The 2013 Children’s Choice Book Award Winners!

With Children's Book Week here, the 2013 Children's Choice Book Awards are as well.  Jeff Kinney received the author of the year award, and John Green won the teen book of the year prize.

There are links to all the winners below. How many have you read? Here’s more from the release:

The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the sixth annual Children’s Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) at a charity gala benefitting Every Child a Reader in New York City last night.

The announcement is an annual highlight of Children’s Book Week (May 13-19, 2013) as the CCBAs is the only national book awards program where the winning titles are selected by kids and teens. Young readers across the country voted in record numbers for their favorite books, author, and illustrator at bookstores, school libraries, and at bookweekonline.com, casting more than 1,000,000 votes.

2013 Children’s Choice Book Awards:

KINDERGARTEN TO SECOND GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DaCosta, illustrated by Ed Young (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
 
THIRD GRADE TO FOURTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Bad Kitty for President by Nick Bruel (Roaring Brook/Macmillan)

FIFTH GRADE TO SIXTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Dork Diaries 4: Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess by Rachel Renée Russell (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster)

TEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton/Penguin)

AUTHOR OF THE YEAR
Jeff Kinney for Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel (Amulet Books/Abrams)

ILLUSTRATOR OF THE YEAR
Robin Preiss Glasser for Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet (HarperCollins Children’s Books)  

Have a look at a winner or two.  Think about getting a couple for the kids or grandkids.  How about enriching a life today...

Let's Celebrate Children's Book Week-May 13-19, 2013

Caldecott-winning children's author and illustrator Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret) has designed the poster for the 94th Children's Book Week from May 13-19.  But what is it, and how did it begin?

 Established in 1919, Children's Book Week is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. Every year, commemorative events are held nationwide at schools, libraries, bookstores, homes -- wherever young readers and books connect.

The event originated in the belief that children's books and literacy are life-changers. In 1913, Franklin K. Matthiews, the librarian of the Boy Scouts of America, began touring the country to promote higher standards in children's books. He proposed creating a Children's Book Week, which would be supported by all interested groups: publishers, booksellers, and librarians.  In the words of Frederic G. Melcher:

A Great Nation is a Reading Nation

Mathiews enlisted two important allies: Frederic G. Melcher, the visionary editor of Publishers Weekly, and Anne Carroll Moore, the Superintendent of Children's Works at the New York Public Library and a major figure in the library world. With the help of Melcher and Moore, in 1916, the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association sponsored a Good Book Week with the Boy Scouts of America.

In 1944, the newly-established Children's Book Council assumed responsibility for administering Children's Book Week. In 2008, Children’s Book Week moved from November to May. At that time, administration of Children’s Book Week, including planning official events and creating original materials, was transferred to Every Child a Reader, the philanthropic arm of the children’s publishing industry, and the Children's Book Council became a CBW anchor sponsor.

Let's support our young people and their reading endeavors and achievements.  Without the skill of reading, most children will not become all they can be.  Their dreams can be come reality if they have the gift of reading.

Some of the Worst Mothers in Books or How I Love to Hate the Antagonist

Let me begin this post by wishing all of you wonderful mothers out there a Happy Day!   I hope you all have a wonderful time with children and grandchildren.  


I thought, for fun, I'd include this list from Jennifer Gilmore, author of  The Mothers. She has compiled the 10 worst mothers as a counterpoint. I am sharing part of the list. See what you think!

The bad mothers of literature can be spectacularly awful. But still, at the bottom of it, these are women who are suffering. They are suffering from bad marriages; they are trapped by their time, unable to be themselves. Their suffering makes them cruel or it makes them clueless to their children’s needs. Present or absent, a bad mother is fodder for great fiction. And a bad mother never fails to get a reaction from all spectrum of readers. Because being a bad mother is the least acceptable character to be.

Here are ten bad mothers in literature. They are in no particular order but as I write, I realize the worst ones are the selfish ones, who live their lives as if their children are not there. Whatever the case, across the board, all bad mothers are punished.

