The Snowy Day,

Keats, who was Caucasian, found the inspiration for the Peter character years earlier in a 1940 issue of Life magazine that featured a series of photos of a young African-American boy about to undergo a blood test. The images of the sweet, trusting child stayed with the author. “He [Keats] said, well, all the books he had ever illustrated, there had never been a child of color, and they’re out there — they should be in the books, too,” Pope stated. “But was he trying to make a cause book, was he trying to make a point? No.”

When The Snowy Day was first released, it faced some initial criticism from civil rights leaders who felt Keats did not push the issue far enough. “They were worried,” Pope said. “This was a time when the African-American community was fighting for a place at the table, was fighting to be heard … and in the past, when white authors had written about black characters, it had not done well. It was not good.”

Yet, as the book grew in popularity, it was clear that children and adults of all colors and creeds found the story very relatable. Keats received thousands of fan letters from around the country praising his work. “There was a teacher [who] wrote in to Ezra, saying, ‘The kids in my class, for the first time, are using brown crayons to draw themselves.’ ” recounts Pope. “These are African-American children. Before this, they drew themselves with pink crayons. But now, they can see themselves.”

“I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change.

“Will there still be readers 50 years from now who feel that way? Who have that hunger for something permanent and unalterable? I don’t have a crystal ball.

“But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.

“Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring,” the writer explains.

In an article posted on the Time Magazine website, Cain makes the distinction between introversion and shyness and touches on a few introvert virtues. “Shyness and introversion are not the same thing. Shy people fear negative judgment, while introverts simply prefer less stimulation; shyness is inherently painful, and introversion is not. But in a society that prizes the bold and the outspoken, both are perceived as disadvantages.

“Yet we wouldn’t want to live in a world composed exclusively of bold extroverts. We desperately need people who pay what [psychologist Elaine] Aron calls ‘alert attention’ to things. It’s no accident that introverts get better grades than extroverts, know more about most academic subjects and win a disproportionate number of Phi Beta Kappa keys and National Merit Scholarship finalist positions — even though their IQ scores are no higher,” she writes.

As a champion of the introverted personality, the author presents an ideal scenario where the introvert and extrovert work together with great effect. “The two types need each other. Many successful ventures are the result of effective partnerships between introverts and extroverts. The famously charismatic Steve Jobs teamed up with powerhouse introverts at crucial points in his career at Apple, co-founding the company with the shy Steve Wozniak and bequeathing it to its current CEO, the quiet Tim Cook. And the three-time Olympic-gold-winning rowing pair Marnie McBean and Kathleen Biddle were a classic match of dynamic firecracker (McBean) and steely determination (Biddle).”

Polacco has certainly nurtured the talents her ancestors passed on to her, as is evident in her numerous awards and the impressive list of over 50 picture books that she has written and illustrated, including Bun Bun Button, The Art of Miss Chew, and The Keeping Quilt. But it is not only her personal history that inspires her stories, but also cultural and folkloric history as well. Her latest book, Just in Time, Abraham Lincoln, takes two young boys on a trip through time to meet President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. While the beloved story Babushka Baba Yaga, was based on Russian folklore.

When approaching the story of Baba Yaga, the author decided to take a different path than the traditional story of the mean old woman. “I took 50 American school children one summer with me to Russia. We were doing an art camp in a small village about 60 miles north of St. Petersburg. These children ranged in age from 9 to 17 years old. They had preconceived ideas, as most Americans did, about what Russians are like. So in a real sense, they believed all Russians were like the original Baba Yaga that appears in so much folklore. I took these kids for a walk through a dense forest and we started talking about the legends of the Baba Yaga. I put the notion to them, what if everything we read about her is a lie? Just as everything they had heard about Russians, they were discovering was quite untrue. This inspired a version in my heart of a Baba Yaga who had been completely misunderstood and demonized by vicious rumors and untruths,” Polacco explained.

By John Green

Summary:
Award-winning young adult author John Green addresses the serious issues of sickness and death in his latest novel The Fault in Our Stars. Protagonist Hazel ­Lancaster is a teenager grappling with her terminal cancer diagnosis when she meets Augustus Waters in a cancer support group. Their shared enthusiasm for ultra-violent video games and Dutch author Peter van Houten fosters a love that grows despite their illnesses. Told with a spark of humor to balance the gravity of the subject matter, Green crafts a story that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, the author discussed his decision to write about such a serious topic. “When I first graduated from college, I worked as a chaplain at a children’s hospital for about five months. While I was there, I saw a lot of young people with cancer and other serious diseases, and I was struck by how different they were from my expectations. The culture surrounding sick kids tends to tell us they are either going to be these fountains of wisdom or they are going to be these sad-eyed, terrible tragedies — the truth is a lot more complex than that. Sick kids are a lot like other people. I learned that during my time at the hospital and also the next 10 or 11 years trying to reflect it in fiction. Then in 2008 I met a young woman who had cancer who was a reader of my books, and through knowing her it became possible to write the story,” said Green.

When asked about the challenges of writing the book from the perspective of a teenage girl, Green replied: “It wasn’t uncomfortable for me at all. Maybe it should have been. It was a little uncomfortable for me when I was reading the audiobook — that was a little awkward. [Laughs] I never thought I would write a female narrator. For whatever reason, I didn’t feel like I was writing a female narrator — I felt I was writing Hazel. I felt very, very close to Hazel and deeply empathetic to her. You know, I hate it when writers say this — I think it’s the most pretentious thing in the world — but unfortunately it’s true in this case: I did not feel as if I were writing her. I felt like she was kind of taking care of herself.”

