Happy News

I am so excited! My book of ocean poems, Water Sings Blue, has won the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award for 2012! In case you're not aware of the award, this is a Big Deal. I'll be flying to Philadelphia in September to accept it. And there will be gold stickers on my book. Gold stickers!

You can read the press release here. To celebrate, I'll show you two spreads from the book. Click on the images to see larger versions. (There are more images in the Amazon preview.) As you can see, Meilo So's artwork is breathtakingly beautiful.

On another nice note, The Poetry Friday Anthology for Middle School is out. Two of my poems are in it. The book is edited by poet Janet Wong and Library and Information Studies professor Sylvia Vardell. It includes focused poetry lessons based on the Common Core Standards.

Now, you may be asking yourself, where, oh where, are the book reviews we've come to know and love here at Book Aunt? Well, hold onto your hats and your britches... this weekend I'll be comparing all kinds of versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. See you then!

Post Teaser and Nice News...

Okay, I'm back from Seattle, full of turkey, and playing catch-up. I have started doing a sort of complicated post that's going to be book picks for your Christmas shopping... I hope to have it up mid-week, but we'll see how it goes!

In the meantime, I have some good news about my poetry collection, Water Sings Blue: it has made Kirkus's list of the Best Children's Books of 2012. There are 100 books total in fiction, nonfiction, picture book, MG, YA, graphic novel, early reader, and poetry, so of course I'm in very good company.

Here's the Kirkus list as a starting point for your holiday book shopping.

Or there's the New York Times list of the best illustrated books of the year.

Not to mention the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children's Literature.

You might also want to check out the Cybils nominations if you haven't already. I'm especially big on the poetry list, and not just because Water Sings Blue shows up there, too. It's simply that I feel people often don't know where to find good poetry for children. You certainly can't count on B&N to carry a full selection of the latest poetry collections! So this list makes a good place to browse.

Now, if you're looking for classics to buy for your children, grandchildren, and students, try USA Today's 100 Greatest Books for Kids list. Better still, here's Betsy Bird's Top 100 Chapter Books from her poll earlier this year at Fuse #8, along with her Top 100 Picture Books.

More soon, I promise!

Note: The "Blue Whale" spread below is an example of Meilo So's truly gorgeous artwork for Water Sings Blue.

Update 12-17-12: Wow! Water Sings Blue made a Wall Street Journal best 10 books of the year list!

Meilo So News

Nice news for Meilo So—and for me! Her artwork for Water Sings Blue has been chosen to be featured in the 2012 Society of Illustrators Original Art Show. Take a look at one of her illustrations and you'll see why...

Join the Audio/Video Club

After the first two came along, I thought I'd share and add a few more clips and picks...

—Someone singing to one of my poems in a bookstore. No, really!

Here's her soundcloud melody and arrangement in case you have my book and want to sing along. Looks like her name is Emily Leatha Everson Gleichenhaus. Arrangement by Paul Raiman. Kind of pretty, huh? Apparently this is a thing she does. (See her blog here and the specific entry for Water Sings Blue here.) Thanks, Emily!




—"More Than a Number," lyrics by Poem Farm poet Amy Ludwig VanDerwater with music and performance by Barry Lane. Great thoughts about real kids vs. standardized test subjects.




—Everybody Dies book trailer by Ken Tanaka. A strangely compelling book trailer. Though the art struggles in comparison to the illustrations in, say, Everybody Poops.








—Not like iPad needs any help from me, but I am about to buy a Mac and this is a great little parody (also out in actual picture book form): Goodnight iPad. Nice reference to Angry Birds, too.





—How to Write a Children's Book—Not. Two so-so ideas plus eight things I completely disagree with, e.g., the suggestion to add a message of some kind. (Yikes!) Plus the whole formulaic approach in general. But the artwork is kind of cute!





—And last but not least, John Green's Crash Course World History #17. After all those teasers about "The Mongols: The Exception," we finally get an entire crash course (11 minutes plus) about the Mongols! Called, naturally, "Wait for It... The Mongols." (Warning: Starts with an ad. When I watched, it was a Duracell ad in Spanish. Random.) Watch the entire series if you like your history mixed with John Green's brand of humor.

ReaderKidZ and Water Sings Blue Giveaway

As mentioned below, I am the Author-in-Residence at ReaderKidZ this month, a poet for National Poetry Month. Thanks, ReaderKidZ. It's a privilege!

