MotherReader

As lists go, I’m partial to my list of 105 Ways to Give a Book, featuring books paired with toys, trinkets, and activities. But as much as I favor my labor of love, I cannot ignore that it is also the time for Best Of 2009 lists. There are lots of these lists. Lots and lots of them all over the Internet. Fortunately, they are rounded up for easy use at Chicken Spaghetti. Thank you, Susan!

For me, there are only three lists for this season, and top of those is the one from School Library Journal. I like the format, and I generally find myself in agreement on the books selected. I also think it tends to balance a bit more kid-appeal into the literary value equation. The list from Publishers Weekly also has a good format, but their reviews have less punch. I enjoy looking at the Kirkus supplement in paper, but hate leafing through the PDF, where it can be hard to tell at times where the list ends and the ads begin. Plus they have inserts like “Second Look: Our Recap of previously featured books that also represent The Best of 2009,” which included The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and The Day-Glo Brothers. But they don’t seem to be on the official list... or are they? I find that confusing.

My favorite lists have yet to come out. The Cybils short lists will go live on January 1, 2010, and I’ll be doing my part in the Fiction Picture Book category to turn out a wonderful selection. I also await with excitement the ALSC Notable Children’s Books list that comes out right after all the cool awards are given at ALA’s midwinter meeting on January 18th.

But for now, here are of my favorites of the year from the School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus lists.

• All the World, by Liz Scanlon (SLJ, PW, Kirkus)
  
  
• The Curious Garden, by Peter Brown (PW)
  
  
• The Lion & the Mouse, by Jerry Pinkney (SLJ, PW, Kirkus)
  
  
• Pigs Make Me Sneeze, by Mo Willems (SLJ)
  
  
• The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau, by Dan Yaccarino (Kirkus)
  
  
• The Day-Glo Brothers, by Chris Barton (SLJ, PW, Kirkus*)
  
  
• Frankie Pickle and the Closet of Doom, by Eric Wight (Kirkus)
  
  
• The Storm in the Barn, by Matt Phelan (Kirkus)
  
  
• When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead (SLJ, PW, Kirkus)
  
  
• The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, by Jacqueline Kelly (SLJ, PW, Kirkus*)
  
  
• Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (PW)
  
  
• Liar, by Justine Larbalestier (SLJ)
  
  
• Lips Touch: Three Times, by Laini Taylor (PW)
  
  
• Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork (SLJ, PW)
  

In fact, start at age two and this would be a pretty good list of books to give at each age up to fifteen. I’m just sayin’ — holiday season and all.

Speaking of which, Liz B. is hosting a Gift Giving Idea Round-Up and updating it as the posts come in. Go and check it out as another way be inspired to Give Books!

And speaking of giving books, I’m in the mood to give one away. Comment here with a favorite book from 2009 different from the ones I’ve listed, and I’ll pick one person at random to win The Day Glo Brothers, by Chris Barton, and a surprise 2009 picture book. Winner selected and announced Friday, December 4th, at 3:00 EST.

Ah, the ALSC and YALSA lists. These are a few of my favorite things. In the ALSC 2009 Notable Children’s Books, let me note the inclusion of a couple of picture books that made the Cybils short list. Namely, A Visitor for Bear, How to Heal a Broken Wing, and Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek. I can’t believe that Wabi Sabi didn’t make this list either. What did Ed Young do to librarians to deserve this total shut-out. Moon them?

2009 Best Books for Young Adults has some great selections — some of which I’ve even read. Hats off to Portland KidLit Conference attendee Christine Fletcher for getting a spot on the Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults with Ten Cents a Dance. Not too shabby.

Another of my favorite things, along with ALA booklists and whiskers on kittens, is my statcounter, because occasionally the keyword searches amuse me. Today the keywords at the top of my statistics — with ten uses — was this search: Is Mo Willems married? Now, I can see wanting to know such a thing. But I can’t figure out if ten women had to find that out today or just one woman needed to know it with a compulsive certainty. (In case that comes up again, yes, Mo Willems is married with a little girl and a house in Massachusetts.)

The Biggest, the Best Carnival of Children’s Literature is over at Jen Robinson’s Book Page, where she rounds up our favorite posts of the year. Honestly, you could spend hours there checking out the links, and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing this evening in my Dedicated Blog Reading Time.