 Emma Bovary, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - Motherhood is a grand disappointment to Emma Bovary, just one in a list of many of her dissatisfactions. Initially she pretends to dote on her daughter, as a cover up of her transgressions, but soon her vanity and unstoppable desires lead her away from her daughter. When Emma swallows arsenic, killing herself (who can forget that wretched scene!) Berthe is left with her father. Soon he dies penniless and Berthe is alone and forced to work in a mill.

Queen Gertrude, Hamlet by William Shakespeare - Does Hamlet’s madness spring from the well of neglected love? Queen Gertrude, his mother, isn’t really paying attention. As soon as her husband’s corpse is cold, she marries Hamlet’s uncle, and doesn’t seem to have a lot of guilt about it. He believes he is alone in the world until he meets Ophelia, but of course, that doesn’t go well either.

Charlotte Haze, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - Like Emma Bovary, Charlotte Haze craves for the finer and more sophisticated things, but she is portrayed as such a cow that she doesn’t even know what those things are. She thinks they are incarnate in Humbert, whom she manipulates into marriage, willfully clueless to his pedophiliac desire for her daughter. Like Emma Bovary and Queen Gertrude, Charlotte Haze (in a haze) pays with a violent death so leaving her unloved daughter vulnerable to the fire of Humbert’s loins.

Sophie Portnoy, Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth - Is constancy a bad thing, given what has happened above? Sophie Portnoy won’t leave her son’s side. She wants to see his bowel movements, control who he dates (no shiksas allowed), and she enables Portnoy to stay in a state of constant adolescence, tending to his every basic need. Has she awoken or thwarted his sexual desires? Sophie Portnoy is a living guilt trip, a constant complainer and perhaps her punishment is the son she has to mother. 

Beth Jarrett, Ordinary People by Judith Guest - There is no denying that Beth Jarrett is suffering. Her eldest son has been killed in a boating accident and her younger son, a survivor of that accident, is not doing so well. But Beth is cold. She is ice. In her attempt to maintain her composure and to keep up appearances, Beth won’t offer comfort to her living son; her dead son seems to be the focus of what little she has of love. Beth’s punishment is to be forced out of the family, leaving out of shock when her husband asks if she can ever really love anyone.

Eleanor Melrose, The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn - Things don’t begin well in this suite of four short novels when Eleanor, an American who has let her family fortune be run into the ground by her gentry husband David, lets her son be raped by his father, her husband David, and chooses to ignore it. Eleanor, who drinks and pops pills constantly, goes through a reform in the second novel, and instead of making amends with her son, allows the rest of her fortune—and what little is left of her motherly love—to a questionable religious organization, led by a conman. Eleanor is punished with a long and hideous sickness that leaves the once attractive woman toothless, with horrible breath, unbearable to her furious son.

I hope you had fun with the list!  You probably have your own.  Antagonists that are supposed to be loving, kind, and honest people and aren't, make for such good writing!

Happy Mother's Day!

Most American Parents Believe that Libraries are Important for Their Children

Think that libraries are obsolete in the 21st Century? A whopping 94 percent of American parents agree that “libraries are important for their children.”


Last year, Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project surveyed 2,252 Americans aged 16 or older to find out more about library attitudes in America. Here is more information from the report:

Original Design
Carnegie Library

84% of these parents who say libraries are important say a major reason they want their children to have access to libraries is that libraries help inculcate their children’s love of reading and books. 81% say a major reason libraries are important is that libraries provide their children with information and resources not available at home. 71% also say a major reason libraries are important is that libraries are a safe place for children.

The report also highlighted how many lower income parents would be “very likely” to use library resources like “classes on how to download library e-books” (44 percent), “e-readers already loaded with library content” (40 percent), or a “digital media lab” (40 percent).

Check it out:

In addition, parents in lower-income households are more likely to say it is important for libraries to offer librarians to help people, free access to computers and the internet, quiet study spaces, research resources, jobs and career materials, free events and activities, and free meeting spaces for the community.

