The Songbook Highway

THE MIGHTY GRASSHOPPERS: REBEL ROCK

Chris LeRoy — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:12:31 +0000

THE MIGHTY GRASSHOPPERS: REBEL ROCK

40 Forever: Maurice Sendak

Chris LeRoy — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:47:54 +0000

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Maurice Sendak

It’s a very sad day today in Libraryland. Beloved author/illustrator Maurice Sendak passed away at the age of 82. I met him when I was about 9 years old. My mother and I waited for hours in the rain at a book signing event in New Haven. When it was finally my turn, he took my well-worn copy of Where the Wild Things Are and scraped off the ice cream and candy drippings that were embedded in the cover. Then he drew a picture of a wild thing for me with the note “Becky-Boo!”

Sendak, Maurice. Where the Wild Things Are. New York: Harper & Row, 1963. Print.

Mr. Sendak lived in Connecticut near my old library. I had a couple of nice phone conversations with his partner regarding artwork for the library. Mr. Sendak was very generous and replaced the pieces which were destroyed in a fire.

Sendak, Maurice. Alligators All Around: An Alphabet. New York: Harper & Row, 1962. Print.

Alligators All Around is my all-time favorite alphabet book. It is one of the few alphabet books that incorporates verbs. For example, H = Having headaches, I = Imitating Indians . . . M = Making macaroni, N = Never napping, P = Pushing people, etc.

Pay tribute to this great author/illustrator by visiting your local library and checking out his books. Don’t have a library card? No problem! Just bring your photo i.d. and you should get one for free right on the spot.

EVENT: Johnny Hickman MEASURE OF A MAN download

Chris LeRoy — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:08:16 +0000

From Johnny’s upcoming solo album comes a straight on acoustic arrow, “Measure of a Man.”

DOWNLOAD MEASURE OF A MAN HERE

WELCOME! Cynthia Linville: THE LOST THING

Chris LeRoy — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:59:24 +0000

Cynthia Linville has a new poetry book out now!

Here is a quick review:

“And I cannot un-choose you” are the haunting words that open “I Chose You” in Cynthia Linville’s new poetry collection The Lost Thing, covering adventures in lust and longing. Linville shows astonishing insight into the ephemeral nature of lust, one of the sadder aspects of love. Her work about hedonistic heartbreak is timeless and universal. We discover how big the poet’s heart is as she describes the torture of memory and the youthful desire to encompass the world, to know everything, to be everywhere. “Aperture,” a two-line poem, can be applied not only to sex but to all existence. How well she describes the panic of those “Kissed by Venus” – one of her apt titles – as well as [how] “this hot thunder can’t last.”

Patricia Hickerson
Poet and former Penthouse writer

Go to http://www.coldriverpress.org/HTML/lost%20thing.htm and get the full story….

EVENT! Cynthia Linville: The Lost Thing

Chris LeRoy — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 04:52:19 +0000

Buy THE LOST THING here….

http://www.coldriverpress.org/HTML/lost%20thing.htm

Read what some are saying of her new work:

Cynthia Linville‘s The Lost Thing finds love all over again, time after time, and in everything from sea-breezes to those nights when “the sharp stars/ sting/ like grit in my eye.” When I read her work I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s voice of Joan of Arc when Joan is asked if she is in a state of grace. She says: “If I am in a state of grace, I pray God keep me there and if I am not in a state of grace I pray God place me there.” Linville resides in a state of grace, stays there and invites us into that state to share it in a lovely poetry she crafts with a sure voice and a total command of her medium. Read this book.

