crooked house

Harvey Potter and Harry Potter

Last night Luke asked me to read him a book he had picked out himself at the library called Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm by Jerdine Nolen. I was surprised by the name "Harvey Potter" and wondered if it was meant to be some kind of parody of the Harry Potter books. It wasn't -- it was simply the story of a man named Harvey Potter who grew crops of magnif'icent balloons on his farm instead of more mundane crops. The narrator, a little girl, spies on him and discovers he does this with the help of a magic "conjurer stick" in the middle of the night. The story is quirky and fun and Luke absolutely adores the illustrations by Mark Buehner -- we had to spend quite some time on the pages devoted to the fields of balloons.

According to the publication date of the book on Amazon, it came out in 1994.  J. K. Rowling didn't finish the first Harry Potter book until 1995, according to Wikipedia at least, and it wasn't published until 1997. How weird. The books are completely different except for their central, similarly-named  characters who also happen to be magic. Imagine Jerdine Nolen's surprise at the stratospheric success of the Harry Potter books. If I were her, I might entertain the notion that Rowling had seen the book and perhaps inadvertently borrowed the name for her own character, but I'd be more likely to chalk it up to coincidence. Or I just might think I was psychic!

You can see more of Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm here.

A Victorian Kindle

Illustration student Rachel Walsh designed this book filled with tiny books in response to the assignment "Explain something modern/internet based to someone who lived and died before 1900." It's a visual explanation of the Kindle e-reader for Charles Dickens. Love it with a passion. Via Iris Blasi

Parodies of Children's Books: Pat the Zombie

WARNING! Do not watch this book trailer with very small and/or easily frightened children! (I'm thinking, for example, of you, Kerry and Harriet. If you want to know why, read this old post about the time three-year-old Luke and I searched for mazes online and got rather more than we bargained for.)

Pat the Zombie is a parody for adults of the classic Pat the Bunny, which both our children have enjoyed. They've enjoyed it so much that we've gone on to buy Pat the Cat, Pat the Puppy and Bunny's Bath Time and we've read them all repeatedly. (I'll admit that in a moment of weakness I even purchased a different parody of the series called Pat the Husband, as a gag gift for David one Christmas, although I never gave it to him as bits of it turned out to be rather insulting.) And now Luke has put in a request for Pat the Zombie after watching the book trailer above, even though -- or perhaps especially because -- it terrified him. He is now six and fond of zombies. I think that bloodthirsty boys who remember reading the original are probably the best audience for this book. You can see some of the pages in the following video.

Now that I'm thinking of it, leave a comment if you want our copy of Pat the Husband. I'll choose a winner randomly if there's more than one.

Parodies of Children's Books is going to be a new feature here, randomly updated. As someone with her own idea for a parody kids' book (see my post Beckett for Babies), my interest was sparked again recently by the phenomenal success of Go the Fuck to Sleep.

Let's compare: Right now, Pat the Zombie is ranked #5,108 in Books on the Amazon Bestseller list while Go the Fuck to Sleep is currently #1. 490 people like PTZ on facebook while 9,783 like GTFTS. PTZ received a favourable review on boingboing.net as did, of course, GTFTS.

 

The Go the Fuck to Sleep Phenomenon

 

On April 23, I saw a link to Go the F**k to Sleep, a parody picture book, on Facebook and, as I am wont to do when something amuses me, I posted it on Crooked House. Now this is a tiny little personal website, averaging maybe four or five hundred hits a day. But in three days that post got around 7000 hits. The only time I ever got more hits than that was a couple of years ago when the reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8 featured Crooked House playhouses and ten thousand people came here by mistake through google while they were watching Kate hiss and spit through her teeth at Jon.

