2book

Children's & YAPicture Book

A new classroom full of friends

Feature by Robin Smith

Back-to-school means new classrooms, teachers and friends. While the dance of friendship is an easy line dance for many children, it’s a complicated tango for others. Every year, teachers spend a great deal of time thinking of ways to help their new students make the transition to a new classroom, where the subtle social rules can seem overwhelming, at least at first. Parents want to help their children fit in, and include new friends in their circles. Three new books will help all children explore these complicated social situations through the eyes of three very different children, perhaps picking up some skills—and empathy—along the way.

ON THE OUTSIDE, LOOKING IN
Peter H. Reynolds quietly explores the feelings of a little boy who is on the outside of the social group in I’m Here. The explanatory information on the jacket explains that he wrote the book “to help us all reach out, embrace, and appreciate children in the autism spectrum, as well as anyone who is different from ourselves.” Young children will be drawn into the world of the playground, where the little boy hears the chatter as one big noise. “They are there. I am here.” All alone, with just the breeze, a piece of paper and eventually one new friend, the little boy narrates his story with few words and an unspoken, overwhelming desire for friendship. Teachers and parents who want to help their children understand the perspective of a child with autism will find this book both moving and useful. The slow pace and blessed lack of bullies and mocking that often are included in books about social adjustment will help all children—and their parents—think of ways to embrace those children who might be on the outside looking in. They are here and they want to be friends.

A SMALL RABBIT WITH A BIG HEART
Squish Rabbit is a remarkably teeny rabbit. He is so hard to see that he feels life is passing him by. Graphic illustrations by first-time author-illustrator Katherine Battersby, combined with paper, fabric and photograph collage, allow the reader to understand Squish’s predicaments based on how he is pictured on the page. At times, he is so tiny he is about to be stomped by another critter. When he thinks he is alone, he has a dandy tantrum that spans four comic style squares, bathed in a wash of red-hot anger. But when he is desperate to save a squirrel, his scream of “STOP” covers most of two pages. This is a book where design is the thing. Children will discuss why there is an ocean of white space between Squish and the squirrel when they meet and why they gain size and lose almost all distance when the page turns. And, of course, everyone is happy when Squish realizes that “his friends made him feel much bigger.” Squish Rabbit is perfect for the youngest new friends.

QUIRKY AND CONFIDENT
Perhaps my favorite new book about school and friendship is Marshall Armstrong is New to Our School. David Mackintosh brings us a remarkable little guy. The narrator is suspicious of Marshall; Marshall is different. He reads at recess, eats “space food” for lunch, stays in the shade and does not have a TV. The illustrations really get at the heart of Marshall. We see him wearing a straw hat, yellow-and-green-striped jacket and necktie; riding a giant old-timey bike; using school supplies straight from an antique store. When Marshall invites everyone to his birthday party, the narrator just knows it will be a miserable time. Turns out that Marshall’s party, despite the lack of electronics, is more fun than a trip to an amusement park! Quirky pen-and-ink illustrations provide plenty of details to explore. Adults will be reminded of Quentin Blake and Edward Gorey, which is just the right tone for a fellow like Marshall. It’s great to see a smart, inquisitive kid portrayed confidently as a hero. Marshall is remarkably self-assured, the kind of kid who is happy to have friends and happy to be alone with his own interesting mind. Children need to be reminded that, though it’s great to have friends, it’s also important to enjoy time alone to imagine, explore and invent.

For more back-to-school recommendations, read a roundup of four reviews from the August issue of BookPage: "Back to the classroom in style."

Robin Smith spends her summers thinking about her new group of second graders and hopes she will have at least one Marshall, some Squishies and a few quiet observers in her class each year.

Back-to-school means new classrooms, teachers and friends. While the dance of friendship is an easy line dance for many children, it’s a complicated tango for others. Every year, teachers spend a great deal of time thinking of ways to help their new students make the…

Fiction

Haunting Halloween horror

Feature by Michael Alec Rose

Let’s face it: if you read horror, you’re a geek. But there’s a broad spectrum of geekiness, stretching from the literary-historical, to the video-related “gross-out,” to the realm of metaphysical inquiry. These books cover all those bases.

THE PAST THAT WASN’T

“Steampunk” is one of those genre terms that few can properly define. There are a few prerequisites, though: 1) Queen Victoria (or her son Edward) occupies the British throne; and 2) the deadly hubris of Dr. Frankenstein has grown apace, thanks to the scientific advances of the Victorian age. The stories commissioned for Ghosts by Gaslight—from a who’s who of fantasy and horror luminaries—derive their energy from the authors’ surrender to the allure of Stevenson, Kipling, Verne, Wells and a host of lesser-known ghost-story writers of that era, whose obscure productions are the hoarded treasure of a special subset of uber-geeks. In this collection, the fruits of such an old-fashioned harvest are variously ripe or wonderfully rotten. Several stories—for instance, those by venerable wizard Peter Beagle and relative newcomer John Harwood—are dazzling. The brief but encyclopedic introduction from editors Jack Dann and Nick Gevers makes the book indispensable.

WHAT'S LEFT OF THE WORLD

Who could have guessed that the author of Vacation is best known as a video-game writer? Well, duh. Once you’re plugged into Matthew Costello’s apocalyptic novel, there’s no friggin’ way to get off this ride. The unrelenting, staccato rhythm of the narrative perfectly matches the enervating effects of video gaming. So, like, survivors of a global agricultural plague in the near future try to avoid being eaten by the zombie “Can Heads” unleashed by the government’s nefarious genetic testing (dude!). Each horrific confrontation works along a jagged crescendo of unpredictability. The hero isn’t only saving his beloved wife and kids, he’s saving civilization (OK, maybe). If this novel doesn’t appear soon in software format, I’ll eat the next NYPD officer whose car breaks down in my neighborhood.

