2.09.2008

Reading Life 24


A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever, written and illustrated by Marla Frazee
When Marla and her editor Allyn Johnston described this book last year at TTU's 3rd Annual Children's Literature Festival, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy. So I told Allyn sometime during that visit that I'd absolutely have to get a copy of it when it came out. She was so kind then, saying she'd send me a copy first thing. Then last November, I saw her at NCTE where she was hanging out with one of her writers at the Harcourt booth for a signing. I stopped by to say hello, and right behind her I saw the FNG (or is it F&G: either way, it stands for Fold 'N Grab: picture book's ARC). I pointed it out and told her how excited this was. She remembered having promised me a copy, and today I got it in the mail. So thanks, Allyn, and thanks to Marla (and to A.J.'s editing on this project)! How witty and funny and touching. A story about two boys who are on the verge of wasting a week at Nature Camp, opting for hanging out playing video games and the like, but they come through at the end, doing for Bill (the granddad who's all about Antarctica) a real kindness using the very nature around them. Can I already choose one of my year's favorites? Whatever! This is one of them!

No comments:

On Glossaries and Italicizing

Author and creative writing teacher John Gardner contends that "the most important single notion in the theory of fiction" is that...