[MUSIC, INTRO] This is The Book of Life, a show about Jewish kidlit, mostly. I'm Heidi Rabinowitz. The last episode of The Book of Life introduced you to the Sydney Taylor Shmooze, a mock award blog for Jewish children's literature. We got some advice from the folks at other mock award blogs, Calling Caldecott, Heavy Medal, and Guessing Geisel, but we couldn't include everything they said in that episode. Here is your chance to hear my full conversation with Julie Danielson of Calling Caldecott Steven Engelfried of Heavy Medal, and Amy Seto Forrester of Guessing Geisel.
Tell us about your mock award blog.
My name is Amy Forrester. I am part of the Guessing Geisel mock blog about beginning readers, and the Geisel Award. The Geisel Award has been around I believe since 2006. It's awarded to the author and illustrator of what's considered the most distinguished beginning reader for kids between kindergarten and second grade. And so the criteria is really specific, it's looking for books that are extremely supportive to those new readers. Amanda Foulk, Misti Tidman, and I started this blog together. We were all on the 2016 Geisel Award committee, the real one, and so we read all of 2015, and we thought, 2016 is going to be so sad, we're not going to be reading in the way that we were before and we were going to miss that and those conversations. So we thought why not create a blog? Nobody is really talking about beginning readers in the way that we wanted to be talking about them. So we started the blog, and it's just grown since then. This year has obviously been a different year as it has for everyone, but Guessing Geisel keeps plugging along.
My name is Steven Engelfried. I coordinate Heavy Medal, which is a mock Newbery blog on the School Library Journal website. The Newbery Medal has been given every year for, I think we're coming up on the 100th anniversary, by the American Library Association to the most distinguished children's book of the year. What we do on Heavy Medal is during the fall we have online book discussions of titles that we think might be possibilities for the Newbery Medal. Everything the Newberry committee does until the award is announced in January is private and confidential, so we really have no idea what books the committees are discussing but we we do our best to get the most likely titles out there and have critical discussions. Volunteers for our Heavy Medal committee vote at the end, so we pick our mock winner.
I'm Julie Danielson, I am a children's book reviewer and I have my own site but also blog at The Horn Book's Calling Caldecott. And it is a mock awards blog, that's all focused on the Caldecott Award. It was born in 2011 and it was Martha V. Parravano, who is the book reviews editor for The Horn Book and she's still blogging there; Lolly Robinson, she was the creative director for The Horn Book, she's no longer there but she's a very talented freelance designer and consultant who knows children's books like the back of her hand; and Robin Smith was the only one of the three who was not a Horn Book staff member, but she was a longtime magazine reviewer and contributor, and she taught second grade for nearly 25 years and very very sadly died from cancer in June of 2017, and she had asked me when she was ill if I wanted to take this on afterwards so it's thanks to Martha and Robin and Lolly that the blog is as wonderful as it is. The Caldecott Award is given by the Association for Library Services to Children, otherwise known as ALSC, which is a division of the American Library Association. It's one of the many awards given out, and the Caldecott Award is given to the most distinguished picture book of the year. The Caldecott I believe the first year was 1938.
Why do you do what you do? What's the value of a mock award blog?
I think the value of a mock award blog is that not only are we raising awareness of this award, which I think is a particularly important one when you think of the fact that only 40% of kids in third grade are reading at grade level, so the need is very real for books that help them learn to read and practice their reading skills in a fun way, and I think the Geisel really lifts up those books, and it lets publishers know that librarians and booksellers and caregivers and kids are really excited about these books. These are books that are mostly overlooked, they're not thought of as art, they're thought of as transition books, right, like you read them because you have to learn how to read. Once you learn how to read then you're on to the real books, right? But they're art. It's an art to create them and it's an art to make one that has that page turning dynamic as our criteria says, so I think that lifting up these books is important and we're not seeing it being done by review journals, they often review beginning readers as picture books, or as chapter books, they have those elements, right, they have illustrations, they have text, but the way they work together is quite different and what their purpose is is quite different. So, I would love to see more people talking about it, besides this blog.
