Review of Once Upon a Banana

This is a subscriber newsletter, so you can't actually link to the review on the site, but here's a copy:

* Once Upon A Banana, by Jennifer Armstrong, Illustrated by David Small
Reading level: Ages 4-8 , PERFECT For Pre-K
Hardcover: 48 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books; 1st ed edition (October 24, 2006)
ISBN: 0689842511
Review by Lisa Barker, http://www.jellymom.com
Silly and fun. Readers follow the chaos created when one monkey tosses a banana peel on the ground intsead of placing it in the trash. All throughout the city a chain reaction of events ensues as one by one people slip on the banana peel. A fun running gag with a favorite fruit and animal that appeals especially to pre-schoolers.

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Inventory temporarily looooooooooww, or Bad News/ Good News

Bad news is, it might be hard to get your hands on a copy of The American Story right now. My editor informs me that the Random House warehouse has no copies left, and is awaiting shipment of printing #2 in about two weeks.

Good news is, it only took a month to sell out the first printing!

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Frost warning

Today I will be hustling to get the houseplants, which spend the summer outside, back inside. There are a lot of them, so it usually takes several hours to clean the pots and the plants and debug them.
It's times like these when I wish I had the powers of Samantha Stevens to wiggle my nose and have it all done. I can hear the accompanying squiggle of music when I close my eyes. But when I open them, the work is still to be done.

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At the farmers' market today...

I saw a chef in white chef coat buying food. A real chef with a meat thermometer sticking out of the little pocket on his arm. Think about it. A chef from a local restaurant, buying food from local farmers. What a concept. And then I saw him walk back to his retaurant. It's almost un-American

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A whole website devoted to the notorious Lizzie Borden case

Who knew? My take on the story focuses on the fact that as a "nice" woman from a "good" family, (read white and upper middle class) Lizzie Borden was considered incapable of a brutal double murder. Nice women from good families just don't hack people to death with a hatchet and then calmly send the maid out to fetch the police. The hunt was immediately on for someone more in line with the public perception of brutal murderer -- black, of course, although Irish or that old stand-by, "foreign" would do in a pinch, vagrant, maybe mentally deranged. Any suspect would be better than Miss Elizabeth Borden! The entire fabric of society might crumble to dust if we believed such things might be possible!
Has society changed since 1892? We are still very quick to point the finger away from "nice" women of "good" families, even when they still have blood on their hands...

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Photo by Brady nominee for Beehive Award

Formerly the Utah Children's Book Award. Photo by Brady was nominated in the information book category. I have no idea when the winners of these awards are announced. My typical obsessive trolling of the internet turns up information like this from time to time. Of course you never hear about it directly -- or almost never. I periodically find out that this that or the other book of mine was a nominee for some state's book award last year or the year before or whatever.
I guess the point being, if I'd won I think I would have heard about it by now.

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Review of The American Story at The Edge of the Forest

"The American Story is one of those books you hope will end up in every classroom, in every library, and in every home. It's just that good and that relevant."
That's how the review begins and it gets even more enthusiastic from there. Isn't that nice? Thank you, Edge of the Forest!

This particular blog is a children's literature monthly, and an excellent resource. And clearly, they have very intelligent and perceptive reviewers...

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back from South Dakota at last

I do feel as though I've been away for a month. The biggest problem I faced, while away, was food. I don't eat meat, and it looks very much as though that's all anybody eats in South Dakota. Even salads have meat on them! You have to request no meat on your salad! On Saturday I took a walk around town in the middle of the day, and spotted a Chinese restaurant some distance away. Oh! Wow! With swift-beating heart I crossed the street (not a problem - there is no traffic in downtown Sioux Falls) and made my way to the Ming Wah Chinese -- uh oh -- Chinese American Cafe. Chop Suey. Chicken-fried steak. Hamburgers. Sweet and sour pork. You get the idea. And actually, to my astonishment, (to my horror, really) no tofu.
Before I had left for South Dakota I went to the health food store and stocked up on protein bars, and a good thing I did, too. You cannot eat enough eggs in one day to compensate for an otherwise steady diet of iceberg lettuce or pasta with a mysterious "Alfredo Sauce."
People seem to think that being an author and going on tour is all limousines and lines of fans waiting for an autograph. You know what? It ain't always like that.