Do. Not. Miss. It.

I’m keeping it short today, but before I go, I also wanted to mention again the excellent resource available in Chicken Spaghetti’s List of Lists of Best Children’s Books of 2008, featuring a stunning amount of sources. My personal favorites for this time of year are the Best Books lists of School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and The Horn Book. In January, I look forward to the Cybils shortlists and the ALSC’s Notable Children’s Books List to round out my reading year.

If you’re still shopping this holiday season — and who isn’t — consider my hundred-plus ways to Give a Book. I’m ready to share my Starbucks gift card with Mary Pearson as we discuss her book The Adoration of Jenna Fox — only my favorite YA book of 2008. Her suggestion. Perhaps because she’s safely located on the opposite coast.

I’ve seen this 100 Books List coming around again, so it seemed time to see where I stood. I did a little investigating to find the original source of the list, as I was particularly concerned with some of the odd things about it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to go too far before I found a blog that did the work for me. Whew.

The Rabid Paladin found an article in The Guardian describing how the list was compiled from a poll where 2,000 people responded naming the ten books they couldn’t live without, and the list matches the meme list. Oh, and the numbers are the ranks of the books. The common phrase associated with this meme, “According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list,” doesn’t appear to have any basis in fact.

But all that research doesn’t make the meme any less fun, so here it is for me with these instructions:

• Boldface those you have read.
  
• Italicize those you intend to read. (For me, only those on my to-read list.)
  
• Put an asterisk by the books you LOVE. (It was originally “underline,” but I’m going with mine.)
  

---

1. Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
   
2. The Lord of the Rings — J.R.R. Tolkien**
   
3. Jane Eyre — Charlotte Bronte
   
4. Harry Potter series — J.K. Rowling**
   
5. To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee**
   
6. The Bible
   
7. Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte**
   
8. 1984 — George Orwell
   
9. His Dark Materials — Philip Pullman
   
10. Great Expectations — Charles Dickens
    

11. Little Women — Louisa May Alcott**
    
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles — Thomas Hardy
    
13. Catch 22 — Joseph Heller
    
14. The Complete Works of Shakespeare [The complete works? On one line?]
    
15. Rebecca — Daphne Du Maurier**
    
16. The Hobbit — J.R.R. Tolkien*****
    
17. Birdsong — Sebastian Faulks
    
18. Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Salinger
    
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife — Audrey Niffenegger
    
20. Middlemarch — George Eliot
    

21. Gone With The Wind — Margaret Mitchell**
    
22. The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald**
    
23. Bleak House — Charles Dickens
    
24. War and Peace — Leo Tolstoy
    
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams**
    
26. Brideshead Revisited — Evelyn Waugh
    
27. Crime and Punishment — Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    
28. Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
    
29. Alice in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll**
    
30. The Wind in the Willows — Kenneth Grahame**
    

31. Anna Karenina — Leo Tolstoy
    
32. David Copperfield — Charles Dickens
    
33. The Chronicles of Narnia — C.S. Lewis
    
34. Emma — Jane Austen
    
35. Persuasion — Jane Austen
    
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe — C.S. Lewis [Okay, part of “The Chronicles of Narnia”?]
    
