Happy Sunday, all! Sorry I've been so absent from the blog lately. I've had a tough time recovering from my recent travels, and I've been a bit under the weather to boot. This weekend, I did finally manage to make it through all of the blog posts in my reader (though some amount of skimming was required). Here are a few (mostly from this past week - everything older than that started to feel like old news):

There are too many wonderful interviews from this week's Winter Blog Blast Tour for me to highlight them all. But I did especially enjoy Shelf Elf's interview of Laini Taylor, as well as 7-Imps' interview of Laini's husband, Jim Di Bartolo. Their daughter Clementine Pie is adorable. You can find the complete set of links to the WBBT interviews at Chasing Ray (home of WBBT organizer Colleen Mondor). See also Liz B's background piece on the WBBT at Tea Cozy. I also enjoyed Mary Ann Scheuer's interview with Annie Barrows, which included tidbits about Annie's reading with her own kids.

Speaking of Laini and Jim, they did not, alas, win the National Book Award for Young People's Literature (for which Lips Touch was shortlisted). Kudos to the winner, Phillip Hoose, for Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, a true-life account of the 15-year-old African-American girl who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in March 1955.

The Cybils nominating committee panelists are reading away. And Cybils tech guru Sheila Ruth reports at Wands and Worlds that "Tracy Grand of Jacketflap has once again created this terrific Cybils nominee widget. It rotates through the Cybils nominees and displays a different one each time the page is loaded. You can get the widget for your own blog here." See also Sheila's post at the Cybils blog about publisher love for the Cybils, and our thanks to the many publishers and authors providing review copies for the Cybils process. Sheila has been doing an amazing job as this year's Publisher Liaison.

Betsy Bird also links to various write-ups about the recent Children's Literary Cafe at the New York Public Library (focused on the Cybils).

Posts about holiday gift-giving are already proliferating. I especially liked this Semicolon post with book ideas for eight and twelve-year-old girls, and this post at The Miss Rumphius Effect with gifts for readers and writers. Elaine Magliaro also has a fabulous list of Thanksgiving-related resources at Wild Rose Reader.

Pam shares the results of the KidLitCon09 charity raffle at MotherReader. She says: "With more than five hundred dollars raised with the charity raffle at KidlitCon, we gave two projects at Donors Choose a huge boost. Now with additional contributors, both DC school literacy projects have been fully funded!" She shares teachers' notes from both programs.

I've seen a couple of responses to Betsy Bird's article about Amazon's Vine program. Maureen has some excellent thoughts at Confessions of a Bibliovore on what it means to review in a professional manner, whether on a blog or not. Roger Sutton from Read Roger, on the other hand, just thinks that blog reviews are too long.

Kate Coombs has a very detailed post at Book Aunt about books that are currently popular with kids. After discussing many of the usual suspects, she says: "I'll conclude my report on the coolest of the cool. It's kind of like watching the popular kids at school. Sometimes you wonder why they're popular when they seem so ordinary, or even, in some cases, so unappealing. On the other hand, there are times it makes sense. Some of the popular kids are truly extraordinary, and their singular status seems completely deserved."

Quick hits:

• Gail Gauthier linked from Original Content to an article recommending 50 Best Books for Boys and Young Men. I personally found the list a bit classics-heavy, but there are certainly some good suggestions. And I like the article's slant that "reading books is manly."
• Playing by the Book shares a list of picture books about trucks, prepared by Lynn from Chronicle of an Infant Bibliophile. The article also includes Playing by the Book's favorite truck songs.
• The Book Dads have a nice reading list on fathers and adoption.  
• Mitali Perkins highlights 15 new young adult titles featuring forgiveness.
• Sarah Mulhern has a new installment of her "hot books in my middle school classroom" series at The Reading Zone.
• Charlotte has started a regular Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy Round-Up at Charlotte's Library. The latest installment is here. She says: "please leave me a comment if I've missed yours, and I will add it to the list!"
• This week's Poetry Friday Round-Up was at The Drift Record. Last week's was at Gotta Book. This week's Nonfiction Monday Round-Up was at Tales from the Rushmore Kid.
• Donalyn Miller suggests that Book Whisperer readers work to get themselves out of their reading ruts. She also shares her recent positive experience in getting her students out of their reading ruts.
• At Just One More Book! Mark Blevis shares the "warrior theme" audio that he made for his wife, Andrea Ross, with good wishes from "a host of authors, illustrators, librarians and publishers from around the world (including England, Spain and Israel)". I'm happy to join all of them in wishing Andrea the best in her battle against breast cancer.
• Speaking of cancer-fighting kidlit bloggers, Jone MacCulloch shares news at Check It Out about a second fundraising auction for Bridget Zinn, who is fighting colon cancer.
• As usual, you can find additional links at Abby (the) Librarians' November 20th Around the Interwebs, Book Dads' November 15th Weekend Wander, and last week's End-o'-the-Week Kid-Lit Roundup from Paul at Omnivoracious. Not to mention various Fuse News posts at A Fuse #8 Production, of course. And there's a new player in the link roundup fray. Travis from 100 Scope Notes has started a new regular feature called Morning Notes. He has gorgeous headlines, and a nice combination of quirky and insightful selections. Great stuff!

