Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis is the funniest book you’ll read this year. With its mix of text and hilarious cartoons it’s sure to be a hit with Diary of a Wimpy Kid fans. This book should come with a guarantee – “If you don’t laugh out loud at least once we’ll give you your money back!” It’s due out in March and you can watch these very funny videos below to meet Timmy Failure, his friends and his enemies. There is also a really cool Timmy Failure website you can visit to find out more about the book and the author – www.timmyfailure.com
children
My Most Anticipated March New Releases
A Necklace of Souls by R.L. Stedman (NZ)
In the Kingdom of the Rose only the power of the Guardian’s necklace can keep the people safe from the forces threatening to destroy it. In a hidden kingdom a mysterious Guardian protects her people with the help of a magical necklace. But evil forces are also seeking the power of the necklace, and as the Guardian grows weaker these forces threaten to destroy the kingdom. With the help of her best friend, Will, and the enigmatic N’tombe, Dana, the rightful heir, must claim the power of the necklace and save her people. But the necklace takes a terrible toll on whoever wears it – a toll that Dana may not be prepared to face. A NECKLACE OF SOULS was the winner of the Storylines Tessa Duder Award for unpublished young adult fiction in 2012.
Seven Wonders: The Colossus Rises
The day after twelve-year-old Jack McKinley is told he has six months to live, he awakens on a mysterious island, where a secret organization promises to save his life – but with one condition. With his three friends, Jack must lead a mission to retrieve seven lost magical orbs, which, only when combined together, can save their lives. The challenge: the orbs have been missing for a thousand years, lost among the ruins and relics of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. With no one else to turn to and no escape in sight, the four friends have no choice but to undertake the quest. First stop: The Colossus of Rhodes … where they realise that there’s way more at stake than just their lives.
The Book of Doom by Barry Hutchison
Heaven has lost the most important object in existence and getting it back is gonna be Hell … The second hilarious book in Barry’s AFTERWORLDS sequence – comic fantasy perfect for fans of Pratchett and Douglas Adams. There’s panic up in Heaven. They have mislaid the BOOK OF DOOM – the most important object in existence. Oopsy. They think Satan might have stolen it, the sneaky little devil, so to save the world – plus, you know, quite a lot of embarrassment, fifteen year old Adam and his angelic guide Angelo are sent to retrieve it. Sadly directions aren’t Angelo’s strong point and they soon find themselves just as lost as the book, wandering through Afterworlds such as Valhalla and Hades and encountering some colourful characters along the way… Can the hapless pair make it to Hell and back?
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis
Take eleven-year-old Timmy Failure – the clueless, comically self-confident CEO of the best detective agency in town, perhaps even the nation. Add his impressively lazy business partner, a very large
polar bear named Total. Throw in the Failuremobile – Timmy’s mom’s Segway – and what you have is Total Failure, Inc., a global enterprise destined to make Timmy so rich his mother won’t have to stress out about the bills anymore.
Fearless by Cornelia Funke
After saving his brother, Jacob Reckless faces death from the fairy’s curse burning in his heart. In search of a cure he returns to the Mirrorworld, where he is reunited with Fox, a beautiful shape-shifting girl. He has one more chance: a golden crossbow, with the power to both save and destroy life, buried in a dead king’s tomb beneath an invisible palace. Jacob must cross continents, face monsters and men – including a dangerous rival – and learn what it means to stay alive.
A Winter’s Day in 1939 by Melinda Szymanik (NZ)
Taken from their home, forced to leave their country, put to work in labour camps, frozen and starved, Adam and his family doubt that they will ever make it out alive. Even if they were to get away, they might freeze to death, or starve, or the bears might get them. For the Polish refugees, the whole of the USSR becomes a prison from which there is seemingly no escape.
Zom-B City by Darren Shan
How many survived the zombie apocalypse?
Where do the living hide in a city of the dead?
Who controls the streets of London?
B Smith is setting out to explore…
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Picture Book Nook: That’s Mine! by Michel Van Zeveren
In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the little frog finds an egg.
“That’s mine!” he says.
But the snake wants his egg, and so does the eagle, and so does the lizard…But what does the angry elephant want?
That’s Mine! by Michel Van Zeveren is a gem of a picture book that’s simple, yet surprising. You start off thinking you know where the story is going, but it veers off in a completely different direction (these are the best sorts of stories). The illustrations are bold and I love the expressions on the animals faces, especially right at the end.
