Award-winning Canadian author Kevin Sylvester is giving Indigo Kids an exclusive treat! We are celebrating Children’s Book Week by sharing some illustrations from his new novel, Neil Flambé and the Crusader’s Curse; the third in Sylvester’s Neil Flambé Capers about a fourteen-year-old world-class chef who also solves crimes with his supreme olfactory talents. A multiple Silver Birch Award winner, Sylvester’s quirky culinary capers are sure to delight fans of Wimpy Kid, The Odds Get Even, the Big Nate Series and Jo Nesbø’s Fart Powder Series.

Courtesy of Simon and Schuster, we also have this pretty cool video where Sylvester teaches us how to draw Neil Flambé. So pull out your sharpies and drawing paper and let’s get started:

Now that you know how to draw Sylvester’s wunderchef, enjoy these images from Neil Flambé and the Crusader's Curse:

From page 82

page 143

Page 224

Rick Riordan has a reputation for raising the bar in his final books, as The Last Olympian was a monumental book for Percy Jackson & The Olympians readers. Readers of The Kane Chronicles won’t be disappointed as The Serpent’s Shadow successfully concludes Riordan’s trilogy of Egyptian magic, gods, and hijinks.

The Kane Chronicles—beginning with The Red Pyramid and continuing in The Throne of Fire—follow brother and sister Carter and Sadie Kane as they master magic, walk the path of the gods, and defend the world from a giant primordial serpent named Apophis who wants to swallow the sun and plunge the Earth into chaos.

All this while grappling with their family’s demons and reputation, meeting and losing friends and allies, and falling in love. While The Kane Chronicles are Middle Grade—nothing more than a kiss or two—they do have a much stronger sense of romance than Percy Jackson & The Olympians did. Riordan handles it tactfully, and the alternating between brother and sister POVs gives readers both a male and female perspective on the highs and lows of first crushes.

The Serpent’s Shadow delivers what I’ve come to expect from Riordan: a fast plot with great characters and high stakes; a careful balance of real and myth; an exploration of family dynamics, politics, and cultures at a level that works for both the 9-12 set and adults. All of this delivered with a careful balance of serious, mortal (and sometimes immortal!) peril and a manic, and gleeful sense of humor. How many books open with an apology for causing the apocalypse?

While I continue to enjoy The Heroes of Olympus series more, I’m pleased with The Kane Chronicles as a whole. I was surprised—in the best way—by something that happens for Sadie. But it would spoil the book to go into any more detail than that, so you’ll have to finish The Serpent’s Shadow before we can talk.

It will be interesting to see if Riordan returns to Brooklyn House in the future or if this will somehow tie into the rumored forthcoming series he plans to do involving Norse mythology. We won’t know for certain until 2015!

While that’s it for the Kanes, and Percy Jackson, The Heroes of Olympus return in The Mark of Athena on October 2.

As we here at Indigo celebrate  the Indigo’s Love of Reading Foundation’s grant announcements yesterday (details to come), and mourned the loss of the great Maurice Sendak on Tuesday, we are reminded that it is also TD Canadian Children’s Book Week in Canada and Children’s Book Week in the United States.  The Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) salutes this by sending a number of Canadian illustrators and authors to schools across the country, sometimes to remote regions which cannot always get an author to come and talk with them.

The theme for 2012, “Read a Book, Share a Story,” promotes reading as a classic pleasure-filled pastime and encourages sharing a good book or story with friends and family.  Overall thirty-four authors, illustrators and storytellers will be visiting schools, libraries, bookstores and community centres.

Founded in 1976, the CCBC is a national not-for-profit organization that is dedicated to encouraging, promoting and supporting the reading, writing, and illustrating of Canadian books for children and young adults. With this mandate the CCBC partners with some Canadian publishers and the TD bank to organize this week of activities as well as give out awards at an annual gala held in the fall. Two weeks ago, TD and the CCBC kicked off the week with a lovely high tea at the Windsor Arms in Toronto and the Indigo Kids Blog was one of three bloggers in attendance.  Vikki VanSickle, Willow Dawson and Brian Deines ate scones, drank delicious tea and talked kids’ books and writing with other industry professionals.

