Author: Loree Burns

TEAM MOON: HOW 400,000 PEOPLE LANDED APOLLO 11 ON THE MOON
By Catherine Thimmesh
Houghton Mifflin, 2006

Category: Middle grade Non-fiction

I was born in December 1969, about five months after Apollo 11 landed on the moon. By the time I was old enough to understand the gravity of the accomplishment (pun intended), much of the excitement and drama of the event had been lost to the routine nature of space travel. Space travel is never routine, of course, but it felt that way to me when I was growing up. As a result of this naiveté, the intensity of TEAM MOON took me by surprise. This book actually gave me goose bumps!

TEAM MOON is grounded by the 1961 challenge from President John F. Kennedy: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to earth.” Guiding readers through eight years of toil and discovery by more than four hundred thousand people (in addition to the three astronauts on the Apollo 11 flight, there were “the flight directors, controllers, planners, and engineers; the rocket designers and builders and technicians; the managers, supervisors, quality control and safety inspectors; the programmers, electricians, welders, seamstresses, gluers, painters, doctors, geologists, scientists, trainers, and navigators”), Catherine Thimmesh successfully re-creates the drama that surrounded one of humankind’s most incredible accomplishments. If you did not witness the landing—and this applies to a whole lot more people than just the middle grade readers the book is written for—TEAM MOON is the next best thing.

TEAM MOON has been nominated for a 2006 Cybil Award. You can peruse the other nominees in the Middle Grade & YA Nonfiction category here.

BUD, NOT BUDDY
By Chistopher Paul Curtis
Scholastic, 1999

Category: Middle-grade fiction

Occasionally I realize that there are piles and piles of fabulous children’s books in the world that I have not read yet. Take this list of 100 Best Children’s Books. I have only read sixty-five of them … and several of those were read more than twenty years ago! But I try not to let the idea of unread “best books” bother me. Instead, I focus on how cool it is that there are hundreds upon hundreds of powerful, meaningful, life-altering books out there just waiting for me to find them.

Which brings me to BUD, NOT BUDDY by Christopher Paul Curtis. The chidren’s literature world heaped praises on BUD, NOT BUDDY back in 2000, when it was awarded both a Newbery Medal and the Coretta Scott King Award. It has taken six years for the book to cross my path; now that it has it will forever be on my list of favorites.

I read BUD, NOT BUDDY out loud with my boys. They were intrigued from the very first chapter, when ten-year-old Bud Caldwell (don’t call him Buddy) is taken in by a foster family … a mean foster family. After enduring a pencil up his nose, false accusations of a bed-wetting habit, and a few scary hours locked in a shed, Bud runs away. Where he goes and how he manages to get there is a story of courage and spunk that we won’t soon forget.

I hope this book finds its way into your hands soon!

TRACKING TRASH
by Loree Griffin Burns
Houghton Mifflin, 2007

On Friday I got an f&g. For those who may not know (I didn’t until very recently) this term refers to a “folded and gathered” copy of the manuscript. TRACKING TRASH is now essentially in its final form … and it looks great!

I have two other bits of trashy news to share:

First, TRACKING TRASH will be featured by the Junior Library Guild as a 2007 selection. Junior Library Guild (JLG) editors review over 1,500 books each year, usually prior to publication, and choose 264 to recommend to their member schools and libraries. JLG selections span twelve reading levels; TRACKING TRASH will be featured in one of the non-fiction categories (either Elementary or Middle Grade). I am thrilled.

Second, I am currently planning my TRACKING TRASH book tour. I will be in various parts of Washington state between March 2 and March 10, 2007. In addition to the Beachcomber’s Fair in Ocean Shores (where I did a lot of the research for the book), I will be visiting schools, libraries and booksellers in the Seattle and Grays Harbor areas. I’ll post a full itinerary on my website when it is finalized. Meanwhile, I have several days still available for school visits … feel free to pass the word to educators and parents you may know in and around these areas. More information on my school visit presentations can be found here.

Ahhhh!