I thought the concept for  the book was funny, yes, but I was perplexed by its popularity. If this little site was getting that much traffic from it, just imagine how many people were viewing it on large sites like boingboing or Cup of Joe, who featured it over the next couple of days. The book, not yet actually published, started climbing the ranks at Amazon and the New York Times remarked on its meteoric rise. (According to the Times, last June the author Adam Mansbach posted on Facebook to “Look out for my forthcoming children’s book, ‘Go the — to Sleep" and the reaction of his friends made him decide to turn his offhand joke into an actual book.)

Now I am an Amazon affiliate, which means that if someone clicks through to Amazon through a link on my site and buys something, I get a tiny percentage of that sale. Because my site is so small, this generally works out to me being able to afford to buy a couple of books or so for the kids every few months. After the frenzy of hits stopped, I noticed that of the thousands of people who visited here to see this book, eighteen of them purchased the book (or actually pre-ordered it, as again I must remark it has not yet technically been published). Eighteen! That has never happened before. Again, keep in mind that it's not the money I'll be rolling in that fascinates me -- I'll be making a few dollars out of this, perhaps 40 cents a copy -- it's the unpredictability of the book's sudden popularity. At that point, the book wasn't even due to be released until October. Th gleeful and surprised publisher, Akashic Books, has since moved the date up to June 14th.

Today, the book is the number one bestselling book on Amazon. This post on the New Yorker blog and this article in the Bay Citizen suggest that the popularity is due to the fact that a pdf of the book went viral. I think it was enough for the concept -- the title, that excellent cover image, one bit of verse -- to go viral. Macy Halford at the New Yorker says that bloggers who posted a verse from the book must have seen that pdf (which she rhapsodizes about). Perhaps they did -- but I got the sample verse straight from Amazon. I still haven't seen the pdf. And if I had, why would I, after enjoying the joke, then rush to buy the book? It's a joke. A joke that really resonates -- oh how it resonates!* -- but a joke nonetheless.  After all, unlike at least some children's book parodies, this probably isn't one you will actually want to read with your children. Unless you want your two-year-old to tell the dolls at daycare to "go the fuck to sleep. " Many people, including Halford, have commented, however, that they plan to give it as a baby shower gift and I can certainly understand the temptation to do that. After all, everyone loves to terrify pregnant ladies. If not with frightening birth stories, why not with the suggestion she will soon be cursing at her darling newborn like a sailor?

*Pdf, schmdf. I'll hazard a guess that one reason this book is really resonating right now is that in addition to the normal difficulties infants and small children have falling sleep, much of North America is experiencing the springtime lengthening of the days, which makes falling asleep even more difficult than usual for kids and even more frustrating and exhausting than usual for their parents. Hmm, maybe someone should do a little research on whether frustrated and exhausted people spend more money on impulse purchases than well-rested ones...

Penguin Classics: Threads Cover Designs by Jillian Tamaki

According to the Caustic Cover Critic, these are going to be the covers of some of the new Threads series of Penguin Classics. They were designed by Jillian Tamaki. The Secret Garden is my favourite -- love the keyhole in the lower lefthand corner. I can't seem to find more information about this series -- did Tamaki actually stitch the originals or do they just look as if they're stitched? And what other books will be in the Threads series?

Update: She did embroider them -- she's just posted more photos and they are gorgeous. She even did embroidery on the back of the jackets.

The Christmas Books by Dickens (White's Books Edition)

It seems to me that if you're going to spring for an actual book instead of an electronic edition, you might as well buy the most beautifully designed one you can find. (Perhaps that's the silver lining in this publishing revolution -- actual, physical books are going to have to get even more beautiful in order to survive.) Here's a gorgeous version of  Christmas Books: A Christmas Carol and Other Stories by Dickens. This has cloth covers with gold foiling in the little windows. You can view the entire piece of artwork, which covers front, spine, and back at the very end of this blogpost by the Caustic Cover Critic -- that site is worth exploring -- or at the website of the artist, Joe McLaren.

Thanks for An Awesome Book of Thanks!

We got this book in the mail today -- appropriately enough, as it's Thanksgiving in the U.S. It is An Awesome Book of Thanks! by Dallas Clayton, who self-published the first book in this series, An Awesome Book!, because he couldn't seem to find a traditional publisher. He finally decided to go the DIY route instead and the book quickly became a phenomenon.

