BookOpinion

Some holiday party hosts have that special touch. You know they have the gift of hosting when you look around the home, you talk to him or her, you mingle…and all of a sudden you realize there’s a warm glow all around.

A few Christmas seasons ago, I was at a party with just such a host. The evening get together of friends, food, and good cheer was already a hit and winding down. The host then called everyone into the living room and announced that she was going to read from a book.

“Every day the small wooden people called Wemmicks do the same thing: stick either gold stars or gray dots on one another. The pretty ones - those with smooth wood and fine paint - always get stars. The talented ones do, too. Others, though, who can do little or have chipped paint, get ugly gray dots. Like Punchinello.”

You could hear a pin drop. And by the time our host had finished reading “You Are Special,” most in the room had a tear or two. The host hit a home run. Max Lucado’s classic childrens book about Punchinello and his meeting with Eli, the woodcarver, made an incredible impression on us adults.

That’s what I’ve found out about many of Lucado’s books, either childrens or adults…they make an impact. His writing is clear and concise, simple but riveting, and reveals a message all should receive.

About the author from MaxLucado.com:

Max Lucado has touched millions with his signature storytelling writing style. Awards and accolades follow Max with each book he writes. Max is the first author to win the Gold Medallion Christian Book of the Year three times—1999 for Just Like Jesus, 1997 for In the Grip of Grace and 1995 for When God Whispers Your Name. In 2005, Reader’s Digest dubbed him “America’s Best Preacher.” In addition, he has been an ECPA Gold Medallion finalist with more titles than any other author in the industry.

In 1994, he became the only author to have 11 of his twelve books in print simultaneously appear on paperback, hardcover and children’s CBA bestseller lists. Lucado set a new industry record by concurrently placing nine different Word Publishing titles on the CBA Hardcover Bestseller List in both March and April 1997. Max Lucado is a fixture on the national bestseller lists – a Max Lucado title has appeared on the CBA hardcover bestseller list every month for the past dozen years. He has appeared on the Publishers Weekly, USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists. He has won eight ECPA Gold Medallion awards.

Here’s some titles of Lucado’s books that follow the Wemmicks and Punchinello:

You Are Special
Punchinello and the Most Marvelous Gift
If Only I Had a Green Nose
You Are Mine

- Alexander

BOOKOPINION REVIEW: In a recent interview, author Judy Blume chose “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” as her personal favorite of her works. The book, which chronicles a year in the life of sixth-grader Margaret Simon, has found itself both lauded and banned. The book’s frank discussions of religion and adolescent issues were considered risque for children’s literature at the time of its publication.

The central character, Margaret, is finding her life very complicated. Born and raised in New York City, her parents have decided to move to the suburbs and she leaves city life and private school for a new life in New Jersey and a public school. Margaret must leave her beloved grandmother and her friends behind.

She does quickly make new friends, all of whom are wrestling with the complications of puberty, especially worrying about when they will get their periods. Each of her new friends attends either church or synagogue, and all are shocked to discover that Margaret is “no religion.”

Margaret’s mother, a Christian, and her father, who is Jewish, eloped against their families’ wishes and decided to raise their daughter without religious education and allow her to make her own choice in the future. Margaret, who speaks with God each now and whenever she feels a need, (her conversations with God always begin with the title phrase) devotes herself to finding the right religion for her. As she searches, she begins to realize that a relationship with God extends beyond the confines of any one religion.

I was ten the first time I read this book, and I really felt the author saw her reader more as a young adult than a child. She understood all our fears and worries, and though she never really tried to solve them, she just kind of showed you that you get through it the best you can.

Margaret does not find all of her answers, but she gains strength as she realizes her own self-worth, and that she does not have to be defined by her religion, her friends or her family. She defines herself, a very empowering thought for a young girl.

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is a must-have for anyone who loves Blume’s books. It is the book that Blume says she found her voice in.

– Jane Leisteiner

“I have so many more stories to tell,” says Judy Blume in a Meet the Writers podcast at Barnes & Noble.