This report is good news, indeed, for devotees of the United States Libraries, an institutions since Benjamin Franklin began the first lending library in 1731.  He convinced his friends in Philadelphia to join forces and donate books to the general public.  (The group had been pooling their books for some time to create a private library for friends.)

Cinco de Mayo, 2013

As many people celebrate Cinco de Mayo this weekend, here is a list of free eBooks about Mexico. These books come from the Internet Archive and include a treasure trove of 18th, 19th and 20th Century writings about Mexico.

See the country through the eyes of explorers, archaeologists, travelers, writers and colonizers in these books. History Channel described the holiday:

It commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War (1861-1867) … Cinco de Mayo traditions include parades, mariachi music performances and street festivals in cities and towns across Mexico and the United States.

Free Books About Mexico:

Anahuac: or, Mexico and the Mexicans, ancient and modern by Edward Burnett Tylor

Travels of Anna Bishop in Mexico by Anna Rivière Bishop
Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (Volume 1) (Volume 2) by John Lloyd Stephens (image embedded above via volume 2)

Border states of Mexico: Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango. With a general sketch of the republic of Mexico, and Lower California, Coahuila, New Leonand Tamaulipas. A complete description of the best regions for the settler, miner and the advance guard of American civilization by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton

Down that Pan American Highway by Roger Stephens
Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and republican : a historical, geographical, political, statistical and social account (Volume 1) (Volume 2)

A gringo in manana-land by Harry L. Foster

The Mexican guide by Janvier Thomas Allibone
Through southern Mexico : being an account of the travels of a naturalist by Hans Friedrich Gadow

A Mexican journey by Emil Harry Blichfeldt

Our sister republic: a gala trip through tropical Mexico in 1869-70 … and reminiscences of the empire and its downfall by Albert S Evans

The Mexican guide by Thomas Allibone Janvier

Unknown Mexico, a record of five years’ exploration among the tribes of the western Sierra Madre, in the Tierra Caliente of Tepic and Jalisco, and among the Tarascos of Michoacan by Carl Lumholtz

Enjoy the books and the weekend!

Secrets of the Great Plague in Britian Revealed in Two New Kids' Books

A week ago, the publication of two new children's books, a novel and companion non-fiction title, on the Great Plague of 1665 were published.  

This is the second release of books in the new children's history range co-branded by The National Archives and Bloomsbury Publishing.

Using original sources from The National Archives, these books will provide important links to support the school history curriculum and wider cross-curricular reading and study for young readers aged seven and above in the U.K. and elsewhere.

Plague Unclassified: Secrets of the Great Plague Revealed by Nick Hunter uses real-life artifacts and documentation to help young readers build a true account of the bubonic plague and how it shaped Britain today - from what life was like in London during the outbreak, to where plague came from, how it was spread, and whether is still exists today.
 
Plague: A Cross on the Door, by children's author Ann Turnbull, is an historical fiction novel. It allows young readers to imagine what life would have really been like for people in London during the time of the Great Plague in London.  The book focuses on a young orphan called Sam who finds his aspirations of becoming a shoe-maker interrupted by its arrival. 

Andrew Payne, Head of Education and Outreach at The National Archives, said: 

Plague Unclassified and Plague: A Cross on the Door use some of the fascinating records we have here at The National Archives to help engage primaryschool children in history. Both books are cleverly written and designed to work alongside the history curriculum, encouraging children to actively explore and engage with the stories and historical sources of one of the most important and gruesome parts of our history.

For those of you interested in such enticing facts, take a look at these books.  A little something different for you and your young people.  Who knows?  This may be just the thing to stir up the historian in us all!

A May Basket!

When I was a little girl, I always made a May Basket.  My mother would help me pick out flowers from her fresh spring garden, and we would arrange them. 

Basket in hand, I would sneak (or so I thought) next door to our lovely neighbors, the Rowans.  Placing the basket on their door handle, I'd ring the bell and scamper away home.