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Still in South Dakota, at the Festival of Books

My experience of South Dakota so far has been something like a forced march, but that's okay. I left Pierre on Thursday with another author, Ann Bausum, who was also sent to Pierre to visit schools in advance of the book festival. Our drive along the Missouri River was amazingly beautiful -- green bluffs climbing up from the river and rippling away into the distance. The topography was formed, if I remember this right, by the Sea of Agassiz during the Pleistocene Ice Age. The Wisconsin Ice Sheet stopped short of here to the east (my Ice Age notes are far away from me right now so I'm winging this) but the meltwater created a giant inland sea for many thousands of years, and when it drained catastrophically (when ice dams finally gave way) it carved the western plains like a rake in a Zen gravel garden.
Anyway, we got to Sioux Falls in a driving rain, registered for the book festival and I went to a cocktail party at the home of one of the festival's sponsors. There I met and had a long and interesting conversation with Los Angeles author Hillary Carlip, author of Queen of the Oddballs. Hillary is a friend of Francesca Lia Block, and they've worked together. If you know Block's work you can infer something about Hillary. Check out her website. Friday I had an elementary school to visit, a public event with lots of the authors at a Barnes & Noble, then another school to visit, then autographing, then a presentation to members of the Sioux Falls Reading Council... and then I collapsed.
Today I have a presentation at the public library, and another autographing session, and then my work is done.

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Greetings from Pierre, SD

I arrived in Pierre, South Dakota, last night after a long journey from Albany, New York. Today, I awoke on the banks of the Missouri River (in a B&B on the banks of the river, not shivering on the mud) with a chill in the air. This is Lewis & Clark country. So a chill in the air and a thrill of excitement. This is historic territory.
I visited a school here in Pierre, and then two other schools north of here. South Dakota is split culturally by the Misosuri; there is West River, a drier, ranchier, more conservative South Dakota, and East River, a wetter, farmier, slightly less conservative part of the state. Where I was today sort of straddled both cultures, with great fields of tough sunflowers turning their faces to follow the sun, and immense wheat silos, and cattle.

So I was talking about The American Story in the schools today, and I said, "You know, I even have a story about South Dakota in this book. About the French explorers from Canada, the Verendryes, who in 1743 claimed this territory for the King of France." Yes yes, they knew all about the Verendryes. And America learned about about the claim for the territory along the Missouri because of the engraved lead plate found here in Pierre in the early 20th Century. Here in PIERRE! So at the end of the day I got to visit to the very spot where the Verendrye plate was discovered. The tablet itself is in the state historical society, and tomorrow (Thursday) before I leave for Sioux Falls I may have a chance to see it.

I can't remember where I first learned about the Verendrye plate, but I can tell you that when I did find it I was thrilled -- so many stories in this book had to do double duty, so when I found a story about French explorers of early European travel on this continent, and it was about a mid-western state that might not otherwise get a story, I was very pleased. It's a French story. It's a South Dakota story. It's two stories in one! And I hasten to say that South Dakota might not otherwise have gotten a story not because of any lack of interest or regard on my part for this great state, but because even now, in 2006, the entire state population is less than 1 million. In the great panoply of American history, it's kind of hard for South Dakota to compete with New York, Massachusetts, California and Texas. Sorry South Dakota, but thank you for welcoming me to the book festival.

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I knew it! I knew this would happen!