THE SPECTRAL SEA

All three of John Ajvide Lindqvist’s books, including the chilling Let the Right One In, have blown over the ocean from Sweden to win great acclaim from U.S. horror fans. His new novel, Harbor, establishes a new mythos. With an uncanny gift for local color and a psychological acuity for universal fear, Lindqvist finds horror in the element of water, whose inexorable force overwhelms the damned island community of Domaro. In this maritime variation on the grand theme of sacrificial evil—so unforgettable in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home—Lindqvist presents affectionate portraits of both flawed protagonists and implausibly scary demons: the magus Simon; a father who has littorally lost his little Maja to a cryogenic sea; and a pair of teenage ghosts. Lindqvist grasps instinctively that the most horrible thing that can happen to us has already happened (our being born into this sorrow-sodden world). The rest of the story is up to us. 

 

Let’s face it: if you read horror, you’re a geek. But there’s a broad spectrum of geekiness, stretching from the literary-historical, to the video-related “gross-out,” to the realm of metaphysical inquiry. These books cover all those bases.

THE PAST THAT WASN’T

“Steampunk” is…

NonfictionArt

A museum in your own home

Feature by Mark Doyle

Two ambitious new books recreate the full museum experience between two covers, making the world's artistic masterpieces accessible to all.

THE TREASURES OF EUROPE
Anyone who has ever battled the camera-wielding scrum in front of the Mona Lisa knows that a visit to the Louvre Museum in Paris can be exhausting. Now a handsome new book containing color images of every single Louvre painting on permanent display, The Louvre: All the Paintings, offers a chance to explore the world’s most-visited art museum at a gentler pace.

The Louvre’s permanent collection—3,022 pieces in all—covers European paintings from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. The book is divided into the Italian, Northern, French and Spanish Schools, and each of these is arranged by artist in a rough chronological fashion, allowing the reader to observe as, for example, the brilliant blues and reds of the Italian Renaissance slowly give way to the duskier hues of the Low Countries. Many pages only display numerous small images clustered together, showing the common characteristics of the work of a single artist or period, such as the smooth, O’Keeffe-like spareness of Pierre Henri de Valenciennes’ 18th-century townscapes. Four hundred select masterpieces are given larger images and descriptive paragraphs, and these are the real strengths of the book: The images are rich and sharp, the descriptions thoughtful and clear. An accompanying DVD allows readers to browse all the paintings by school or artist and to see the book’s tinier paintings at a slightly larger size. Altogether, this is a fascinating overview for anyone looking to learn more about the grand old European masters.

ART THROUGH THE AGES
The Art Museum offers a museum experience of an entirely different order. It is an astonishing book, not just because it displays the entire history of world art from the earliest cave paintings to the latest nominees for the Turner Prize, but also because it takes so much space to do it. Weighing nearly 18 pounds and measuring 13 by 17 inches, this is not a book that will fit on most coffee tables, but despite its unwieldy size, it is an exciting, nearly perfect collection of the greatest visual art in human history.

The Art Museum is divided into 25 “galleries” (representing different regions and eras) and 450 smaller “rooms” (representing specific schools, artists or genres), along with special “exhibitions” devoted to specific works or themes. It displays more than 2,500 works of art: paintings, sculptures, tapestries, the interiors and exteriors of buildings, pottery, furniture, photographs and much more. The most impressive “rooms” are the two-page spreads displaying actual rooms or other locations, such as the stunning wide-angle photograph of the ruins of Persepolis. Most rooms contain a handful of representative examples on a theme; every image is perfectly legible and has a substantial, lucid description. While some of the topics are conventional—Netherlandish Portraits, Maya Sculpture, Surrealism—many are more innovative. For example, Room 426, on “Systematic Documentation,” introduces us to artists who obsessively photographed the same objects—cinemas, water towers, Memphis streetscapes—over and over. The scope of the book encourages readers to make unexpected connections, as when rooms devoted to African masks and carvings usher us into a section on the Cubists, hinting at the affinities between the two. Indeed, given the scale of its ambition and achievement, perhaps we should be grateful that The Art Museum is as compact and user-friendly as it is.

Two ambitious new books recreate the full museum experience between two covers, making the world's artistic masterpieces accessible to all.

THE TREASURES OF EUROPE
Anyone who has ever battled the camera-wielding scrum in front of the Mona Lisa knows that a visit to the Louvre Museum…

Romance

A romantic twist on the holidays

Feature by Lois Dyer

Christmas-themed romance novels are as plentiful as shopping mall Santas, so we’ve picked a few of this year’s best and brightest for your enjoyment. Relax, put your feet up, pour a hot cup of Earl Grey and be swept away by these holiday tales.

PASSIONATE REUNION
Best-selling author Robyn Carr will delight her many fans with Bring Me Home for Christmas, an endearing story set in a small mountain town in Northern California. This tale of a lovers’ reunion stars Rebecca Timm and Denny Cutler. Once deeply in love, the young college student and Marine were torn apart when Denny’s mother died and he re-enlisted in the Corps. Now, several years later, Becca is considering a marriage proposal from another man. Before she can give him an answer, though, she knows she has to see Denny again. Becca is seeking closure when she travels to Virgin River—and what she finds there is a love that has endured and still holds them both in thrall. Despite their painful past and the broken hearts they’ve both suffered, is it possible that Becca and Denny can find a way forward, together? This latest entry is a wonderful addition to Carr’s Virgin River series.