The thing I like most about this book though is the text and the design. As each of the animals appears the sound they make turns into a word, like the eagle who flies in saying “Ack…ack…ack..actually it’s mine.” Children can follow the direction that each animal appears from by following the direction of the words (the hsss of the snake drops down from the top to the bottom of the page). I love the way that the text changes size depending on how loud the animal is talking and in relation to their size. On a page featuring all the animals, the text is largest for the elephant and smallest for the frog, so it’s clear that each of the animals has a different voice.
That’s Mine! is the perfect picture book for reading aloud. You can do different voices for all the animals and make it really silly. It could even be acted out in the classroom, with each child being a different animal.
4 out of 5 stars
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Give books not flowers this February 14th
February 14th is only a couple of days away, which means that International Book Giving Day is nearly here. Instead of giving flowers and chocolates to show your love, why not show your love of books and give books to a child who needs them the most. Here are some ways you could get involved in International Book Giving Day:
1. Give a Book to a Friend or Relative.
Celebrate International Book Giving Day by giving a child a new, used or borrowed book.
2. Leave a Book in a Waiting Room or Lobby.
Choose a waiting room where kids are stuck waiting and there are few to no good books available. Purchase a good book, and deposit your book covertly or overtly in your waiting room of choice. The goal here is to spread the love of reading to kids, so choose a fun book, nothing controversial.
3. Donate a Book.
Wrap up a box of children’s books that your kids have outgrown and get them in the hands of children who could really use a book or two. See my posts about donating to New Zealand charities KidsCan or Duffy Books in Homes.
I’ve cleaned out my bookcases of books I no longer need and bought a heap of new books to send to these charities on they day. Along with my library colleagues I’ll also be donating some nice new picture books to the doctor and dental surgeries in our community.
If you’re a school you could hold a special mufti day to raise money or gather books to send to Beckenham School in Christchurch, who recently lost their school library in a fire. A Free Post address is being set up for schools who would like to send books for Beckenham School free of charge.
Whatever you’re planning on doing for International Book Giving Day it would be great to hear all about it. You can join the International Book Giving Day Blog Hop to share your plans.
Let’s get books into the hands of the children in New Zealand who need them the most.
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Countdown to Skulduggery Pleasant Book 8
The wonderful people at HarperCollins New Zealand sent me a very exciting email today about Skulduggery Pleasant. Only 219 days until the, as yet untitled, Skulduggery Pleasant Book 8 is released! Read on for more info and to view Tom Percival’s temporary cover.
If you’ve been following Derek’s blog, you’ll know that he has written a third of Book Eight already. In fact, he’s cracking on with it at such an amazing pace that we can now officially confirm that Skulduggery Pleasant Book Eight will publish on 29th August 2013.
Yes, that’s just a little over 7 months away. Or a mere 219 days. Only 5,256 hours. And if you want to know the minutes, you should get a calculator.
Only kidding: it’s 315,360.
Derek will reveal the title on his blog soon (http://dereklandy.blogspot.co.nz/) – just another reason to check the blog page regularly. That, and he sometimes posts funny pictures of cats.
Nor will that be the last exciting reveal of the spring, because the jacket will be revealed sometime after that, once artist extraordinaire Tom Percival has worked his usual magic.
In the meantime, here’s a lovely holding image, to keep you going:
Stay tuned for further developments.
And start counting down the minutes.
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Picture Book Nook: Anton and the Battle by Ole Konnecke
Anton and the Battle is one of those picture books that you know is going to make kids laugh just by looking at the front cover. How can you not laugh when the two boys are swinging a cow and a cello at each other? The cover hooks you in and you want to find out what the battle is about.
The story starts with Anton and Luke arguing about which one of them is the strongest. Anton can lift a big stone, but Luke can lift an even bigger stone. They keep trying to out-do each other by proving that they’re stronger or louder or braver – until they meet a ferocious puppy.
Anton and the Battle is a wonderful story about the power of the imagination and the joy of play. Both the text and the illustrations are so simple, but really funny. Ole has coloured his two characters but left the rest of the page white so that they and their imaginations stand out. The white space allows the giant horn or the bombs to take center stage and draw the reader’s attention. The illustrations will have children laughing out loud, as Anton and Luke chase after each other with giant hammers, swing lions and tigers over their heads and get stuck up trees. The page where they are swinging lions and tigers over their heads is hilarious (just look at their faces)! I love the twist on the story when Ole throws a puppy into the mix and even when they’re stuck up a tree, they’re still trying to out-do each other.
