It's history for some, heritage for others

Welcome to the month of February.  Doesn't feel like February, does it?  Today Jamie, a fellow children's bookseller, made the comment that the weather has been too hormonal lately.  I mean, 20 to 60F?  That's so crazy!  Good thing weather does not effect celebrations, well at least not this one: welcome to Black History Month!

If you know my taste, you will now that with the exception of Christmas, I am not a fan of holiday books.  They're usually too cutesy or televised or just horribly written.  But, over the years, I am finding that books depicting Black History are quite different.  They are all unique and many of them read as true literature.  It is clear that these authors and illustrators take a great deal of pride in their work.  There is also a great variety.  From slavery to civil rights to strong world leaders (and this is just covering our non-fiction section, not fictional novels) there's so much to learn!

Our Children Can Soar   by Michelle Cook

Though it may seem simple on the surface, this picturebook covers more than a list of important names, "Jackie [Robinson] scored... so Rosa [Parks] could sit.  Rosa sat...so Ruby [Bridges] could learn."

Without one person, such as the first African American baseball player changing the world, who's to say that Rosa Parks wouldn't have had the courage or inspiration to change the world?  Or to inspire a little girl who wanted to go to school.  History does not document a relationship between these people specifically, but it is the theme they share that inspires others to fight segregation and live freely. (ages 4-8)




Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave  by Laban Carrick Hill -- Caldecott Honor 2011, Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award 2011

"To us / it is just dirt, /the ground we walk on... / But to Dave / it was clay, / the plain and basic stuff / upon which he formed a life / as a slave nearly 200 years ago."  Dave, though he was a slave, had the education and knowledge to write brilliant poetry and skillfully create amazing pottery.  In Hill's own words, "Dave created his art in spite of a society that not only discouraged his brilliance but threatened him with death for expressing it."   (ages 4-8)



Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans  by Kadir Nelson -- Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor 2012

This is the quintessential history book -- from where we are today, from slavery to the Abolition, to finding freedom in the aftermath of slavery and public views of "coloreds," to great leaders, heroes, and accomplishments...our history cannot be overlooked no matter what race you were born in to. (ages 9-12)





Coretta Scott  by Ntozake Shange
Some of you may know her as just the name of an award.  Did you know that she was Martin Luther King Jr.'s wife?  But this picturebook shows far more than their relationship.  Shange's poetry focuses on Coretta Scott King's hardships of growing up and striving for change in a world of indifference.  "No matter who we are / and the Negroes are no different / but fervor for the coming vote / and equality / pushed Coretta a peace and wonderment / of the Lord / 'ain't gonna let nobody turn me round / turn me round.'" (ages 6-9)

Come peruse our non-fiction with over 20 titles!

Destinaton: Walden Pond

Last week, after closing up Booksmith one night, I discovered that the 66 bus, whose reliable service I often depend upon to take me home to my apartment in JP, would not be at Coolidge Corner for another 33 minutes. Tired after a day of work, I sighed, left the bookstore, and began walking.

Knowing I had a 40 minute trek in front of me, I took out my cell phone. I considered it too late to call anyone in Boston, but none of my friends on the West Coast were answering. So I was stuck with myself for company on my late night walk home, with nothing but my thoughts and the abandoned streets of Brookline to keep me company.

As I crossed Beacon and headed down Harvard, I began thinking about the books waiting at my bedside for me, if ever I made it home: W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, Teju Cole's new novel Open City, and the recently re-published Conversations with Kafka by Gustav Janouch.

By the time I reached South Huntington, I had realized something. All three of these books were connected in a way I had never before recognized. Each of their deeply meditative narratives draw inspiration from the same activity: walking.

W.G. Sebald's narrator takes a walking tour of East Anglia, but his reflections travel far from England's shores, deep into the dark heart of imperialism in Africa, to the silk trade in China, and back to England's landscape, seamlessly weaving together fact and fiction as he excavates deep into England's history and culture.

Open City has a similiarly ponderous pace. "And so when I began to go on evening walks last fall, I found Morningside Heights an easy place from which to set out into the city," begins Cole's narrator, an Ethopian med student in New York City. "These walks, a counterpoint to my busy days at the hospital, steadily lengthened...in this way...New York City worked itself into my life at a walking pace."

