Bryce the Book Pusher (and a Publisher’s Weekly announcement about a certain book deal . . . )

Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising Sequence)So TRC has been devouring the Animorphs series, which I picked up from a certain library that was getting rid of theirs. (Gotta love the donation shelf.) I’ve been really happy to see him with a nose in a book a lot of the time, but I couldn’t help but wish he’d get into something a bit more . . . lofty, shall we say. (This isn’t meant as a jab against Animorphs. I’ve never read the series, so I don’t feel like I can disparage it.) In any case, I brought home Over Sea, Under Stone from my library and gave it to him about a month ago. It languished amidst his other books, passed over for things with flashier covers time and time again. I knew he could handle it, and that he’d like it–we’d listened to A Wrinkle in Time on the way down to Pennsylvania at Thanksgiving, and he didn’t want it to end. But the packaging of the book just wasn’t up to today’s standards. (It’s not the cover I included to begin this post. It’s the first edition. This one:

SusanCooper OverSeaUnderStone.jpg

Anyway, he finally ran out of Animorphs, and it was a bit before we could make it to the library again so he could pick out some more, so I suggested he try Susan Cooper again. He agreed and took it with him to bed. The next morning, I asked how it went. He made it through two pages and gave up.

Not good.

Was I just out of touch? Was the book not as good as I remembered? I vowed not to give up so easily, so last night I offered to read it to him. We read the first chapter together, and then I said he could keep reading, but my voice was tired. I gave him the book. He read the next three chapters on his own, and he’s off and running now.

Mwa ha ha ha!

(By the way–has anyone noticed the overabundance of adverbs in that book? I never saw it as a kid, but it really grated on me now. Still like the book, and it might have been different if I hadn’t been reading it out loud, but still . . . )

Anyway, once he’s got The Dark is Rising polished off, I’ll start him on Prydain and Narnia, and then it’s just a short jump over to The Hobbit, and we all know what comes after that. Lord of the Rings, baby. I read it when I was in second grade. I’m wondering if TRC can get to it by the end of first. Maybe, if Denisa would stop taking him skiing so often. 🙂  Growing a superhuman isn’t easy, but between the two of us, we’re working at it.

And in other news, here’s the announcement about Vodnik that appeared in Publisher’s Weekly Children’s Bookshelf Newsletter yesterday:

Stacy Whitman at Lee & Low Books has bought Bryce Moore’s debut novel Vondnik, for publication in spring 2012 by the Tu Books imprint. The YA fantasy tells the story of Tomas, a Roma boy who returns to Slovakia and discovers that the folk tale creatures he befriended as a boy are more dangerous than he knew, and he must strike a bargain with Death to save his cousin’s life. Eddie Schneider at JABberwocky Literary Agency brokered the deal for North American rights.

So they got the name of the title wrong (Vodnik, not Vondnik) but I still thought that was pretty nifty. Nice to see things moving along. I’ll be working on that rewrite very shortly. Can’t wait!

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