“I’m a much, much better rewriter than I am a first or second draft writer,” Blume says. In the podcast she talks about not only the writing process, but a variety of other topics.

Asked if she could put one book in a time capsule, which would it be, she said “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

“It’s the first book where I let go,” Blume said. “The first two books were learning experiences. I was trying to figure it all out. And with ‘Margaret’ it was I don’t care about these rules I’m just going to write what I know to be true because I so remember my own sixth-grade experience.”

Listen to the Judy Blume podcast here.

I can still recall the first time I heard about this book. I was sitting in my fourth-grade classroom, and my teacher brought in a television to show us some program (maybe Reading Rainbow) about books. Several books were previewed, but I remember watching the preview of “A Wrinkle in Time” and thinking, “I have got to get that book.” I remember reading it the first time and becoming almost spellbound by the story and characters.

In the many years since then, I have read the book easily a dozen times. It always has been found on children’s shelves, but like so many “children’s” books, it far surpasses the mindless nothings we find in the grown-up sections of our libraries and bookstores. A few days ago, L’Engle passed away, leaving a legacy of dozens of amazing novels. I have read many, but not all. “A Wrinkle in Time” and its companion books, “A Wind in the Door” and “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” have always been my favorites. I was never a fan of fantasy or science-fiction books. I never made it beyond the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia, and never made it anywhere near Tolkien, so it surprises me to no end, that “A Wrinkle in Time” is one of my favorites.

For the uninitiated, “A Wrinkle in Time” is the story of Meg Murray, an awkard and self-conscious teen, who embarks on a journey to find her missing scientist father who has developed an enormously fast method of space and time travel and then suddenly disappears. Of his family, which includes a wife and four children, Meg seems the hardest hit by this abscence. Her youngest brother, a precocious, five-year-old named Charles Wallace introduces her to three elderly women who he says will help find their father. With the help of a newly-found friend, a schoolmate of Meg’s named Calvin O’Keefe, the three entrust the women to lead them on a journey through space and time, encountering new planets and strange creatures, and eventually leading to Meg and Charles Wallace’s father.

With skillful dialogue and engaging descriptions, L’Engle has you hooked before the first chapter is over. I had read about two pages before I realized (at the tender age of 10) that this was going to be one of those books I would love forever. My recap and description hardly do the novel justice. Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin are some of my favorite fictional characters. I felt tears come to my eyes when I read of L’Engle’s death, but I am so thankful that she left us all with great stories that will last forever.

– Jane Leisteiner

Newbery Award-winning Author Madeleine L’Engle, who’s known mostly for her novel “A Wrinkle in Time,” has died at the age of 88, her publicist said Friday.

She wrote more than 60 books, which include poetry, memoirs, fantasies and often feature spiritual themes and her Christian faith. L’Engle followed “A Wrinkle in Time” with further adventures of the Murry children, including “A Wind in the Door,” 1973; “A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” 1978, which won an American Book Award; and “Many Waters,” 1986.

The “St. James Guide to Children’s Writers” called L’Engle “one of the truly important writers of juvenile fiction in recent decades.”

The Associated Press writes:

Although L’Engle was often labeled a children’s author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she did not write down to children.

“In my dreams, I never have an age,” she said. “I never write for any age group in mind. When people do, they tend to be tolerant and condescending and they don’t write as well as they can write.

“When you underestimate your audience, you’re cutting yourself off from your best work.”

“A Wrinkle in Time” — which L’Engle said was rejected repeatedly before it found a publisher in 1962 — won the American Library Association’s 1963 Newbery Medal for best American children’s book. Her “A Ring of Endless Light” was a Newbery Honor Book, or medal runner-up, in 1981.

In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal.

“Wrinkle” tells the story of adolescent Meg Murry, her genius little brother Charles Wallace, and their battle against evil as they search across the universe for their missing father, a scientist.

We have found this message from L’Engle on Amazon, talking about her writing, motivations and the questions most people ask her:

I wrote my first story when I was 5. It was about a little G-R-U-L, because that’s how I spelled “girl” when I was 5. I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about. My father, before I was born, had been gassed in the first World War, and I wanted to know why there were wars, why people hurt each other, why we couldn’t get along together, and what made people tick. That’s why I started to write stories.

