The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man by M. Chabon

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Merrill Distad
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Protein Delivery ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Story Line ◽  
Canadian Prairies ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Michael Chabon ◽  
The University

Chabon, Michael. The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man. Illus. Jake Parker. New York: Balzer & Bray, 2011. Print. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon recounts an archetypal small boy’s fantasy life as superhero Awesome Man. Equipped with all the requisite SuperPowers, including positronic-ray-blasting vision and a “thermovulcanized protein-delivery orb,” young Awesome Man, accompanied by Moskowitz, the Awesome Dog, does battle against the forces of darkness, including talking mutant Jell-O from beyond the stars.  After vanquishing Professor Von Evil and his antimatter Slimebot, the young hero battles his arch-nemesis, the Flaming Eyeball, and henchmen Red Shark and Sister Sinister. Returning to his “Fortress of Awesome, deep at the bottom of the deepest, darkest trench under the Arctic Ocean,” he finds his mother, the only one aware of his secret identity, awaits his return in the kitchen to offer him a restorative serving of cheese, crackers, and chocolate milk. Chabon’s thoroughly derivative story line, familiar at least since Super Man’s 1939 debut in Action Comics No. 1, is only redeemed by Jake Parker’s imaginative and charming illustrations. Adults reading this slight effort to children will at least be afforded a chuckle over Moskovitz, the Awesome Dog, named in honour of one of Sci-Fi’s most prominent students and proponents. Recommended with reservations: 2 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadMerrill Distad is Associate University Librarian (Research and Special Collections Services) and University Archivist, University of Alberta, and is the co-editor of Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies to 1953 (Toronto, 2003).  He is the author, most recently, of The University of Alberta Library: The First Hundred Years, 1908–2008 (Edmonton, 2009).

Polar Bear Morning by L. Thompson

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Polar Bear ◽  
Book History ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
The University

Thompson, Lauren. Polar Bear Morning. Illus. Stephen Savage. New York: Scholastic Press, 2013. Print.Ten years ago, Lauren Thompson and Stephen Savage collaborated on “Polar Bear Night”, which was a splendid picture book that swiftly became a New York Times best seller. “Polar Bear Morning” follows up on the simple story of a polar bear cub that ventures out onto the arctic tundra for an adventure, but this time our favourite cub meets a new friend. The story begins when the cub emerges from her dark den, peeks out at the clear blue sky, and follows the sound of seagulls. Soon after heading out into the snow and ice, she notices something tumbling down a snow hill. It’s a snow cub! The moment when the cubs first meet is beautifully portrayed in a two-page spread that shows two furry faces in profile looking at each other without words on the pages, which perfectly captures a child’s speechless, wide-eyed bliss upon meeting a new friend.The story continues with several charming scenes that show how the friendship develops: they climb the snow hill and tumble down together; they sprint beside the sea; they race past seals, walruses and whales; they pause at the ice’s edge; and finally, they jump into the sea together. It’s a delightful portrayal of a budding friendship, with simple, yet charming illustrations rendered in a gentle palette of soft blues, greys, pinks, and browns. This picture book is a joy to read and has all the makings of a beloved classic, including frolicsome illustrations, thoughtful design, and a captivating story. It’s a wholly satisfying picture book that will be a pleasure to read again and again.Recommendation: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember.

scholarly journals The Honeybee Man by L. Nargi

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Mead-Willis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Rare Book ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Spare Time ◽  
The University ◽  
Local Ecology ◽  
Wild Blueberry

