What alcoholic beverage pairs best with your favorite children's book?

Examiner.com came out with a few fantastically awesome (and spot-on) lists of books to read with alcohol: beer, wine, and hard liquor.  I went through an embarrassing Victoria Holt stage in high school so I got a particular laugh out of the recommendation to read her with a glass of white wine.  I also snickered over the recommended pairing of Budweiser/Miller with America (The Book) by Jon Stewart - it's the perfect antidote to my overdose on election coverage.

So what about children's literature?  And young adult?  Am I the only one that does imbibe (sometimes) while reading?  What are some pairings you would choose?  I mean, obviously, you have to pair a raspberry cordial with Anne of Green Gables - that's a no-brainer.  Any others?  Here's a short list off the top of my head:

Beer:

- Sammy Keyes series by Wendelin Van Draanen (is it just me or is she Stephanie Plum in training?)

- Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka (totally!)

- Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (probably something cheap and domestic...they are in high school, after all)

Wine:

- Sweet Valley High and Sarah Dessen's books are white wine books (I mean NO disrespect to Sarah Dessen by pairing these together!!!!  If it helps at all, SVH is a white zin and The Truth About Forever is a complicated, rich Viognier)

- Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares (totally white wine fare)

- My One Hundred Adventures by Polly Horvath and Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller (these are Pinot Noir books - warm, cozy, lovely, complex but not weighed down)

- The Giver by Lois Lowry is a Zinfandel - Before I Die by Jenny Downham is a Zin too.

- The Luxe series by Anna Godbersen is soooooo champagne perfect!

Hard Liquor/Cocktails:

- Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicholson series is the perfect thing to read with a Cosmopolitan, anything pastel-colored, anything with -tini at the end of it.

- Whiskey neat: I think if Kiki Strike were to be an adult and a drinker, she'd go for a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails whiskey neat.  10 Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher is a whiskey neat too, given the speak-easy nature of the setting.

- Harry Potter is challenging, but I would have to choose the pumpkintini I've been dreaming about for two years...you know, they drink all that pumpkin juice...get it???

- Lastly, I don't know if I'm getting the time period right here but doesn't it seem like you should drink mead with Good Masters!  Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz?

Eat, drink, and read children's books while doing so.

Random House Summer 2008 Preview*

Love was in the air at the Random House Summer 2008 preview (it was on Valentine’s Day)! Instead of the usual rows Random House has us sit in, they had us in a Golden-Globes-esque set-up where we sat at little tables with our colleagues. The tables had confetti lips scattered on them with chocolate kisses and cherry-flavored gummy lips. Fun, right?

One of the first books I got excited about was presented by the Golden House group: The Big Tidy-Up by Norah Smaridge. It was published in 1970 – this is a reissue – and I’m not familiar at all with the original. But this just looks darling. (Note: the endpapers they showed us for the book were fantastic) 5.13.08

Elissa’s Odyssey by Erica Verrillo is the sequel to Elissa’s Quest, and I’ve read neither at this point. Nevertheless, Elissa’s Quest circulates quite nicely in Queens so I’ll be sure to order the sequel. 6.24.08

This looks insanely promising, and it’s called Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale E. Basye. A colleague of mine started it and wasn’t terribly happy with it…but also claimed that she may have just been feeling grumpy that day. So the verdict is still out. Nevertheless, I think you could put it on display and it’ll fly off the shelves based on the name and cover alone. 7.22.08

The Order of Odd-Fish by James Kennedy has a cool cover and the editors described it as “Roald Dahl meets Monty Python.” Could be cool. 8.12.08

The editors also talked about the reissue of Sweet Valley High, a well-covered topic on this blog. Needless to say, lots of people cheering in the room about this one (someone even yelled "Elizabeth and Jessica forever!" when the book was announced)! 4.22.08

For you Giselle Potter fans out there, Schwartz and Wade promoted their book, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, illustrated by…you know…Giselle Potter. The trouble is that I’ve never been a fan of her work. It’s not that I don’t like it…it’s just…meh. And her faces remind me of all those Middle Ages paintings where the babies have the faces of grown men. But that’s just me. 5.13.08

Yay! Lenore Look, author of the Ruby Lu series, has a chapter book coming out for boys: Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School, and Other Scary Things. It’s next in my stack of galleys to read. Can’t wait! 7.8.08

Meghan McCarthy is doing astronauts this time in Astronaut Handbook. I received the F&Gs and my initial impression is that it’s really fantastic. Especially as we see the space program being phased out, it’s good to see a book that will capture kids’ imagination and encourage them to dream about being astronauts. A few more years and this book might seem more nostalgic and, perhaps, old-fashioned. But it’s just right for now. 6.10.08

The Penderwicks are back in Jeanne Birdsall’s The Penderwicks on Gardam Street. I feel like I’m the last librarian to not have read the first book! Nevertheless, I guessed that most of you would be happy to hear about this so here it is. 4.8.08

And, once again, my love of food and youth literature collide in the form of two books: A La Carte by Tanita Davis and High Dive by Tammar Stein. In A La Carte, an African-American, vegetarian teenager dreams of having her own cooking show. There are recipes at the end of each chapter. In High Dive, Arden travels around Europe, taking in all the culinary pleasures. Naturally, I have both books at the top of my huge galley pile – you can imagine how stoked I am. A La Carte - 6.10.08, High Dive - 6.10.08

Last, Wendelin Van Draanen was the guest, promoting her upcoming non-Sammy Keyes book, Confessions of a Serial Kisser. Wendelin was a complete treat and she table-hopped while we ate lunch…meaning that I was able to be a bit of an arse and tell her how much Sammy Keyes reminds me of my own daughter, blah, blah, blah. God, just don’t let me be anywhere near authors. There are two authors I have never been a jerk around: Peter Sís (because I had no idea who he was until 45 minutes into the conversation – which is why everyone should where name tags at the damn conferences) and Patricia MacLachlan (because she’s so down-to-earth, she wouldn’t have stood for any fussing, and my daughter fell in love with her). Except for those two, I’m an idiot. Serial Kisser - 5.13.08

And on another culinary note, marketing extraordinaire Tracy Lerner passed around really pretty iced cookies while we were talking with Wendelin. Naturally, they were heart-shaped.