The books I read most as a child were by Lucy Maud Montgomery, who’s best known for her Anne of Green Gables stories, but I also liked Emily of New Moon. Emily was an only child, as I was. Emily lived on an island, as did I. Although Manhattan Island and Prince Edward Island are not very much alike, they are still islands. Emily’s father was dying of bad lungs, and so was mine. Emily had some dreadful relative, and so did I. She had a hard time in school, and she also understood that there’s more to life than just the things that can be explained by encyclopedias and facts. Facts alone are not adequate. I love Emily. I also read E. Nesbit, who was a nineteenth-century writer of fantasies and family stories, and I read fairy tales and the myths of all countries. And anything I could get my hands on.

As an adult, I like to read fiction. I really enjoy good murder mystery writers, usually women, frequently English, because they have a sense of what the human soul is about and why people do dark and terrible things. I also read quite a lot in the area of particle physics and quantum mechanics, because this is theology. This is about the nature of being. This is what life is all about. I try to read as widely as I possibly can.

I wrote A Wrinkle in Time when we were living in a small dairy farm village in New England. I had three small children to raise, and life was not easy. We lost four of our closest friends within two years by death–that’s a lot of death statistically. And I really wasn’t finding the answers to my big questions in the logical places. So, at the time I discovered the world of particle physics. I discovered Einstein and relativity. I read a book of Einstein’s, in which he said that anyone who’s not lost in rapturous awe at the power and glory of the mind behind the universe is as good as a burnt-out candle. And I thought, “Oh, I’ve found my theologian, what a wonderful thing.” I began to read more in that area. A Wrinkle in Time came out of these questions, and out of my discovery of the post-utopian sciences, which knocked everything we knew about science for a loop.

A Wrinkle in Time was almost never published. You can’t name a major publisher who didn’t reject it. And there were many reasons. One was that it was supposedly too hard for children. Well, my children were 7, 10, and 12 while I was writing it. I’d read to them at night what I’d written during the day, and they’d say, “Ooh, mother, go back to the typewriter!” A Wrinkle in Time” had a female protagonist in a science fiction book, and that wasn’t done. And it dealt with evil and things that you don’t find, or didn’t at that time, in children’s books. When we’d run through forty-odd publishers, my agent sent it back. We gave up. Then my mother was visiting for Christmas, and I gave her a tea party for some of her old friends. One of them happened to belong to a small writing group run by John Farrar, of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which at that time did not have a juvenile list. She insisted that I meet John any how, and I went down with my battered manuscript. John had read my first novel and liked it, and read this book and loved it. That’s how it happened.

The most asked question that I generally receive is, “Where do you get your ideas?” That’s very easily answered. I tell a story about Johann Sebastian Bach when he was an old man. A student asked him, “Papa Bach, where do you get the ideas for all of these melodies?” And the old man said, “Why, when I get up in the morning, it’s all I can do not to trip over them.” And that’s how ideas are; they’re just everywhere. I think the least asked question is one that I got in Japan. This little girl held up her hand and said, “How tall are you?” In Japan, I am very tall.

I get over one hundred letters a week. There are always letters that stand out. There was one from a 12-year-old girl in North Carolina who wrote me many years ago, saying “I’m Jewish and most of my friends are Christian. My Christian friends told me only Christians can be saved. What do you think? Your books have made me trust you.” Well, we corresponded for about twenty years. I suggested that she go back to read some of the great Jewish writers to find out about her own tradition. Another letter asked, “We’re studying the crusades in school. Can there be such a thing as a Holy War? Is war ever right?” I mean, kids don’t hesitate to ask questions. And it’s a great honor to have the kids say, “Your books have made me trust you.”

Link to Author’s Message

Chosen in a public poll developed from all of the last 70 winners of the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature, Philip Pullman’s “Northern Lights” (or “The Golden Compass” as it’s titled in the U.S.) was selected as the best children’s book. The Carnegie Medal has been awarded since 1936.