There is also good new for those fans who cannot wait until summer for more Captain Underpants. As reported on the GalleyCat website, Scholastic has announced that two previously published Captain Underpants graphic novel adventures will be available in eBook format at the end of the month. The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby and Super Diaper Baby 2: The Invasion of the Potty Snatchers eBooks will include bonus material such as deleted scenes, information about the making of the books and sketches by Pilkey.

Winner of the Caldecott Honor Award in 1997 for his book The Paperboy, Dav Pilkey has written more than 40 children’s books. To learn more about the author, please visit his website www.pilkey.com.

The Happy Meal book offer features a selection of six titles in the popular Mudpuddle Farm series, including: Mossop’s Last Chance, Albertine, Goose Queen, Pigs Might Fly!, Jigger’s Day Off, Martians at Mudpuddle Farm, and Mum’s the Word. A finger puppet designed to tie in with the books will also be given out.

This book promotion is the latest step the restaurant franchise has taken to bolster a more positive and healthy corporate image. McDonald’s has already run a similar book give away in Sweden that was very successful. Hopefully, this British launch signifies that the fast food giant plans to expand these types of promotions around the globe. The move has garnered praise from literacy advocates in the UK. “Our recent research showed that one in three children in this country don’t own a book, which is extremely concerning as there is a clear link between book ownership and children’s future success in life. We are very supportive of McDonald’s decision to give families access to popular books, as its size and scale will be a huge leap towards encouraging more families to read together,” explained director of The National Literacy Trust, Jonathan Douglas.

In a recent e-mail exchange with Nick Owchar of the Los Angeles Times, the novelist spoke of her experience writing both books. When asked whether it was her intent to show readers how writing non-fiction differs from writing fiction, she replied: “I didn’t have anything like a grand idea of demonstrating how the two are different, though as I was writing them alongside each other, I found I was thinking about the differences all the time as I was experiencing them.

“My intention was to provide the readers of the fictions with three factual essays to serve as “companions” to the novels. So many people ask me where the history ends and the fiction begins that I now provide a bibliography of history books at the end of every novel so people can discover for themselves. In the case of Jacquetta, there is nothing in general publication at all. My research on Jacquetta produced files and files of notes, so I thought that I might as well write an essay on her for readers to study, if they so wished.”

On what Gregory learned by taking two different writing approaches to the same life, she explained: “What became really clear to me was how much the history (just like a novel) is a process of selection of facts based on the interest and prejudices of the historian. We all know that history is subjective, but it was a very powerful experience for me to see how the material that struck me as important for understanding the historical character was exactly the material that struck me as interesting as a novelist. What is revealed in both the novel and the history is the life of Jacquetta and, of course, the interests of the author.

“The other thing that really struck me — and this is rather technical — is the difference in language. Often the scenes in the history and the fiction are almost identical but the descriptions are totally different. The fictional scene uses far more active and interesting verbs, and is designed to evoke emotion in the reader. It is also written with an eye to lyricism of language, and even how the paragraphs look on the page. Ideally, the novel is a thing of beauty. The history is more restrained and dry. I suspect that as readers we confuse coolness with accuracy and that we all think that detachment is ‘scientific.’”

By Kitty Ferguson

Science writer Kitty Ferguson builds a revealing profile of physicist Stephen Hawking’s early life in the new book Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind. Hawking, best known for his research in the areas of theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity, is one of the world’s most renown scientists. With his lectures and writings, he has made highly complicated scientific theories interesting and palatable to the general public. “It’s not dumbing down [science]; it’s really making it accessible, hopefully, to a lot of people,” explains the author in an interview with NPR’s Fresh Air. Her book focuses on Hawking’s early childhood through his undergraduate and graduate work at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, and his diagnosis of ALS disease in the early 1960′s. At the time, doctors predicted he would not survive his 20′s, but the physicist has beaten the odds, and will celebrate his 70th birthday on January 8th.

“It’s just so interesting to see how he came to terms with [his illness],” continues Ferguson. “What he says is that it wasn’t courage. [He says] ‘I just did what I had to do.’ … He took to listening to a lot of Richard Wagner, thinking of himself as a rather tragic hero. His mind went through all kinds of ways of dealing with that type of problem, but eventually, I think, he realized that theoretical physics was kind of a great escape from it.”

Ferguson has worked with Hawking for over ten years and helped edit his book The Universe in a Nutshell. The Cambridge professor admires Ferguson’s talent for explaining complex intellectual concepts in relatable language, and her book was written with his blessing. Along with detailing his early life, Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind also touches on his latest scientific theories.

With the holidays quickly approaching, he decided on a short story format, and gave the publisher very detailed instructions on the book design, specifying a gold stamped cover, a green and red title page and several etched illustrations. Despite the high production values, the book was reasonably priced at five shillings, so that it would be affordable to a large segment of the population.

The book was an instant hit with readers and sold 6,000 copies by Christmas Eve. Along with his audience, Dickens was deeply touched by the heartfelt story. “I was very much affected by that little book,” he admitted to a journalist, “and quite reluctant to lay it aside even for a moment.”

This classic tale was truly a gift to the public as the novelist made little profit from it. But, it did mark a turning point for Dickens as the popularity he gained for A Christmas Carol, translated into lucrative sales of his later works including Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities.

Happy Holidays Everyone!