That is the sound of me screaming from beneath the pile of fabulous books that have been nominated for the2006 Children’s and YA Bloggers’ Literary Awards (otherwise known as the Cybils) in the Middle Grade and Young Adult Nonfiction category. I am one of five lucky members of the Nominating Committee; we get to whittle the thirty-seven nominated titles down to a list of five finalists. I’ve already blogged about some of the nominees, and with any luck I will be able to post more soon.

This week I have read:

TEAM MOON, by Catherine Thimmesh

SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING, by Carla Killough McClafferty

ESCAPE, by Sid Fleischman

EDWARD JENNER, by Ana Maria Rodriguez

ALL MADE UP, by Audrey D. Brashich

THE BUFFALO AND THE INDIANS, by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, Photos by William Munoz

ONE KINGDOM, by Deborah Noyes

It’s enough to keep a girl distracted from her work (finishing touches on a picture book biography and opening touches on a middle grade chapter book) and her turkey (poor Tom is not at all ready for his big day). What can I say? I am a book junkie. Can’t be helped.

What are you reading these days?

I GET WET
By Vicki Cobb
Illustrated by Julia Gorton
HarperCollins, 2002

Category: Picture book non-fiction

It has been raining in central New England all week. I am sick of being wet. And yet …

My daughter and I have been playing with water indoors all week. Why? Because we found Vickie Cobb’s I GET WET at the library and, well, we are hooked. I GET WET is not a book you cuddle up on the couch and read together. Rather, this is a book you refer to now and again while you are elbow deep with water experiments in the kitchen. We are talking hands-under-the-faucet, water-all-over-the-place, little-minds-expanding, play-while-you-learn fun. And it all starts with this 32-page picture book.

The activities in I GET WET center on helping kids to understand the properties of water that allow it to “wet” things. By filling cups, saucers and pans with water, they come to appreciate the flowing nature of water. By watching water drip slowly from a faucet, they begin to understand the concept of cohesion (it’s NEVER called that in the book, of course). By experimenting with wax paper and paper towels, they begin to wonder about how water interacts with other materials.

I love this book. And, joy of joys, it is one of a series … Vicki Cobb’s Science Play series also includes I FALL DOWN, I SEE MYSELF, and I FACE THE WIND.

Surely the sun will be back by the time we are done!?

Pull our your copy of Barbara McClintock’s ADÈLE AND SIMON. Turn to the spread that shows the children in the Louvre. Find the woman in the fancy yellow hat on the bottom left of the scene. Look closely at the top of her hat.

We have found the pesky yellow crayon at last!

Phew.

ADÈLE AND SIMON
By Barbara McClintock
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006

Category: Picture book

Okie, Dokie Artichokies … I need your help.

Barbara McClintock’s fabulous picture book ADÈLE AND SIMON was among the New York Times Best Illustrated Books of 2006. (The list was published in a special supplement on Sunday and can be viewed online here.) As you may recall, one of the Burns children received this book as a birthday gift about a month ago. There is a whole lot to love about this book, not the least of which is the seek-and-find pleasures throughout. In each double-page spread, Simon loses something—his drawing, his books, his scarf, his gloves, his hat, his CRAYONS, his knapsack, his coat, and his sweater—and the reader gets to find it. Delicious. But here’s the thing: we can’t find Simon’s yellow crayon.

Early on the entire family was in on the hunt, but after several lengthy scouring sessions, the kids gave up. I kept the book in my office and methodically scanned the Louvre spread a few times with a magnifying glass (I kid you not) looking for the pesky yellow crayon. Red, blue and black are easily found. Yellow? No dice. Can’t find it. It isn’t there.

Or is it?

Now that ADÈLE AND SIMON is in the limelight, I am searching with renewed energy. I have got to find that crayon! Do help me if you can. I have so many other things that I should be doing …

PS. A Fuse#8 Production posted a fabulous review of ADELE AND SIMON; check it out.

