SubscribeIt’s finally time to celebrate the launch of Brain Camp, by Susan Kim (@skim212) & Laurence Klavan with illustration by Faith Erin Hicks (@smuu). Yes, this is the book that Kirkus called “Smart, Disgusting Fun” (the creators are honored). And what better way to celebrate a book launch than with a book trailer!? The book had its first foyer into the world this past weekend at San Diego Comic Con. A delightful first response indeed. Were you at Comic Con? What was the most interesting thing you saw at the show?
Book Launches
One of the greatest joys you can experience as an agent, after making the sale, is book launch day. Tuesday marked the second book launch for Baker’s Mark clients this month. The post just below this one celebrates Boilerplate by Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett. This post celebrates Never After by Dan Elconin. Never After is a wickedly fun re-imagining of J.M. Barrie’s classic Peter Pan story. Barrie fans will notice many call backs to the original Peter and Wendy. I’m not a huge fan of spoilers so I won’t give anything away. But let me just say that Peter is not as lovable as you may have thought. At any rate, the book already has 17 five star reviews on Amazon.com! We couldn’t be more pleased. Well, we could if it debuted on the New York Times best-seller list, but that would just be icing on the cake. Here is a little preview for your viewing pleasure:
Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel
Over here at Baker’s Mark, we are anxiously awaiting the release of an amazingly cool book that we are lucky enough to represent. Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel will be out from Abrams Image October 1. Enjoy the book trailer below, visit the site, and stay tuned to our Twitter and to the blog for updates on amazing events happening around the creators, the book, and the robot next month.
Mash-ups, re-imaginings, and Rick Astley
I’ve been remiss, it’s true, and I have neglected the blog atrociously. Really, it happened because, when busy, the first thing to go is my belief that I’m amusing enough for anyone else to really come here to read my thoughts. Sorry.
These days, I’ve been thinking a lot about the mash-up/re-telling old stories trend. In my mind, they’re different breeds of the same species, and it’s a breed I quite enjoy. In general, it reminds me of an essay in Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man Without A Country, where he explains that all the stories told in the world follow five very general plotlines:
“Man in Hole,” “Boy Meets Girl,” “Cinderella,” “Hamlet,” and “Kafka.”
(You should really read this amazing book, btw.)
That is to say, Mr. Vonnegut claims that all book plot lines fall within five main types. One, someone gets into trouble, and by the end, they get out it. Two, of course, is basically any rom-com you’ve watched or read written in any time—Act one, boy meets girl; act two, boy and girl hit obstacle in relationship; act three, boy and girl overcome said obstacle and live happily ever after. Three, four, and five should be clear from their names, folks, so I won’t take the time to insult your intelligence further—that is, any further beyond explaining “Man in Hole” and “Boy Meets Girl”—to get my point across. Thank you once again to the genius of Kurt Vonnegut for such astute observations re: storytelling.
I happen to think that a re-imagining or a well done mash-up takes guts and an incredible ability to look at how we have come to think of a story for decades, centuries—dare I say millennia—and tweak it just enough to make it have the same overall goal while still being completely fresh.
I realize there were probably many Austen fans out there—and let’s not even bring up academia—who nearly had a coronary when Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was announced, but look what it’s done for the book. Are all the people who enjoy 28 Days Later and World War Z really going to crossover and pick up Pride and Prejudice at some point? My guess is no, just as it doesn’t always go the other way either, so if Lizzy Bennet slicing the heads off of zombies at Longbourn is a way to bring in some readers—to both Austen and to the zombie genre—I say well done. It’s fresh and fun, and hey, Darcy and Elizabeth still end up together.
Mash-ups, while much newer, are not that far from re-imagings, which really do the same thing: put a fresh twist on an old story. Helen Fielding did it to much acclaim by using the general plot line of P&P in Bridget Jones’s Diary; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus has the myth it was heavily influenced by directly in the subtitle; James Joyce’s Ulysses was groundbreaking in spite of its “retelling” status; and let’s just avoid looking back at the many different early religions that have overlapping stories (because I’m not here about religion; I’m here for the literature).
I think that it is important that these things happen, actually. In ancient cultures, stories were passed down orally, and it is generally accepted that many of the stories subtly changed with each new generation. Maybe it was a particular inflection in someone’s voice that gave a word different meaning than before, or perhaps it was purposefully tweaked, to make it more relevant to the times, but they changed, just a bit with the passing of each year. The stories that we have cherished need not be any different.