A NEW SHOT AT LOVE
Prepare to be enchanted by Sheila Roberts’ The Nine Lives of Christmas. Even Ambrose the cat has an opinion about whether firefighter Zach Stone should get together with retail clerk Merilee White. Unfortunately, Zach is seriously commitment-shy, while Merilee is just . . . well . . . shy. But Ambrose is on his ninth and final cat life. He’s convinced that he’s required to atone for his past eight wicked-cat lives and is now on a mission to bring his human companion a serious dose of Christmas happiness. Unfortunately, Zach is not only uninterested in holiday trappings, he’s determinedly avoiding Merilee because he’s wary of the powerful attraction he feels toward her. Nonetheless, Ambrose is determined to play matchmaker. Zach has a wall of steel around his heart, and it isn’t until family secrets are laid bare that he’s able to see his world—and Merilee—with new perspective. The story has Roberts’ trademark humor woven into a well-crafted plot, combined with engaging characters that are sure to charm and delight readers.

ROMANCE IN THE WEST
New York Times best-selling author Linda Lael Miller transports readers back to the early 1900s and the American West in A Lawman’s Christmas. When Clay McKettrick arrives in Blue River, Texas, to begin work as the new town marshal, he’s accosted by a precocious six-year-old cherub. He takes her home and learns her mother is Dara Rose Nolan, the widow of the prior marshal. The small house the family lives in is part of the marshal’s compensation, and Clay now has the power to evict Dara and her two daughters from their home. But Clay is charmed by the pretty young widow, and Dara Rose finds the handsome young marshal irresistible. The two agree to join forces, but what begins as a practical decision to secure a future for her two daughters soon has Dara Rose struggling with whether she dares to risk falling in love. Miller has created a rock-solid Western setting, and she brings it to life with characters who are believable and admirable. Readers will love this heartwarming Christmas story.

Christmas-themed romance novels are as plentiful as shopping mall Santas, so we’ve picked a few of this year’s best and brightest for your enjoyment. Relax, put your feet up, pour a hot cup of Earl Grey and be swept away by these holiday tales.

PASSIONATE REUNION

Children's & YAPicture Book

Celebrating the traditions of Hanukkah

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

No matter how we spell it, Hanukkah or Chanukah is a unique holiday, an eight-day celebration that commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Celebrated from December 20 to December 28 this year, Hanukkah continues to inspire new children’s books that offer historical background and cultural details about the holiday. We've selected three that are particularly noteworthy additions to the Hanukkah repertoire.

THE HISTORY OF THE HOLIDAY

Hanukkah is a holiday about miracles, and sure enough, it’s almost a miracle to find a picture book about Hanukkah origins and customs that’s suitable for all children, Jewish and non-Jewish, in the classroom and at home. The Story of Hanukkah, written by David A. Adler and illustrated by Jill Weber, successfully combines history, modern customs, attractive artwork and a word-picture ratio that should keep even wriggling preschoolers interested. Recommended for ages four through eight, this pictures book assumes no prior knowledge of the holiday, and yet covers crucial ground that experienced children could hear again. The book begins and ends with the Holy Temple, making clear the reasons for the military essence of the holiday in the middle. The Jewish people learn to be soldiers to fight for religious freedom and rescue the Temple from the ancient Syrian Greeks, a feat depicted in color-soaked, double-page spreads of swords, arrows and cavalry, including the unforgettable elephants. After the miraculous victory, the Jews dedicate the Temple back to God—Hanukkah means “dedication”—and this is where another miracle comes in: the oil. The book’s last two pages deftly cover modern customs like candle-lighting, latkes and sufganiyot (doughnuts) fried in oil, songs, gifts and dreidels. My only wish is that our present-day candles could be more overtly linked to the Temple’s oil menorah. Candles are a convenient way to kindle Hanukkah flames, but as a substitute for the original olive oil.

The illustrator’s latke recipe and a handy page of dreidel rules are included. These additions round out The Story of Hanukkah as an excellent and much-needed option for teachers and parents looking for just the right way to tell the story of the holiday.

HANUKKAH IN 3D

Near-miraculous also describes what it’s like when master pop-up artist Robert Sabuda makes a Hanukkah book. Fans of movable books and Jewish kid lit will be thrilled. In Chanukah Lights, Sabuda joins veteran author Michael J. Rosen to imagine the holiday through the world, through time. Each night represents a different stage of Jewish history, starting with the very first first night of Hanukkah at the Temple in Jerusalem. The second night is in a desert encampment, the third in a refugee ship, the fourth in a new continent (Europe), the fifth in a shtetl, the sixth in a tenement block, the seventh on an Israeli kibbutz, and the eighth with a city skyline. Rosen uses “we” to include readers and listeners in the hushed, historic feel, and sums up mood and meaning of each scene in a single, poem-like sentence. No matter that children might miss the subtle historical timeline, because they will not miss the overall effect, which is spectacular.

Sabuda’s artwork—expandable, three-dimensional illustrations in cut, embossed and printed card stock—erupts in ascending layers of white. Like magic, a turn of the page reveals an entire diorama. To give an idea of the detail lavished, the tenement scene includes awnings, pickle barrels, pushcarts, carthorse, a hanging shop sign and two lines of laundry strung on a telegraph pole, all floating in different spatial planes.

Tucked somewhere in each diorama is a Hanukkah menorah, magically indicated only by its ever-increasing number of lights. Even if the youngest kids can’t play with the delicate paper engineering, they can find and point to the gold foil flames shining against a black window. Chanukah Lights is recommended for ages five and up, including adults.

