The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets

A new Dahl book:

Miranda Mary Piker, described by author Roald Dahl as “a horrid little girl who was disgustingly rude to her parents and also thoroughly disobedient,” is one of several “nasty children” who didn’t make it into the final version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when it was published in 1964. Fans can make her acquaintance at last in The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets, which includes “Spotty Powder,” the deleted chapter featuring Miranda. Due from Puffin next month with a 75,000-copy first printing, the book also contains biographical and autobiographical tidbits about Dahl’s life and writing, as well as art by Quentin Blake.

Ignatius Press Children's Books

From Catholic News Agency:

Ignatius Press announced on Monday that they are launching a collection of illustrated Catholic books for children, with the first eight to be released in October 2010.


The company has partnered with Magnificat in publishing a series of Catholic books that will “capture the imagination of children of various ages through delightful full-color illustrations, exciting stories from the Bible and lives of the saints, and simple yet powerful prayers,” read a press release on Aug. 16.

Rabbit & Possum Sketches

Patricia Neal (wife of Roald Dahl) dies at 84

From the New York Times:

... During her affair with Cooper she became pregnant and had an abortion, according to the autobiography “As I Am” (1988), written with Richard DeNeut. “If I had only one thing to do over in my life,” she wrote, “I would have that baby.” Eager to have children, she married Dahl in 1953, even though she did not love him then, she wrote in her autobiography. A former R.A.F. fighter pilot who became a renowned writer of often darkly humorous children’s books (“James and the Giant Peach,” “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”), Dahl took control of Ms. Neal’s life. After their four-month-old son, Theo, was left brain-damaged when his pram was crushed between a taxicab and a bus on a New York street in December 1960, Dahl decided that they would move to the village of Great Missenden in England. Two years later, their eldest daughter, Olivia, who was 7, died of measles encephalitis, perhaps for want of sophisticated medical care that would have been available in a big city.

Gli Amici di Gesú

A children's book from Pope Benedict! It is only currently available in Italian though:

The book is composed of passages taken mainly from the Pope’s Wednesday general audiences, and tells the tale of Jesus’ first friends and disciples. Its 48 pages are illustrated by Italian artist Franco Vignazia, and it features a prologue by Spanish priest Father Julian Carron.

I also found Joseph and Chico a while back; a biography of the pope written for children.

Terrifying Children's Book Art of Japanese Monsters by Gojin Ishihara

Great work! Children's books don't always have to be happy tales about fuzzy, big-eyed creatures. 

"I came across a gallery of Ishihara's work today, mostly from the 1972 children's book "Illustrated Book of Japanese Monsters," in which the prolific artist drew pictures that I'm guessing were explicitly designed to scare the living hell out of the kids who read them."

Read the whole article here.

"Things aren't the same, and they never will be."

From PW: The Digital Revolution in Children's Publishing:

Picture books have used artwork as a core part of their storytelling as long as the art form has existed, yet they have always evolved, too. "The printed book hasn't stayed static—look how popular graphic novels are with kids," says Eliza Dresang, the Beverly Cleary professor for children and youth services at the University of Washington and author of Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age. "Things aren't the same, and they never will be."

...

Publishers and authors typically say they want kids to be able to read (and interact with) a story in any form, including electronic devices. "They're not so much competitors as they are companions," says author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, whose Little Pea is the book of the month for Readeo.com, a subscription site that lets children and adults in different cities see live video of each other sharing digital picture books. "You might own it in both forms. One doesn't preclude the other."

The Children's Book

I've been curious about the novel The Children's Book by AS Byat since it came out:

Olive Wellwood lives an apparently perfect life; a successful writer of children's books, she lives in a beautiful old farmhouse in the Kentish countryside - Todefright, "tactfully extended and modernised in the Arts and Crafts style" - with her husband Humphry, her sister Violet and her brood of children. There they hold parties and mix with their friends and neighbours, well-known figures in the worlds of art, literature and politics; indeed, the novel begins in the run up to the Wellwoods' Midsummer party, with its Shakespearean themed costumes and a visiting puppet show.

...

Meanwhile Olive, pregnant again, continues to work not only on the children's books she writes for publication, but the individual, handwritten volumes she fills with stories for each of her own children, mysterious tales of secret worlds accessed through invisible doors, gaps in tree roots or cracks in tea-cups. Yet as with the Wellwoods' own lives, these beautiful fairy tales are filled with secrets and with danger, foreshadowing difficult times ahead as the children begin to grow out of their seemingly idyllic lives.

Read the whole review by Elizabeth Gregory here.

Maurice Sendak on what being an illustrator means

"When you hide another story in a story, that's the story I'm telling the children."

I found this via Mark Mitchell at How to be a Children's Book Illustrator.

Library of the Early Mind

From Publishers Weekly: New Film on Children's Book Authors and Illustrators:

Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar stories, or more specifically Adam Gopnik’s interpretation of them as part of the common language of childhood in the New Yorker in September 2008, serve as both title and inspiration for an upcoming film on children’s literature, Library of the Early Mind, directed and produced by Edward J. Delaney and co-produced by Steven Withrow.

...

“We wanted to do a film that would be interesting to people who may not have an interest in children’s literature,” says Withrow. “We wanted to describe how the writers and illustrators become artists and how these personal experiences really were the crucibles of the art they created.”

Here is the film's website.