All the World

One of my favorite picture books right now is All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon and illustrated by Marla Frazee. It has no shortage of fans, being a Caldecott Honor Book and a New York Times Best Illustrated choice of 2009. 

I could tell you all about the extensive praise that the lyrical text and captivating drawings have received, but instead I am posting a video of Ms. Frazee talking about the joys of illustrating for the child audience.
Any time I have an opportunity to hear an illustrator speak about their artistic inspiration and craftsmanship, I am in awe. These are the people who can bring stories to life.
All the World achieves that perfect union of word and picture, but I would say it takes it one step beyond and Frazee's illustrations tell many tales within the text. It is a beautiful, grand achievement.


Video courtesy of youtube

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Book-A-Day

Last month I stumbled upon perhaps the handiest blog ever for Children's Literature enthusiasts or really anybody looking for a great book recommendation for kids. Anita Silvey's Children's Book-A-Day Almanac is a spot for daily essays on classic and contemporary children's literature.

If you are unfamiliar with Silvey, you may not realize what a resource this is, but if you are acquainted with the work of the once VP at Houghton-Mifflin Publishing and Editor-in-Chief at The Horn Book Magazine, then you are jazzed :). Either way, the children's book almanac is a treasure trove of information on everything from picture books to young adult literature delivered one day at a time.

Silvey only launched the blog back in October, so she is just getting started. I started visiting the site daily last month and I am already coming away with loads of interesting information and titles to check out.

If you, or one of the smaller folks in your life, is looking for a summer reading resource...this is the spot!Source URL: https://jimhensons.blogspot.com/search/label/reading
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supporting the indy bookstore

via booktumbling

If you use blogger then you probably also got the email about the Blogger and Amazon.com integration. The bait is that if you use this feature (which claims to not only simplify how you hyperlink to Amazon, but allows you to directly search the website from Blogger editor) then you will earn "commissions" from the Amazon-linked items you've recommended and your readers have bought.

All this is well and good and I've got nothing against earning a couple of extra bucks or Amazon (trust me, I've bought plenty from them!). However, I hate the manipulation of this "integration," how the recommendation of a book and the use of a hyperlink to that book becomes a marketing ploy to trusting readers. Aside from that - it also seems like another way for a huge business/website to not only take more business away from other, smaller, bookstores, but also attention from authors' pages, book reviews, etc.

Anyway, before I step off my soap box - I'd like to make a commitment to hyperlinking any books Hiving Out recommends to IndieBound, an online place that helps locate local independent and small bookstores (hope that's okay with you, L. and Mae!). And, yes, with this website you can also earn commissions too (something we have not signed up to do), but at least it's in support of the independent bookstores and who doesn't want to support them, right? Okay, I'm off my soap box now - have a great weekend everyone!!Source URL: https://jimhensons.blogspot.com/search/label/reading
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marilyn reading

via miss wallflower


Aren't these pictures just gorgeous? I had to seriously stop myself from including every image I could find of Marilyn Monroe reading in this round-up.

Aside from just how lost she seems in what she's reading (I love that picture of her on the couch with the books of the floor! It reminds me of some of the positions you find kids in when they're reading books that they're really into), I love that there are images of her reading everything from scripts to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, from a picture book to James Joyce's Ulysses.

Yes, indeed, these images make me happy.




via little girl things



via The Daily Mail



via drx



via art.com



via pop culture nerd



via The Walt Whitman Archive



via biblioklept
Source URL: https://jimhensons.blogspot.com/search/label/reading
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"This is for Tabby, who got me into it- and then bailed me out of it."- S. King