"In a tour de force of visual sequencing captioned only by a set of rhyming street and shop signs, Small sets up a hilarious chain of events along a busy city street. The action starts on the front endpapers as a street performer's monkey snatches a banana from a fruit stand and tosses the peel onto the sidewalk. This sets off an escalating ruckus the moves around the block (and is actually mapped out on the rear endpapers), involving pedestrians, a painter atop a ladder, cars and trucks, dogs (lots of dogs), much flying through the air and a hurtling carriage with a delighted baby on board (for part of the way, anyway)..." begins the starred review of Once Upon a Banana in next month's Kirkus. THERE IS NO MENTION OF THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK in the entire review! I knew this would happen! The book is so spare of text that I knew people would think of this as a David Small book, and overlook me entirely. Sure, sure, another great David Small book, people will say, but what did Jennifer Armstrong have to do with it?
Mind you, the "tour de force" bit is richly deserved. David's visual interpretation of this manuscript is truly inspired.

But ... ahem... I'm over here!

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Reviews of both new books, on Kids Bookshelf.com

This page demonstrates the advantage of being at the top of the alphabet...

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The first time I ever went to South Dakota...

... was years ago. Probably fifteen years ago at least. It was fall, and the prairie was pale gold. I was amazed at how the land spread and dipped in sudden folds. Somehow I had imagined that it was literally as smooth and uninterrupted as the ocean. As a Yankee I found the unlimited horizon to be both exciting and alarming. My psychological environment includes more hills and trees, interrupted views. More boundaries. More people. Out there, I had a sense of myself the way a child draws herself standing on the earth -- a tiny stick figure jutting up from a sphere. In other words, something that blemishes an otherwise perfect globe. You know, the whole dwarfed-by-nature thing. In the thickly-built environment of the east, it is easy to enter the fallacy that things are the other way, that the earth is dwarfed by humans.
It's good to be reminded of it. I imagine that some people are frightened by it. Others exalted. This was largely the inspiration for my sodbusters novel of the Dakota Territory, Black-Eyed Susan. Of all my novels, this was the one that -- for whatever reason -- was the easiest to write. I knew with perfect clarity what it was I wanted to say, and how I was going to say it. I know I could not have written had I not actually experienced the prairie for myself. I am really pleased that, this week, I will be going back there for the South Dakota Festival of Books. I can't wait.

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Back from Providence

Betcha didn't even realize I was gone. I went to the New England Booksellers' Association (NEBA) trade show, where I spoke at the "children's dinner." I was very happy to be able to thank the independent booksellers of New England for getting The American Story on their bestseller list last week. Before the dinner I did a power-signing: I sat down and autographed 200 copies of the book, which were then put on every seat at the banquet. Thanks to Elizabeth Bluemle, co-owner of The Flying Pig children's bookstore in Shelburne, Vermont, to Carol Chittenden, owner of Eight Cousins Bookstore on Cape Cod, Lisa Dugan of Koen Book distributors. and Laurie Hogan, of Random House, for their assistance during the power-signing. I know I'm leaving people out, so thank you all.

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First through Ellis Island, Annie Moore traced through family

You'll need a New York Times user account to read this article, but it ties in to my story, "Welcome to America," in The American Story. Annie Moore, a teenager from Ireland, was the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island. For years, an Annie Moore in Texas was believed to be this same Annie, but a genealogist has cracked the case and found that Annie remained in New York City for the rest of her life.

Fortunately, this does not alter my story at all, since I didn't include any information about what Annie did once she left Ellis Island. Writing history can be a confounding process -- events don't always sit still in the past. They are subject to new discoveries. While this book was in production two stories I thought were "finished" had to be revised. First, the Red Sox finally won the World Series, so I had to go back into the galleys and correct my story about "The Curse of the Bambino;" second, the identity of the Watergate informant, Deep Throat, was revealed, and I had to change my story about that episode of our history. Scholars will continue to unearth new information about the past, and no doubt some of my stories will be made incorrect by these revelations.
That's a good reason to go buy the book and read it now, before historical research reveals anything at odds with it!

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From across the northern border...