How many of have done the same for this sentimental holiday?  Millions, I would suspect.  A sweet holiday, celebrating springtime, friendship, the burgeoning season of plenty.


Celts called it Beltane, and the Romans called it Floralia.  But whatever it is called, May 1 has been known as May Day since the Middle Ages.  

Ancient villagers celebrated the end of harsh winter months and the beginning of fertile summer.  There were feasts, game competitions and dancing.  Which brings us to the May Pole. 

May Day was and is, especially in Europe, celebrated with traditional dancing around the maypole.  Colorful ribbons were, and still are, used so the dancers can weave in and out, celebrating the season and what it means to everyone individually.  

But for me, as that child of six or seven, I knew nothing of a Roman holiday, a celebration of summer's fertility, or a call of workers the world over.  I knew my mission was to take the basket next door, run away, back to the business of growing up.

Happy May Day, Everyone!

The Wonderful, Glorious, Awesome Downtown Tampa Sunday Market!

Yesterday was the most beautiful spring day in Tampa.  The weather was perfect, sunny and warm.  Real tropical weather without a trace of humidity.  It was a terrific foil for the Downtown Tampa Sunday Market!

I was asked if I wanted to have a booth to sell my books.  I decided to do it and am so glad I did.  This was my first experience attending the market.  It will not be my last.

Downtown Tampa

Not only did my books get sold, I met many lovely people and saw lots of friends.  I bought the freshest of fruits and vegetables, ate various yummy foods, including French pastries and drank freshly squeezed lemonade all day.  Heaven.

I believe it is such a good thing to support one's local establishments.  Doing so helps make the whole economy healthy.  Buying locally grown produce etc. is a fast growing trend all over the U.S., and Tampa is no exception.  Many restaurants nationwide are doing the same, featuring locally grown meats and produce on their menus.

Nancy and Louie

 Downtown Tampa is a bustling place all week, and the Sunday Market brings so many families to stroll, eat and buy goods from the various vendors.

There is always live music, and yesterday was no exception.  Show tunes wafted over the crowds, making everything all the more festive.

Friend and Fellow Author
Shannon Hitchcock

The film Annie was playing across the courtyard at the Tampa Cinema.  Kids of all ages poured into the area and eagerly chattered in line, waiting to go inside.  My year old puppy, Louie, loved it when the kids appeared, and he could get all the petting his heart desired.

All this to say, do support your local activities.  Your friends and neighbors will appreciate it, and it's so good for the soul to get out and meet and great people.  I am so glad I went to the market yesterday.  Oh, yes.  And sold books, too.

So What is it About Inspiration?

Inspiration is a cloud of smoke, hard to get through and so worthwhile when you do.  I am asked often about the concept.  Where does it come from?  Do you have to conjure it up?  Are there times when it goes away?  I decided to give an illustration through a vignette.  

And speaking of illustrations, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the marvelous illustrator/water colorist of the Bella and Britt series, Samantha Bell.

Sea Turtle Summer came to me, not on a glorious beach with glimmering white sand but in a stark utilitarian hospital room.  Talk about being led by your muse.  She had to work wonders with this one.
 
My husband was recovering from back surgery (happily, he's fine now.)  I sat in his room, net book on lap and waited for inspiration to come calling.  And she did, demanding another Bella and Britt book.   About sea turtles.

So I began Sea Turtle Summer on a frigid February morning in St. Louis and was instantly transported to Clearwater Beach, where the weather was balmy, and the beach was getting busy.  

A female Loggerhead sea turtle was heading back to the sea, but I knew her nest was in trouble.  Enter Britt and Bella, and the girls and I were off and running.

It's a funny thing, inspiration.  Sea Turtle Summer, I know, was a combination of my many early morning walks on Clearwater Beach, all the conversations about the plight of sea turtles and time on my hands that winter morning, willing my muse to conjure up a worthy story.  She hardly ever fails.

Once it began, the book came quickly, and I was able to get the main story in place by the time my husband went home.  Some books do that, I find.  Some do not.  But whichever way they begin, the end game is the goal.  Oh, that and something wonderful and magical in the pages between.  Let's hope my muse or inspiration or spark continues.  It is such a positive thing!