“I am humbled and honoured that Northern Lights has been chosen from among so many wonderful books,” said Pullman in a BBC News interview.

Nominated books must have been published in the UK during the previous year. The entire list of previous winners is listed below. A panel of judges narrowed down the list to 10 selections from which voters could choose.

Pullman’s book was the first of His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass; The Subtle Knife; The Amber Spyglass).

“These books have redefined children’s literature and changed the way we think and talk about children’s books,” said Carnegie judge Jonathan Douglas of the series. “They are classics.”

Booklist summarizes the storyline of the book:

The story begins at Jordan College in Oxford, where young Lyra Belacqua and her daemon, Pantalaimon, are being reared and educated by the Scholars. Although a lackluster student, Lyra possesses an inordinate curiosity and sense of adventure, which lead her into forbidden territory on the night her uncle, Lord Asriel, visits. He’s there to solicit funds for a return journey to the distant arctic wastes, where he has observed and photographed strange goings-on, including a mysterious phenomenon called Dust that streams from the sky and a dim outline of a city suspended in the Aurora, or Northern Lights, that he suspects is part of an alternate universe. After he leaves, Lyra finds herself placed in the charge of the mysterious Mrs. Coulter and in possession of a rare compasslike device that can answer questions if she learns how to read it. Already shocked by the disappearance of her best friend, Lyra discovers Mrs. Coulter’s connection with the dreaded children-stealing Gobblers and runs away, joining a group of gyptians bound for the North to rescue missing children. Lyra has also learned that her uncle is being held prisoner in the North, guarded by formidable armored bears. Filled with fast-paced action, the plot involves a secret scientific facility, where children are being severed from their daemons; warring factions; witch clans; an outcast armored bear, who bonds with Lyra; and more. It becomes evident that the future of the world and its inhabitants is in the hands of the ever-more-resilient and dedicated Lyra.

Here is a movie teaser for the film based on the book. It will hit theaters in December:

A list of all the past winners, from which the book was chosen:

2006 Meg Rosoff, Just in Case
2005 Mal Peet, Tamar
2004 Frank Cottrell Boyce, Millions
2003 Jennifer Donnelly, A Gathering Light, Bloomsbury
2002 Sharon Creech, Ruby Holler, Bloomsbury
2001 Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Doubleday
2000 Beverley Naidoo, The Other Side of Truth, Puffin
1999 Aidan Chambers, Postcards From No Man’s Land, Bodley Head
1998 David Almond, Skellig, Hodder
1997 Tim Bowler, River Boy, OUP
1996 Melvin Burgess, Junk, Andersen Press
1995 Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, Book 1), Scholastic
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R.L. Stine is producing a new series of the wildly popular Goosebumps title. Goosebumps HorrorLand will be an original 12-book series that will launch in April of 2008 with two books.

“I thought writing 87 Goosebumps books was enough for a human—but everywhere I go the kids keep begging me to write more,” said R.L. Stine. “I’m so pleased to be able to do what I’ve always done: listen to my audience!”

The new books will be serialized with the story not ending on the final pages of the first book. The adventures will continue in subsequent books, as well as on the internet. The first title of the series will be “Revenge of the Living Dummy.”

“I missed my subway stop last week reading the first manuscript,” said Lisa Holton, president of Scholastic Trade and Book Fairs. “When I wasn’t laughing I was on the edge of my seat, holding my breath. Bob Stine has done it again—with HorrorLand he will take millions of readers on a thrill ride like no other.”

Scholastic says the first nine HorrorLand books all will feature a combination of frightful new faces as well as the vilest villains from the original Goosebumps series. Ordinary kids are being summoned to a theme park, HorrorLand—but why? Who—or what—is behind the evil plot to assemble these kids? The answer will be revealed in the final book.

“Readers are in for the ride of their lives as the cast of characters trapped in the theme park grows larger with each book, and their situations become more and more perilous,” writes Scholastic.

Since the Goosbumps books debuted as a monthly series in 1992, more than 300 million copies have been sold worldwide in 32 languages—selling at the phenomenal rate of four million books per month in the mid-1990s.