It’s a story with lots of anticipation that keeps children guessing. Before you turn the page you could ask them what they think might happen next. Even after the story is finished you could ask children to suggest other things that Anton and Luke could battle with or ways they could show they’re stronger, louder or faster than each other. They could even draw their own Anton and Luke battle scene.
Anton and the Battle is one of Gecko Press’ first releases of 2013 and is available in libraries and bookshops now.
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Picture Book Nook: Open Very Carefully by Nicola O’Byrne and Nick Bromley
I love picture books that are interactive. I’m not talking about book apps, but physical books that ask the reader or the audience to do something. Not only are they fun for the audience, they’re also incredibly fun for the reader. Some of my favourite interactive picture books are the cat books by Viviane Schwarz (There Are Cats in This Book, There Are No Cats in This Book), that involve you blowing on the page to dry them off and throw balls of wool at them. I’ve just discovered a new favourite interactive picture book, called Open Very Carefully by Nicola O’Byrne and Nick Bromley.
The book starts off with the story of The Ugly Duckling, but something shows up in the story that shouldn’t be there – a really big, scary CROCODILE! It seems that this crocodile likes to eat letters, words and even whole sentences, but you’ve got to stop him before he eats the whole book. You try rocking the book backwards and forwards to make him go to sleep, and you try shaking the book to make him fall out. Will it work or will he eat the whole book?
Open Very Carefully will have adults and children in hysterics! Part of the humour of the book is in the way that you read it, putting the emphasis in the right place, and part of it is in the hilarious illustrations. At the beginning of the book the crocodile is looking very happy with himself, but that changes quite quickly when he discovers that he is wearing a very unflattering outfit. From the very first page children are engaged in the story and they’ll want to help you get rid of the crocodile. The interactive parts of the book are especially great for sharing one-on-one as these parts make children feel like they are important to the outcome of the story. The design of the book is wonderful too, especially the final pages and the back cover, which offers one final surprise for readers.
I will be reading Open Very Carefully again and again to preschoolers and school groups in my library. I’ll have to try and read it without laughing myself though.
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Support KidsCan on International Book Giving Day
One of the many ways that you can be involved in International Book Giving Day on 14th February is to support KidsCan, one of our wonderful local charities who get books into the hands of the children who need them most. The wonderful folks at KidsCan have written a post all about the amazing work that they do.
KidsCan was founded in 2005 and today supports the education of over 46,000 disadvantaged New Zealand children in 265 low decile schools, nationwide.KidsCan delivers targeted programmes which remove the physical barriers preventing children from getting the most out of their education. These tangible initiatives are ensuring New Zealand children living in poverty get through the school gate in a better position to learn. Simple, things – food, shoes and raincoats – can make a powerful difference to a child’s start in life.
The causes of poverty can be debated but there is almost universal agreement on the value of education. Children who grasp the power of learning have the power to change their future.
International Book Giving Day is a great initiative that is dedicated to getting as many new, used and borrowed books into the hands of as many children as possible. KidsCan is very pleased to be a recipient of these books that we can then pass on to children at our partner schools.
See our website http://www.kidscan.org.nz/ for more info on how to get involved in other ways to support these children.
If you would like to donate books to KidsCan you can send them to:
38F Apollo Drive
Mairangi Bay
Albany
AUCKLAND
Attention: Natalie Vincent
You will also need to send them your contact details and a book list with an approximate value as they must register them as in-kind donations.
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Winners of the 2013 ALA Youth Media Awards
It was an exciting time earlier this morning in the US when the winners of the 2013 ALA Youth Media Awards were announced. The Youth Media Awards include the prestigious Newbery Medal and Caldecott Medal and the Printz Award.
Congratulations to all the winners! I think it’s the first time that I’ve read and loved the winners of the Newbery and Caldecott Medal so I’m very pleased that they won. Here are the winners and honour books:
John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature:
There were three Newbery Honour Books announced too:
Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children:
There were five Caldecott Honour Books announced too:
Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults:
There were four Printz Honour Books announced too:
For more information about the awards and the winners of the other book awards check out this article http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/28/5146146/american-library-association-announces.html.
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Meet the wonderful Oliver Jeffers
I thought Oliver Jeffers was awesome before I saw this video, but now he’s just reached an all new level of awesomeness! I’ve been a huge fan of Oliver since his first book was published and I’ve loved everything he’s created so far, from his own picture books to illustrations for other authors, such as John Boyne and David Almond. His books are wonderful and it’s great to get this entertaining insight into his creative process.
My Best Friends Are Books 