And in Conversations with Kafka, Janouch's narrator--himself as a seventeen-year-old budding poet who has just been introduced to Franz Kafka by his father, a co-worker of Kafka's at Workmen's Accident Insurance Institution--demonstrates that walks are not only fuel for the reflective mind, but can also pave the way into deep discussions with a companion. When not conversing over Kafka's desk at the insurance company, the two escape into the streets of Prague.

Janouch's book was republished by New Directions

with cover illustration by Maira Kalman

and introduction by Francine Prose.

"I often marvelled at Kafka's wide knowledge of all the varied architectual features of the city," Janouch reports, "He was familiar not only with its palaces and churches but also with the most obscure alleys of the Old Town."

As the two roam the streets, what unfolds is not unlike a kind of Socratic dialogue, only more plausible and less didactic. The conversation of the young poet and his mentor, the darkly introspective novelist Kafka, flourishes on the city streets, fed off of the youth of one, the experience of the other, and the exhilaration of a good walk down the familiar yet ever-revealing streets of one's own city.

Inspired, a few days later I found myself pacing out the circumference of Walden Pond with a companion. When our conversation flagged, our thoughts were consumed with the fresh pine-scented fragrance of the air around us or with the minute gradations of gray on the thinly frozen pond. On the train ride back to Boston, we read passages of Henry David Thoreau's essay, "Walking," aloud to one another. "I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking," Thoreau writes, "who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering." 

While I am not sure I have mastered the art of walking yet myself, in the meandering prose of these books I have found mentors and companions, fellow saunterers whose perengrenatious musings inspire me to skip the bus more often, to know the streets of my city through the soles of my feet.

Classic Combinations

Peanut butter and jelly. Chocolate and peanut butter. Peanut butter and crackers. There are combinations of things so genius, so beautiful, that they withstand the test of time. And then there are combinations that are new--unseen to this earth--so brilliant that one wonders why it wasn't thought of sooner. Gobs of these genius combinations floating around the UBC are waiting to be discovered by you, our humble browser. Observe:

Pandas and Antlers
from a Parisian guidebook on our DOLLAR CART, people.

Corn cobs and Edvard Munch
I'm pretty sure this was on the original canvas, it just got cut out because of some vast Norwegian government conspiracy.

Dali and tarot
So obvious. So cool. A whole book of images; surrealism meets esoterica.

(It's my birthday, ya'll)

Dear 24.

We know you don't like being told what to do, because you are headstrong and independent and have been since the very first day you exited the womb, all blue and covered in viscera. The establishment, however, feels that, since we are somewhat of a package deal, perhaps you could do with a re-assessment of your priorities on this, the anniversary of your 24th revolution around your brightest, hottest star. 23 was not bad, we're not saying it was bad, we're just saying that there might be room for improvement. Might be being the operative words here; are you listening? Okay.

24, we will require that you continue to follow your absolute own determination in matters of looks, style, personality, humor, eloquence, and gender assignment. As if anybody besides the covenant of academia could ever make you do or be anything that you were not planning on inhabiting already; as scholar and gentleman Mr. T once said, "I pity the fool". However, we urge you, 24, to continue to try to deeper understand the frailty and sensitivity of human life. Please complete your assignment of making room for the different aspects of being that keep violently occurring, as if out of nowhere, all around you. These specimens are of utmost importance, and it is the truly exotic ones that will, most likely, supply you with the most vital information.

Please, remember patience, while balancing the furtive notion that at all times, and all around you, clocks are forever ticking. Keep a certain stillness in your heart, or at least try, even when you are being the most ridiculous clown you seem hell-bent on being despite our every desperate effort. 24, please be more careful with your stubborn heart, but not too careful. Try to lead by example, let hope spring eternal, and believe that some, if not most, if not all people are generally, fundamentally, or at least partially good and wish to visit good, in turn, upon the earth. Cling to that notion of goodness as if it were the inflatable safety raft of your loss at sea.