WHEN PLANS GO OFF TRACK

Engineer Ari and the Hanukkah Mishap, written by Deborah Bodin Cohen and illustrated by Shahar Kober, turns mistake into miracle in the third of a series set against the historic Jaffa-to-Jerusalem railway. Engineer Ari is in a rush to get home to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah with old friends, but must halt the engine to avoid a camel on the track. The caboose derails and Ari’s packages are scattered, including his Hanukkah menorah, oil, dreidels and sufganiyot (which is so much more fun to say and write than “doughnuts”).

He meets Kalil, the camel’s owner, who helps to collect his things and invites Ari into his tent for coffee until help arrives. Ari ends up celebrating the first night not with old friends, but with a new one. He lights his menorah using what is left of the oil—“enough for only one night,” as per the first Hanukkah story—and shares dreidels and sufganiyot with Kalil. The spontaneous friendship between Jew and Bedouin, miraculous to grownups, feels natural and inevitable. What a lovely seed to plant in the minds and hearts of listening children.

The plot weaves snippets of history and customs as revealed through encounters with kids at play, and through the discovery that Kalil’s tent lies in what used to be Maccabee territory, site of much of the original Hanukkah action.

Koben’s colorful illustrations are cartoony and adorable. They toy with perspective while conveying the feel of the old walled city, the countryside and helpful flashbacks like the re-lighting of the Temple menorah.

Engineer Ari and the Hanukkah Mishapis recommended for ages five to nine. A brief glossary and Hanukkah summary are included, plus an author’s note about the significance of the 1892 Jaffa-Jerusalem railway.

No matter how we spell it, Hanukkah or Chanukah is a unique holiday, an eight-day celebration that commemorates the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Celebrated from December 20 to December 28 this year, Hanukkah continues to inspire new children’s books that offer historical…

NonfictionNatureAnimals

The mysteries and majesties of nature

Feature by Michael Alec Rose

These three new publications, taken together (what a good gift idea!), fairly sum up the diverse approaches of nature lovers towards their oversized passions.

POETRY IN MOTION
Possibly the most common attitude of the enthusiastic naturalist is obsession, a loving preoccupation with a single corner of the natural world. Tamsin Pickeral, the author of The Majesty of the Horse: An Illustrated History, exerts the full force of her expertise as an art historian in paying the ultimate lavish attention to every great breed of horse on Earth. The combination of vastly intelligent text and magnificent photographs by Astrid Harrisson turns each turning of the page into a revelation of scientific fact, historical inquiry and visual splendor. Even the titles identifying each breed of horse, along with its origins, seem like little poems in themselves—for instance, “Knabstrup: Ancient—Denmark—Uncommon.” The close-up of this creature’s gorgeous spotted hide on the facing page perfectly embodies the mysterious and immemorial bond between us and the horse.

DISCOVERING OUR ANIMAL BRETHREN
Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide is the runaway science bestseller of the year in this revised and updated version, and for good reason. Whatever your curiosity about the animal kingdom, whether you’re four years old or 94, this glorious tome will be a pleasure to explore, an entire education between two covers, a delight for the eye and the ever-flowering mind. After so many years of trial and error, Dorling Kindersley has perfected its visual format, whereby a dizzying array of images and text on every page somehow coheres into a lucid fabric of comprehensive knowledge. But there is a further region of book magic, where knowledge ascends into wisdom. As this DK guide proceeds from general facts about animals (evolution, conservation, habitats) into the specific wonders of various phyla, genera and species, it is impossible to sustain the illusion any longer that we are distinct from the quotidian marvels we are seeing and reading about on the page.

INFINITE VARIETY
The poet William Blake invites us “to see a world in a grain of sand,” and there’s no better way to RSVP to Mr. Blake than to treat yourself to the endless astonishments of Giles Sparrow’s The Natural World Close-Up. On the pair of opened pages devoted to “Sand,” Sparrow typically gives us three levels of magnification: a stretch of desert sand dune, a life-sized close-up of a sandy handful, and then a view magnified 91 times, showing a dozen grains of sand beautifully blown up into big irregular asteroids, each one pockmarked uniquely with the ravages of time and wind and infrequent rainfall. The wonders never cease. In the section devoted to insects, we encounter at overwhelmingly close range the cellblock pattern making up a butterfly’s wing, every ward of which seems to be a thought; the manifold ingenuity of light-capture on a fly’s eye; the straightforward miracle of pollen-capture on a bee’s leg; and the Piranesi prison of a spider web. In the same poem, Blake also enjoins the reader “to hold infinity in the palm of your hand.” To do just that, simply hold this book in hand and look the tiny tadpole on page 119 right in its bizarrely developing eyes, magnified 38 times.

These three new publications, taken together (what a good gift idea!), fairly sum up the diverse approaches of nature lovers towards their oversized passions.

POETRY IN MOTION
Possibly the most common attitude of the enthusiastic naturalist is obsession, a loving preoccupation with a single corner of…

Staying fit and confident as we age

Feature by Martin Brady

With the nation’s population aging at an unprecedented rate, three new books help seniors (and near-seniors) get a jump on the physical and emotional challenges of growing older.

