EVENTS

Janice Graham reading & signing this Thursday

Christie Merriman Breault book signing this Saturday

Meet YA author T. A. Barron at the next KMUW Literary Feast

Get tickets now: Mitch Albom reading & signing Wed. Nov. 15

REVIEWS

National Book Award nominees in Young People’s Literature

"500 Great Books for Teens" by children’s editor Anita Silvey

Christie Merriman Breault’s Wichita story "Logan West: Printer’s Devil"

-

Big thanks to everyone who helped to spread the word about author Eoin Colfer’s recent appearance at Watermark. We had a great crowd, and Mr. Colfer had everyone in stitches. We still have signed copies on hand of his new book "Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony," so please let us know if you had to miss the show, and we’ll hold one back for you. (Also, our Lemony Snicket Book Release Party last week was as dour and deflating as expected: many sad souls attended, and all left dearly disappointed. Good times. We’ll keep a good stock of "The End" for all those foolish enough to want it.)

-

Upcoming Author Events:

Janice Graham Reading & Book Signing, Thurs. Oct. 19, 7:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Join us for a reading and signing by Janice Graham, author of the novel The Tailor's Daughter. Graham is a Wichita native and the author of the New York Times-bestselling book "Firebird." Her new novel is set in Victorian London and follows a pioneering young woman who struggles against male chauvinism and her own deafness to succeed in the traditionally male career of tailoring. It’s an adult book with a lot of interest for older teens. Also, we’ll have a special early session for book club members to meet Ms. Graham: it’s not too late to sign up your club! Just e-mail to: beth.golay@watermarkbooks.com

Christie Merriman Breault Book Signing, Sat. Oct. 21, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Local teacher Christie Merriman Breault will sign her new book for young readers, "Logan West, Printer's Devil." The book is set in Wichita during its cow town days and features a young boy who works as a printer’s assistant at the Wichita Eagle newspaper. Look below for a brief review.

Meet YA author T. A. Barron at the Nov. 3 KMUW Literary Feast

The next session of the Watermark/KMUW Literary Feast, our monthly gourmet dinner and book club, will feature a special appearance by young adult author T. A. Barron on Friday Nov. 3 at 7:00 p.m. Mr. Barron is the author of the acclaimed fantasy series "The Lost Years of Merlin" and "The Great Tree of Avalon."

Watermark will host Mitch Albom, author of the bestsellers "Tuesdays with Morrie" and "Five People You Meet in Heaven" for a reading and book signing at the Grand Chapel, 828 N. Broadway.

His new new book "For One More Day" is available now, and so are tickets to the event: One free ticket comes with purchase of the book (or without purchase, a ticket is $10). Call 682-1181 for more information, and start rounding up your friends for what promises to be a perfect night-out before the holiday crunch.

-

National Book Award Nominees Announced Last Week

I’m a big fan of the National Book Awards, especially the Young People’s Literature category. It has brought to my attention several excellent and enjoyable books I might otherwise have missed, including recent highlights like Julianne Peters’s edgy and beautiful "Luna" and Jeanne Birdsall’s utterly charming "The Penderwicks." Last week, the selection committee announced the 2006 nominees, and here they are:

"The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick, 0763624020, $17.99)

This book has maybe the best title EVER. It’s the story of a young boy, the son of an exiled princess, who is raised in secret by a band of elite philosophers for a destiny he can’t imagine. It’s the first of two volumes, and it’s a beautiful book: slightly oversized with rough-cut pages and fantastic old-style type. It will make readers want to curl up and get lost in its imaginatively skewed view of history.

"Keturah and Lord Death" Martine Leavitt (Boyd Mills Press, 1932425292, $16.95)

And this book has the weirdest title of the list. It’s a high fantasy-romance young adult novel about a young woman who meets Death himself and uses her story-telling ability to play Scheherazade and gain a short reprieve of life. The catch is that she has just one day to find her one true love. CAN SHE DO IT? Probably, but the fun will come in finding out how. I think teenage girls who love period pieces like Libba Bray’s "A Great and Terrible Beauty" will especially adore this book.

"Sold" by Patricia McCormick (Hyperion, 0786851716, $15.99)

Bookseller friends at The Bookworm bookstore in Omaha, Nebraska, recently included this poetic new novel on a list of likely-to-be-banned books because it deals with the touchy but timely subjects of child trafficking and prostitution abroad. McCormick has written it as a sort of free-verse prose poem that makes the events depicted both grandly distant and achingly immediate.