To me, there's a couple of things that people get out of it. One is just a really high level of book discussion. You can do book groups in all kinds of ways. But what's fun about doing a mock award book discussion is you kind of have to follow the guidelines that a real committee follows. And so it forces you to look more critically at books, especially with kids, it's really hard sometimes when you're talking about books to go beyond what you like. And that's great, that's really why we read, but it's an extra step to identify what we liked about it, was it the characters or was it just the writing style? And then an extra, extra step to really look at what the author did to make us like those things but really look at from the literary quality of the writing. And I think if you do a mock award it sometimes helps you focus on those qualities, it's just not a popularity contest. Another neat thing about it is, the discussions of the Newberry committee are confidential and private, and even after it's all over, people can't talk about it. So it's also kind of a way for those of us who aren't on the committee to get that experience. It's not the exact experience but you kind of go through and think about the books in a different way, not just for your own enjoyment, but you're going to have to share what you think about them and listen to what other people think about them. Getting part of the experience of a real committee. And I will say, having been participating in mock awards, before I ever got a chance to be in a real committee was really helpful to me. And then the other thing, and I think people sometimes rank this one higher than I do, it's kind of fun to predict what's going to win. We don't know until it's announced on that Monday morning at the ALA press conference. So if you've been heavily involved, whether you're kids or adults looking at these books, you've got your favorites, you think you know what may win. And then you get the announcement. I don't value that quite as much just because you don't really know; you could do the best work you could as a mock award committee and come up with a completely different answer from what the real committee is going because that's kind of how books work, but that that is another piece of it so it's kind of: great book discussion, sort of a simulation of the committee work, and also that fun of trying to predict the real winner.
I think a lot of people enjoy weighing in and talking about the books that they love, and a lot of people find awards predictions very exciting and fun, it's maybe a thrill for them to imagine being on that real Caldecott Committee but we don't have a crystal ball or any Caldecott tarot cards, you know we can't predict what these individuals are going to choose. And the mock votes have absolutely no impact on what the actual committee decides. Most importantly, I would say, we wanted to emphasize that the joy in the blog for us is not in predicting, which we aren't even capable of doing, but it's the rich discussions that we get to have. We take these deep dives and discuss picture books. We have guest bloggers. And it's about appreciating the picture book as the unique art form that it is. Maurice Sendak used to put it so well when he would talk about the seamlessness of text and art, that is happening with a picture book that makes it such a unique art form, if you have that seamlessness he would talk about how the illustrations serve the words by interpreting the text or extending the text or even enlarging the text, a lot of experts in the field have talked about how it's so much like film and that way those compelling page turns it's just such a unique art form. Leonard Marcus once said picture books represent the ultimate distillation in expression, and I love that, I love that, I think that really captures it well, there is just nothing like the picture book. We're happy to provide a place for discussion for people who love to talk about picture books.
What recent book from your blog are you excited about?
I am most excited about the Ty's Travels series by Kelly Starling Lyons and it has illustrations by Nina Mata, it's one of the first really well done #ownvoices, about a Black boy who's just exploring the world. We really have a dearth of any sort of diversity in beginning readers, especially books that are #ownvoices stories. And so this is really exciting to see and I hope that we see more of it in the coming years.
The book I'm probably most excited about this year is Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, kind of a semi fictionalized semi memoir. He was born in Iran, wound up in Oklahoma. It's sort of centered around him being a 12 year old in Oklahoma, telling his story to his classmates who are very far apart from him, going back into time with his family history and mythology. And I just thought it was really funny and really insightful and interesting. Not everyone is sure it's really written for children, its best audience might be adult; that's probably the top of my list right now.
The one I'm probably rooting the most for is called The Bear and the Moon by Matthew Burgess who is a poet which you can really tell from this beautiful text and illustrated by Catia Chien. It's about a bear who spots a balloon on a string, and he believes that it's a small red moon, and that it's a gift from the sky. He plays with it and he shows it where he lives and his surroundings and you know what he sees every day. And in a very successfully suspenseful spread he tries to hug it and readers know how that is going to end because he's got these adorable little claws. He tries to fix a balloon, of course it has popped, but he fails and he grieves the loss of his friend and he just 100% takes the blame until the real moon rises in the night sky and sort of absolves him of his guilt. I reviewed it for The Horn Book actually and wrote that the bear I think is a very successful stand-in for toddlers everywhere who are learning to manage their really big emotions, but I think it's a book that works on many levels and speaks to readers of all ages, who have dealt with sorrow or loss and really are learning self forgiveness, which is something the bear experiences. And in the end he relies on his memories of his friend to help ease his grief. The language is beautiful and the illustrations are these hazy atmospheric washes of color, I think it's just a really perfect blending of art and text.