Please maintain calm. We will reconvene in approximately 365 days, upon which we will evaluate your performance and will instate 25 as your successor. Please take care of the husk and its many physical needs accordingly, and remember, it never rains but it pours, throw excess salt over your right shoulder, 42, and the first rule of Italian race car driving: what's behind you is not important.

Hear Ye Hear Ye

In case you haven't heard, this past Monday revealed the ALA 2012 Youth Media Awards -- you may know this better as the Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and other prestgious awards that are given each year.  We all have our mixed feelings of this year's picks, but we encourage you to form your own:

John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature:
-Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos
-Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai (honor)
-Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin (honor)

Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children:
-A Ball for Daisy  illustrated and written by Chris Raschka
-Blackout  illustrated and written by John Rocco (honor)
-Grandpa Green  illustrated and written by Lane Smith (honor)
-Me … Jane  illustrated and written by Patrick McDonnell (honor)

Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults:
-Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
-Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler (honor)

-The Returning by Christine Hinwood (honor)
-Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey (honor)
-The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater (honor)

Coretta Scott King (Author) Book Award recognizing an African American author and illustrator of outstanding books for children and young adults:
-Kadir Nelson (author and illustrator of Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans)
-Eloise Greenfield (author of The Great Migration: Journey to the North) (honor)
-Patricia C. McKissack (author of Never Forgotten) (honor)

Coretta Scott King (Illustrator) Book Award:
Shane W. Evans (illustrator and author of Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom)
Kadir Nelson (illustrator and author of Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans)

Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement:
Ashley Bryan is the winner of the Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime achievement. The award, which pays tribute to the quality and magnitude of beloved children’s author Virginia Hamilton.

Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience:
-Close to Famous by Joan Bauer
-Wonderstruck: A Novel in Words and Pictures by Brian Selznick
-The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen

Alex Awards for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences:
-Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin,
-In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
-The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan
-The New Kids: Big Dreams and Brave Journeys at a High School for Immigrant Teens by Brooke Hauser
-The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
-Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
-Robopocalypse: A Novel by Daniel H. Wilson
-Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
-The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures by Caroline Preston
-The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo

Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children's video:
- Children Make Terrible Pets (Weston Woods Studios, Inc.  The video is based on the book written by Peter Brown)

Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults:
Susan Cooper is the 2012 Edwards Award winner. (The Dark is Rising Sequence)

Mildred L. Batchelder Award for an outstanding children's book translated from a foreign language and subsequently published in the United States:
-Soldier Bear (Dutch) by Bibi Dumon Tak
-The Lily Pond (Swedish) by Annika Thor (honor)

Odyssey Award for best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States:
-Rotters by Daniel Kraus and narrated by Kirby Heyborne.
-Ghetto Cowboy by G. Neri and narrated by JD Jackson (honor)
-Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt and narrated by Lincoln Hoppe (honor)
-The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater and narrated by Steve Westand Fiona Hardingham (honor)
-Young Fredle by Cynthia Voigt and narrated by Wendy Carter.

Pura Belpré (Illustrator) Award honoring a Latino writer and illustrator whose children's books best portray, affirm and celebrate the Latino cultural experience:
-Diego Rivera: His World and Ours illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh
-The Cazuela that the Farm Maiden Stirred illustrated by Rafael López (honor)
-Marisol McDonald Doesn’t Match illustrated by Sara Palacios (honor)

Pura Belpré (Author) Award:
-Under the Mesquite written by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
-Hurricane Dancers: The First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck written by Margarita Engle (honor)
-Maximilian and the Mystery of the Guardian Angel: A Bilingual Lucha Libre Thriller written by Xavier Garza (honor)

Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award for most distinguished informational book for children:
-Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by Melissa Sweet
-Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor written by Larry Dane Brimnerand (honor)
-Drawing from Memory by Allen (honor)
-The Elephant Scientist by Caitlin O’Connell and Donna M. Jackson (honor)
-Witches!: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem by Rosalyn Schanzerand (honor)

Stonewall Book Award -Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award given annually to English-language children’s and young adult books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience:
-Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy by Bil Wright
-a + e 4ever by Ilike Merey (honor)
-Money Boy by Paul Yee (honor)
-Pink by Lili Wilkinson (honor)
-With or Without You by Brian Farrey (honor)

