Danielsaurus

Awesome Things Ahead for Dallas Clayton

The Hollywood Reporter:

Harper Collins signed self-publishing sensation Dallas Clayton to a three-book deal.

The Los Angeles-based Clayton self-published the children’s picture book An Awesome World! in 2009 after writing it for his then six-year-old son (with actress Shannyn Sossamon) Audio Science. An Awesome Book!, which Clayton says is about “dreaming big and never giving up,” evokes a brighter and softer Maurice Sendak with a hint of Shel Silverstein. […]

Under the deal Harper Collins will publish its own edition of An Awesome Book! in spring 2012. Clayton will also develop children’s content across multiple platforms, including television.

I’m a huge fan of Dallas (if you don’t know his work yourself, you really should!), and I can’t begin to say how excited I am that he’s been given this very well-deserved opportunity.

I’m thinking about making up road signs to mark the occasion: “Unimaginably Brilliant and Uncontained Awesomeness Ahead!” (What do you think?)

Vanity Fair Profiles Maurice Sendak

Written by Dave Eggers and photographed by Annie Leibovitz, it’s a ‘Can’t Miss’ portrait of the man:

Sendak’s sense of humor is pitch-black and ribald, though this fact, and the baroque essence of his work, is often lost on readers now that his books have become canonical. “A woman came up to me the other day and said, ‘You’re the kiddie-book man!’ I wanted to kill her.” He hates to be thought of as safe or his work as classic, and he won’t tolerate overpraise. “My work is not great, but it’s respectable. I have no false illusions.”

He’s wrong, of course. Sendak is the best-known, and by most measures simply the best, living creator of picture books, and in the stretch of years since his most prolific period—when he made In the Night Kitchen, Where the Wild Things Are, Kenny’s Window, The Sign on Rosie’s Door, and the “Nutshell Library”—his work has only grown in stature. No one has been more uncompromising, more idiosyncratic, and more in touch with the unhinged and chiaroscuro subconscious of a child.

Sendak’s upcoming picture book, Bumble-Ardy – the first he’s done solely on his own since 1981’s Outside Over There – looks great, and I can’t wait for it. Anymore, though, I find myself more excited by Maurice Sendak himself. He’s a fascinating man, both as an artist and an individual, and he holds what I think is a wonderful attitude and philosophy about children and childhood. If you ever wanted a glimpse into his life and thoughts, I can’t recommend enough that you go out and watch the 2010 documentary Tell Them Anything You Want, by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs: it’s an uncompromisingly honest portrait of him, one that touches on the many wonderfully rich, philosophical themes that have emerged throughout his life.

Though he is now 83 years old, it strikes me that, just in these past few years, ol’ Maurice has perhaps become more alive and honest and connected to life than ever before.

A Talk With the Author Who Created Ramona Quimby

Beverly Cleary, the now 95-year-old author of the Ramona Quimby books, on why her stories have continued to remain popular with children over the years:

I think it is because I have stayed true to my own memories of childhood, which are not different in many ways from those of children today. Although their circumstances have changed, I don’t think children’s inner feelings have changed.

The whole conversation between Cleary and The Atlantic’s Benjamin Schwarz makes for quite a nice read. I think what always sticks with me, though, when I read about the lives of the few true legends in the children’s book world – like Cleary, and like Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Arnold Lobel, and others who were inspired and nurtured by the great Ursula Nordstrom – is how honest and connected they were with their own childhood. They didn’t write and illustrate for children out of pretense or agenda; they just wrote to remember, and to honor their own childhoods. They worked at time when books for children were regarded as illegitimate, throwaway materials – and most were either simple penny novels to preoccupy, or pedantic ‘Dick and Jane’ readers to educate. But Cleary, and those like her, did something different. They didn’t try to trick or outsmart or educate their child readers; they just put their own memories on the page, and trusted that children would find the truth in it.

I rather like that. Don’t you?

Letters to the Children of Troy

As Jack Cheng tells the story:

In 1971, Marguerite Hart, the children’s librarian of my hometown of Troy, Michigan, wrote to dozens of politicians, writers, artists and otherwise notable individuals asking them to send in a few inspirational words for the children of Troy on the opening of its first public library. […] I remember going there to binge on Matt Christopher books in elementary school, and to research class reports and use the computers later on.

In response to Hart’s request, 97 letters were eventually returned – from individuals as wide-ranging as Isaac Asimov and Pat Nixon to Neil Armstrong and Dr. Seuss. Considered in sum, the letters speak to the the untold social value of libraries and the transcendental wonders of books. E.B. White, in his letter to the children of Troy, wrote that books were people – “people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book”:

Dr. Seuss also wrote, pressing the children with an important task:

While many of the letters were addressed to the children themselves, like Isaac Asimov’s and Dr. Ben Spock’s, others were addressed to Ms. Hart herself – or speak of how “a world without books would be a world without light” and of the important role libraries play in storing the knowledge of the world.

As poignant as some of the letters are, though, what has captivated me most is the legacy of a truly great children’s librarian shining through it all. Ms. Marguerite Hart must have been a real local treasure to the city of Troy, and it’s her vision for what libraries can become that seems to be her greatest legacy. As Troy’s library recounts, she once said:

The public library has a choice of roles to play in a community. It may be a vital, telling force, a source to which its patrons turn first, or it may be a passive entity, doing its work as a background for community activity. I believe that like the City of Troy, to which it belongs and which it represents, our new library must take a prominent place. Before children are able to read independently, a librarian helps them to know the library as the place they may explore when they do read. She helps them discover reading as a pleasurable experience, the quality of which derives from the attitudes within the library and that of the community it serves.

The Joys of Reading Children’s Books

What’s so great about reading children’s and Y.A. literature, even when you’re well into your adult years? Quite a lot, Pamela Paul maintains in this essay:

“A lot of adult literature is all art and no heart,” Foreman, who is currently working on a book about British involvement in the American Civil War, said. “But good Y.A. is like good television. There’s a freshness there; it’s engaging. Y.A. authors aren’t writing about middle-aged anomie or disappointed people.”

That may be, in part, why so many middle-aged readers like them.

Neil Gaiman’s Instructions, the Spice of the Macabre, and Deep-Fried Cheese Curds

Neil Gaiman reflects on the newfound ubiquity of his writing, how the macabre adds spice to stories, and much more, in a conversation with ABC News about his life, work, and upcoming new book.

And then, in the middle of it all, there’s this:

After living for 17 years in Wisconsin, Gaiman says he’s worried about losing his ability to find things strange in America.

“I’m thinking maybe I should now go to Finland or somewhere for a few years, just to get that sense of the alien back,” Gaiman said. “You know you’ve been in the Midwest too long when the idea of somebody deep-frying cheese curds is not strange.”