Thursday, October 22, 2009

Children's Literature Center at the Library of Congress

I had the pleasure of attending the 3rd annual KidLitCon 2009 last weekend, which was organized by Pam at MotherReader. What a great time. Informative and fun. Not only did we have a day of bloggeriffic speakers on Saturday, we also had the opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Children's Literature Center at the Library of Congress Friday afternoon. My friend Barbara and I arrived a bit late, but the LOC folks were amazingly accommodating to the latecomers in our group. Several winding corridors and a spiral staircase later, we were in! We heard talks by Sybille Jagusch PhD, who showed us a James Marshall original dummy and sketch, and by another wonderful guy whose name I didn't get in the rare books room, who showed us 15th century books. What an experience! I felt so lucky to get a peek in the back rooms. As usual, I had no camera. Luckily my pal Barbara brought hers, which is why I can share these photos.


Bill Prosser of literatelives.blogspot.com listens in the rare books room of the LOC. You can't see it here, but the tabletop had a really cool swirly tree-ring design which Bill and I wondered about. From real trees? Antique? We'll never know.




Me in the Children's Literature Center, where the lovely Sybille and her cohorts were kind enough to display the books of visiting authors. I only wish my blog partner at readertotz, Lorie Ann Grover could have made it this year. She attended in 2008 and told me how great it was. She was right!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

My new book Shampoodle released this week!

http://www.randomhouse.ca/images/dyn/cover/?source=9780375855764&height=300&maxwidth=170

Shampoodle is finally in stores this week! It's a Random House Step Into Reading title for ages 4-7.
Many thanks to Kirkus Reviews for this lovely review! I so agree that Tim's art is fabulous!

Holub, Joan
SHAMPOODLE
Illus. by Tim Bowers
This Step into Reading title is a crazed, out-of-breath, fly-on-the-wall peek at picture-day morning at the Shampoodle salon for dogs. Four stylists are simply no match for seven rambunctious dogs. Add in the distraction of three cats, and chaos ensues. Snappy rhyming verses lead children through the fiasco to the hysterical hairstyles that are the result (all, oddly enough, look remarkably like the stylists that crafted them): “New hair. Blue hair. / Beads with knots. / Purple hair with polka dots. / Spiked hair. Mohawk. / Striped like skunk. / Glitter critter. / Super funk.” Short sentences, easy vocabulary and a large font fit the Step 2 level. Bowers’s characters all have wonderful personality, especially the pooches. Beginning readers will have to stop laughing at the pictures before they will be able to read the text. Very funny—there may be a short film in this somewhere. (Early reader. 4-7)