Nargi, Lela. The Honeybee Man. Illus. Kyrsten Brooker. New York: Schwartz & Wade, 2011. Print. This charming picture book chronicles the unconventional cottage industry of Fred, a Brooklynite who spends his spare time tending three colonies of honeybees housed on the roof of his townhouse. As the day unfolds, we follow Fred’s bees as they fan out across the borough, bringing back nectar from the herb gardens, flower pots, and even wild blueberry bushes flowering therein. Fred then harvests the honey and distributes jars of it to his neighbours. With this growing popularity of urban agriculture (and urban apiculture), Nargi’s story is a timely one, clearly aimed at progressive young families interested in the connection between local ecology and human community. The book is transparently but not disagreeably didactic: bee behaviour is examined and explained (both within the context of the story and in a two-page appendix), and the processes of beekeeping and honeymaking are illuminated through Fred’s perambulations within his apartment-cum-apiary. Brooker’s illustrations, a combination of gestural painting and collage, have a patchwork, handmade quality well suited to the book’s overarching preoccupation with all things organic and homespun. Her renderings of Brooklyn’s brownstone vistas are simple in their bright, flat planes of colour, but also satisfyingly dense with decoupaged texture and detail. Like the honey made by Fred’s “tireless Brooklyn bees,” her artwork is both a concentration - and a sweetening - of the teeming heterogeneity of urban life.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Sarah Mead-Willis Sarah is the Rare Book Cataloguer at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. She holds a BA and an MLIS from the University of Alberta and an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria. 

scholarly journals The Lonely Book by K. Bernheimer

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Book History ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Public Library ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
The Public ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The University

Bernheimer, Kate. The Lonely Book. Illus. Chris Sheban. New York: Random House, 2012. Print.This charming story about a well-loved book will not easily be forgotten. It’s the sort of picture book I would have loved to discover during my childhood visits to the public library. The tale begins in a classic fairytale style, “Once there was a brand-new book that arrived at the library.” As the story unfolds, young readers learn all sorts of details about the inner workings of a public library, including the custom that many of the newest books are placed on a special shelf in a high traffic area.The “lonely book” of this story initially had a popular and fulfilling life on the new book shelf but eventually it is relegated to the children’s section, along with countless other well-loved titles. Years pass, the book becomes a little tattered and worn, and is now checked out all too infrequently. Then, one morning, a little girl named Alice discovers it and falls in love with the story about the girl and her life under a toadstool, and so she takes it home. “The book had never felt so beloved.” Readers will discover how lonely it becomes when Alice forgets to renew her old book, and especially so when it begins a new life in the library’s storage basement. In time, Alice longs for her favourite book and despairs that she may never see it again. The story ends on a cheerful note, however, when Alice is reunited with her once cherished book at the library’s big book sale.For those of us who understand what it is like to cherish a book from our childhood, this book will bring back fond memories. The soft watercolour illustrations complement the story beautifully and they evoke a magical time when children fall in love with books, read them late into the night, fall asleep with them under their pillows, and dream sweet dreams about favourite characters and events.Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember.

scholarly journals The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case by A. McCall Smith

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Quirk
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
First Case ◽  
Life Lessons ◽  
The University ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Lunch Time

McCall Smith, Alexander.  The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe’s Very First Case.  Illus. Iain McIntosh. New York: Anchor, 2012. Print.Adult readers around the world have been charmed by the best-selling “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series, in which Mma Ramotswe tackles the troubling mysteries and personal problems of ordinary people, and does so by relying on her sharp wit and her extraordinary insight into human nature.  In this book, young readers will be introduced to a school girl who is destined to become a great detective.  Here, Precious Ramotswe – “one of the nicest girls in Botswana”  challenges her classmates’ assumptions in order to solve her first case. The story begins when Precious asks her beloved father to recount her favourite story: an account of the time he was “nearly eaten by a lion”.  Since young Precious can tell which parts of his story really happened and which parts are made up, her father suggests that she might become a detective someday.  His idea is soon put to the test when her classmates begin to notice that their lunch-time treats are being stolen from the outside shelf where they leave their bags during school.  When the children scapegoat a shy boy with a sweet tooth, Precious realizes that she will need to do more than find the truth, she will need to prove it.This book has the charm of the original series, and is recommended for readers aged 7-10 years old.  It offers an engaging story and several life lessons.  Further, the story offers young readers a glimpse of ordinary daily life in Africa, and the author hopes it “will inspire them to read more about that wonderful continent and its remarkable people” .In a note addressed to the reader at the back of the book, the author tells us that families have been reading his “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series aloud together, but acknowledges that the series would be challenging for young readers to read on their own, and so this book has been written with young readers in mind.  Teachers and librarians who are fans of Mma Ramotswe will enjoy sharing her adventures with young readers, and will be pleased to find various curriculum materials at the back of the book.Highly recommended: 4 stars out of 4 Reviewer: Linda QuirkLinda is Assistant Special Collections Librarian at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library at the University of Alberta.