Alzheimer’s disease is undoubtedly the affliction of aging that scares people the most. Gary Small, director of the UCLA Longevity Center, offers a proactive approach to dealing with this concern in The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program: Keep Your Brain Healthy for the Rest of Your Life, co-written with his wife Gigi Vorgan. The text offers an overview of Alzheimer’s research and the physiology of the disease. Yet the main focus is on physical regimens and mental exercises designed to promote good overall health, to reduce stress and, most critically, to strengthen memory and reinforce mental acuity in ways that might help to stave off the Alzheimer’s threat. The book also includes diet recommendations, tips about drug interaction and handy health-related Q&As. According to the authors, “this program will . . . help you feel better and delay Alzheimer’s disease longer.” Given the stakes, it’s certainly worth a try.

A potential companion volume for the age-conscious is The Baby Boomer Diet: Body Ecology’s Guide to Growing Younger. Nutritional consultant Donna Gates aims to combine the best ideas from conventional medicine with alternative therapies, and in this ample guidebook she tailors her already established Body Ecology Diet to the needs of older folks. The coverage is inclusive, with information on everything from teas, wines and water to cancer-fighting grains and “healing” condiments. Gates also addresses issues such as cooked foods versus raw, the dangers of fat, the truth about iodine and the importance of certain fruits as anti-oxidants. Overall, Gates’ recommendations encourage restorative effects on the digestive, immune and endocrine systems, though sticking with the program would be a timely (and costly) pursuit for the average person. A pertinent shopping list is included, with recommendations of specific brand-name products.

For social worker Wendy Lustbader, the glass is half-full where aging is concerned. Her Life Gets Better: The Unexpected Pleasures of Growing Older is a sensitively written collection that stresses the liberating aspects of aging. Lustbader’s observations are divided into sections—loss, spirituality, courage, etc.—and each anecdote illustrates a perspective on living enhanced by the passage of time. Lustbader’s goal is to present aging as a challenging and invigorating adventure, and she succeeds in inspiring seniors to move forward with confidence.

With the nation’s population aging at an unprecedented rate, three new books help seniors (and near-seniors) get a jump on the physical and emotional challenges of growing older.

Alzheimer’s disease is undoubtedly the affliction of aging that scares people the most. Gary Small, director…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Let the snow days begin!

Feature by Alice Cary

By March my friends are usually ready to shoot me, because I never get tired of snow. There's so much fun to be had, as these new picture books confirm.

PLAYGROUND BATTLES
Barbara Reid’s Perfect Snow does just what its title suggests, by beautifully capturing the joyful rush of newly fallen snow. Reid’s sharply written text begins with the utter glee of kids waking up to snow, and their growing excitement as recess approaches.

Reid’s unique artistic approach adds a three-dimensional quality to her illustrations that makes readers feel as though they, too, are out amid the icy drifts. She molds figures out of Plasticine, a modeling clay, and combines these creations with ink and watercolor panels. The resulting scenes are colorful and lively, such as a bird’s-eye view of a schoolyard filled with kids, and the words, “The recess bell set off a stampede. Kids swarmed the snow like ants on a dropped ice cream cone.”

This playground becomes the scene of possible conflict: Jim is determined to build a “totally massive, indestructible Snow Fortress of Doom,” while Scott labors to make a team of snowmen. Happily, when Jim’s resulting “blizzard of destruction” threatens to destroy Scott’s creation, Jim deftly steps in and saves the day.

ALONG FOR THE RIDE
Preschoolers will enjoy Lita Judge’s Red Sled, the story of a little girl who lives in a mountain cabin and leaves her red sled out on her front porch. A curious bear approaches one night and decides to take the sled for a joy ride, and soon finds himself zooming with wild abandon down the snowy slopes. Before long the bear is joined by a menagerie that includes a rabbit, moose, possum, porcupine and mouse.

Judge deftly illustrates the fun as the animals bask in their growing speed. Her text is nearly wordless except for onomatopoeic words that parallel the animals’ adventures: “alley-oop,” “gadung gadung,” “whoa,” and finally, upon landing, “fluoomp……ft.” Parents and kids will enjoy this sweet, energy-filled tale, and will be amused to see what happens once the little girl discovers that her sled has been “borrowed.”

SAYING GOODBYE
The fun always comes to an end, and Alison McGhee’s Making a Friend addresses the inevitable cycle of falling and melting snow. A little boy carefully makes a snowman, but later wonders where his beloved friend goes after it melts. As spring arrives, the boy observes, “Look. He is in the falling water / and the rain upon the ocean.”

In what becomes a gentle meditation not only on snow, but on the changing of the seasons and the cycle of life, the text repeats the message, “What you love will always be with you.” The boy enjoys summer and fall, and finally, winter returns, as does his snowman. Marc Rosenthal’s illustrations add resonance to the book’s message, managing to be wistful, meditative and yet concrete, focusing on the transforming elements of this youngster’s world.

After a cold winter’s day, grab one of these books, a steaming cup of cocoa, and let it snow!

By March my friends are usually ready to shoot me, because I never get tired of snow. There's so much fun to be had, as these new picture books confirm.

PLAYGROUND BATTLES
Barbara Reid’s Perfect Snow does just what its title suggests, by beautifully capturing the…

Romance

Swoon-worthy new series

Feature by the editors of BookPage

Every reader knows the feeling: You turn the last page in a book, and sadness sets in. As Avon executive editor Erika Tsang says, “Readers don’t want to let go of characters they’ve come to love. We want to know what happens next.”

Luckily, with many romance stories, you don’t have to say goodbye. “With series we get to return, time and again, to a place and a cast of characters that have become like family to us,”explains Amy Pierpont, editorial director of Forever, Grand Central’s romance imprint. Here, we’ve highlighted three new series from debut authors that will give you what Dianne Moggy, Harlequin’s vice president of series editorial and subrights, calls “happiness hits,” the kind of romance novels that “give us permission to escape from the day-to-day reality of our lives.”