Both books are endearingly quirky, visually appealing, and have great messages about dreaming big and being thankful. But don't take my word for it -- you can read both books for free here. Additionally, Clayton gives away one book for every book that is sold. This is a clever gesture, as well as a kind one.

This time,  An Awesome Book of Thanks! is being published by Amazon Encore. Apparently Amazon Encore targets indie and small press books that have generated a real buzz and good sales on their own and then republishes the books with a little more fanfare. It's a very interesting model, one to watch closely. An Awesome Book of Thanks! is their first picture book.

My favourite spread:

Yes, thank you! (And Happy Thanksgiving, American friends. We're eating turkey tonight, too, in solidarity and thankfulness.)

Luke's Homemade Book

Luke got a couple of magazines in the mail today and, after perusing them for a little while, he asked me if he could make his own book. I was all over that in a heartbeat. Here it is: his "Chickie Book." I suppose in another ten years or so the term "Chickie Book" might have a different meaning for him.

And here is one of the pages, a puzzle page, his favourite.

That says, "Find two strange things." Okay, then. Shouldn't be too difficult, around here.

The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

A recent development in e-books and e-readers.

Inspired by someone's list of top dystopian novels -- a link I lost and found on twitter, sorry -- I downloaded Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer last week.

It was fascinating to read the descriptions of said primer, especially on my kindle and in light of all the recent developments in the field of e-books and e-readers. Designed to deliver a subversive education in living an interesting life to a young girl in a futuristic neo-Victorian society, the primer is an interactive e-reader that doesn't seem all that improbable anymore. It looks and feels like an old-fashioned book, except that it reads the stories it contains aloud, its illustrations sometimes morph into videos and it offers video-game-like problems to solve. Most interestingly, the primer tailors its stories to the circumstances of the reader's own life and is able to respond to the reader's questions. It also teaches the reader to read along the way, as well as lots of other useful skills like martial arts and computer programming.

Although the primer was designed for the privileged grand-daughter of a wealthy and  important man, instead it falls into the hands of an impoverished little girl with a mostly absent mother who brings home a constant stream of abusive boyfriends. Here is that little girl's introduction to the book:

It appeared to be a flat decorated box. Nell could tell immediately that it was fine. She had not seen many fine things in her life, but they had a look of their own, dark and rich like chocolate, with glints of gold.

"Both hands," Harv admonished her, "it's heavy."

Nell reached out with both hands and took it. Harv was right, it was heavier than it looked. She had to lay it down in her lap or she'd drop it. It was not a box at all. It was a solid thing. The top was printed with golden letters. The left edge was rounded and smooth, made of something that felt warm and soft but strong. The other edges were indented slightly, and they were cream-colored.

Harv could not put up with the wait. "Open it," he said.

"How?"

Harv leaned toward her, caught the upper-right corner under his finger, and flipped it. The whole lid of the thing bent upward around a hinge on the left side, pulling a flutter of cream-coloured leaves after it.

Underneath the cover was a piece of paper with a picture on it and some more letters.

On the first page of the book was a picture of a little girl sitting on a bench. Above the bench was a thing like a ladder, except it was horizontal, supported at each end by posts. Thick vines twisted up the posts and gripped the ladder, where they burst into huge flowers. The girl had her back to Nell; she was looking down a grassy slope sprinkled with little flowers toward a blue pond. On the other side of the pond rose mountains... The girl had a book on her lap.

The facing page had a little picture in the upper left, consisting of more vines and flowers wrapped around a giant egg-shaped letter. But the rest of that page was nothing but tiny black letters without decoration. Nell turned it and found two more pages of letters, though a couple of them were big ones with pictures drawn around them. She turned another page and found another picture. In this one, the little girl had set aside her book and was talking to a big black bird that had apparently gotten its foot tangled up in the vines overhead. She flipped another page.