"Rules for Survival" by Nancy Werlin (Dial, 0803730012, $16.99)

Nancy Werlin has ties to some of our local, Wichita-based children’s authors, who first tipped me off to this gripping contemporary teen novel. It’s narrated by a big brother who spends his whole childhood looking after his younger sisters and trying to protect them from their dangerous and unpredictable mother. It’s a grim and engrossing story lightened by sibling affection, and it’s absolutely compulsive reading. Fans of Scott Westerfeld and Stephenie Meyer are gonna flip over this one. If you’ve read it, don’t tell me the ending; I’m not finished yet!

"American Born Chinese" by Gene Luen Yang (First Second, 1596431520, $16.95)

Yang is a computer science teacher in the Bay Area, and his excellent three-in-one story about outsiders’ longing to belong is the first graphic novel to be nominated for the National Book Award. Told in an animation-influenced cartooning style and fluent prose, it links together the life of Jin, the only Chinese-American kid in his class; the mythical Monkey King, who gets snubbed by the other gods for being, well, a monkey; and Chin-kee, a sit-com character come to life, who embodies all the negative qualities of the Chinese stereotype. The book is fantastic and beautifully designed.

The winners of the National Book Awards will be announced November 15 in New York City. Stay tuned for updates.

-

"500 Great Books for Teens" by Anita Silvey (Houghton Mifflin, 0618612963, $26.00)

As a children’s book publisher and past editor of the Horn Book Magazine, Anita Silvey has had decades of experience in choosing reading material for young readers, and her previous books (including "100 Best Books for Children") are great resources for parents and educators who want to find high-quality books.

Last week, Silvey released a new volume particularly aimed at adolescent

Silvey lists young adult and teen titles as well as many "adult" titles suitable for teens. She includes obvious classics like "To Kill a Mockingbird" alongside surprising choices like Tom Robbins’s "Skinny Legs and All," and she devotes a chapter to the attractive (to teens) but sometimes daunting (to adults) medium of graphic novels.

While paging through my advance copy of "500 Great Books for Teens," I found personal favorites (John Green’s "Looking for Alaska," Michael Chabon’s "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," Khaled Hosseini’s "The Kite Runner") along with interesting titles I’d never heard of before (Aidan Chambers’s Printz Award-winning "Postcards From No Man’s Land," which tells the twinned stories of a teen in the 1990s and his grandpa in World War II, both meeting the same people in Holland).

This is a great tool for educators to turn to for inspiration and ideas, and it’s an essential addition to libraries catering to teenagers: what better way to encourage students to seek out new books than by offering them this road map?

Watermark will be stocking "500 Great Books for Teens" (and Silvey’s "100 Best Books for Children," too), and I’ll be keeping my well-thumbed copy around for reference. Take a few minutes to look when you’re next in the store; it may be the resource you’ve always hoped to find.

-

Christie Merriman Breault’s "Logan West: Printer’s Devil" (Mondo Publishing, 1593367627)

Logan West is a St. Louis boy uprooted to Wichita in its heyday as a rough-and-tumble cow town. His father moves the family further west, leaving behind Logan’s beloved grandparents, in order to pursue his work as a blacksmith and to give Logan a taste of frontier life. He wants his son to learn to ride and shoot and all that, but Logan just wants to read. His favorite hours are those he spends with his nose buried in a dime novel about Wild Bill Hickok or in the latest effort by Charles Dickens. The last thing he wants is to go to Wichita.

Christie Merriman Breault packs a lot of local history and period detail into "Logan West," and she also sets up an interesting character contrast between bookish Logan and his hard-working father. While the son loves words and writing best of all, the father is illiterate and employs all sorts of clever evasions to cover up his lack of learning. Amid all the Wild West headlines in this youth novel, the central drama spins out of whether the two West men can come together on some common ground.

The result is a local story, suited to young readers of about 9 to 12 years of age, that evokes a strong sense of place and explores what life and work might have been like on the Kansas prairies back in the founding days of Wichita.

And remember: Christie Merriman Breault will be signing copies of the book at Watermark this Saturday, Oct. 21, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

-

-

A happy Halloween to all your ghouls and boys!

Mark David Bradshaw