Conventional Attributes of Masculinity

Some of the novels I’ve been looking at lately, and plan to do some thinking about in entries here, revolve around ways in which their male characters think about their maleness and what it might mean or ought to be. For that reason, I thought I’d better post here a handout I prepared some years [...]

The Curse of the Evening Eye

While avoiding work on alternating narratves, I’ve put together a book trailer for Ghosthunters 2: The Curse of the Evening Eye,  the sequel to The Proof that Ghosts Exist.  Here it is:

Not Alternating Currently

I’ve had to mothball my work on alternating narratives in the last while, in order to give some talks at conferences in Vanocuver and Troisdorf, Germany, and to work on a draft of the third novel in the Ghosthunter’s series, The Hunt for ther Haunted Elephant.  I hope to  get back to it again in [...]

Seth Lerer’s Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter

Lerer, Seth.  Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter.  Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
This book, it seems, has just been named as a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle 2008 awards for criticism.  According to its website, the National Book Critics Circle consists of “more than 900 active [...]

The Proof That Ghosts Exist? Not!

After the various positive comments for The Proof That Ghosts Exist, the novel by Carol Matas and me, that I recorded earlier (see Responses to the Proof That Ghosts Exist) comes this late bloomer, from School Library Journal:
MATAS, Carol & Perry Nodelman. The Proof That Ghosts Exist. Bk. 1. 216p. (The Ghosthunters Series). Key Porter, [...]

Doctor Atomic and Alternating Narratives

Having gone to the Cineplex last Saturday to see John Adams’s opera Doctor Atomic “live” from the Met, I find myself thinking about it in terms of this alternating narratives project.  What struck me was that, while much of the music is evocative and interesting, there really isn’t much else very involving going on in [...]

Responses to The Proof that Ghosts Exist

These are comments from both Canadian and American reviews of the novel by Carol Matas and me, The Proof that Ghosts Exist, the first book of the Ghosthunters trilogy.
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books:
As this is the first novel in a planned trilogy, there is little resolution offered as to the likelihood of their [...]

Picture Book Texts

I’ve given my permission for a post I wrote recently on the Child_lit listserv to appear on Susan Thomsen’s Chicken Spaghetti blog. The post is about picture book texts and their relationship to poetry.

The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature

Here’s a book trailer for my new book, The Hidden Adult: Defining Children’s Literature, out soon from Johns Hopkins University Press.

The book presents close readings of six stories in order to try to develop  a clear definition of children’s literature as a distinct literary form. I begin by considering the plots, [...]

Not a Nickel to Spare: The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen

Here’s a book trailer for my novel in Scholastic Canada’s Dear Canada series, about a Jewish girl in Toronto in the depths of the depression:

The book is based on my parents’ memories of their childhood, and ends with the characters becoming involved in the Christie Pits riot.
Not a Nickel to Spare [...]