scholarly journals Why We Broke Up by D. Handler

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Mead-Willis
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
New York ◽  
English Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Rare Book ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Object A ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Sexually Explicit ◽  
The University

Handler, Daniel. Why We Broke Up. Illus. Maira Kalman. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2011. Print. In 1975, Judy Blume published Forever, in which a girl meets a boy at a high school party, dates him, falls madly in love with him, sleeps with him, and then breaks up with him. The novel was the first of its kind— a frank and sexually explicit portrait of teen love, delivered by a modern, post-women’s-lib female narrator. And while the book scandalized some readers, it became a coming-of-age touchstone for others. (Indeed, this reviewer remembers getting a copy from her mother – a bit embarrassing, given all the sex that was in it – as a sort of warning of the pleasures and pains of incipient adulthood.) Fast forward thirty-five years to Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up, in which a girl meets a boy at a high school party, dates him, falls madly in love with him, sleeps with him, and then breaks up with him. Not quite the trailblazer of a story that it was in 1975, but a fascinating (and in many ways superior) revision of the doomed-teen-romance downer. Daniel Handler is, after all, known to most as Lemony Snicket, and readers may detect shades of Snicket in the sly wit and mordant humour that infuse this particular series of unfortunate events. But his improvements on Blume’s prototype do not stop at style. For one thing -- and this is a big thing -- Handler invents a far more interesting narrator to tell the tale. While Min Green encompasses the moods and caprices typical of the teen girl umwelt, she also displays repertoire of quirks unwedded to age or gender: an obsession with cult cinema, a wicked sense of humour, and a singular worldview disclosed to the reader in lyrical, synaesthetic morsels. (“Enormous as a shout” is how she first describes Ed Slaterton, her love interest.) Through Min’s voice, Handler creates something that is less a love story than a headlong plunge into the teenage psychic cosmos— that welter of sensory, emotional, and cultural bric-à-brac that young people accrue in their projects of self-creation. The book is cluttered with spurious allusions to movies that were never made, musicians who don’t exist, food and beverages not on offer anywhere outside the text. (Viper shots, anyone? How about a bottle of Scarpia’s Extra Bitter?) These are a clever device on the author’s part; instead of attempting to tap the vocabulary of teenage cool (and burden the novel with effortful hipness), Handler fabricates a pitch-perfect simulacrum. As befits a post-2000 story of young love, there is a visual counterpoint to Handler’s text. Each chapter begins with the image of an object -- a bottle cap, a comb, a pair of earrings – rendered in lush oil paint by artist Maira Kalman. All are mementos of Min’s and Ed’s relationship, and all are cast away as Min comes to grips its ruin. But just as love leaves a trace that cannot be easily expunged, so the images conjured by this novel will resonate, mournful and comic, long after the book is closed. Highly recommended:  4 out of 4 starsReviewer:  Sarah Mead-WillisSarah is the Rare Book Cataloguer at the University of Alberta's Bruce Peel Special Collections Library. She holds a BA and an MLIS from the University of Alberta and an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria.

scholarly journals Bon Appétit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child by J. Hartland

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Desmarais
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Book History ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
English Literature ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Line Drawings ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Information Studies ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The University