The pages she'd already turned were under her left thumb. They were trying to work their way loose, as if they were alive. She had to press down harder and harder to keep them there. Finally they bugled up in the middle and slid out from underneath her thumb and, flop-flop-flop, returned to the beginning of the story.

"Once upon a time," said a woman's voice, "there was a little girl named Elizabeth who liked to sit in the bower in her grandfather's garden and read story-books." The voice was soft, meant just for her, with an expensive Victorian accent.

Nell slammed the book shut and pushed it away. It slid across the floor and came to rest by the sofa.

There are passages and passages about the marvels of the primer, so many good ones that I found it difficult to choose which ones to excerpt. As a former teacher of reading to small children, I was intrigued by this one:

What's a raven?" Nell said.

The illustration was a colorful painting of the island seen from up in the sky. The island rotated downward and out of the picture, becoming a view toward the ocean horizon. In the middle was a black dot. The picture zoomed in on the black dot, and it turned out to be a bird. Big letters appeared beneath. "R A V E N," the book said. "Raven. Now say it with me."

"Raven."

"Very good! Nell, you are a clever girl, and you have much talent with words. Can you spell raven?"

Nell hesitated. She was still blushing from the praise. After a few seconds, the first of the letters began to blink. Nell prodded it.

The letter grew until it had pushed all the other letters and pictures off the edges of the page. The loop on top shrank and became a head, while the lines sticking out the bottom developed into legs and began to scissor. "R is for Run," the book said. The picture kept on changing until it was a picture of Nell. Then something fuzzy and red appeared beneath her feet. "Nell Runs on the Red Rug," the book said, and as it spoke, new words appeared.

"Why is she running?"

"Because an Angry Alligator Appeared," the book said, and panned back quite some distance to show an alligator, waddling along ridiculously, no threat to the fleet Nell. The alligator became frustrated and curled itself up into a circle, which became a small letter. "A is for Alligator. The Very Vast alligator Vainly Viewed Nell's Valiant Velocity."

The little story went on to include an Excited Elf who was Nibbling Noisily on some Nuts. Then the picture of the Raven came back, with the letters beneath. "Raven. Can you spell raven, Nell?" A hand materialized on the page and pointed to the first letter.

"R," Nell said.

"Very good! You are a clever girl, Nell, and good with letters," the book said. "What is this letter?" and it pointed to the second one. This one Nell had forgotten. But the book told her a story about an Ape named Albert.

The folks at the Complete Review said The Diamond Age is an "ambitious story with interesting ideas, but [it] never really takes off." Apparently, they were most put off by the primer: "Stephenson relates a fair number of tales told by the Primer to Nell, but though these are meant to be tied to the narrative, they are not very successful and certainly the most tiresome aspect of the novel." Whereas I found much of the rest of the novel somewhat tiresome -- although chock full of gripping ideas -- and the story of Nell's life and her constant interaction with the primer enthralling. In fact, I felt most of the book was a sloppy hot mess  and that the other story lines could've been dumped in favour of fleshing out and properly finishing Nell's story. (For the San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Carroll wrote "Perhaps the loose ends are not all tied up, but then he's very profligate in the creation of string.") Clearly, however, the science fiction community disagreed with me, as the book won both  both the Hugo and the Locus and was shortlisted for the Nebula in 1996.

The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer leaves me wondering -- are there other fascinating e-books and/or e-readers in fiction that I've not stumbled across? Someone should do a round-up.

My Kindle Review: It's A Tad Messy But Watch Me Slurp It Up

Perversely, Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist was the first book I bought for my new Kindle. I chose Baker specifically -- he's a fierce defender of paper and I happen to love his writing. (Among other things, he recently wrote a negative review of my new favourite toy.) Choosing him was a bit of a private joke -- downloading my first book felt like an historic event to me and I wanted to mark the occasion. Because, while I love paper and while I expect paper to be around in its many forms for a long, long time, I think it's pretty much a no-brainer that the future of books is in e-readers. Not necessarily in the Kindle, or in the Sony e-reader, or in the Nook, or even in the hotly anticipated yet weirdly still nameless Apple tablet thingamabob, but in some device, or in many devices, like these.