Simply because we can pick up Pride and Prejudice these days doesn’t mean Bridget Jones’s Diary is redundant or unnecessary. Just because there are numerous translations and CliffsNotes out there covering The Iliad, it does not means we should refrain from picking up Troy High. And just because I can read the version of Sense & Sensibility that was published while the indomitable Ms. Austen was alive does not mean that I don’t want to see how it works out when Colonel Brandon is a sea monster.
I, for one, am glad that classics are getting a second look, a new plot point, or even a complete overhaul to get a new generation interested in their stories, and it looks like I’m not the only one. For some reading in this vein, I highly recommend:
What Would Emma Do? by Eileen Cook
Troy High by Shana Norris
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen & Seth Graham-Smith
The Looking Glass Wars trilogy by Frank Beddor
Never After by Dan Elconin—a true testament to our love of retellings, as we are proud to say that Dan is one of our clients
For some sort of in-between area, that includes continuations of a story and using characters from classics, I love:
Jasper Fforde’s work
Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein series
The Sisters Grimm by Michael Buckley
Abigail Reynolds’s The Pemberley Variations
And just to make sure you were at least amused today, experience some Rick Astely/Nirvana mash-up:
A Beautiful Book & What Looks to Be a Great Movie
I love Alice Sebold’s writing, and I thought The Lovely Bones was a truly innovative, poignant, and amazing novel. The trailer for the new movie by Peter Jackson actually gave me goosebumps. I can’t wait for this to come out.
We Gave Ourselves a Questionnaire
In honor of Shelf Awareness’s great questionnaires for featured writers—and in honor of the craziness that comes with recovering from San Diego Comic-Con and my lack of time to write a developed blog entry last week (and maybe this week as well)—I am filling out the questionnaire for your reading enjoyment. My tastes fluctuate and I often find new writers I love and new favorites—as does Bernadette—so we may make this a recurring entry when strapped for time or in the mood to promote new amazing things we’ve found. So, here you go:
On your nightstand now: Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by John L. Howard, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith, and a stack of manuscripts as high as an elephant’s eye. (I’m from the Midwest, so you must forgive the farm-crop reference.)
Favorite book when you were a child: Matilda; From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Franweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, I really wanted my brother and I to runaway and live in a museum; any Nancy Drew book; and I stayed addicted to The Bernstein Bears for much longer than I probably should have.
Your top five authors: Since I am limited to five, I will go with where my heart lies at the moment, which is: Kurt Vonnegut, Italo Calvino, Kelly Link, Libba Bray, and Karin Slaughter.
Book you’ve faked reading: Technically it’s not a book, it’s a play, but I did fake reading Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest out of procrastination in college more than a desire to not read it. It was unfortunate that my professor then asked me to read one of the parts in class, as I had no idea what I was talking about and delivered line after line of a very poorly acted portrayal of Lady Bracknell.
Book you’re an evangelist for: Anything that is being attacked. We shouldn’t be scared of that which we don’t approve of; we should just not subject ourselves to it on such a regular basis as to infuriate us into book burning.
Book you’ve bought for the cover: Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence by Nick Bantock. Turned out to be completely worth it.
Book that changed your life: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It speaks to me on a different level every time I read it.
Favorite line from a book: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
Book you most want to read again for the first time: The Master and Margarita by Mikhal Bulgakov, my first introduction to magical realism. It opened my mind to new wonders in literature I didn’t previously know were possible.
Okay, that’s it for now, though I do hope to have time to thrill you with my wit and wisdom concerning words later this week. If you have any questions (like this–no submission questions please!) email them to us so we can try and include them next time!
Sense & Sensibility…& Sea Monsters? Love the Mash-ups
Can’t help but love the new trends of mash-ups and books trailers, but the combining of the two with this video for the forthcoming Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters really is the best I’ve seen. These types of things are why I love working in this industry. Watch it below:
She Is Too Fond of Books and It Has Turned Her Brain
A few weeks ago, I posted on here and mentioned the “hoopla” with Gossip Girl and Maureen Johnson’s The Bermudez Triangle in Florida. My mention of it was more of a side note to the idea that adults CAN and SHOULD enjoy YA books just as much as YA do, especially with the host of great options out there right now. I touched on the fact that this host of options is great partly because they don’t talk down to readers and they cover issues that teens actually deal with. In a new twist this week, the two mothers from Florida have made it to FOX news. I beg of you, watch it now. (Maureen Johnson addressed the FOX news segment that featured the Florida moms as well, and it is well worth watching.)