That's all for today. It's nice to be feeling a bit more caught up on my reader, I'll tell you that. More soon...

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).

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This week’s children’s literacy and reading news round-up, brought to you by Jen Robinson’s Book Page and Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, a Reading Tub blog, is now available at the Reading Tub. I've been traveling for most of the past week, but Terry Doherty has stepped up to the plate, and has tons of news about literacy & reading-related events; literacy and reading programs and research; 21st century literacies; and grants, sponsorships & donations. 

Sorry that my blog and Twitter account and Facebook page have been so sparse for the past few days. I find when I'm traveling I can barely even keeep up with email. But I should be back up to speed by the end of this week. Meanwhile, please check out the new literacy news from Terry. I'm looking forward to digging in and reading the whole thing when I have a bit more time.

I do have a new post up today at Booklights, the second post in my new series on Tips for Growing Bookworms. This week's tip is about reading the books that your children read. This is a tip that I learned from the first-hand experiences of friends, and have also found to work well with my young friends and nieces. Of course I know that many of my blog readers are avid fans of children's literature anyway, so this will be something that you're already doing. But I hope that you enjoy the post anyway.  

Or, if you're more interested in author interviews, the Winter Blog Blast Tour starts today. Colleen Mondor has the full WBBT schedule at Chasing Ray. The WBBT is a coordinated series of interviews, across a group of children's and young adult book blogs. Unlike a typical "blog tour", in which one author visits a series of blogs, the WBBT participants work with a carefully selected range of authors, to provide a diverse reading experience with something for everyone.

Happy reading!

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Today I will be sending out the new issue of the Growing Bookworms email newsletter. (If you would like to subscribe, you can find a sign-up form here.) The Growing Bookworms newsletter contains content from my blog focused on children's books and raising readers. It is sent out once every two weeks (if you are getting daily Feedblitz updates, you might prefer to sign up for the Growing Bookworms newsletter instead, and only receive one email every two weeks). There are currently 961 subscribers to the newsletter. (I know that it's just a number, but I'm really hoping to get to 1000 by the end of the year.)

Newsletter Update: In this issue, I have three book reviews, two children's literacy round-ups (one here and one at The Reading Tub) and three posts with Kidlitosphere news. I also have a post about a nice list of children's literature blogs from School Library Journal. Not included in the newsletter, I have:

• Two posts at Booklights, one with children's literacy links for parents, and the other launching a new series that I'm writing on Tips for Growing Bookworms (Tip #1 is about reading aloud).
• A post showing my favorite Sesame Street-themed Google logo from the week (I love Cookie Monster).

Reading Update: In the past two weeks, I read two middle grade and two young adult titles:

• Angie Sage: Queste (Septimus Heap, Book 4). Katherine Tegen Books. Completed November 3, 2009. My review.
• Angie Sage: Syren (Septimus Heap, book 5). Katherine Tegan Books. Completed November 6, 2009. My review.
• Diana Peterfreund: Rampant. HarperTeen. Completed October 29, 2009. My review.
• Jordan Sonnenblick: After Ever After. Scholastic. Completed November 1, 2009. My review.

I have a trip for work coming up later this week which means that A) I'll probably get some reading done on airplanes; but B) posting on the blog will be sparse for the next few days. Hopefully I'll be able to get back up to speed on reviews after that. I have a huge stack of picture books awaiting my attention.

How about you? What have you been reading and enjoying? Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms!

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).

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Book: Queste (Septimus Heap, Book 4) and Syren (Book 5)
Author: Angie Sage
Illustrator: Mark Zug
Pages: 624,
Age Range: 9-12

I recently read the fourth and fifth books in Angie Sage's Septimus Heap series. I never reviewed books 1 through 3, although I enjoyed them, because I listened to them on audio (and I find I need to be able to flip back through flagged passages to write a proper review). The Septimus Heap books are a solid middle grade fantasy series, well-suited to kids who like the early Harry Potter books or Sarah Prineas' Magic Thief series. They are light and fun, filled with lush descriptions and humorous moments. While the characterization isn't as deep as, say, that of the Harry Potter books, Sage has a knack for capturing bad guys and characters of decidedly mixed motives.

The Septimus Heap books are set in a wholly fictional country with castles and wizards and ghosts and a series of ice tunnels that run below ground. Book 1, Magyk, introduces the Heap family, their adopted daughter, Jenna, and the seventh son, Septimus, who was spirited away at birth, and is believed by the family to be dead. Parallel story lines follow Jenna, an orphan called Boy 412, and a young apprentice to a dark wizard. There are assassination attempts, secret identities, diabolical villains, and, of course, magical spells and potions. Other books in the series flesh out various characters and add elements such as time travel, dragons, and alchemy. While major elements are resolved in each book, other threads are left open, to be continued from story to story.