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished beginning reader book:
 -Tales for Very Picky Eaters by Josh Schneider
-I Broke My Trunk by Mo Willems (honor)
-I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen (honor)
-See Me Run by Paul Meisel (honor)

William C. Morris Award for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens:
-Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
-Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson (finalist)
-Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard (finalist)
-Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall (finalist)
-Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys (finalist)

YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults honors the best nonfiction book published for young adults, ages 12 – 18, each year:
-The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery by Steve Sheinkin
-Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos (finalist)
-Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition by Karen Blumenthal, (finalist)
-Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way)by Sue Macy (finalist)
-Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein by Susan Goldman Rubin (finalist)
 
Come on in or shop online at http://www.brooklinebooksmith-shop.com/.

For more information on the ALA youth media awards and notables, please visit the ALA Web site at www.ala.org.

Destination: East Anglia

If you have ever asked Lisa here at Booksmith for a book recommendation, you were probably regaled with an elaborately structured oral term paper on the book in question, and, very likely, you walked out of the store with said book tucked underarm. The art of the book review is a difficult skill to master, as any reader of the NYRB can tell you, and to give one verbally, on demand, is a talent few readers possess. So when Lisa told me about her latest read, Edmund deWaal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes, I listened with rapt attention, to learn not only about the book, but about the art of talking about books. An art cultivated in bookstore aisles.

De Waal's narrative follows the history of his family's inheritance--a collection of netsuke, Japanese wood and ivory carvings--through the Parisian and Viennese art worlds until the family's wealth was dispersed during WWII. To get a full review of the book, come on in and ask for Lisa. When she told me about the book, she compared it to Sebald. I stopped her. "Wait...who?!"

I had just begun reading W.G. Sebald's Rings of Saturn the night before. Delighted with the coincidence, we began to discuss the author. I just mentioned Sebald to a customer, Lisa told me, who had not only read him, but coincidentally, had recently published an article about him. This customer's father, I learned when I read his article for myself, had once left England for a walking tour in Germany. In Rings of Saturn, Sebald, a German, takes the reader on a walking tour of England.

Such coincidences are not uncommon in a bookstore, and, in fact, abound in the works of Sebald. To Sebald, everything is connected, so that to say he takes the reader on a walking tour of East Anglia is a gross understatement. Sebald's work is travel narrative at its fullest, a deeply-layered, multi-faceted exploration of what it is to travel, not only to new spaces, but across time. Sebald describes each place he encounters not only for what it is, but for what it has become through a culmination of its history, science, culture, and environment. He examines the wars, the explorations, the inventions, the everyday lives, and uncommon deaths that occured in these landscapes over centuries. The result is a meditative masterpiece of modern literature--a hidden inheritance for any reader to discover--that will have you running to your nearest bookstore to find someone to share such a journey with. We can't wait to hear about it.

Herakut, why you need to know that name

Take this home. I promise it will explode all over your living room.

For four remarkably productive years, the graffiti loving and street art affiliated "storytellers," Hera and Akut, have combined their artistic skills and individual specialties in order to create one odd but always exquisitely beautiful, instantly recognizable style: Herakut. It's an extremely contradictory mix of ingredients - Akut's autodidactic but top-level photorealism and Hera's classically educated though Don't-Give-A-Shit-roughness - that results in a surprisingly well-balanced fusion of respect for each other's qualities and the shared urge to capture life's anecdotes with brush and spray can. For the second time this book explores the interpersonal and creative processes behind the duo's murals and canvas paintings, which have attracted the attention of the international art scene.

The images are stunning, a little girl pealing out of a body suit of an older obese woman, "play ageing"


Mothers and children wearing animal skulls, or live heads, representing some performitive aspect of species, and perhaps gender identities

Guns, alcohol, children, flowers all enormous building sized murals offer both hilarity and haunt.

Fierce and surprising contrasts of violence and innocence make these artists unequalled.

This is an incredible book for your table, for some inspiration, and for a challenge.

Then buy their first book