Now that we’ve all listened to what they have to say, I feel the need to address the issue of banned books more in depth, with no specific focus on YA (though, of course, the current example does happen to be). It begins to make me wonder what it is we are trying to protect people from. Twelve- and thirteen-year-olds can’t read a conversation where a character is talking about sex because…wait, why? I’m still fuzzy on that actually. Because they never hear it at school, they aren’t pressured to talk about it and know about it? Is that right?
It reminds me of the days when women were considered odd if they read, and in general, were not allowed to. In the 1750s, Elizabeth Montagu founded the Blue Stocking Society in England—though it was based on the French society of the same name—and it was considered unusual at best and rebellious at worst. Women reading? Dear me, it could addle the poor dears’ brains. Mustn’t tax them by letting them read about things they should not consider. Apparently, back then, as is true in some places now, if you don’t let people read about something, it ceases to exist and they won’t ever have to strain their noggins thinking about it! Interesting. Sex, politics, hunger, pain, relationships; if you stay away from reading about these things, then you simply never have to deal with them, whereas if you do read about them, well, they’ll corrupt you forever.
The mothers on FOX, as you saw if you clicked the link above, are very careful to emphasize that they are not banning books; they simply want them moved to a section where their children can’t find them. I’m wondering, would the kids not know that this is where they were moved to and then try and check them out anyway? If they need permission, is it possible that books would become illicit, traded in dark rooms and passed under lunch tables by kids whose parents would let them check out these books? Oh, to give teenagers an item that they are not supposed to have is to up its desirability by at least 100%.
While I am obviously not saying that parents do not have a right to decide what their own children read, is it really okay for them to insist that other children are treated the same way? What may be more important though is if it’s okay to do so when you have not read the books or are not in expert in child-rearing (or psychology in general if we are discussing an adult book). Does having a strong opinion about the appropriateness of something, whether it be book, film, or otherwise, somehow mean your opinion is the right one and the one that should be adhered to?
It is not only an issue of banning books or limiting their availability; it’s about making an assumption about a lack of validity the work has if it contains…well, anything that can be seen as subversive or sub-par. This has happened with romance novels, comic books, YA books, erotica, etc. The list could go on, but why would we want it to? Let’s remember something, people: Reading is still reading and is an intellectual pursuit whether you are reading Kafka or Gossip Girl or Captain America. You are reading no matter what the material, and to judge the validity that a work has simply because it has elements that you do not like is to cut yourself off from the rest of the world.
Let’s all remember that it isn’t our job to judge what’s good for other people; in fact, let’s try to keep the judgment to a minimum in general. And, maybe we should also keep it in the forefront of our minds that “appropriateness” and validity have seldom gone hand in hand. And just so you have something to take away with you in case I’ve bored you to tears with the rest of my opinion, here’s a reminder of just some of the books that have been banned or access has been limited to at one time or another in the U.S.:
Blubber by Judy Blume
Forever by Judy Blume
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Ulysses by James Joyce
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
-gs
Where the Wild Things Are
I love when movie adaptations of books have the potential to actually be good; I love it even more when the trailer gives me goosebumps. The soundtrack sounds promising, and I think they handled the wild things brilliantly. Now, just a few more months until we get to see if the movie lives up to the trailer. Check it out below:
Reading YA as an A
A recent post by Barbara Vey for Publisher’s Weekly has us talking. It is not a brand new idea by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly has opened our eyes to the fact that we are not alone. Turns out she had recently received an email from Lauren Baratz-Logsted discussing the pros of adults reading YA. Hallelujah, we are not the only ones!
Well, of course it would be silly to assume that Bernadette and I are the only adults reading YA novels–J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer have definitley proven that YA can reach far beyond its proposed “demographic”–but it is great to see that other people not only see the merits of it, but they are willing to discuss it at length with other adult readers (now if we can just get those same people to see the merits and distinct storytelling abilities of graphic novels, we’ll be set).