Thank you to the newpaper in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a nice mention of The American Story.
Nova Scotia, once known as Acadia, reverted to English control from the French in the mid-18th Century. The French Acadians, exiled by an influx of English immigrants, headed for more sympathetic settlements, including French Louisiana, where they established the Cajun culture.
I actually tried to find a good story about the Cajun diaspora for The American Story -- possibly about Longfellow's poem Evangeline. For some reason that I cannot now remember, I decided not to tell that story. In the interests of including more early French history of the United States, I ended up with a story about the settlement of Mobile Bay, (which predates the Cajun exile) but that one was cut to make room for something else.
Anyway, no Cajun story. Je suis desole', mes amis Acadiens!

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from the Buffalo News

"A gifted writer offers a marvelous kaleidoscope of stories from American history, bringing to vivid life both well-known and lesser-known stories from 1565 to 2000, and exploring the links between events many years apart."
Quite a long and very nice review. Thank you very much, Buffalo News.

Buffalo was settled as far back as 1780, and probably named after Buffalo Creek, the name used by the local Senecas. With the opening of the Erie Canal, Buffalo became the gateway to the Great Lakes and the interior of the continent, with steamers carrying cargo and passengers to and from Chicago on a trip that took up to twenty days.





The transcontinental railraods somewhat diminished the importance of the canal -- and of Buffalo --to shipping, but nearby Niagara Falls became a tourist mecca when 19th Century travelers developed a fascination with the picturesque.

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Close to Home and Far Away

My friend John McPherson put me in a cartoon this summer. I hasten to assure you that I have absolutely no psychic powers. He is a very whimsical man.



Today I got tangled up in traffic leaving the funeral of a New York State Trooper who was killed in action while on a manhunt for an escaped con. Rumor was that thousands of people were coming to Saratoga for the funeral. Naturally I forgot all about it when I went out to do errands. From where I first hit the traffic heading out to the Saratoga National Cemetery, I could have walked home in less time than it took me to get there by car. So I had ample time to consider the day, the uniforms, the bright sunny weather. Five years ago today the weather was the same here as it is today-- bright, clear, warm. In other words, a brilliant September day. Since that day I have been to far far away places -- Budapest, London, the South Pole, Auckland, and many others. Travel has changed, how I feel about home has changed. Nothing is the same and everything is the same. Wherever you go, people are still people, trying to accomplish their daily goals and sometimes pay heed to larger ones. Babies are born, loved ones die. Is it naive of me to think we all want the same things, really? All I wish for everyone is peace, perspective, patience and compassion.

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First appearance on a bestseller list...

Bookreporter.com reports that NAIBA (New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association) saw the the debut of The American Story on its bestseller list for the week ending last Sunday (September 3). Me likey. Thank you, history lovers of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland!

Today I also found this story in Myrtle Beach Online.

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A visit to a very strange place

So here I am, giving my spiel at a panel on history at the book sellers' trade show in Orlando. Booksellers from Florida, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, etc. all reported the book selling very well in their stores, and I made an impassioned plea in my ten minute talk to restore patriotism as a virtue common to all political parties. "I am a vegetarian, atheist, pro-chioce, anti-war, organic-gardening blue state liberal, and I am a patriot," I declared. Later, as I autographed books, they all gave me -- in one way or another -- the thumbs-up.

The very strange place I allude to in the title of this post is the Gaylord Palms Resort, in Orlando, where this trade show is being held. It's part of the same convention/resort group that owns Opryland, and if you've ever been there, you get the idea. Massive theme-park-like covered atrium with waterfalls and rivers and regional sections -- St. Augustine, Key West, South Beach, etc. The artificial river flowing through the place is stocked with giant catfish and tiny alligators of like size. It reminded me of the rubber animals my childhood best friend used to collect on visits to the dentist -- all the same size, so the lion was the same size as the rabbit which was the same size as the elephant. The river even had a section shrouded in artificial swamp fog. All very peculiar. Very very peculiar.

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New Banned Books Week Poster using art from The American Story

from the American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom of Expression.


This is from the title page of The American Story, illustration by Roger Roth. Isn't this the coolest? I love it that this is the logo for Banned Books Week! I am insanely proud to be associated with this event! This is a poster you can download. Follow the link! FREADOM!

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Social Studies for Kids

A nice review, and a good site if you follow the home link.