Hartland, Jessie. Bon Appétit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2012. Print.Master chef and author Julia Child (1912–2004) was adored by audiences from the moment she first starred in her own television cooking show in 1963. It was an immediate success because people were captivated by Child’s warm, high-spirited personality and her enthusiasm for good food and wine. Indeed, she regularly toasted viewers with a glass of wine and her trademark “Bon appétit!” in her distinctive voice. Young readers are introduced to Child in this delightful picture book biography that is a feast for the eyes. It offers a surprisingly thorough account of her life, and includes scenes from her early childhood in Pasadena, California, her brief career with an American spy agency, and her struggle to publish the now famous “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, to name but a few of the highlights. In one especially amusing spread, readers are shown how to make chicken galantine in 32 numbered panels, which make clear that Child encouraged her fans to try new foods and cooking techniques. Author-illustrator Jessie Hartland uses simple cartoons and a handwritten typeface to tell the story, and it is immediately apparent from the opening pages that the book is jam-packed with artwork and text, but the overall effect is one of considerable charm and animation. The endpapers are crammed with line drawings of kitchen tools, ingredients, and objects from Child’s life, which have English and French labels for readers who want to learn some essential vocabulary in both languages. For readers who want to learn more about Child, the book includes a useful bibliography, brief epilogue, and web links that show Child’s actual kitchen from her house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the restaurant where she had her first meal in France. This adorable publication will appeal to foodies of all ages. Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 stars    Reviewer: Robert DesmaraisRobert Desmarais is Head of Special Collections at the University of Alberta and Managing Editor of The Deakin Review of Children’s Literature. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information Studies, with a Book History and Print Culture designation, he also has university degrees in English literature and publishing. He has been collecting and enjoying children’s books for as long as he can remember. 

scholarly journals I Love You, Nose! I Love You, Toes! by L. Davick

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Feisst
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Young Children ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Series Books ◽  
Words And Images ◽  
The University

Davick, Linda. I Love You, Nose! I Love You, Toes! New York: Simon & Schuster-Beach Lane Books, 2013. Print.Graphic artist, illustrator and animator Linda Davick, whose colourful images have appeared in several seasonal counting series books such as the New York Times bestselling 10 Trick-or-Treaters, has penned her first book for children aimed at celebrating the unique qualities we all have. Starting from our head right down to our toes, the simply drawn children, with fun disproportionately-scaled features and descriptions to portray many kids, show off their various body parts. The book is essentially a whimsical love poem to our bodies that children will find entertaining, both in the prose and the illustrations.  Take this stanza as an example:I love you, nose, though there’s no doubt that when you sneeze some stuff comes out.The images are great, too: a little girl covering her nose to the smell of her baby sibling’s diaper, a child thinking about smelling pepper (spoiler alert: she sneezes), a stinky sock and fragrant flowers; young children will enjoy the interplay of words and images, especially about body parts and functions that are generally not discussed:I love the parts my friends don’t see: the parts that poop, the parts that pee.Ending with a sleepy boy drifting off to sleep, this would be a fun book to read with young children at night as part of a bedtime routine or even as part of an early-years story time, though the latter would certainly create a memorable experience for the students! Highly recommended: 4 stars of out 4 Reviewer: Debbie FeisstDebbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta.  When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction.

scholarly journals James Moses. Trends in Rare Books and Documents Special Collections Management. 2013 Edition. New York: Primary Research Group, 2013. 64p. $75 (ISBN 978-1-57440-226-1).

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-80
Author(s):  
Amy Chen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Library ◽  
Ohio State University ◽  
State University ◽  
Collections Management ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Rare Books ◽  
The Ohio State University ◽  
The University

Trends in Rare Books and Documents Special Collections Management, 2013 edition by James Moses surveys seven special collection institutions on their current efforts to expand, secure, promote, and digitize their holdings. The contents of each profile are generated by transcribed interviews, which are summarized and presented as a case study chapter. Seven special collections are discussed, including the Boston Public Library; AbeBooks; the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Washington University of St. Louis; the Archives and Rare Books Library, University of Cincinnati; the Rare Books and Manuscript Library at The Ohio State University; and the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare . . .

