max sails off to where the wild things are, to join their savage carnival. "We'll eat you up, we love you so . . . "

Like Sendak's even stranger In the Night Kitchen, which has a naked toddler flying an aeroplane made of cake-mix through a kitchen filled with demented Oliver Hardy lookalikes, the story is unsettling – but it's better described by the German word unheimlich, meaning unhomely. That makes a sort of sense. These stories are a way of leaving the safety of home for a world created by someone else's imagination, where you are under their control. Suddenly, your bedroom is a forest. Suddenly, you are in a savage carnival. Of course it's scary.

Cut and Paste (Old School)

2009-10-25T08:00:00.001-04:00

John McCrae

2009-10-25T07:46:00.001-04:00

Linda Granfield will be in Montreal this week, launching her new book Remembering John McCrae, Soldier Doctor Poet.

And for those of you not sure of who John McCrae is, here's a gentle reminder:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Tuesday October 27th at 4 pm
Babar en ville, 1235 Greene Avenue, 514-931-0606.
This event is suitable for ages 8 and up.

Scrambled Humpty Dumpty

2009-10-18T22:18:00.008-04:00

Oh, for the love of Old Mother Goose, do we really need such happily-ever-after endings for everything that it becomes necessary to have Humpty Dumpty end with all the King's men making "Humpty happy again?" Apparently somebody at the BBC thought so.

Here's a completely unreconstructed Humpty, courtesy of illustrator Rene Milot.

And here's a short story called "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds," by Neil Gaiman in which Humpty Dumpty is portrayed as a murder victim in sort of noir nursery fable.

Zombies 'r' Us

2009-10-18T11:26:00.000-04:00

Zombies are for boys and vampires are for girls. So says writer Charlie Higson in a recent Guardian piece. He writes:

Vampires are the undead of choice for girls, and zombies for boys. Vampires are cool, aloof, beautiful, brooding creatures of the night. Typical moody teenage boys, basically. Zombies are dumb, brutal, ugly and mindlessly violent. Which makes them also like typical teenage boys, I suppose.

Charlie Higson's new book The Enemy is out this month and has a very spiffy website where you can read an extract or even zombify yourself.

The book is just out and the press release makes me wish we were going to be in Toronto this coming weekend:

In Canada, Puffin Books will be celebrating the release of The Enemy at the Toronto Zombie Walk on October 24th in full zombie attire, with wound tattoo giveaways for the walkers. Be sure to visit us at 3:00 pm at Trinity Bellwoods Park bordered by Dundas St. and Gore Vale Ave.

Of course, here in Montreal we can see zombies walking the street any night of the week.

And in Victoria, my brother Graham McDonald is directing a zombie-ful version of Mary Shelley's novel: Frankenstein in Oblivion (adapted by Graham McDonald & Kirsti Mikoda) which opens next weekend. So we also wish we were going to be in Victoria.

In one of my favourite family photos, our older son is dressed as a zombie (as he was every Hallowe'en over a span of years), and is standing next to his great-grandmother who has her arm around him and is beaming like she couldn't possibly have been prouder of this horrible-looking creature. Such is love.

From Time to Time

2009-10-09T07:17:00.012-04:00

Looking forward to the new Julian Fellowes film From Time to Time, which stars young Alex Etel, a remarkable young actor who was shockingly good in the Cranford adapation.

The film is based on the novel The Chimneys of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston and was filmed in Dorset in a house that was once used to film a Tom Baker episode of Doctor Who. (Lately, all roads seem to lead to Doctor Who around here. That's what happens when you live with a little Whoovian.)

I wrote about Green Knowe here some time ago but forgot all about it until now. Must go and find the books as I do love a good ghost story. I'm also particularly interested in the process of adaptation right now as it is something I'm working on with my screenwriting students, and also has to do with a particular project I have in mind. There is an interesting article about the recent spate of adaptations of children's books here (with thanks to the ever informative Betsy Bird for the link.)

Meg Rosoff on Procrastination and Inspiration

2009-10-06T07:25:00.000-04:00

Quote of the day from Meg Rosoff:

I procrastinated about writing a book for about 35 years, always sure I’d never write one good enough. When I finally tried to write a novel, I was inspired by some really bad books I’d read, thinking, ‘at least I can do better than that’.

~From a piece on how children's writers got their start in the Times Online.

Can't wait to read the new book.

Max at Sea

2009-10-05T07:27:00.004-04:00

Missed this at the time, but the New Yorker has a short selection from the Dave Eggers novelisation of Where the Wild Things (written after his work on the screenplay). The story, "Max at Sea," is online here and you can also read an interview with Eggers here. Required reading for both my Children's Writing and my Screenwriting students.

Here's a sampling of what he has to say:

The weird thing is that working within an established story was actually kind of liberating. You know the beginning and middle and end, more or less, so there’s less pressure to figure all that out. So it was a matter of probing deeper into who Max is, what he wants, what his life is like at home and at school. And on the island, looking deeper into who the Wild Things are and what they want from Max, his life as their king, and why he leaves. From the beginning, though, Maurice was clear that he didn’t want the movie or the book to be timid adaptations. He wanted us to feel free to push and pull the original story in new directions.

And, oh my sweet heaven, take a look at this:

Eggers came up with the idea for this special edition, which unlike Margaret Wise Brown's original edition of The Fur Family uses artificial fur.

Typing Manually

2009-10-04T12:47:00.009-04:00

The youngest and most productive member of our writing family has just started using a manual typewriter, purchased at a church sale for the sum of five dollars. It is small and green and has the charming moniker of Hermes baby. Browsing around online for info on securing a new ribbon, I have learned that the typewriter used by Douglas Adams was an Hermes 8.

We've just received a copy of the Eoin Colfer sequel to the Hitchhiker series: And Another Thing (Penguin Canada) which is amusingly subtitled Part Six of Three of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and are looking forward to reading it.

We are also not impervious to the Doctor Who connection, given that Adams wrote for the series and that young son has aspirations in that direction. So it seems to have been an auspicious purchase. It's also funny to hear the sound of keys clacking in the house.

The Next Chapter

2009-10-03T20:06:00.002-04:00

Wearing one of my other hats, I was over chatting with Shelagh Rogers at CBC about biographies the other week. You can listen to the podcast version here.

Boy Meets Penguin

2009-10-03T09:57:00.005-04:00

This is just so lovely. Euan found it online this morning and showed it to me. He also pointed out that there is one Oliver Jeffers title which we don't have, and so obviously I have been delinquent in my duties as a parent.