William Shakespeare's Birthday Flowchart

Goodreads has created a massive William Shakespeare flowchart to celebrate the famous author’s birthday.  April 23 was his 448th birthday.  As he was the the fountainhead where much of western writing crystallized, it is certainly fitting we acknowledge the day of his birth.

Take a look at the chart below.  It's fun and informative, too!  And Happy Birthday, Mr. Shakespeare! 

Bella Saves the Beach Book Tour and Excerpt!

Bella Saves the Beach--third in the Bella and Britt Series is Here!

About the book:

Bella and Britt are worried about all the trash appearing on their beautiful beach. But what can they do? Britt is leaving on vacation, and Bella can’t solve the problem alone. Without adults to lend a hand, can they possibly save their beach?

Excerpt:

Bella, Britt and all their friends built sand castles and filled moats with salty sea. But this summer, the girls were worried.

“Look at all this trash, Britt,” said Bella.

She nodded. “Yeah, and I leave on vacation tomorrow. I can’t help pick it up!”

Next morning, Bella walked along the beach alone. “Hello.” Bella said to the old crooked beak pelican, perched on his piling. “Somebody has to help, and I guess it’s me.”

Purchase from:

NANCYSTEWARTBOOKS.COM
GUARDIAN ANGEL PUBLISHING
AMAZON
BARNES AND NOBLE

Bella Saves the Beach Tour Schedule

Monday, April 22^nd

Guest post at The Children’s and Teens’ Book Connection

Tuesday, April 23^rd

Book trailer feature at If Books Could Talk

Wednesday, April 24^th

Book review at On Words - Opening Eyes, Opening Hearts

Thursday, April 25^th

Book spotlight and giveaway at The Busy Mom’s Daily

Book review at Shannon Hitchcock Pen and Prose

Monday, April 29^th

Book review at Hook Kids on Reading

Guest post at The Pen and Ink

Tuesday, April 30^th

Guest post at Write What Inspires You

Wednesday, May 1^st

Book review at LadyD Books

Thursday, May 2^nd

Book review at Kid Lit Reviews

Friday, May 3^rd

Guest post at Lori’s Reading Corner

Monday, May 6^th

 

Interview at Tribute Books Reviews and Giveaways

Tuesday, May 7^th

Book reviewed at The Picture Book Review

Wednesday, May 8^th

Book reviewed at My Devotional Thoughts

Thursday, May 9^th

Book review at It’s About Time Mamaw

Friday, May 10^th

Book review at The Children’s and Teens’ Book Connection

Monday, May 13^th

Book review at 4 the Love of Books

Tuesday, May 14^th

Book spotlight at Review from Here

Book review at The Jenny Revolution

Wednesday, May 15^th

Guest post at Literarily Speaking

Thursday, May 16^th

Book review at Mrs. Mommy Booknerd’s Reviews

Friday, May 17^th

Book spotlight at I’m A Reader, Not A Writer

Bella Saves the Beach Blog Tour Has Begun!

Hello, Dear Readers!

My virtual book tour of Bella Saves the Beach began today and will continue until May 17.   Each day Bella, Britt and I will hop around the blogosphere to visit fabulous blogs. 

I will be guest posting on some of the blogs, several will review the book, and one blog will review the trailer.  Please join us as we tour.  We'd love it if you would!

Today we were guests of Cheryl Malandrinos and her marvelous Children's and Teen's Book Connection.  I did a guest post on Earth Day, 2013.  Have a look!

Tomorrow we will stop in at If Books Could Talk where the trailer of Bella Saves the Beach will be reviewed. 

Bella Saves the Beach Launched on Earth Day, April 22, 2013

My new picture story book, Bella Saves the Beach, is the third in the Bella and Britt series.  It is being launched this week with a blog tour, kicking off on Earth Day, Monday, April 22 at The Children and Teens Book Connection.  