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Leaving today for Orlando, SIBA trade show

The Southeast Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA) is holding its fall trade show right now in Orlando (yikes!) and I'm flying down there this evening. Tomorrow morning I will be on a panel of four authors for something called A People's History (tip of the hat to my guru, Howard Zinn). Then autographing books. Then back to the airport and home again by tomorrow night.
The miracle of modern travel (tip of the hat to Wilbur and Orville) allows me to leave upstate New York, speak in Florida, and be back home in just over 24 hours. Wild. I'll take my camera, and hope to get some snaps of famous authors while I'm there. Look for update on Saturday. Imagine, a day without blogging tomorrow (sniff sniff).

I do just want to say before I sign off that last night I went to a fancy reception to hear this man, Bishop Kevin Dowling, speak about his AIDS hospice work in South Africa. The party was at a new and extravagantly expensive home here in town, and all I can hope is that the bishop ends up with more in contributions for his work than was spent on the party. Perhaps the host and hostess could have opened a few bottles of wine themselves and passed around some cheese and crackers, instead of spending thousands on catering and tents etc., and then given him a check for the cost of the party. But that's just me being snarky. If you think the work the bishop is doing is important, please consider a gift to the Community Hospice Africa Fund, and your donation will go to Tapologo House.

Until Saturday.

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new pictures

Please look to the right and click on WATCH THE SLIDESHOW to see some additional images from The American Story that I just uploaded. The scans are not all of equal quality, I'm sorry to tell you.

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Who knows what language this is?

Ilmestymispäivä 20060800 Hinta 42,40 Saatavuus Tilapäisesti loppu Rekisteröidy palveluun asettaaksesi tuotteita vahtipalveluun

What is that, Finnish? This website is selling The American Story.

Let's say it's Finnish. They're selling the book in Finland. And in England. And in Japan, Italy, Germany, one of the Spanish speaking nations (a s Spanish-language on-line retailer, anyway). People in other countries are interested in reading about American history. The conservative media have picked it up. Homeschoolers, many of them conservative, have picked it up. So folks on the rightward end of the political spectrum are interested in reading about American history, too.

But again, let me rant a little about the more liberal mass media. Here we are a week away from the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and I would have expected a patriotic (but not flag-waving) book to be everywhere. I cruise around liberal blogs and websites about politics and sometimes I can't even find the word "patriotic." Has the word "patriotic" come to mean something bad? I posed the question to a friend of mine by email (he's a famous novelist, but I didn't ask if I can quote him so I won't say who it is.)

"It's all a result of tarring the left with the brush of anti-Americanism so you can wrap yourself in the flag, and then the secondary result of the left's responding like intellectual wusses...[they]may feel too threatened by the flag-wavers (and too angry at them) to come out of their corner and endorse something that brings a warm heart to the issues. These are cold combative times."

Come on, liberal left! Don't act like what you are wrongly accused of being!

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Boulder, Co., Daily Camera says "most adults could brush up on their history, traditional and otherwise, by reading along."

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From the San Diego Union Tribune -- see what I mean about the molasses story?

“The American Story: 100 True Tales from American History” (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, $34.95) is quite an achievement by author Jennifer Armstrong and illustrator Roger Roth. The book, covering the years 1565 to 2000, makes history come alive for young children as it tells story after story of how the nation came to be. In addition to all the momentous events are little stories, such as the Great Molasses flood of 1919 and the appearance of the banana in the United States. Ages 6 and older."

As I said before, people seem to fixate on this story. What do they do, read through the table of contents and say, "Hmm, I wonder what THAT one is about?" and then go read it? I don't think it's by any means the most interesting story in the collection, or the most obscure, or the most bizarre. Why so many critics are mentioning it is beyond me.