scholarly journals The Best Birthday Party Ever by J. LaRue Huget

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Feisst
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Picture Book ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Young Adult Fiction ◽  
Elementary Grades ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Birthday Party ◽  
Layer Cake ◽  
The University

Huget, Jennifer LaRue. The Best Birthday Party Ever. Illus. LeUyen Pham. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2011. Print. “My birthday is 5 months, 3 weeks, 2 days, and 8 hours away.  Today I started to plan my party.” And so the planning begins for the 5-year-old soon-to-be birthday girl in this charming picture book.  She has to start planning early if she wants the best birthday party ever.  She is going to invite all 57 of her friends including the mailman and the invitations will be sprinkled with fairy dust.  She will have 9 thousand balloons, streamers and napkins: all in pink.  On the menu is a 17-layer cake, each layer a different flavour, with 6 zillion candles on top.  Not only will there be: a magician, camel rides and a Ferris wheel, but each lucky guest will receive a hamster as a party favour. In a kid-friendly countdown style towards the big day, our sweet party planner gets more and more excited as her birthday approaches and the plans get more and more grandiose.  Only after her mother comments that this birthday party is “getting out of hand” does she agree to skip the sparkly necklaces.  The day finally arrives and while it may not be the party she dreamed of, she is appreciative and enjoys her day so much that she immediately begins plans for her next birthday. This beautifully illustrated read-aloud captures the excitement of a child as she looks forward to her special day and will appeal to lower elementary grades as well as preschoolers.  The whimsical mostly-pink drawings may be initially off-putting to boys but they are certain to relate and enjoy the story. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Debbie FeisstDebbie is a Public Services Librarian at the H.T. Coutts Education Library at the University of Alberta.  When not renovating, she enjoys travel, fitness and young adult fiction. 

New Methods for C-N Ring Construction

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglass Taber
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Gold Complex ◽  
Cascade Process ◽  
State University ◽  
University Of Alberta ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
University Of New Mexico ◽  
Memory Of Chirality ◽  
Cu Catalyst ◽  
The University

Chaozhong Li of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry demonstrated (Organic Lett. 2008, 10, 4037) facile and selective Cu-catalyzed β-lactam formation, converting 1 to 2. Paul Helquist of the University of Notre Dame devised (Organic Lett. 2008, 10, 3903) an effective catalyst for intramolecular alkyne hydroamination, converting 3 into the imine 4. Six-membered ring construction worked well also. Jon T. Njardarson of Cornell University found (Organic Lett. 2008, 10, 5023) a Cu catalyst for the rearrangement of alkenyl aziridines such as 5 to the pyrroline 6. Philippe Karoyan of the UPMC, Paris developed (J. Org. Chem. 2008, 73, 6706) an interesting chiral auxiliary directed cascade process, converting the simple precursor 7 into the complex pyrrolidine 9. Sherry R. Chemler of the State University of New York, Buffalo devised (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 17638) a chiral Cu catalyst for the cyclization of 10, to give 12 with substantial enantiocontrol. Wei Wang of the University of New Mexico demonstrated (Chem. Commun. 2008, 5636) the organocatalyzed condensation of 13 and 14 to give 16 with high enantio- and diastereocontrol. Two complementary routes to azepines/azepinones have appeared. F. Dean Toste of the University of California, Berkeley showed (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2008, 130, 9244) that a gold complex catalyzed the condensation of 17 and 18 to give 19. Frederick G. West of the University of Alberta found (Organic Lett. 2008, 10, 3985) that lactams such as 20 could be ring-expanded by the addition of the propiolate anion 21. Takeo Kawabata of Kyoto University extended (Organic Lett . 2008, 10, 3883) “memory of chirality” studies to the cyclization of 23, demonstrating that 24 was formed in high ee. Paul V. Murphy of University College Dublin took advantage (Organic Lett . 2008, 10, 3777) of the well-known intramolecular addition of azides to alkenes, showing that the intermediate could be intercepted with nucleophiles such as thiophenol, to give the cyclized product 26 with high diastereocontrol.

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