What do I love about the Kindle? I absolutely love the device's size and its weight. I absolutely love the way I can download a book from almost anywhere, almost instantly. A huge plus for me is that on the Kindle this wireless feature is free -- I'd like to own an iPhone but I'm not willing to pay a hundred bucks a month to use it. That's a lot of diapers. I am also thrilled that I won't need to buy any more bookshelves in the near future.

Well, that's a bit of lie, actually, because I still have tens of boxes of books in the attic. And there are still many books I'll want to purchase that are not yet available in electronic format. And the kids need picture books, although I imagine there will be a good picture book reader available some time in the next ten years. But my kids are likely to be pretty much beyond picture books by then. Of course we'll still buy art books -- books of photographs or books that are in some way works of art themselves -- so there still will be plenty of paper entering this house and demanding shelf space over the next ten years. But as much as is possible, I will be buying electronic books. They save space and they're cheaper. And  the five books I happen to be reading at any given time are much lighter when they're carried around in a Kindle instead of in a shopping bag. 

I also really like the Kindle's dictionary application. Whenever I happen upon a word I don't know, I can instantly look it up. It's a bit clunky, though -- if I want more than the first line or two of the definition and click for more info, I am taken into the dictionary itself and can't simply click the "previous page" button to return to my book. I have to hit the "home" button and reenter my book from there. Of course this is a bit like complaining that I like soup but it's a huge bother that I have to tilt the spoon when it gets to my mouth in order to eat it. Still. Spoonfeed me all the way, please. (I haven't even used the clipboard function or the note-taking one yet but I expect them both to be very helpful. If you're interested, watch this space for updates.)

Now there are definitely some things I don't like about the Kindle. For instance, I've found, like Baker did, that it's a bit too easy to accidentally turn the pages when you pick up the device, simply because the buttons for page turning are awkwardly placed on either side of it, right where your hands naturally hold a book. I don't know why they didn't put that button on the top right-hand corner of the device, which is where your hand instinctively goes if you're used to reading paper books.

And, like Baker, I think the display screen itself -- what passes for a page of text -- is too small. It should be at least a third bigger in order to approximate the size of the pages of a medium-sized book. The Kindle also requires a built-in nightlight. It's the perfect size and weight for reading in bed -- in fact, it's much easier to manage while lying down than a conventional book -- but because of the odd Vizplex screen meant to approximate the look of a real book, it doesn't glow like a conventional electronic screen. I happen to like the appearance of this Vizplex screen and I don't at all mind reading text on it the way Baker does. In fact, I quite like it, but I don't like the fact that I still need to use my nightlight to read in bed without disturbing my husband or my kids.

I do, however, vehemently agree with Baker that the graphics are deplorable. Luckily for me, graphics aren't usually a factor in the kinds of books I read. I also join with Baker in grousing that there simply aren't enough Kindle books available yet. It's not like there isn't a good selection -- I've purchased eight or ten Kindle books in the past couple of weeks which is, frankly, more than I can afford -- but ideally, I want everything that's available in print to be available for my e-reader.

Ideally, everything that's available in print would also be available and all of these electronic books would be published in the same format, one not owned by any one publisher or giant online store bent on world domination. And all these electronic books would be readable on all the different kinds of e-reader devices. I am uncharacteristically optimistic about this -- it is my expectation, as well as my fervent wish and desire. I will admit, however, that I'm concerned, so much so that I wonder if it should somehow be legislated. It's that important. Because as much as I love my Kindle, I don't want any one company to have a monopoly on book publishing. I can't imagine how that could possibly be good for the state of literature -- for writers or for the readers themselves. But overall? Yes, for right now, I am obsessed with my very imperfect Kindle.