Personally, I think the most delightful story (or one of them, anyway) is the one about P.T. Barnum marching his circus parade, headed by the famous Jumbo, over the Brooklyn Bridge to demonstrate its safety. Talk about a fantastic publicity stunt! I can picture it so clearly -- little girls in their shirtwaists and ribboned hats, boys in their knickers and suspenders, gulls soaring over the East River, Brooklyn merchants sweeping up at the end of the day, horse-drawn buses clop-clopping along the avenues and the growing skyline of Manhattan bristling all the way up past Union Square... And then out onto the new suspension bridge steps the mighty Jumbo, his big feet planted squarely with each stride. Ears flapping, tail swishing, trunk swinging from side to side, and stretching out behind is the long parade of zebras and trick ponies and camels and acrobats and cages of lions and seals! What a sight it must have been!

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"This wondrous volume will transport readers back through four centuries," says Hillsdale, (NY) Independent

They also say, "Glorious illustrations, snappy dialogue, dramatic narratives, and without this book, readers might never learn about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. The American Story is a treasure for all ages."
The funny thing about this is the number of times the molasses flood is mentioned in interviews and reviews -- it seems to be an almost universally captivating story. Yesterday I did another radio interview, and again the molasses flood came up. If you live in Boston, this is probably a story you already know --just as, for the folks in Beaumont, Texas, the story of the Spindletop oil well is common knowledge. But somehow, people commenting on the book can't get over their astonishment at the story of the molasses flood.
Well, I suppose that's one reason people are enjoying the book. I wish I had a copy of the illustration for the flood story, but I don't. So here's the illustration for the Spindletop story again. Illustration courtesy of Roger Roth.

Today's morning sales ranks: Amazon.com 1,085 (#90 on the children's bestseller list); Barnes & Noble 782.

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The American Story a September special on Just For Kids website

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Why I Keep Reading Homeschool Blogs -- A Play in Three Acts

"Jennifer, excuse me, you don't have kids. Why the interest in home school?"

This is a reasonable question. I don't home school because I don't have kids. But I find the concept enchanting, and I've been reading a lot of home school blogs. And here's why:

Act I: Scene... the curtain rises to reveal the bedroom of a bright, imaginative kid, decorated in a way that let's you know, hey, this is 1971! Groovy! On the bed is a kid reading a big book. Let's say it's a treasury of Greek myths, or maybe a collection of folk tales. Possibly a book on the history of archaeology or how to identify snakes or the architectural styles of the cathedrals of Europe. Maybe all those books are there. There are also puzzle books and novels and collections of Peanuts comics. Maybe a copy of Ranger Rick magazine (and surely there is a centerfold from Ranger Rick taped to the wall -- lion cubs yawning, or possibly a tiny tree frog on a broad green leaf). On the big desk are art supplies and a microscope, a gerbil tank, and a flute. From somewhere in the house we hear a Bach cantata. We see the kid as the hub of a complex web of ideas, information, inspiration. This kid is learning, learning, learning, connecting the flute to the myth of Pan, the gerbil to the fable of the mice and the lion, the art supplies to the beautiful snakes and the ruined frescoes of ancient Greece, the microscope to the texture of paper, the cathedrals to the cantata... as the curtain falls.

Act II: Scene...Lights up, and a student (age unimportant) is crossing the stage slowly, examining the schedule for first day of school (fifth grade, seventh grade, whatever). The subjects are lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery, disconnected, disintegrated. Sure, the student can hit them all, but so what? At the end of the day it's just a pile of dead ducks and a prize for marksmanship. The student regards this list with a sigh and walks off stage as the lights dim.

Act III: Scene... The office of a children's book author. Papers strewn about. Books piled haphazardly. The author is writing, trying to recreate the rich web of associated ideas for some kid out there, somewhere, a kid like the one from Act I. This idea is connected to this one, see? And look, doesn't it sort of remind you of this over here, too? And I see a pattern here, do you? This author has spent a lot of time visiting schools on 'author day' and has seen many teachers trying hard to do many things for many children while simultaneously trying to hit a moving target called "standards." The author is sympathetic to these teachers, and sympethetic to those students. But the real reader of this author's books is the kid who is free to learn. The author looks out the window for a moment and wonders, where is that kid? How do I find that kid?

Curtain falls.

please follow this link if you home school.

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