FIRELIGHT
Take Beauty and the Beast, make the costumes skimpier and add some demons and a quest for eternal life, and you’ll have the first book in Kristen Callihan’s Darkest London series. Set in Victorian England, Firelight draws readers in with the many secrets of Miranda, a pistol of a woman with special abilities, and Lord Benjamin Archer, the masked man she must marry. Murder, a secret society and overwhelming desire keep Archer and Miranda on their toes—and keep readers turning pages.

CHEMISTRY INDEX: Medium-high. The couple’s frequent quarreling (hot as it is) can sometimes get in the way of the good stuff.
SIZZLE-O-METER: Read with a cold shower nearby!
FAVORITE LINES: “Does watching me eat entertain you?” she murmured when she felt his eyes upon her.
“Yes. You do so with such hedonistic abandon.” His gaze went hot. “It is rather stirring. Perhaps I should bid you to forego the silverware, if only to see how you use your hands.”

—CAT D. ACREE

VENGEANCE BORN
In the first book of Kylie Griffin’s Novels of the Light Blade series, Annika, the half-human daughter of a demon king, helps Kalan, a Light Blade warrior, escape from her father’s dungeons. Annika was conceived as an act of revenge, and she’s been tormented beyond endurance. Kalan alone holds the key to her future. This unlikely couple will enthrall readers as they take a stand against hatred and bigotry—all in the name of love.

CHEMISTRY INDEX: Hero and heroine are like moths to the flame.
SIZZLE-O-METER: In spite of the constant danger that surrounds Annika and Kalan, sparks ignite—and a slow burn turns into an eternal fire.
FAVORITE LINE: “You’re aroused.”

—KAREN ELLEY

A TOWN CALLED VALENTINE
In Valentine Valley, a Colorado town that’s famous for romance, Emily Murphy meets Nate Thalberg, a sweet and sexy rancher. Emily’s in town to fix up her family’s building and sell it, quick, so she can go back to college. Nate helps her with the renovations . . . and teaches Emily a thing or two about love.

CHEMISTRY INDEX: Electric. Nate and Emily feel an immediate attraction, but then she backs off, thanks to her rocky romantic history. As they get to know each other better, the slow-and-steady build feels realistic and true.
SIZZLE-O-METER: Hot and heavy.
FAVORITE LINE: “But then his eyes locked on her, and suddenly she was back?in the bar, his mouth on hers, his hands making her feel like a woman once again.”

—ELIZA BORNÉ

Visit The Book Case to read about more new romance series and trends.

Every reader knows the feeling: You turn the last page in a book, and sadness sets in. As Avon executive editor Erika Tsang says, “Readers don’t want to let go of characters they’ve come to love. We want to know what happens next.”

Luckily, with many…

Nonfiction

Partners in love and life

Feature by bookpagedev

Looking for a Valentine’s Day gift that’s not candy or flowers? Three new books offer fresh insight on modern love—along with a healthy dose of humor.

BETTER? YOU BET
After nearly 10 years of marriage to her husband Dan, Elizabeth Weil still felt “proud, nearly giddy” about being his wife. She also worried: “Because just as I believed that marriages formed slowly over time, I also believed they broke that way.” Armed with a goal-oriented mindset, Weil decided she and Dan would embark on a year-long marriage improvement project and proactively address things that weren’t such a big deal at the moment—e.g., their laissez-faire approach to money management, differing marital role models—but might become problems later. From religion (should they raise their daughters Jewish?) to food (he brings home and cooks entire animals, she’s not thrilled) to partnership (they swim in a punishing race from Alcatraz to San Francisco), No Cheating, No Dying explores the ways in which two people can form and strengthen bonds—or accept some things just the way they are. This is an eminently enjoyable tale of a committed, kooky couple and an excellent resource for doing a relationship tune-up of your own.

100 SIMPLE RULES
Clinical psychologist Harriet Lerner is perhaps best known for her bestseller The Dance of Anger, but she’s also written books on motherhood, fear, sex and more. In ­Marriage Rules, she offers rules for long-term relationships. There are 100, but not to worry: They’re straightforward, brief and organized by subject matter, so readers can turn right to sections like “How To Connect with a Distant Partner” and “Forget About Normal Sex.” Lerner’s not trying to be heavy-handed; she suggests readers regard rules “as pretty good ideas to consider. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of our own common sense.” Her list of 100 should do the trick, and anecdotes about all manner of couples, including herself and her husband, demonstrate how the rules can be helpful, when gracefully applied.

THE HILARITY OF LOVE
If it’s by The Onion, it’s gotta be irreverent and funny with a good hit of raunchy, and Love, Sex and Other Natural Disasters doesn’t disappoint. This compendium of “relationship reporting” has hilarious entries galore, from news briefs like “New Girlfriend Bears Disturbing Resemblance to Old Girlfriend” to a report about “Voyeur Concerned About Lack of Sex in Neighbors’ Marriage.” There are dating tips, too, such as: “Do not bathe for several days prior to a date to get your pheromones good and strong,” and “Please, for the love of God, just stop doing that weird chewing thing with your mouth.” With its trademark combination of silly and spot-on, The Onion brain trust has created another laugh-out-loud volume of articles, photos and infographics that will perk up Valentine’s Day for sure.

Looking for a Valentine’s Day gift that’s not candy or flowers? Three new books offer fresh insight on modern love—along with a healthy dose of humor.