What’s important to realize, and this is something Lauren points out in her blog as well, is that this is not the same YA that we grew up reading. I had moved on to Dean Koontz and John Grisham by the time I was in high school, occasionally picking up a Lois Duncan book–using the excuse that because they were scary, it was okay that they were books for teens. It was not okay to read YA when I was a YA, simply because the majority of what we could get our hands on was somewhat trite and had characters that were a little too wholesome to really be relateable. Now, we are in a YA renaissance, in my opinion. Not only are the characters relateable to those who are that age, the characters are complex enough to remind adult readers of the time. Seriously, reading the Twilight series made me feel like a teenage girl again–all I wanted to do was make out with my boyfriend after reading. (By the way, any Twilight lovers should check out the new movie tie-in cover and weigh in on it.)
Teenagers like to read “up,” and that means that YA shouldn’t talk down. There are so many absolutely amazing books out there now that speak to the craziness, the chaos, the emotional turmoil, the cutting down of others, the insecurities, and the massive amount of pressures that teenagers deal with, and I thoroughly enjoy a lot of them. There was a recent hoopla over the Gossip Girl series and one of Maureen Johnson’s books (who is an amaizng writer by the way), in Florida; apparently, mothers felt that the books were too racy and by shelving them in the “kids” section, twelve-year-olds could pick up these books and read about…sex. (gasp!)
Let’s just admit it, folks: teenagers have sex. And I’m guessing that one thing that hasn’t changed since I was that age is that they aren’t hearing about it and being enticed, pressured, or whatever else may be the causes into having sex by a book. They are…wait for it…reading! That’s right people, and by reading books with characters their age, they are realizing that they are not the only one who is waiting to have sex (Blair from Gossip Girl and most the main characters in Pure), the only one with an eating disorder (again, thank you Blair and the main character in Wintergirls), or the only one who has been sexually assaulted (Speak). There is a breadth of material out there that is smart, well-written, and entertaining, and I am enjoying it right along with the teenagers. Yes, I read YA even though I am now an A.
Some of my recently read faves are:
Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson
Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (out in December from Little, Brown)
and yes, the Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar
So, tell me people, what are you reading? Do you like YA? What are your thoughts on “adult” material in YA books?
-GS
Comic Books 101
The word is sperading about Chris Ryall and Scott Tipton’s new book Comic Books 101! Here’s some of what people are saying! (Click the quotes to check out the full review.)
The Arizona Daily Star: “…Chris Ryall and Scott Tipton make geeky seem cool.”
Play Magazine: “[Chris] and Scott cover everything from the history of comics’ beginnings through the current day.”
SFX Magazine: “…It’s all done in a very accessible style, with Ryall and Tipton’s chatty manner not bogging things down.”
Comic Book Resources interviews Ryall and Tipton: Getting the 411 on Comic Books 101
Central Crime Zone: “…What strikes me more than anything else about this book is the fact that both Chris Ryall and Scott Tipton obviously love comics and it shows on every page.”
Chris and Scott at one of their signings
Drawing with Water
This is absolutely amazing. There is genius, and then there’s something beyond that:
The amazing Faith Erin Hicks
So, of course, we must point out how amazing our client Faith Erin Hicks is. War at Ellsmere was recently released, and people are still talking about the awesomeness of Zombies Calling, so you must check out the amazingness in some way. Here is a preview of Zombies Calling and a preview of War at Ellsmere.
Here are links to a smattering of reviews, even more proof that she is amazing:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=11961
http://comicsworthreading.com/2008/12/04/the-war-at-ellsmere-recommended/
http://artattheauction.blogspot.com/2009/06/zombies-calling-or-why-sporks-are.html
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/540000654/post/1090042509.html
She made the ALA Great Graphic Novels for Teens list, and her new stuff will be out from First Second in the future.
OR you can just check all this out for yourself at her website:
The Meaning of Life–for only $9.99
This movie looks absolutely amazing. Check it out:
The Meaning of “Baker’s Mark”
The name Baker’s Mark comes from a 15th century tradition of baker’s marking their breads with a unique seal that was “a means of identifying him for punishment if his bread were unwholesome or short of weight. If, however, a baker consistently made good bread, this same seal would naturally come to be associated with his high standard and would stand for the goodwill of his trade. To sell bread unsealed, therefore, exposed one at once to the suspicion of trying to pass off poor stuff” (Thrupp, Sylvia. The Worshipful Company of Baker’s. Croydon: Galleon Press 1933). In this same spirit, Baker’s Mark puts their mark of identification and seal of quality on every book that is represented under the company name.
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