Here are the posts so far:

"What's Your Story?" About my childhood as a budding poet/writer

"A Letter to Readers" About the beach and how it inspired this book

Water Sings Blue Giveaway The announcement at ReaderKidz

FAQs: How Can I Help My Child Enjoy Poetry A very nice guide by Jeannette of ReaderKidz


ReaderkidZ has asked my publisher to give away a copy of Water Sings Blue in connection with their posts, and the folks at Chronicle have kindly agreed. However, my site is better equipped to host a giveaway, so we're doing it here.

Since we're celebrating poetry this month, you can qualify for the giveaway by writing a haiku about an ocean animal or some other maritime topic (like boats) and leaving it in the comments. The winner's name will be drawn and announced at the end of April. Please also make sure you are easy to get in touch with by leaving contact info in your comment or at least by checking back.

Thanks again, ReaderKidZ and Chronicle!

Water Sings Blue Launch

Big week for my ocean poems! They started shipping on Wednesday, but are already being reprinted. Today I'm doing a story time/book launch at a very cool indie bookstore in Salt Lake City, The King's English. Trying to think how to present well to 6-year-olds and my elderly aunts, who will turn out in force to support me!

Meanwhile, I've done some interviews around the blog and gotten a few nice reviews, to boot. (There's a little overlap among the interviews, but I tried to say different things when possible!) Here are the links:

Blog Interviews/Reviews

—Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (Julie Danielson, also about Hans My Hedgehog)

—Jama's Alphabet Soup (Jama Rattigan)

—Cracking the Covers (Jessica Harrison; click here for a complete transcript)

—Paper Tigers (Marjorie)

Thanks very much to all those who hosted and interviewed me!


Press/Journal Reviews

—Wall Street Journal (short but sweet!)

—Deseret News (Salt Lake City)

—Kirkus Reviews

—Publishers Weekly

Oh, and check out the seashell gallery I put up on my author's website.

Wish me luck today...

Update, 3/25: For those of you wondering why Amazon says "11 to 14 days" to ship WSB, it's because the first printing sold out and Chronicle is reprinting. (This is partly because B&N is going to use the book in a beach book display coming up soon, so they've ordered a lot of copies.)

Update, 3/27: Another starred review! This one's from Booklist. That makes three—hooray!

Update, 4/15: Take a look at this post in which Meilo and I interviewed each other for the Chronicle blog. Great pictures and stories from Meilo!

Water Sings Blue and the Shetland Islands

Okay, so I just have to tell you: my poetry collection, Water Sings Blue, has gotten two starred reviews so far, from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly! (And they gave two starred reviews to Hans My Hedgehog a month or so ago).

If you go to Water Sings Blue illustrator Meilo So's new website, it currently features our book with the starred reviews. You can also explore more of her amazing artwork.

Alas, my envy of Meilo has reached epic proportions. She lives in the Shetland Islands. Where they have puffins! And pink flowers! And little white cottages! While, sadly, living across the Atlantic makes Meilo ineligible for the Caldecott (Betsy Bird and I both think she'd be up for it, though I'm slightly more biased), it's still an incredibly pretty place to live. So I will give you a glimpse of what the rest of us non-Shetlanders are missing out on, even if we're not ponies. Um, you know what I mean.

See? SEE? I think I should go on a book tour to the Shetland Islands. I'm pretty sure the fishermen (fisherpeople) would love to hear me read poems from the book. The puffins might enjoy it, too. (Which reminds me, you really should read Eleanor Farjeon's The Silver Curlew, a classic fairy tale retelling with puffins in it.) In the meantime, I'll just have to dream. And try to control my envy, which is as green as the Shetland Islands.

Update: Meilo and I interviewed each other for the Chronicle blog. Check out Meilo's photos and stories about her island home.

Oh, the Thrill!

Just so you know, the #1 thrill moment when you're an author is when your author copies arrive from the publisher and you open the box, then turn those pages for the first time. I had a great week: both of my sets of author's copies came at once! That would be Hans My Hedgehog, due out 1/24, and Water Sings Blue, due out mid-March.

I took some photos so you can get a feel for what it's like. (Pride, joy, bliss, disbelief...)

First I'll show you the box of Hans books, above right.


Here's one of the spreads, with Hans up in a tree playing his fiddle. That's King #1 down at the bottom, yelling.









I really like the spot art.












The ocean poems came Fed Ex. I think my favorite spread is the jellyfish.










But the title page is also really pretty.










So yes, I've been semi-delirious the last couple of days. (I won't show you a photo of that.)

Oh, and the #2 thrill? When a kid likes your book and tells you so, or sends you an illustrated fan letter. Then again, maybe I should call it a tie!