37. The Kite Runner — Khaled Hosseini
    
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin — Louis De Bernieres
    
39. Memoirs of a Geisha — Arthur Golden**
    
40. Winnie the Pooh — A.A. Milne****
    

41. Animal Farm — George Orwell
    
42. The Da Vinci Code — Dan Brown
    
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney — John Irving
    
45. The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins
    
46. Anne of Green Gables — L.M. Montgomery**
    
47. Far From The Madding Crowd — Thomas Hardy
    
48. The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood**
    
49. Lord of the Flies — William Golding
    
50. Atonement — Ian McEwan
    

51. Life of Pi — Yann Martel
    
52. Dune — Frank Herbert
    
53. Cold Comfort Farm — Stella Gibbons
    
54. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen
    
55. A Suitable Boy — Vikram Seth
    
56. The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    
57. A Tale Of Two Cities — Charles Dickens
    
58. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley
    
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time — Mark Haddon**
    
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    

61. Of Mice and Men — John Steinbeck
    
62. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
    
63. The Secret History — Donna Tartt
    
64. The Lovely Bones — Alice Sebold
    
65. The Count of Monte Cristo — Alexandre Dumas
    
66. On The Road — Jack Kerouac
    
67. Jude the Obscure — Thomas Hardy
    
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary — Helen Fielding****
    
69. Midnight’s Children — Salman Rushdie
    
70. Moby Dick — Herman Melville
    

71. Oliver Twist — Charles Dickens
    
72. Dracula — Bram Stoker
    
73. The Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett
    
74. Notes From A Small Island — Bill Bryson
    
75. Ulysses — James Joyce
    
76. The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath
    
77. Swallows and Amazons — Arthur Ransome
    
78. Germinal — Emile Zola
    
79. Vanity Fair — William Makepeace Thackeray
    
80. Possession — A.S. Byatt
    

81. A Christmas Carol — Charles Dickens
    
82. Cloud Atlas — David Mitchell
    
83. The Color Purple — Alice Walker
    
84. The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro
    
85. Madame Bovary — Gustave Flaubert
    
86. A Fine Balance — Rohinton Mistry
    
87. Charlotte’s Web — E.B. White
    
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven — Mitch Albom
    
89. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    
90. The Faraway Tree Collection — Enid Blyton
    

91. Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
    
92. The Little Prince — Antoine De Saint-Exupery**
    
93. The Wasp Factory — Iain Banks
    
94. Watership Down — Richard Adams
    
95. A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole
    
96. A Town Like Alice — Nevil Shute
    
97. The Three Musketeers — Alexandre Dumas
    
98. Hamlet — William Shakespeare [Um, covered in “Complete works of Shakespeare”?]
    
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Roald Dahl
    
100. Les Misérables — Victor Hugo
     

---

So, 45. Though I think if I can get a whole book credit for The Little Prince, getting only one for the complete works of Shakepeare kind of sucks. Okay, and I’ve just decided this minute that since two titles were repeated — “Shakepeare”/Hamlet and “Narnia”/The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — I can put in two titles of my choosing from children’s literature. Hmmm. I’m going with Tom Sawyer/The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, for number 98... and how about Holes, by Louis Sachar, for number 36. Great, now I’m up to 47.

So if I take out Heart of Darkness and replace it with Poisonwood Bible — both Africa — and change Cloud Atlas to Atlas Shrugged — both with “Atlas” — I’m at 49. And to make it halfway through the list, we need only change The Bell Jar to Who Took the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? All right, 50 it is!

It’s the Pigeon anouncement! I was guessing “brother” or “cell phone,” but this makes more sense. Thanks for letting us in before the event, Mo. I was afraid I’d have to wait until evening, and that would have been too long.

I’m warming up to a MotherReader announcement of my own, but taking the lead from the Mo news, today I’ll point out some odds and ends from my writer friends.

Cats and Jammers blog teaches me a thing or two about Work For Hire and the illustrator’s rights — or lack thereof — associated with the practice. Especially galling when the celebrity author is keeping the change. BACA OFF! indeed.

Laura Salas asks, “How do you decide to spend your time online?” My answer: “Randomly.” Sometimes I skim through JacketFlap, but I’m more likely to go into my blogroll and poke around. It takes freakin’ forever, but I do see posts that I would have missed, and I tend to comment more than I do otherwise. The downside is that I can’t do it all the time, so I’m missing lots of stuff anyway, and my blogroll is not up to date. If anyone has a great solution for how they handle their online time, I’d like to hear it too.

Just for a laugh, check out the “updated” covers for Anne Frank and the Bible over at Radar Online. They say that girly covers sell books. (Thanks to Longstocking Jenny Han for the link.)

Mitali Perkins points out the 2007 Notable Children’s Books in the English Language Arts and wonders, “Do we value humor in the book world?” I wrote about this issue in The Edge of the Forest — saying basically, “No, but we’ll keep trying.”

YALSA and readergirlz are teaming up for Operation Teen Book Drop on April 17th, donating 10,000 books in pediatric hospitals across the country. You can join in by leaving a copy of your book with a TBD bookplate where a teen will find it and take it home. Also join the party at readergirlz on that evening, 9–11 EST to chat and clink the virtual champagne glasses. (Virtual nonalcoholic beverages provided for teens and designated virtual drivers.)