Saturday, November 12, 2011

Books and Threads

Purl Soho--Emma, The Secret Garden, Black Beauty, Penguin Threads edition
Emma, jacket flap
Jane Austen, Emma
A display of books in the store windows of Purl SoHo, one of my favorite fabric and yarn shops, caught my eye as I walked by this weekend.  Apparently, Penguin books has just released three classic titles repackaged in new "Penguin Threads" editions, which, according to the website, "will appeal to the Etsy-loving world of handmade crafts." The cover designs were stitched by artist Jillian Tamaki, using needle and embroidery floss, and then reproduced in a final, embossed design. The underside of wraparound French flaps boldly and honestly reveal the underside (i.e., normally hidden side) of the stitching.


These designs connect to a genre of children's book art:  illustrations where needlework panels make up an entire picture.  A Pocketful of Posies, is an example that we recently acquired for our library.  Illustrated by Salley Mavor, this book is made up of page after delightful page of appliqued and embroidered scenes from nursery rhymes.  While researching Salley Mavor, I discovered that there currently is a traveling exhibit of the work that she made for the book.  You can learn more about Salley Mavor, her work, and her process on her Wee Folk Studio blog.
Pocketful of Posies by Salley Mavor,  Houghton Mifflin, 2011
Clare Beaton's Mother Goose Remembers is another collection of nursery rhymes, illustrated with felt, embroidery, vintage buttons, and beads.  The homespun, pastel images evoke a a cozy feeling of snuggling up to a lap reading of familiar rhymes.  
Clare Beaton, Mother Goose Remembers, Barefoot Books, 2000


Tô Ngoc Trang (illustrations), Pham Viêt Ðinh (embroidery)
Inspired by the embroideries made in the village of Quat Dong in Vietnam
Anna Grossnickle Hines, Pieces: A Year in Quilts,  Greenwillow Books, 2001
There's a huge body of children's literature around the subject of quilting.  But in Anna Grossnickle Hines' Pieces: A Year in Poems and Quilts, quilting is the medium for illustrating her poems on the theme of the seasons.  In the appendix, Hines describes her process of making quilts.


Thursday, November 10, 2011

Mark Aronson @ NYCSLS Fall Conference

Once again, New York City's School Library System's (NYCSLS) Office of Library Services put together a fantastic day of learning at Brooklyn Tech.  Marc Aronson, the prolific author of many original nonfiction books for young people, kicked off the 2011 NYCSLS Conference with a spectacular keynote called "The Magic Key and the Great Quest: The Many Journeys Nonfiction Books Offer Readers."  Aronson disputes the notion that fiction is for pleasure and nonfiction for information.  He even called into question the very name "nonfiction," as if it defines itself by what it is not (fiction).  In light of the demands of the new Common Core Standards, which emphasize reading informational text, Aronson asked "how can we convey the pleasures of nonfiction reading?" With nonfiction books, readers find pleasure beyond story.  A reader of nonfiction is not reading about or living through someone, s/he is someone. Librarians, he concluded, are the wizards, giving young people the key to a journey, albeit one that does not necessarily take them out of themselves.


Trapped: How the World Rescued 33 Miners from 2,000 Feet Below the Chilean Desert (forthcoming, August 2012) by Marc Aronson

Wall Street Journal Features our Library

Jennifer Maloney, a reporter visited our library to cover the new pilot program.  The story,

Library Links to Schools:

Books Borrowed Online Are Delivered Directly to Classrooms for the First Time appeared on Monday's edition of the Wall Street Journal.