* Keep in mind I'm only mentioning the books that were of interest to me. There are many, many books I didn't mention here, like Judy Blume's Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One (5.13.08). Check out Random House's website for more info on books I didn't mention.

Note: Copyright stuff baffles me to no end. Can anyone tell me if I'm breaking copyright laws here by posting the pictures of the book covers??? God, I hope not.

I'm eleven years old again!

Just when I thought I couldn't be any geekier about my renewed obsession with Sweet Valley High, I had to sit next to Carlie at the Random House preview and she introduced me to this.

Thanks to Carlie over at A Chair, A Fireplace, & a Tea Cozy for the heads-up...and for sharing the geekdom.

Morsels of children's news with a pinch of foodie talk

It’s a dreary, rainy day in NYC and, naturally, we still don’t have any snow. I have friends and family in places like San Luis Obispo and Raleigh…they have snow. I’m surprised my friends in Arizona haven’t reported getting snow. Everywhere but NYC. I was unaware that we were protected by some sort of forcefield, apparently.

So I’ve had no other choice but to avoid work and browse blogs and news.

** Educating Alice is raging today, and it’s awesome. Alison started it by blogging about peeking versus non-peeking: people who read ahead and people who would never. Alison is very judicious about the issue, soliciting opinions from readers. But the responses to Alison's post are passionate and confessional - there are a lot of peekers out there! What has Monica annoyed are the non-peekers that feel they've taken a nobler, higher moral ground by not peeking. One commenter on Alison's post said that peeking "would simply be wrong!", and a publisher even got in on the act, asking readers to stop peeking and compromising the integrity of the author's work, or something like that. I'm just annoyed that, more and more, the way we go about our lives and the daily small choices we make are being being dictated to us. Do it this way! No, do it this way! Sheesh. Reading and, to a certain extent, libraries are two of America's greatest examples of democracy. To each their own or, as Monica succinctly put it, "the democracy of reading rules!"

** Booklist has put up their interview with Christopher Paul Curtis and it's fantabulous, as Curtis is one of the most articulate and brilliant authors out there. I particularly enjoyed Curtis' observation that humor is "the twin sister of tragedy. They are inextricably wound together." The interview also turns incredibly potent when Curtis likens a black person's use of the n-word to a "suicide bomb."

** Sweet Valley High is being reissued!!!!! It's like I've been transported back in time and my 11-year-old heart is leaping with unbridled joy! Apparently some things have changed: the Wakefield twins no longer drive a Fiat Spider (Damn, I loved the Fiat - I was convinced that I would drive one too when I turned 16. Instead I got a 1967 Buick. Shazam!) and Elizabeth has an anonymous blog whereas, in the original books, she had an anonymous column in the school paper. The cover has been redesigned too, of course. The new one is okay, but you can't really tell the twins apart, which I liked about the original covers. Thanks to A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy for the link. Carlie mentions in the "SVH 2.0" post that, before Stephenie Meyer's "Team Jacob" and "Team Edward" t-shirts, there could have been "Team Todd" and "Team Jeffrey" shirts. I would've worn "Team Todd": Todd Wilkins, now and forever, baby. I take it a step further: you know how Sex and the City came out with "I'm a Carrie" or "I'm a Charlotte" shirts? You could totally do that for Sweet Valley High: "I'm a Jessica" or "I'm an Elizabeth". Or "I'm a Lila." Which one are you? I'm totally an Elizabeth.

** Fuse has some great posts up right now. First, I love her description of how NYPL goes about sharing their "100 Favorites" list - I'm already brainstorming about how I can get something like that going here at Queens. Granted, we don't have a fancy list like NYPL, but we can still do a dramatic sharing of titles we like. I've been finding it a bit of a challenge, in a large system like this, to find out what the librarians are reading and what they're enjoying. It would be a hoot if everyone would really get involved with an event like this. Even better, it would be fantastic to hold it after-hours and provide wine and hors d'oeuvres. Fuse also has a Save Central Children's campaign going, echoed by A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy. I'm jumping on too. That space is magical, and I can hardly imagine that treasure trove of resources and literature scattering to 80-some branches. Unthinkable. Do the right thing, NYPL.

** The Telegraph came out wiht their list of "100 Books Every Child Should Read." As with every list of this nature, there's always room for debate. I would have liked to see some more newer titles, for one thing. Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom for the link.

** And in foodie-related news, right on the heels of my fondue rant last night, I got an email from Saveur, my favorite foodie magazine, and guess what food they were featuring for Super Bowl Sunday: Fond-friggin-uuuuue. Stop the madness.

And now that I finished writing this post, it's sunny outside. The clouds and rain are gone. Yep, I still don't see any snow.