PS2. Okie, Dokie Artichokie is the name of a picture book by Grace Lin. We’ve loved it forever and the title phrase has become a favorite saying around here.

WRITING MAGIC, CREATING STORIES THAT FLY
By Gail Carson Levine
Collins, 2006

Category: Middle-grade non-fiction

Are you in elementary school or middle school or even high school? Do you like to write stories of your own? Would you like to hear some words of encouragement and wisdom from a successful children’s book writer with more than ten novels and a Newbery Honor Medal to her credit? Well, then, put a copy of Gail Carson Levine’s WRITING MAGIC on your wish list.

WRITING MAGIC is packed with lessons on basic writing skills: how to create vital characters, realistic dialogue, intriguing beginnings, satisfying endings, and compelling stories in between. It is also chockablock with advice on how to keep at your writing: “If someone says that your story is lousy or that you can’t write to save yourself, you must never, ever show your precious writing to that person again.” The pièce de résistance, in my opinion, are the writing prompts that close every chapter. Levine is a truly creative spirit and her writing prompts are simply irresistible. I don’t think it is possible to finish this book and not feel ready to fly. (And by fly, of course, I mean write truly fabulous fiction.)

WRITING MAGIC has been nominated for a 2007 CYBIL award. You can check out the other nominees in the Middle Grade & YA Nonfiction category here.

ISAAC NEWTON
By Kathleen Krull
Illustrated by Boris Kulikov
Viking, 2006

Category: Middle-grade non-fiction (biography)

This is the first book in Viking’s Giants of Science series that I have read, and I can tell you this: I will read the others. Kathleen Krull’s biography of Isaac Newton is well-written, interesting and accessible; if her treatments of Sigmund Freud and Leonardo Da Vinci are half as good then I don’t want to miss them.

Here is an example of the intriguing way Krull approaches biography. In the opening chapter she tells readers that the world during Newton’s time was a dramatic and wild place with kings “coming and going, getting beheaded, being run out of the country.” Newton, Krull assures us, “seemed to float above the fray. Up in his ivory tower at Cambridge University, he lived a quiet life. A life apart.” The reader is given a half-moment to absorb the idea that Isaac Newton may have been both brilliant AND boring before Krull adds: “Except when he was poking sharp objects into his eyes, throwing world-class tantrums, burning fires night and day in his secret laboratory, and making earth-shattering discoveries and refusing to tell anyone.”

ISAAC NEWTON has been nominated for a 2007 CYBIL award. You can check out the other nominees in the Middle Grade & YA Nonfiction category here.

ELSEWHERE
By Gabrielle Zevin
Bloomsbury, 2005

Category: young adult fiction

Late last week, just before my husband and I took off for a three day getaway to celebrate our eighteen years together(!), my friend Maia brought me this book. Knowing absolutely nothing about it, I stuck ELSEHWERE in my bag and brought it on the trip.

This is a novel that is fun to go into blind. If you’d like to give this a try, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER.

Gabrielle Zevin built her novel around the fictional wonderland Elsewhere. It is where we humans go when we die. In Elsewhere, people age backwards from the day they arrive (i.e. the day they die) to the day they are babies again … at which point they are bundled up and sent back to earth to be reborn. When fifteen year-old Liz, who has been struck and killed by a taxi cab, arrives in Elswhere, she is in serious denial. She is met on the dock by her grandmother, her only dead relative, who died before Liz was born. It is in Elsewhere—under the careful watch of her thirty-six year old grandmother and while aging backwards—that Liz comes of age. Talk about an interesting twist on an age-old theme!

Although I enjoyed the premise of ELSEWHERE, I did find myself craving time and depth in several places. As a reader, I thought the story often moved too quickly, without much time for exploring the emotions of the characters. I mean, some of the situations they find themselves in are incredible; I wanted them to share what they were feeling! For the most part, they didn’t. Be that as it may, this is a book that gets you thinking. For example, in the ELSEWHERE reality, my mother, who died when she was only twenty-four, is already back on earth as a seven year-old. Cool.