Book 4, Queste, begins as Septimus, Jenna, and Septimus' friend Beetle set out to rescue Septimus' brother Nicko and his friend Snorri, who were lost in the past after an incident with a time-travel mirror. A time-traveling alchemist is able to give them a clue as to Nicko and Snorri's whereabouts, but a dangerous quest is required.

I found Queste to be a bit darker than the earlier books in the series. There's a long, bleak trek through a winter wood, for example. And Septimus' fate lies under a cloud for much of the book. However, there are also lighter elements, such as Beetle's growing crush on Jenna, and another character's addiction to licorice. Here are a couple of passages that I flagged as representative of the feel of the book:

"He stopped and took a last look at the broad sweep of the Castle below him before he descended once more into his bright basement. It was breathtakingly beautiful. The moon was riding high in the sky, casting its cool, white light across the rooftops and sending long shadows down the streets far below. A myriad of pinpoint candlelights glittered across the vast expanse of the Castle, in a way that Ephaniah had never seen before." (Page 318, paperback edition)

"Septimus sat next to Beetle and looked through his Physik tin with anticipation. At last he was getting a chance to try out the Physik he had learned on a real patient. Beside him his unwitting patience dozed peacefully on the floor of the tree house, pale but breathing steadily." (Page 488, paperback)

Book 5, Syren, picks up the very day after the end of Queste. While returning from their previous quest, Septimus, Jenna, and Beetle find themselves stranded on a mysterious island, an island inhabited by a Syren. They eventually cross paths with Septimus' old friend Wolf Boy, traveling unexpectedly with Lucy Gringe (girlfriend to Septimus' bad apple of an older brother), and have to fight off multiple terrifying enemies.

I liked Syren better than Queste - there's a bit  more character development, and I preferred the island setting to the forest of the previous book. It's a nice combination of idyllic and menacing. I enjoyed Jenna's relationship with her usually absent father ("Jenna fought back the urge to kick him" - Chapter 17), as well as the baby steps taken by prior bad guy Simon towards rehabilitation. Here are a couple of quotes that caught my eye:

"It was a bright, blustery spring day in the Marram Marshes. The wind had blow away the early-morning mist and was sending small white clouds scudding high across the sky. The air was chilly; it smelled of sea salt, mud and burned cabbage soup." (Chapter 2) (Can't you just feel this scene?)

"Spit Fyre had flown a very agitated Marcia Overstrand all the way to the House of Foryx without a single mistake. Given the fact that Marcia had got the basic dragon-direction instructions completely backward, this was quite an achievement. Marcia naturally believed it was her innate dragon-riding skills that had gotten them safely there, but in fact it was down to Spit Fyre's innate ExtraOrdinary Wizard-ignoring skills." (Chapter 13)

In general, the adults in this series are presented with a sort of benign, affectionate ridicule, while the kids, though flawed, too, are the real forces to be reckoned with. This is as it should be for this type of book, I think. Sage's writing style is a nice combination of light-hearted humor and multi-sensory description.

Both books featured a wrap-up chapter at the end, with sections giving some additional background, and filling in details of what happened to particular characters. I found these sections anti-climactic and distracting (and I don't recall whether or not the first three books did this, too), though some useful information was conveyed. There's also a tendency for the plotting in the Septimus Heap books to rely on coincidence (Oh look, there's Wolf Boy, turning up on the deserted island that we're stranded on. How fun!). But those are minor points. I still think that the Septimus Heap books are fun, kid-friendly stories that will please middle grade fantasy fans. Recommended.

Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Publication Date: March 31, 2008 and September 9, 2009
Source of Book: Review copies from the publisher
Other Blog Reviews: The Bookette, Melissa, Bookworm Blogger

© 2009 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. All Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, and may result in my receiving a small commission on purchases (with no additional cost to you).

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This week’s children’s literacy and reading news round-up, brought to you by Jen Robinson’s Book Page and Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, a Reading Tub blog, is now available at the Reading Tub. This week Terry Doherty and I have collected plenty of content for you about literacy & reading-related events; literacy and reading programs and research; 21st century literacies; and grants, sponsorships & donations.

Terry's added a special section to the roundups, which we'll have for the rest of the year: Literacy & Book-centric Holiday Events and Activities. I'm guessing that this section will expand as we move forward. Especially interesting in this week's 21st Century Literacies section is a new service that Terry found called the Storybook Research Project. Terry says:

"Well, Nokia just blew my idea for making a personal digital recording reading a book out of the water. It seems that they have partnered with the Sesame Street Workshop to “create an interactive reading experience that can involve grandparents and grandchildren no matter how far apart they may find themselves. The Storybook research project melds the tactile and visual pleasures of reading a real book with video conferencing technology which allows distant relatives to take an active part in a child’s literacy development.”"

I have some additional links for parents focused on raising readers at Booklights today, in my Literacy 'Lights from the Kidlitosphere column. Next week, I'll have Item #2 in my Tips for Growing Bookworms series (Tip #1, about reading aloud, is here).

I'll be traveling later this week, so Terry is going to host next week's children's literacy and reading news roundup at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub. How I ever kept up these roundups before I started partnering with her, I do not know. Thanks for reading, and for growing bookworms!

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