Pink Me

Librarian to the Stars: What to Expect When You're Expecting... Your Movie to a. Be Awful and b. Tank

Do you know what I get tired of? I'll tell you what I get tired of. I get tired of these over-30 (or over-40, or even over-50) actresses calling me up on the phone, complaining about the parts they're being offered. "They keep sending me MOOOMS!!" Nicole will whine. "When it's so OBVIOUS I am still Sexy Secret Agent material!" Or it'll be Kristen Wiig: "Do I look like a MOMM to you?! Why don't they get Catherine O'Hara?"

 

 

Those pants are really a sweater - and Catherine O'Hara makes 'em look good.

 

Sigh. Catherine O'Hara is 57 years old. The poor woman's been carrying the "funny mom" baton since the late '80s - time for her to move on to "funny mother-in-law." Jane Fonda and Candice Bergen can't be expected to handle all those roles by themselves.

Although - it's kind of a fact, besides the gay moms and Kevin's poor mother, mom movie roles have been a bit lame lately. Movie moms generally are participating in some kind of horror story in which they have to protect their child/get back their possessed child/never had a child to begin with; or they are present only as comic obstructions to the teenager or adult male saving the world in some way. Julie White, the mom in the Transformers movies? Totally underutilized.

 

Those Transformers movies would have been so much more fun if the mom were the hero instead of the kid. Look at her with her baseball bat. Let 'em have it, Judy!

 

One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, pictures by David Small - review

 

Oh David Small! For decades you and your wife gave us stories that we loved, populated by characters that, for all their exaggerated features, were wonderful, recognizable real people. Your landscapes and buildings always looked effortless but terrific. Then you wrote Stitches: A Memoir, and we all cried our eyes out. Amazing graphic novel memoir. And I don't know about other people in my industry, but I figured, given the acclaim Stitches garnered, David Small would then by and large quit illustrating picture books.

So pleased to be wrong!

Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs - review

Grace is feeling kind of out of place at her new high school in San Francisco. Newly arrived from a small town, she is hoping to find a friend.

Tough Gretchen has no need or desire for friends.

And snooty rich girl Greer doesn't have friends so much as she has acolytes, minions, and social rivals.

What do these three have in common? Besides first names that start with G? Well, they were all adopted, for one thing... and since this is a teen novel, you might as well guess: they're long-lost triplets. Not just any triplets, either. Descendants of a mythological monster slayer, they have a duty and abilities and there's a prophecy and all of a sudden Grace's GPA is in danger and Greer's Stella McCartney top is going to get mussed.
 
Part Percy Jackson, part Beverly Hills 90210 - with an acknowledged debt to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Grace has moved to San Francisco from a small town called Orangevale, where she attended a two-story school with stucco-covered walls), this is good fun, marred somewhat by writing that hammers home every expressive nuance ("'What are you doing here?' she demands, clearly unhappy to see me.")

Boy characters are amusingly decorative - entering the action with portentious fanfare, all eyelashes and biceps, only to disappear for long stretches with nary a ripple, reappearing - or not - several chapters later. Although they may have some role in later books, in Sweet Venom they appear to be nothing more than gratuitous romantic interest. A not-too-serious paranormal action novel along the lines of the Maggie Quinn, Girl vs. Evil books.

Adapted from a review originally published in VOYA.

In and out of days: Great new picture books that just happened to cross my path the week Maurice Sendak died

 

Author-illustrator Gary Taxali's tribute to Maurice Sendak was featured in Sunday's New York Times

 

I would have liked to have met Maurice Sendak. As impatient and uncompromising as he seems to have been, he took this stuff seriously in a way that I feel like I recognize - and he knew it was all folly at the same time.

I will wager that almost every person involved with picture books has learned something from Maurice. I know I have. In the Night Kitchen taught me to look at all the stuff inside the pictures; Where the Wild Things Are, with its expanding and contracting picture area, taught me to look at the page as a whole; and his illustrations for the Little Bear books showed me that animal characters need not be cartoonish or unrealistic to be endearing. 

It is a fitting coincidence, therefore - a random tribute - that this past week was a particularly good one for illustration in picture books. Here are the ones I brought home to share and savor with my sons, not a line of 'ordinariness' in any of them:

BZRK by Michael Grant - review

 

You have got to hand it to Michael Grant - the guy has CHOPS.

I started reading his stuff with the first GONE novel. "Terrific premise," I thought. "Great staging of the classic civilization-reboot-in-the-hands-of-the-children plot." And then, "Jeez that's some STRONG horror. This guy pulls no punches."

Then I read The Call, the first entry in his middle-grade series, The Magnificent 12. I described that book as "Michael Grant popping the top off his can of funny." It's like entry-level Douglas Adams: I hand The Call and The Trap to any kid who answers 'yes' to the questions, "adventure?" and "funny?"