Beauty in Everything image courtesy of weheartit.com


Almost as soon as you crack open a book, you stumble upon a dedication, and that sentence or phrase is nearly as fascinating to me as the author's work that follows it. Maybe it is because those dedications have their own stories that we are not privy to or maybe it is because it seems to be the ultimate gesture of gratitude....whatever the reason, I always read the dedication before I start a book and again when I finish it. I'm often disappointed when it reads matter-of-factly "To John" or "For Jane" (despite the honor and beauty in those simple words) because I want to know more....
It turns out there is actually a book, "Once Again to Zelda: The Stories Behind Literature's Most Intriguing Dedications" by Marlene Wagman-Geller, that tells us about some of those "John"s and "Jane"s. It was in an article in the the New York Times about this book that I read the story of the dedication to Tabby (the one that is this post's title in fact) from author Stephen King.
For instance, in his first novel, “Carrie,” Stephen King wrote, “This is for
Tabby, who got me into it — and then bailed me out of it.” Was Tabby a cat? No.She’s Mr. King’s wife, Tabitha, whom he started dating in college, after they both reached for the same copy of “The Joy of Sex” in the library. They married in 1971, and Tabby worked at Dunkin’ Donuts to give Mr. King time to write.
When he threw away a draft of “Carrie,” she fished it out of the trash,
encouraged him to finish it, and helped him flesh out the girls’ locker-room scenes. Ms. Wagman-Geller writes that, when the book sold for $400,000,“Tabitha, who was sitting on a sofa that she had salvaged from a yard sale,put her head in her hands and wept.”



It is just the kind of quirky story of inspiration and love I imagine when I read a dedication. To think there are 49 other tales in Ms. Wagman-Geller's book....I will definitely be checking it out.
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Are you WHO you read?

photo via Books Rule



On the blog "Let Us Read and Let us Dance," I discovered this hilarious list by Lauren Leto called "Readers by Authors: Stereotyping People by Their Favorite Author" in which she does just that. Below are some of the ones I thought were the funniest and most on target (even if this reader felt herself called out once or twice...).

J.D. Salinger
Kids who don’t fit in (duh).


Stephenie Meyer
People who type like this: OMG. Mah fAvvv <3>


Jeffrey Eugenides
Girls who didn’t get enough drama when they were younger.



Lauren Weisberger
Girls who can’t read. Or think.


Jonathan Safran Foer
30somethings who were cool when they were 20something.



Ayn Rand
Workaholics seeking validation.


David Foster Wallace
Confirmed 90’s literati.



Ralph Waldo Emerson
People who can start a fire.



Charles Dickens
Ninth graders who think they’re going to be authors someday but end up in marketing.



Mark Twain
Liars.



Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
People who drink scotch.



Joseph Conrad
People who drink old fashioneds.



Dominick Dunne
People who get their class from Vanity Fair.



Anne Rice
People who don’t use conditioner in their hair.


Edgar Allan Poe
Men who live in their mother’s basements. Or goth seventh graders.



Michael Crichton
Doctors who went to third-tier medical schools.



Dan Brown
People who used to get lost in supermarkets when they were kids.



Dave Eggers
Guys who are in the third coolest frat of a private college.



Emily Giffin
Women who give their boyfriend marriage ultimatums.



Anais Nin
Librarians.



William Faulkner
People who are good at crosswords.



Jackie Collins
Your drunk stepmother.



Nicholas Sparks
Women who are usually constipated.



James Patterson
Men who score a 153 on their LSAT exam.



Sylvia Plath
Girls who keep journals (too easy).



George Orwell
Conspiracy theorists (too easy).


Aldous Huxley
People who are bigger conspiracy theorists than Orwell fans.


Nick Hornby
Guys who wear skinny jeans and the girls that love them.



Hunter S Thompson
That kid in your philosophy class with the stupid tattoo.



Toni Morrison
Female high-school English professors who only have an undergraduate degree.



Thomas Pynchon
People who used to be fans of J.D. Salinger.



Elizabeth Gilbert
Women who liked the movie “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” but didn’t read the book.



Rebecca Wells
Women on the East coast who wish they were from the South.


Alice Sebold
People who liked Gilmore Girls – even in the first season.


Brothers Grimm
Only children with Oedipal complexes.



Nicole Krauss

Girls who intern at Nylon but end up moving back to the Midwest for their real job.


Virginia Woolf
Female high-school French teachers who have their master’s degree.


John Irving

People whose parents are divorced.


James Joyce
People who do not like John Cusack movies.



Truman Capote
People who would never dream of owning anything that could be classified as a “knick-knack”.

For the full list go: here.

Source URL: https://jimhensons.blogspot.com/search/label/reading
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