Highlights of November and Carnival of Children’s Literature

I can not believe that we are now doing the round-up for November! The year is about to end and we will be welcoming 2012 sooner than we know it. It brings us great pleasure to once again be part of the Carnival of Children’s Literature which is being hosted this week by Roberta Gibson from Wrapped in Foil. Instead of posting a review of a single book, we usually do a summary of things we have done for the month as our contribution to the Carnival.

Since we do our Round up Post a tad early, there are a few residual posts from October that we would also be adding on here.

Leftovers from the Dahl and Magical Theme

We usually cram quite a number of reviews as we are wrapping up our bimonthly themes – and as you can see, there are traces that spill over in the following month:

Academic Nook

We also posted Dr. Joseph Palis’ piece on Dahl entitled “The Epexegetical and Pernicious Dahl” over at Behind the Books. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I invite you to drop by and visit (there are harrowing stories and shades of darkness we can offer along with hot tea).

Poetry-Filled Yuletide Cheer for November and December

PoetryYuletideCheer3 — Our theme for the month. Poster courtesy of the ever-talented Iphigene.

Several weeks back, we also launched our new theme which we are very excited about. We have also introduced the people who would be visiting our site for the next two months: Holly Thompson for Meet the Storyteller; Alwin Aguirre, PhD Cand. for Academic Nook; and Professor Joel M. Toledo for Poet’s Sanctum (click here to be taken to the announcement post).

Since I have been traveling this month and arranging a few musical gigs/events, alongside marking my students’ papers and doing university duties (whew! excuses, excuses) – we haven’t made as much progress in our theme, well as much as we would wish, that is. We planned to review a number of poetry books, picture books in verse, and novels-in-verse. Here are some of our reviews, thus far.

Conference Updates

I tried as much as I can to also blog about the highlights of the conferences I was privileged to attend this November, as well as the musical gigs/events that I was arranging here in Singapore.

Books for Review (from Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group)

Fats usually gets our freebies, being US-based, and she couldn’t stop gushing about this book. While the review (as can be found here) is a wee-bit delayed, it’s worth the wait: “Of Marids, Wyverns, and Heartless Children: A Quick Look At Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.”

Reading Challenge Update

Picture Book Reading Challenge Update: 124 out of 120 – As we have noted last month, since we lovelovelove picture books, we would be happy to contribute to the database every month. We are also pretty excited to see how many books we would be able to finish by end of the year.
Persons of Color Reading Challenge Update: 51 (out of targeted 25) – Again, technically completed, but we wish to contribute more to the database. The community of participants in this challenge update, while admittedly, is not as vibrant as say the PictureBook Reading Challenge, it still is worth visiting other links and be introduced to really rare finds/titles.
Murakami Reading Challenge Update: 2 of 7 – Still no update here. I know for a fact, though, that Iphigene has drafted a review of another Hurakami book – so do watch out for that one.
South Asian Challenge Update: 5 of 7 – This month Iphigene has added a review of Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai for this Reading Challenge (thanks Iphigene!).

365 Reading Project: 2011

We have been a bit more relaxed in our reading knowing that we have already reached our 365 goal, here are the numbers for the month of October

January-February – 94 books
March-April – 96 books
May-June – 62 books
July-August – 105 books
September-October – 75 books
November:

Myra – 5 books
Iphigene – 4 books
Fats – 3 books
Total: 12 books

Grand Total: 444 books

That was paltry – compared to what we read the previous months, that is. We shall try to do better in December. 🙂 We are still challenging ourselves to read 500 books collectively in 2011.

Quill Junior

For our GatheringBooks Quill Junior Contributor this November, we are glad to welcome Ryo Tan Chee Ann, an eleven year old boy from Ai Tong Primary School. Here is his review on Sing to the Dawn by Minfong Ho.

Poet’s Sanctum

We concluded our feature of the very warm and generous-souled Professor Jimmy Abad last month with a feature of Iphigene entitled Day and Night by Gemino H. Abad.

We also introduced our Featured Poet, Professor Joel M. Toledo. Here are some of our posts on a few of his selected poems which we link to the very affirming community of bloggers/ teachers/ poetry-lovers/ writers/ acclaimed poets during Poetry Fridays.

Blog Meme and the Kidlitosphere

We continue being active in the kidlitosphere and the blogosphere through our participation in several themed-days as hosted by wonderful bloggers/ librarians/ bibliophiles as could be seen below.

Nonfiction Monday

Book Talk Tuesday

The Witches by Roald Dahl

Teaser Tuesday

Interview Wednesday

We are privileged to feature the extremely talented Holly Thompson for November and December. We are doing a four-part feature on her, and so far we have only published “A Snapshot of Holly’s Life in Japan.”

In My Mailbox

Just a few weeks back, Iphigene and I have been plotting and planning about our plans for GatheringBooks in 2012. It’s such a joy when we never run out of things to discuss and excitedly feature in our little corner here. Much much more in store, especially in December when we come up with our lists based on our bimonthly themes, as well as announce our planned Reading Challenge for next year! Yay! 🙂