Please view the trailer at the bottom of the post!

There is a back story, though, to this book, which is this:

Bella Saves the Beach was the first book in the series and the one taken by my publisher, Guardian Angel Publishing.  That was in 2010.  Just before it was to go to press, the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill happened. 
 
My publisher, Lynda Burch, thought the House needed to have a book for kids on the spill and determined Bella and Britt were the kids to do it.  

Lynda was hoping to have the book, which became One Pelican at a Time, become the first kids' book in the U.S. to deal with the spill--and it was! 

 
Poor Beach Bella was put on hold.  Another in the series, Sea Turtle Summer, was published.  And then it was Beach Bella's turn!  

I am so delighted the book will help celebrate Earth Day and would love if if Britt and Bella helped spread the word about how very important this global celebration will be.  Samantha Bell, the wonderfully talented water-colorist, did the illustrations for the series.  I am so grateful to her for bringing the books to life on the page. 

Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2012

Here is the list--only a step above actually banning a book.  Take a look at this year's offerings.  Have you or your kids read any of them?  All of them? 

The American Library Association (ALA) has released its annual list of the most frequently challenged library books of the year. They have linked to free samples of all the books on the list–follow the links below to read these controversial books yourself.

Captain Underpants

The list was part of the ALA’s 2013 State of America’s Libraries Report. During the past year, the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received 464 reports of challenged books. Here’s more from the report:

In California, a school committee voted to remove the Stephen King novella “Different Seasons” from Rocklin High School library shelves. The lone dissenter on that committee was 17-year-old student Amanda Wong, who continued to fight the ban and spoke against the decision at a later school board meeting. After hearing Wong’s concerns that the removal “opens a door to censoring other materials,” the district superintendent overturned the committee’s decision and returned the book to the Rocklin High School library’s collection.

Thirteen Reasons Why

10 Most Frequently Challenged Library Books of 2013

1. Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey
Reasons: offensive language, unsuited for age group
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
3. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Reasons: drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group
4. Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James

The Kite Runner

Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit
5. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: homosexuality, unsuited for age group
6. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit
7. Looking for Alaska by John Green
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
8. Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: unsuited for age group, violence
9. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit
10. Beloved by Toni Morrison
Reasons: sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violent

And Tango Makes Three

Again, whether we approve of the books listed above, and lists in the past and those to come, we must remember there is an inherent danger in getting close to the act of wholesale banning.  

Of course, parents have the right and expectation of approving books their children read.  But for an entire community to mandate what citizens can read does not belong in a democracy.  What do you think?     

New Kids' Book by Bob Staake--And a Trailer Sneak Peek

The preview for Bob Staake's new book, Bluebird, has just premiered. The beautiful, wordless book tells the story of a boy, a bird, and some bullies. It is aimed at the 4 to 8 crowd.  The book was launched this past week by Random House’s Schwartz & Wade imprint. 

Please view the trailer at the bottom of this post!

 Bluebird is a complete departure for Staake who has written or illustrated more than 55 children’s books, is a New Yorker cover artist, and has done illustrations for a variety of publications, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and the Wall Street  Journal. 

 When asked in an interview by Sally Lodge, he said the following: 

 

In  2002, I was walking around Central Park on a quintessentially gorgeous spring day. The trees were flowering and the light was perfect. And there was a bird that seemed to be following my path. And I thought, “I’ve got do something here. There must be a way to capture this moment in a book.” And as I walked along, I thought about how to take this simple, lyrical moment and tell it in a story – with no words.

Kirkus Reviews assessment: "Like nothing you have seen before." Is it Bob's magnum opus? I'd say "yes.. so far." Who knows what he'll do next?

 He does all of his illustration work using a pre-OS X version of the Macintosh operating system and Photoshop 3. He doesn't use a stylus, and instead does everything with a mouse.  His new trailer, seen at the bottom of the post, was premiered by Boing Boing.  

 Kirkus Reviews says of the book:  "Like nothing you have seen before."  Take a look, and see what you think of Bok Staake's new offering.