D. R. Wagner
Poet, Musician, Visual Artist and Lecturer in Design – UC Davis

Cynthia Linville’s new book, The Lost Thing, is an eloquent testimony to love, mostly love lost but also an unquenchable affirmation of life. The honesty with which she views life is manifest in these words: “even the sweetest of pilgrimage shatters/ under too much light.” She is not afraid to expose the intensity of her varied life under this light. Nature is an integral part of many poems: the “forbidden plum,” the bees at Joshua Tree National Park, or Duncan’s Landing that is a “briny repository of secrets.” There is also the strangler vine that destroys her grandparents’ home. In her last poem, “I am Fortune’s ungraceful daughter,” she asks that time be returned back to her. “Return it to me,” she says, words that echo in the heart for many of us, and this book of poems is one to which you will want to return.

Allegra Jostad Silberstein
Poet Laureate for the city of Davis, CA

“And I cannot un-choose you” are the haunting words that open “I Chose You” in Cynthia Linville’s new poetry collection The Lost Thing, covering adventures in lust and longing. Linville shows astonishing insight into the ephemeral nature of lust, one of the sadder aspects of love. Her work about hedonistic heartbreak is timeless and universal. We discover how big the poet’s heart is as she describes the torture of memory and the youthful desire to encompass the world, to know everything, to be everywhere. “Aperture,” a two-line poem, can be applied not only to sex but to all existence. How well she describes the panic of those “Kissed by Venus” – one of her apt titles – as well as [how] “this hot thunder can’t last.”

Patricia Hickerson
Poet and former Penthouse writer

Cynthia Linville has lived in London, New York, San Francisco and outside of Washington DC but keeps coming back to live in her hometown of Sacramento. She has taught in the English Department at California State University, Sacramento since 2000. She is active in the local poetry scene, hosting readings and reading with the group Poetica Erotica as well as on her own. Cynthia served as Poetry Editor of Poetry Now from 2008-2010 and continues to serve as Managing Editor of Convergence: an online journal of poetry and art (www.convergence-journal.com). Ms. Linville regularly contributes her poetry to the Sacramento News and Review, Medusa’s Kitchen and WTF. A music aficionado with a theater background, she is usually out and about supporting the arts.

102pp. + Soft Cover. Perfect Bound. 6″ x 9″. Limited,
signed and numbered 200 first run print is $15.00.
Additional print runs will not be numbered.
Shipping Included

Paul Adams Listening Theme 68 – British Heavy Metal

Chris LeRoy — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:46:45 +0000

Listening Theme 68 – British Heavy Metal

by Paul Adams on Monday, April 16, 2012 at 12:02pm ·

Hi all,

It’s been a while (sorry about that) but I’ve dusted off the cobwebs to bring you another Listening Theme. This time it’s the turn of BRITISH HEAVY METAL. As usual, I’d like your recommendations. I’d really like specific albums not just band names, that way I can really focus in on the very best of British metal.

Looking forward to your suggestions, but remember they must be A) BRITISH and B) LOUD!!!.

Cheers, Paul

40 Forever: Coming This August

Chris LeRoy — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:38:38 +0000

Coming this August . .

The Bell Jar meets Hatchet meets Into the Wild . . .

Morel, Alex. Survive. New York, NY: Penguin (Razorbill), 2012. Print.
ISBN 9781595145109

Survive is one of the most emotionally intense YA novels I’ve read in a long time. It’s the story of a deeply depressed teenage girl who convinces the staff at her psychiatric facility that she is well enough to travel home on a week-long pass. On the flight to visit her parents, she slips into the airplane bathroom and pours herself a handful of pills. Before she has time to swallow, the plane crashes, and she passes out. She awakes to discover that she is one of only two plane crash survivors. She and her seatmate (a cute mountain climber) are left to struggle for their lives on an uninhabited mountain in the middle of a blizzard.

This psychological adventure story was written by one of my high school classmates, Alex Morel. I don’t think that my high school produced any professional athletes, but it did put out some extremely talented published authors: Eric Boehlert, Suzanne Brockmann, Suzanne Kingsbury, J.M. Steele, and David Allen Sibley.

Sibley, David. The Sibley Guide to Birds. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000. Print.