BETTER? YOU BET
After nearly 10 years of marriage to her husband Dan, Elizabeth Weil still felt “proud,…

Fiction

Spotlight: Short stories

Feature by Harvey Freedenberg

It’s an embarrassment of riches to have new collections by short story masters Nathan Englander and Dan Chaon released on the same day (Feb. 7). After publishing novels in 2007 and 2009, respectively, they’ve returned to a form that showcases their talents at fashioning sturdily constructed, memorable tales.

Englander caused a stir in 1999 with his first collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, which offered unorthodox glimpses into the world of Orthodox Judaism. He stays close to his roots here, echoing the art of Jewish short fiction masters from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Philip Roth in tales that are both contemporary and timeless.

Most of the Jewish characters that populate the stories in What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank are survivors (literally so, for the several who endured the Holocaust). Nowhere is that more dramatically demonstrated than in the novelistic “Sister Hills,” set in the northern portion of the territory captured by Israel in 1967. The story spans decades, and focuses on Rena and Yehudit, settlers who occupy two desolate settlements on “empty mountains that God had long ago given Israel but that Israel had long ago forgotten.” With its mythic overtones, it’s a stunning narrative achievement.

Englander is intrigued by the difficulty of moral choices, as displayed in stories like “Camp Sundown,” when a group of Holocaust survivors at an elderhostel camp decide to take revenge on a man they believe was a Nazi guard at a concentration camp. And the title story, evoking a classic Raymond Carver tale, follows two couples—one, assimilated South Floridians; the other, friends who have abandoned America for an ultra-Orthodox life in Israel—as they debate which of them would shelter the other in a new Holocaust.

As serious as some of Englander’s themes may be, he displays an equally potent gift for comedy, most notably in “How We Avenged the Blums,” recounting the fumbling efforts of a group of Long Island Jewish boys and their dubious Russian martial arts teacher to retaliate against an iconic bully, “the Anti-Semite.”

Several of the stories in Dan ­Chaon’s Stay Awake have the same enigmatic aura as his 2009 novel, Await Your Reply, an intricate exploration of identity in the cyber-age. From the opener, “The Bees,” in which a recovering alcoholic is haunted by his decision to abandon his wife and young son, a chill descends on Chaon’s world.

The mostly male protagonists  are stunted, both economically and emotionally. The employed ones work as supermarket clerks or UPS drivers, and the most accomplished, a former college professor in the story “Long Delayed, Always Expected,” has been brain damaged in an automobile accident.

Death is another thread that unites Chaon’s stories. Two moving examples are the title story, in which a child is born with a “parasitic” twin head with an underdeveloped body attached to hers, and “Thinking of You in Your Time of Sorrow,” where a teenager and his “former future wife” struggle after their newborn’s death.

Though their subject matter could not differ more dramatically, in their moral seriousness and literary craftsmanship Nathan Englander and Dan Chaon deliver some of the best of what contemporary short fiction has to offer.

It’s an embarrassment of riches to have new collections by short story masters Nathan Englander and Dan Chaon released on the same day (Feb. 7). After publishing novels in 2007 and 2009, respectively, they’ve returned to a form that showcases their talents at fashioning sturdily…

NonfictionBiography

The lives and times of exceptional women

Feature by Deanna Larson

One day, we won’t need to set aside a month to honor women’s contributions to history, since their accomplishments won’t be considered exceptions. Until then, we’ll wait each year for March to bring new histories and biographies to savor. This year, new books highlight the diverse lives of three exceptional women.

ON MADISON AVENUE . . .

The Lucky Strike-puffing, martini-fueled “mad men” of the glamorous heyday of advertising are sexy again, thanks to the hit TV show. But “mad women” were also making their mark in the testosterone-dominated advertising industry of the 1960s and ’70s, producing sharp copy, courting big clients and making shrewd business moves while the other hand slapped away the pinches and grabs. In Mad Women, advertising exec Jane Maas dishes the juicy details of a long career that began in 1964 as copywriter at the legendary agency Ogilvy & Mather. After rising to O&M creative director and moving on to other storied agencies, eventually running her own shop, Maas capped her award-winning career by directing the famous “I Love New York” campaign (she still works as a consultant for the industry). With zany dashes from tidbit to tangent in sections including Sex in the Office, Get the Money Before They Screw You and The Three-Martini Lunch and Other Vices, Maas is the embodiment of Kay Thompson’s character from Funny Face, a woman who can say, “I was the first woman to wear a pantsuit to the office. It was 1965, and I caused quite a stir,” yet doesn’t hesitate to admit that her husband selected all of her clothes for her. Part respectful homage to a glamorous and golden age, part good gossip over lunch at 21, Mad Women proves that behind every man’s career, another successful woman is pedaling even faster to get where she is today.

. . . AND ON THE FRONT PAGE

Privileged and politically connected men controlled the influential newspaper and magazine businesses of the 19th and early 20th centuries. So it was quite surprising to find a woman at the helm of two major English-language papers. Enter The First Lady of Fleet Street. Rachel Beer’s fascinating story begins as a descendant of the House of Sassoon, a Jewish Indian family that made its fortune in opium and cotton. Born in Bombay in 1858, Rachel Sassoon later moved with her family to England, where they became one of London’s most prominent immigrant families. In “a union of the East and West in flourishing Victorian London,” she married Frederick Beer, whose family came from the Frankfurt ghetto to make their fortune in railroads and telegraphy. Contending with a climate unfriendly to Jews, the families found that “money was a powerful tool for breaking down the barriers of the class system.” Rachel Beer became owner of the Sunday Times and the Observer during the rise of the “so-called New Woman” who emerged on the verge of the 20th century asking for equality and the vote. She ran her papers “with the woman reader in mind,” yet wrote challenging editorials on weighty world affairs—even getting involved in a scandal of the time—while still fitting in a lavish social life and philanthropic work. With The First Lady of Fleet Street, authors Eilat Negev and Yehuda Koren illuminate a small but fascinating period of Jewish and British history.