Website News

My author's website is nothing if not sprawling, and it has just grown again: I've put up pages for my upcoming picture book, Hans My Hedgehog, and for my upcoming poetry collection, Water Sings Blue. Thanks to my website designer, Barb Aeschliman of Jaleroro Web Designs, for all her hard work!

Check out the Hans book page and a page of hedgehog facts, plus the Water Sings Blue book page (with the title poem) and a seashell gallery (from my own collection).

I'm especially happy because Hans My Hedgehog has garnered two starred reviews in the past few weeks, one from Kirkus and one from Publisher's Weekly. Of course, a lot of the credit goes to illustrator John Nickle, whose artwork is just amazing!

Happy sigh...

Note: I am also exploring the wonders of Twitter, if you'd like to check it out. My username is KateCoombs13.

Book Update and Awesome Man

I have some fun news about my own books, not to mention a review of Michael Chabon's picture book, which turns out to be related.

First, I'll just remind you that my retelling of the Grimms' tale, Hans-My-Hedgehog, will be out on January 24 and is already up on Amazon. John Nickle is the very talented illustrator. At the moment, my website designer Barb Aeschliman and I are busy working on a hedgehog page (much like my frog and squirrel pages).

Second, I now have cover art for my collection of ocean poems, Water Sings Blue, which is also up on Amazon and has a pub date of March 14. Isn't it pretty? Meilo So is the illustrator, and her interior artwork just knocks my socks off. Interesting note: Meilo lives in the Shetland Isles. (I discovered this while trying to FedEx galleys when they wound up at my house instead of hers!)

Third, I have had a picture book manuscript waiting for an illustrator at Atheneum for quite a while now, and voilà! The Tooth Fairy Wars will be illustrated by Jake Parker. Check out his website. You can expect this book in late 2013 or early 2014.

Jake is known for his comic series, Missile Mouse, and for his work on animated films like Horton Hears a Who and Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. His most recent project is Michael Chabon's picture book, The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man, which came out on September 6.

In case you haven't seen it, this book tracks the adventures of a superhero and his sidekick, Moskowitz the Awesome Dog. Here's how the story begins:

Hi! I'm a superhero. My name is Awesome Man.

I have a cape as red as a rocket, a mask as black as midnight, and a stylin' letter A on my chest.

I'm just basically awesome.

The superhero goes on to list some of his superpowers (shown in application in the illustrations) and to recount his adventures with villains such as mutant talking Jell-O from Beyond the Stars, Professor Von Evil, and the hero's arch nemesis, the Flaming Eyeball.

But our superhero has his down moments, and we see him returning to his Fortress of Awesome under the Arctic Ocean to try and get a grip.

Parker's comic style art suits this superhero story. He even uses dot backgrounds like old newsprint comics in some of the early spreads. I like the way his fortress, while under the sea and the eye of a passing whale, is a suburban home beneath a set of glass domes. Despite the smoothness of the rendering, Parker can show his square-jawed hero sulking as well as preening.

As for Chabon's text, it's a tad tongue-in-cheek—watch, for example, for a supervillain named Sister Sinister. The wording has a nice casual tone, as in this excerpt:

I fly west. I fly east. I fly eight times around the earth and all the way to the heart of the sun. (The Flaming Eyeball hangs out there sometimes.)

Chabon is, of course, best known for his adult fiction, e.g., Pulitzer Prize winner The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but he has also written a YA (upper MG) novel, Summerland, which I quite liked.

I noticed that some Amazon customer reviewers were complaining that Chabon's new picture book doesn't have a stronger plot, but I think they're missing the point: this one is intended to be a profile of the superhero, not Die Hard 3. (If you want more plot in a picture book along these lines, try Barnett and Santat's Oh No! Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World.) I will say, the ending of The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man isn't quite my cup of tea, but young readers will probably like it. For the kid who's a bit too young for Vordak the Incomprehensible, Chabon's new book may be just right.

Poetry Friday: A Watery Preview

I just heard from my editor at Chronicle; apparently she is working on selecting the cover art for my very first poetry collection, Water Sings Blue (illustrated by Meilo So). Woo-hoo! It's coming out next February or March, just in time for National Poetry Month 2012. I thought I'd give you a sneak preview by sharing two poems that didn't quite make it into the collection. After all, July and oceans go together nicely!


Albatross

The sky is my ceiling,
the sea is my floor,
as much as I can
I avoid the shore.

The clouds are my walls,
the wind is my chair,
I stride over water
and sleep upon air.


Advice to a Young Plankton

Slosh, slish,
swosh, swish.
Try to steer clear
of the ravenous fish.

