Happy Holidays and Hereville Giveaway
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 6:46PM 
Let's celebrate with a contest! Thanks to the generous folks at Abrams, I have a copy of Barry Deutsh's Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword to give away. All you have to do is name your favorite children's book in a comment on this post before January 22nd, 2012. I’ll pick a winner at random.
In case you missed the buzz about this wonderful middle grade graphic novel, ignore the tongue and check cover claim. Hereville's heroine, Mirka, is not "yet another troll-fighting 11 year-old Orthodox Jewish girl." But Hereville is what the respected and very perceptive children's book reviewer Elizabeth Bird wrote --"A remarkable little book and, I guarantee, like nothing else you have on your bookstore, library, or personal shelves. "
Good news! Barry Deutsh is working on Hereville, Book Two.
Read Elizabeth Bird's complete Hereville review.
Listen to School Library Journal's Interview with Barry Deutsh
Visit Barry Deutsch's Hereville website.
Reader Comments (19)
Hereville is the best graphic novel I've read this year! I was just feeling sad that I have to return my copy to the library. I can't wait for the next one to come out!
When not reading graphic novels, I love audiobooks, and my favorite children's audiobook is Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. I have to listen to it at least once a year. Very funny with a great girl hero similar to Mirka.
Thanks for the fabulous giveaway!
Chris
nerfreader at gmail dot com
There's a kidsbssv from when I was little called Away Went Wolfgang. Loved it in kindergarten.
My favorite children's book is Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie. I treasure the memories of my father reading it to me and my siblings at bedtime when I was six or seven.
C.
When I was a kid, I really liked Skinnybones by Barbara Park. As an adult, I've enjoyed the Harry Potter series and the Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud.
I have loved so many children's books, it's hard to choose just one "favorite"... but the title that had the largest *influence* on my thinking over the years, by far, is Ursula K. Le Guin's "A Wizard of Earthsea" (well, the whole Earthsea trilogy, really, but you did ask for a specific book). These books first introduced me to ways of seeing that world that I still hold to 40 years later.
Congratulations to Barry Deutsch. Hereville was 2011 Sydney Taylor Book Award Winner for Older Readers - the first graphic novel to "get the gold."
Phantom Tollbooth! SO good and so beautifully illustrated.
Love Barry's work. Thanks for the opportunity!
Full disclosure: I blog at Alas--though I haven't been doing that much lately because of work--and I think Hereville is a phenomenal book. Trying to pick a favorite children's book is hard, though, since there are so many. The first one that came to my mind was A Hole is To Dig: A First Book of Definitions, by Maurice Sendak.
My favorite children's book is Alice in Wonderland. I've read and reread it throughout my life, and read it aloud to my children -- twice!
I'm intrigued by the book you are giving away. :) Hope to win!
Forgot the book. Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie. Terrific book. Slightly below young-adult grade level. Amazing story.
Thank you all for writing with your great comments. I am heading down to the library to check out some of your favorite books--one I have not read.
My favorite as a child was Voyage of the Dawn Treader. So much weirdness and wonder, compared to the previous, more straightforward Narnia books! Edmund's and Eustace's relationship is one of the most human elements of the whole series.
I was also fond of James and the Giant Peach, and as I got older The Hobbit supplanted Dawn Treader as a favorite. Older still,_A Wizard of Earthsea took my breath away.
Thanks so much for the giveaway! Hereville is a thing of beauty.
My very favorite book for very small pre-readers is "The Pussycat Tiger" by Joan Chase Bacon -- I had it plus a little vinyl read-along when I was that age. For older children, I'd have to go with "The Egypt Game" by Zilpha Keatley Snyder or perhaps "Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien.
It's really difficult to pick just one or a couple. I was one of those kids who read everything in the school library and then everything else he could get his hands on, including a lot of books not remotely meant for children. But those are a few that pleasantly stick out in my memory from a childhood where books were good friends.
I can't pick a favorite, but I'll stump for Maniac McGee here, because I think it's less well read than some of the others, and it's a really beautiful, epic, fun book.
Louisa May Alcott's Little Woman provided hours of reading and role play to me and my friends. My daughter is loving it too.
My favorite story was THE SECRET GARDEN. I was always Mary, ugly and unloved, but I am afraid my ending is not as happy as Mary's.
Here are many of my favorites, in no apparent order:
From my own childhood and young adulthood: "The Secret Garden" and "A Little Princess" by Burnett (with the Tasha Tudor illustrations, of course); the Anne of Green Gables books; "Little Women" and "Eight Cousins" and their sequels; the Narnia books; Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books; Elizabeth Goudge's "Linnets and Valerians" (I later discovered "The Little White Horse" and her adult works as well); Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" series; Madeleine L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time trilogy (yes, I know, but it was only a trilogy back then); L. M. Boston's "The Children of Green Knowe" and "The Treasure of Green Knowe"; "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth Speare; Elizabeth Marie Pope's "The Perilous Gard"; Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons books (the first two, and "We Didn't Mean to Go To Sea"); Joan Aiken's first four in "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase" series; Elizabeth Enright's books about the Melendy children. And of course, "Winnie the Pooh" and "The House at Pooh Corner." Oh, and Beatrix Potter's "Squirrel Nutkin," which was the only one I actually owned.
From my daughter's childhood and young adulthood: The Harry Potter books, Tamora Pierce's The Protector of the Small quartet (and other books). Early readers: Cynthia Rylant's charming "Mr. Putter & Tabby" and "Henry & Mudge" series. And picture books: almost anything by Jan Brett; "Time for Bed" by Mem Fox & Jane Dyer; Grahame Baes's "The Waterhole"; "Too Many Pumpkins" by Linda White & Megan Lloyd; "The Midnight Farm" by Reeve Lindbergh & Susan Jeffers.
I could go on, but that's a good start! <smile>
It is so hard to pick but I loved All-of-A-Kind-Family by Sydney Taylor . I am the second sister of six in my family and my mother would buy all of A kind dresses for us, so maybe that was why I loved that book so much,I also loved The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright, so now you probably know how old I am!