DARKMAN: a song about mark linkous

Chris LeRoy — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 19:29:15 +0000

http://www.reverbnation.com/c./poni/101098976

DARKMAN

Another dark man
Out in the jet stream
Another great plan
Another dark dream
Just ask his cell phone
Ask his advisers
When it’s all over
Who was the wiser?
Another dark man

They’re coming over
They have the car keys
They have agendas
They are the enemy
Just ask his hangers on
And the survivors
When its all over
Who was the wiser?
Another dark man

I barely knew him
It didn’t take long
He was a mystery
Wrapped in a sad song
Just ask the howlin’ wind
The dust that rises
When it’s all over baby
No one’s the wiser
Another dark man

There goes the dark man
Out in the jet stream
One soul is touching down
Another leaving
There goes a dark man
There goes a dark man
There goes a dark man
Another dark man

40 Forever: The Scar

Chris LeRoy — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:37:07 +0000

Remembering

Moundlic, Charlotte, and Olivier Tallec. The Scar. Somerville, Mass: Candlewick Press, 2011. Print.

When I was little, my Uncle Brian (who was more like a big brother because he was only 8 years older than me and lived with us sometimes) was killed. When my mom and I stayed with my grandparents that summer, I slept in his old bedroom. I used to go into his closet and deeply breathe in his scent which still lingered on his clothes. (When I close my eyes and think back, I can still smell the inside of his favorite baseball cap and feel the soft, yet rough texture of his plaid flannel jacket.)

When he was dying in the hospital, I remember being very angry with my mother for leaving me behind in Connecticut. In fact, I am still ashamed of something I said to her on the phone. I thought that perhaps the whole thing was a farce and everyone was really having a party and just didn’t want to invite me. I said to my poor grieving mother, “I hope you’re having fun.” Even though I was only 10, I still find it hard to forgive myself for that nasty comment.

The Scar is the most accurate depiction of a grieving child that I have ever read. The main character of this outstanding picture book by Charlotte Moundlic and Olivier Tallec is a young boy has just lost his mother. Even though it’s hot and stuffy inside, he doesn’t want anyone to open the windows because he wants to keep his mother’s scent in the house. Unlike many children’s books about death, the story is not overly sweet or sentimental. For instance, the boy even yells at his father and grandmother. When the grandmother consoles him and says that his mother lives in his heart, the boy runs until he is out of breath so that he can feel his mother beating in his chest.

Although it’s about the loss of a mother, this book is for anyone who has ever lost a household member. It literally gives me goose bumps.

Posted by Rebecca Hickman at 12:11 PM

40 FOREVER: A (Yarn) Yarn

Chris LeRoy — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:51:21 +0000

A (yarn) yarn

Barnett, Mac, and J Klassen. Extra Yarn. New York: Balzer + Bray, 2012. Print.

So far, this is my favorite picture book of the year because it makes me laugh. (The humor is a little off-kilter, which makes it even more fun.)

Extra Yarn is the story of a girl named Annabelle who brings some light into her cold, gloomy town by knitting everyone colorful sweaters. She even knits one for Little Louis! (There is no explanation as to why she would have left poor Louis out, except that he appears to be a half-size man with a full-size beard. Is he the village idiot?) She wants to knit a sweater for Mr. Crabtree who “never wore sweaters or even long pants” and is pictured wearing boxer shorts and a wife beater shirt. He declines her offer, so she makes him a hat instead. (Is he the village exhibitionist?)

One day an evil archduke sails into town on a mission to steal Annabelle’s yarn. He declares: “Little girl, I curse you with my family’s curse! You will never be happy again!” (For some reason, this cracks me up.)

Good wins out over evil, and in the end “it turned out that she was.” On the last page we see Annabelle perched comfortably on a yarn-covered tree branch accompanied by a few sweater-clad dogs and cats. This is her happy ending. (No handsome prince needed–just a couple of pets for good company.)

Posted by Rebecca Hickman at 11:31 PM

Labels: books, children’s literature, dogs