Beware their mouths
like soup tureens—
those jaggedy teeth
above and beneath,
just waiting
to sweep you between—

and whatever,
whatever, whatever you do,
stay away from the glowering
mountains of blue,
with their caves of tall baleen.

—Kate Coombs, 2011, all rights reserved


Now, on to our many special guests this blue-sky-and-watermelon Poetry Friday! As always, please post your links in the comments, and I'll list them below as the day goes by. (I should start posting by 6:30 a.m. Mountain Time, so hang in there, East Coasters...)

—What better way to start off than with a bit of summery "Solitude" from William Wordsworth and our Poetry Friday leader, Mary Lee, at A Year of Reading?

—Unless it's with exuberant congratulations to the very talented Heidi Mordhorst, who is getting married tomorrow after 20 years with Fiona thanks to the new marriage laws. She celebrates with a love poem by e.e. cummings, "I carry your heart with me," at Juicy Little Universe!

—Thanks to April Halprin Wayland of Teaching Authors for giving us, not only sailboats and soursops in Fiji, but also a very cool poetry writing exercise involving keys.

—Charles Ghigna, AKA Father Goose, offers us a lovely original poem about a young dancer, "Stella Saw a Star."

—Over at Gottabook, Greg is celebrating summer with his strongly sensory original poem, "At the Beach."

—On the other side of the world from me, in Singapore, Myra Garces-Bacsal of GatheringBooks has an interview with poet Tita Lacambra Ayala about the 30-year anniversary of her Road Map Series featuring promising poets. In addition, Myra posts Ayala's poem, "Love Poem Macabre."

—At Paper Tigers, Corinne invites us to an event featuring Francisco X. Alarcón, author of four season-themed bilingual books of poetry, starting with Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems/Jitomates risueños y otros poemas de primavera. (Just want you to know I own all four books!)

—Our favorite Author Amok got to tour Louisa May Alcott's former home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts, last week. She shares highlights of her tour and a poem by Alcott, "A Song from the Suds." Thank heavens for washing machines!

—Now take a look at Changming Yuan's surprising white "Crow" over at Tabatha's blog, The Opposite of Indifference.

—Diane Mayr has given birth to Poetry Friday quadruplets! You can read Amy Lowell's poem, "A Petition," over at Random Noodling; enjoy Diane's own poem "Pledge of Allegiance" from her World War II collection, Kids of the Homefront Army; savor "Cricket Jackets" by Aileen Fisher at Kurious Kitty's Kurio Kabinet; or copy down the wonderful Mary Oliver quote at Kurious K's Kwotes. (This last is from one of my favorite Oliver poems, "When Death Comes.")

—Carol of Rasco from RIF reminds us that summer can be scorching with a poem by Denny Lyon, "Sweltering Summer Heat."

—Over in Haiti at There Is No Such Thing as a God-forsaken Town, Ruth shares the ultimate classic when it comes to summer: Shakespeare's sonnet, "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?"

—Mandy of Enjoy and Embrace Learning reminds us to savor the moment with Regie Routman's poem, "Now."

—On a sadder note, Doraine Bennett speaks of a friend losing her husband to cancer at Dori Reads; she gives us an Emily Dickinson poem, "As Imperceptibly as Grief," to honor him.

—Pentimento remembers her old parish church with an excerpt from John Logan's "Cycle for Mother Cabrini."

—Steven Withrow points out that sometimes summer days can feel too long with his original poem, "Boooooring." He has a poem for teens at Crackles of Speech, too: "School Play."

—As Shakespeare proved (see above!), you can do worse than spending your summer writing love poems. Irene Latham of Live. Love. Explore! shares her concise original poem, "Sixteen Words for Love."

—Thanks to Madigan at Madigan Reads for reviewing a new rebus take on nursery rhymes, Will Hillenbrand's Mother Goose Picture Puzzles.

—Anastasia Suen previews Marcus Pfister's clever couplet collection, Questions, Questions at Picture Book of the Day.

—Remember running through the sprinklers on a hot summer day? Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader does in her refreshing original poem, "Backyard Mermaid." Then at Blue Rose Girls, Elaine shares Margaret Atwood's "You Begin" and the original poem it inspired in honor of her daughter's wedding.

—Next Katie gives us a review of Read a Rhyme, Write a Rhyme by Jack Prelutsky over at Secrets & Sharing Soda.

—And finally, Libby joins us at A Year of Literacy Coaching with an appropriate end-of-the-day poem by Shel Silverstein, "Tired."

Thanks to everyone for participating in our beach picnic of poems!