Having just sat on the jury for the Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy, written a number of book reviews for the CCBC’s quarterly magazine, Canadian Children’s Book News, and attended a number of their events, I can tell you that the people who work and volunteer for this organization are as passionate about Canadian children’s books as we are.

The Indigokids blog will also be celebrating this week with some exclusive photos from Kevin Sylvester’s new novel, Neil Flambé and the Crusader’s Curse.  

Also, check out our Canadian Books for Canadian Kids shop to see who we think are the best in Canadian children’s lit.

Alberta:

Don Aker, author

Rina Singh, author

British Columbia:

Jan Andrews, storyteller & author

Brian Deines, author
Bernice Gei-Yung Hune, storyteller

Labrador:

Alison Lohans, author

Manitoba:

Vivien Bowers, author

Gina McMurchy-Barber, author

New Brunswick:

Aubrey Davis, author & storyteller

Newfoundland:

Joan Marie Galat, author & storyteller

Northwest Territories:

Andrea Spalding, author

Nova Scotia:

Karen Patkau, author & illustrator

Nunavut:

Allan Stratton, author

Ontario:

Alison Acheson, author

Caroline Adderson, author

Eileen Cook, author

Yayo (Diego Herrera), illustrator

Jessica Scott Kerrin, author

Chris McMahen, author

Robert Rayner, author

Prince Edward Island:

Willow Dawson, author & illustrator

 Quebec

(English-language tour):

Marty Chan, author

Shoshana Litman, storyteller

Kathleen McDonnell, author

Caroline Pignat, author

Richard Rudnicki, illustrator & author

(French-language tour):

Caroline Merola, author & illustrator

Luc Melanson, illustrator

Bruno St-Aubin, illustrator

Édith Bourget, author, poet & illustrator

Linda Amyot, author

Saskatchewan:

Judy Ann Sadler, author

Vikki VanSickle, author

Yukon:

Alan Cumyn, author

One hundred writers of children’s literature are sitting in a classroom listening to our teacher describe what makes a perfect picture book. On the screen is Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

One hundred children are sitting under a tree at a day camp where I used to work.  Sunlight drips through the leaves as they listen wide-eyed to the counsellor reading from a picture book that they’ve probably heard one hundred times before, but it doesn’t matter. The book is Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are.

Carole King wrote music to his poems and stories Really Rosie and Pierre (which this blogger played in a camp production of the musical in the 1990s.) Stephen Colbert’s recent interview with him went viral within minutes and his new book, I Am a Pole (And So Can You!) has a quote from Sendak on the cover: “The sad thing is, I like it.” Spike Jonze adapted Where the Wild Things Are into a complex film about what it means to grow up. And we all remember the cartoon that was played countless times in elementary school.

Who some would say is the godfather of children’s literature, Maurice Sedak (June 10, 1928 – May 8, 2012), died today at the age of 83, and generations of writers and readers will never be the same.  The Caldecott Medal winner amazed critics for exploring our darker/shadow side in Where the Wild Things Are and pushing the boundaries of children’s literature, which before then had been heavily didactic and sanitary.  Consistently admired, his book, In the Night Kitchen, has been banned by school libraries for some of its content.

For me, Sendak’s Chicken Soup with Rice is the one that sticks out. Something about the rhythm or the (ironic) feeling of safety when I think of the consistency of having chicken soup with rice while “slippin’ on the slidin’ ice” conveys the duality of Sendak’s work.  This is something we can all relate to. It imbues his work with a sense of timelessness and will continue to inspire writers and readers of children’s literature for generations to come.

For many of us, our childhoods were defined by Sendak.  As adults we share his stories with the children in our lives, making us all want to join that wild rumpus again and again.