SCOUTING OUT A NEW PATH

There are few American women who didn’t experience formative times as a Brownie or Girl Scout. In the delightful new biography Juliette Gordon Low, historian Stacy A. Cordery peeks into the life of a cheerful, imaginative, slightly dotty girl who became an accidental reformer, feminist and leader of one of the most influential organizations of the 20th century. Juliette was the daughter of a proud independent mother and rebel soldier father who moved back and forth between Savannah and Chicago during the Civil War. She grew up to make a bad marriage to philandering British/American aristocrat Willy Low, who died before she could divorce him, then remained in Britain, looking for a way “to do good in the world.” Enter the dashing General Sir Robert Baden-Powell, whom she met in 1911 after he left the British army to form the Boy Scouts. His great experiment to teach boys “soldiering” modeled after samurai and chivalry inspired Low to become involved in the British female version, the Girl Guides. She brought the idea home to Savannah the following year, under the name Girl Scouts. Cordery traces how Low’s peripatetic upbringing formed her patriotism, practicality and love of fun, adventure and the outdoors, and her grown-up leadership skills and passion for the potential in all young women made her uniquely poised to embody Scouting values for generations of women around the world.

One day, we won’t need to set aside a month to honor women’s contributions to history, since their accomplishments won’t be considered exceptions. Until then, we’ll wait each year for March to bring new histories and biographies to savor. This year, new books highlight the…

Fiction

Verse-atility: Celebrating the power of poetry

Feature by Julie Hale

National Poetry Month is a time for applauding poetry’s unique appeal—its capacity to surprise and move us, to show us the world in new ways. The new collections below are stellar examples of the genre’s timeless attraction.

POETRY OF TRANSFORMATION

Much like the moon, the human heart waxes and wanes—a fact that provides the foundation for Jonathan Galassi’s beautifully wistful Left-Handed. Following the phases of that fickle organ with a sensitive eye, Galassi’s perceptive poems document the ways in which our desires change with time. “I don’t / know how my dream / became a contraption / for unhappiness,” he writes in “The Scarf,” one of many pieces that show a mind struggling to make sense of an attachment gone awry.

Galassi frequently employs rhyme in the service of mood, using it to exude playfulness, melancholy or awkwardness, as in “Tinsel Tinsel”: “All the fool for love can do is stare. / His neck is permanently out of whack; / he doesn’t care.” Overall, the collection tracks a movement from confusion to clarity, to a place of fresh possibilities, where relationships actually work. The president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and author of two previous collections of verse, Galassi is honorary chairman of the Academy of American Poets. His latest book is everything a poetry collection should be: companionable, wise and expertly crafted.

A POETIC DEPARTURE

In Almost Invisible Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Strand forgoes verse for prose, offering a transportive group of poems, each in the form of a short paragraph. Despite their orderly exteriors, the pieces are often surreal, with a touch of the fairy tale about them. Some are full-fledged narratives, and some are musings; others are sharply etched portraits of characters without bearings in the world, who have no sense of connection. In “Like a Leaf Carried Off by the Wind,” a man works at a place “where he is not known and where his job is a mystery even to himself,” while the narrator of “Bury Your Face in Your Hands” struggles with the vagueness of daily existence: “There is no way to clear the haze in which we live . . . The silent snow of thought melts before it has a chance to stick.”

Strand achieves his very own tone—an ominous quality offset by dark humor—and he sustains it from start to finish. These poems soar thanks to his great wit and his remarkable understanding of humanity—its capacity for miscommunication, its tendency to cultivate discontent. “What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past?” he writes in “No Words Can Describe It.” Like all great poets, he articulates the big questions beautifully.

A SOUL IN TRANSIT

Across the Land and the ­Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001 is a watershed volume that makes the collected poetry of German writer W.G. Sebald available in English for the first time.  The author of numerous celebrated novels, including Austerlitz, Sebald died in 2001. Rich with historical allusion, international in scope, these visionary poems—translated from the German by Iain Galbraith—tell of departures and returns, of hotel interludes en route. They’re snapshots of a life marked by transience. Many of the poems reflect a sifting of daily experience as they touch upon everything from art, religion and mythology to past conversations and memories. In the midst of this sifting, spare yet crystalline images serve as points of clarity, like these beautifully refined verbal visuals from a poem called “Panacea”: “A club moss / and a cube of ice / tinted with a jot / of Berlin blue.”

Sebald, whose father served in the Nazi army, was no stranger to the weight of history, and in many of these poems, the past is a force to be reckoned with. “Memo” reads as a telling note to self: “Build fire and read / the future in smoke . . . / Be sure / not to look back / Attempt / the art of metamorphosis.” Sebald’s later poems are delicate balancing acts between memory, the moment at hand and whatever awaits. His mind, it seems, is usually in at least two places at once. “Day Return” contains references to (among other things) Samuel Pepys’ diary, graffiti scrawled on an urban wall and the city of Jerusalem. The products of an expansive intellect and an inquisitive mind, the pieces in this collection are nothing less than transcendent.

National Poetry Month is a time for applauding poetry’s unique appeal—its capacity to surprise and move us, to show us the world in new ways. The new collections below are stellar examples of the genre’s timeless attraction.

POETRY OF TRANSFORMATION

Much like the moon, the human heart…

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