Month: October 2007

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Graphic Witness: Four Wordless Graphic Novels edited by George A. Walker

October 31, 2007 admin 0

It’s difficult to know quite what to make of Graphic Witness (Firefly Books, 423 pages). As soon as you hold it, you know you have here an impossibly important book. It seems at once seminal and historic, a graphic witness, as the title indicates, of the very roots of the graphic novel. Here we have four important stories told in woodcut and without words, collected for us by George A. Walker, himself an award-winning engraver, […]

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Measured by Measure

October 31, 2007 admin 0

The Rap Sheet has announced a winner of its Elmore Leonard Limerick Contest. He’s Robert Holland of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and he will receive one free, signed copy of the new non-fiction book Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, which was finally released today under the William Morrow and Company imprint. Holland’s winning submission, titled “Less Is Elmore,” nicely sums up this novelist’s modus operandi: At his best, he is not even there.No descriptions obscure […]

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Bird Songs from Around the World by Les Beletsky

October 29, 2007 admin 0

Bird Songs from Around the World (Raincoast/Chronicle, 368 pages) is so much more than just a book, I almost don’t know where to begin. In the first place, it’s quite heavy for its size. This is only in part due the 368 color pages featuring glorious botanical paintings of birds. It’s also due the mechanical apparatus that is part of the binding of the book and that makes the sound possible. And what sound! The […]

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The Big Book of Pop Culture by Hal Niedzviecki

October 29, 2007 admin 0

And while we’re on the topic of Hal Niedzviecki’s Big Book of Pop Culture (Were we? Kinda.) the book, which was published by Annick Press earlier this year, is amazing. In some ways, it’s quite beyond the scope of anything I’ve seen done for kids before, by someone who knows this topic about as well as it can be known. From the book: Creativity is often confused with originality. But when you create, the challenge […]

Review: Vanilla Bright Like Eminem by Michel Faber

October 29, 2007 admin 0

Today, in January Magazine’s fiction section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews Vanilla Bright Like Eminem by Michel Faber. Says Leach: Some years ago my husband and I read Jane Smiley’s Greenlanders, her attempt at Norse Saga. Character after character abruptly died by falling through the ice. It became a joke between us: whatever happened to so and so? He fell through the ice and died. The characters in Michel Faber’s Vanilla Bright are about to […]

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Lipton and Pinker and Wolf, Oh My

October 29, 2007 admin 0

And even more on the five most recent installments of Ed Champion’s wonderful Bat Segundo Show featuring literary podcast interviews with some really terrific authors: The latest five installments (Shows #146-150) of The Bat Segundo Show … are now up. These shows include Inside the Actors Studio’s James Lipton as you haven’t heard him before, talking candidly about his work as one of the leading television interviewers (#150), a heady discussion about thought and language […]

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Skype and Annick Team Up for Kids

October 28, 2007 admin 1

Annick Press has teamed with Skype Technologies to put together an online program for middle and junior high school kids. LIVEbrary brings students together with authors, experts and teachers virtually in a secure online environment. Funded in part by a two-year grant from Canada Council for the Arts, the program is free, but teachers and librarians must register their classrooms in advance to participate in the live chats. Parents and homeschoolers are also welcome. Every […]

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There Once Was a Writer So Hairy…

October 27, 2007 admin 0

The countdown has begun on The Rap Sheet’s contest to win a free signed and numbered copy of the about-to-be-released book Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing. Rap Sheet editor J. Kingston Pierce makes the whole thing sound probably easier than it is. “To enter, simply send us one clever Leonard-related five-line limerick. You might incorporate into that doggerel the titles of Leonard’s novels or the names of his characters, or perhaps one or two […]

Review: Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

October 26, 2007 admin 0

Today, in January Magazine’s fiction section, contributing editor Cherie Thiessen reviews Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz. Says Thiessen: … in Anderson-Dargatz’s fictional world that evil is never stamped out, remaining indelibly to stain space and haunt its victims. The reader hopes that the raging forest fire has been heaven-sent to finally raze the earth so that new growth can flourish here, hopefully in time for Kat. She has already made several wrong choices in her […]

Review: Fremantle Impressions by Ron Davidson

October 24, 2007 admin 0

Today, in January Magazine’s art & culture section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Fremantle Impressions by Ron Davidson. Says Bursztynski: The port of Fremantle in Western Australia is old. Founded in 1829, it’s actually older than Melbourne, which didn’t begin until 1835. Fremantle has been a center of whaling, of imports and exports, it has had convicts and Aboriginal rebels and union strikes and has seen the foundation of business dynasties. In the 1980s, it […]