Sounds wonderful! Are there any new Jewish books that you are excited about?
This year I read for our chapter book Best and Brightest list at my library, and my favorite Jewish book was Get a Grip, Vivy Cohen by Sarah Kapit. I am not a sports person, I'm not good at the sports but I love to read about the sports. And this one I felt like had such real characters, writing letters back and forth. I remember loving books that had characters that wrote letters, that was just fascinating. And so as an adult reading it I could imagine myself as a kid loving it too.
The one that stood out to me is by Gail Carson Levine, who wrote a book called A Ceiling Made of Eggshells that takes place in Spain, right around the time that Columbus headed off on his voyages, and it's the story of a family as, as life got much harder for Jewish people. In the beginning of the story, family is very well off and kind of the level of Spanish royalty. Things get dangerous and it's a really fascinating story. She is such a good writer, she's known more for writing fantasy, but this one really captured that time and I think it's a time in history that most people aren't that aware of.
Good choice. And actually, I interviewed Gail for my podcast about that book. So, yeah.
I've had two favorites this year, that sort of bookend the year. One of them came out way back in the beginning of the year is called Welcoming Elijah: A Passover Tale with a Tail by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Susan Gal, and it is set during the first night of Passover. And you see a family gathering with other family members and friends who have gathered to a Seder and a young boy inside the house spots this kitten, sort of a stray abandoned kitten, outside of the house, and how they meet is what drives the story, and spoiler alert, how the kitten finds a home and name is really the heart of the story. And it's such beautiful prose and illustrations, I think they were inks and charcoals and charcoals are the way to my heart, it's my favorite medium. These just warm and cozy indoor scenes and then they're juxtaposed with the kitten outdoors who is all alone and Susan Gal plays with light in particular in a really beautiful way in this book. And then a book that was just released, it's a holiday book called The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol by Arthur A. Levine and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes. I heard an NPR review with Arthur who described it as a pourquoi tale. It's about the tradition of presents and Hanukkah and Nate is Arthur's sort of original mythical creation, he's described as a great big spirit who makes things stretch for families in need. And in the story he follows a family who emigrates from Europe to America and Nate is there, as they start anew and helps this family out in the tradition that he is responsible for his presents outside of the bedroom door for each member of that family that he's helping.
Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about that I haven't thought to ask you?
So I guess I would say this. Please don't call them easy readers. They're early readers, or beginning readers or books for developing readers, or books for early elementary readers or what have you, but "easy readers" I think does our readers a disservice. These books are not easy for the kids who are reading them, they can be actually quite challenging. And I think we throw around this term easy readers in a way that may make readers feel like they're not good enough, they're not reading at the level they should be when really they're at the place that they need to be on their journey. So, if I can say one thing to people is, change your signage, change the way you talk about them. Words matter, there, there are a lot of other really great ways to refer to these books.
A lot of book groups do this, but when you're discussing a book, for whatever reason, it's always nice to start with the positive things, to start the discussion with, what do you see is good about this book. It forces everyone around the table to think about the virtues of the book and pretty much all of the books that you're going to read are going to have some strengths. That way the conversation doesn't really get shut down and it forces even someone who maybe has some concerns with the book to acknowledge the strengths of it. I think it leads to a sort of a more lasting discussion and more fruitful.
Everything you just said is great advice for life as well as for book discussion!
That is true.
Great. Well, thank you so much for talking with me Steven.
Oh sure, glad to do it.
Amy, thank you so much for speaking with me today.
Thanks, Heidi, it's really fun to talk about mocks so thank you for this opportunity.
Julie Danielson, thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.
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