Now for BZRK. This is sci-fi set in the real world: non-dystopian secret-agent-type sci-fi, gritty, dark, and extra-violent. Teenagers are recruited to fight battles so surreptitious that they are invisible to the naked eye.

 

Nonfiction Monday - High Riders, Saints, and Death Cars: A life saved by art by Nicholas Herrera - review

 

It's the fortunate teenager who will come across this beautifully produced art book and its subject, self-taught folk artist Nicholas Herrera. Not only does Herrera describe his process, inspirations, and technique, but he speaks frankly about his wild youth, bad behavior, and the consequences thereof.

 

 

The Wreck, Mi Vida de 25, 1999

 

 

Pink Me makes a move, plus a tribute to my women

It's a bittersweet day here on the Pink Me couch... I am upping stakes and switching libraries.

I have always refrained from specifying where I work when I write these reviews, just out of general vague worry about my employer at some point taking issue with something I've written, or a reader mistaking my views with that of the system. But there are plenty of Pink Me readers whom I also help at the library, and I'd like to let them know that I will no longer be... um, at that place where you often see me... and instead I will be... at the similar place that is located in Dundalk.

It's also my habit, when library customers thank me for my help (as polite people do, regardless of whether I've been much help), to reply, "My pleasure." And I mean it every time. The kids and parents that I've helped at... the place where I often am... are a consistent source of challenge and delight, and I'd love to see you guys... at this other place that is further East. (Ask at the desk, they'll give you a map.)

Same system, new job. FULL TIME, BABY. So you might not be seeing as much of me on Pink Me. On the other hand, I bet I will be doing more storytimes! Heads, shoulders, knees, and WIGGLE THAT BUTT, LITTLE KIDS!

 

 

The combined Goodreads shelves in this room would sink a ship

I'd like to take just a moment to thank the women - it's been mostly women (except for you, Token Boy and John) - who have taught me my job. A few of them are in the picture above. Here's a fun fact - when I started at the public library 8 years ago, I had never handed a book to a child. Hell, I had never handed a book to a grownup - I was a museum metadata expert, and before that a photo archivist! Children? Fiction? These were total blank spaces for me.

 

And you know - I went to library school and all, I have the degree, but without a doubt it's been the dedication and expertise of my co-workers that has taught me how to do what we do, and eight years later, I can't see me doing anything else.

I've worked a lot of places, and in a lot of professions, but I have never seen such consistent professionalism and passion as I've seen among public librarians. They read, they talk, they are principaled, and they are generally funny as hell. These are my people! And I'll miss the ones I work with now, but I am very happy and excited to be working with a whole new batch.

 

Dead mice, shy cats, problematic whales and Goldie Hawn: Pink Me talks to Mac Barnett and Adam Rex!

 

In the new picture book Chloe and the Lion, a little girl blows a jarfull of change on the merry-go-round, gets dizzy, loses her way in the woods, and meets a hungry lion. Then she ends up standing on a street corner wearing a tube top in order to lure more unsuspecting children into the lion's clutches.

Wait. No. That's not what happens at all! That's me, the reviewer, hijacking the story. Which I am completely not supposed to do. Bad reviewer! Fired!

Hey and you know who else is not supposed to hijack the story of a picture book? The illustrator. Yup. The illustrator is not supposed to draw a purple dragon instead of a hungry lion (even if a dragon is way cooler), because if he does, the author is going to step in with a WAITAMINIT, VARLET - YOU DRAWS WHAT I TELLS YA TO DRAW, and then maybe the illustrator will retaliate by drawing the author in a variety of interesting and humiliating outfits, and then the illustrator will find himself FIRED. And eaten.

Like it? Me too!

Pantone Colors, illustrations by Helen Dardik - review

 

Once, very briefly, I worked in publishing. I learned a lot in that short time, and I learned things that have come in handy in most of my subsequent jobs. (I have also briefly worked in museums, in software, in ice cream, and in men's pants, and the knowledge that I gained in each of those venues has had unexpected applications later in life. For example, I can still estimate a man's inseam at 25 paces.)

In my capacity as an Editorial Assistant, I had occasion to sit in on those production meetings that were really budget meetings, during which line items like color, paper, coatings, die-cuts, and binding options were discussed with a sometimes brutal disregard for the needs of the content. Those meetings would make a grown man weak in the knees.

 

Beneath a Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson - -review

Cover your ears, gentle souls, because it is about to get LOUD in here. And there will be swearing.

I socked in to Beneath a Meth Moon last night after the kids went to bed, and stayed up late reading it in one go. And from page one I was struck - again - by how singular, how passionate, how direct... how enormously fucking talented Jacqueline Woodson is.