Fresh Approaches: New Editions and Reissues

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Joy Fleishhacker -- School Library Journal, 6/9/2008 8:14:00 AM

Freshen up the Newbery Shelves

The phrase “oldie but goodie” is particularly appropriate for Newbery Medal-winning works, which frequently appear on recommended or required reading lists. Librarians know that a jacket can make or break a book, and even with classics, the added enticement of an attractive cover can persuade middle graders to read the first page…and then become hooked. It’s time to retire dusty copies with old-fashioned, off-putting book designs and replace them with eye-grabbing new editions.

The Aladdin reprint of Will James’s Smoky the Cowhorse (Scribner, 1925) sports a fresh cover painting showing a spirited stallion dramatically rearing up on hind legs, while off in the distance, a determined cowboy whirls a lasso. Awarded the Newbery Medal in 1927, this classic horse story evokes the Old West with laid-back language and a sense of wide-open freedom.

Set in ancient Japan, Elizabeth Coatsworth’s The Cat Who Went to Heaven (Macmillan, 1930), the 1931 Newbery winner, tells the tale of an impoverished artist who reluctantly agrees to take in a cat brought home by his kindhearted housekeeper—a decision that reverberates with surprising consequences. With a bright-hued cover depicting the gracefully posed feline, the Aladdin edition also has new interior artwork by Raoul Vitale, the illustrator of Emily Rodda’s “Fairy Realm” series (HarperCollins). The realistic full-page shaded sketches and smaller vignettes evoke a sense of time and place and make the characters more accessible.

During a sizzling summer on her family’s farm, nine-year-old Garnet Linden finds a silver thimble in a dried-up riverbed and feels sure that it is magical, especially when a drought-ending rain falls that very night, thus beginning the amazing events of Thimble Summer (Holt, 1938). Elizabeth Enright’s novel earned the Newbery in 1939. While retaining the author’s interior illustrations, the new Square Fish edition has an updated cover—showing a pigtailed, overall-clad girl, her face raised to relish the rain—that tempts readers in.

Harold Courlander and George Herzog’s The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories (Holt, 1947) has long been a storyteller’s staple. Sprinkled with Madye Lee Chastain’s detailed drawings, this collection of 17 traditional tales was a 1948 Newbery honor book. The Square Fish reprint’s inviting cover art, featuring an African storyteller and her rapt audience, was painted by Yan Nascimbene, who did the lovely illustrations for Pamela S. Turner’s Hachiko: The True Story of a Loyal Dog (Houghton, 2004).

In I, Juan de Pareja (Farrar, 1965), the slave of the great 17th-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez tells a tale that touches on themes of creative expression, overcoming boundaries, and the powerful bonds of friendship. Elizabeth Borton de Treviño’s gripping work of biographical fiction, the 1966 Newbery medalist, has been reissued (Square Fish) with a colorful cover mélange of Velázquez’s paintings, including his circa 1650 portrait of de Pareja.

Although everyone else in her small Canadian fishing village believes that her parents perished at sea during a storm, 11-year-old Primrose is sure they will return. Polly Horvath’s Everything on a Waffle (Farrar, 2001), a 2002 Newbery honor book, is told in an endearing first-person narrative that combines quirky humor with steadfast hope. The cover art for the Square Fish edition, which shows the charismatic main character contemplating a tower of waffles layered with other treats, captures the book’s flavor and is sure to whet readers’ appetites.

Pub Info

COATSWORTH, Elizabeth. The Cat Who Went to Heaven. illus. by Raoul Vitale. S & S/Aladdin. 2008. pap. $4.99. ISBN 978-1-4169-4973-2.

COURLANDER, Harold & George Herzog. The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories. illus. by Madye Lee Chastain. Square Fish/Macmillan. 2008. pap. $6.99. ISBN 978-0-312-38006-9.

ENRIGHT, Elizabeth. Thimble Summer. illus. by author. Square Fish/Macmillan. 2008. pap. $6.99. ISBN 978-0-312-38002-1.

HORVATH, Polly. Everything on a Waffle. Square Fish/Macmillan. 2008. pap. $6.99. ISBN 978-0-312-38004-5.

JAMES, Will. Smoky the Cowhorse. S & S/Aladdin. 2008. pap. $6.99. ISBN 978-1-4169-4941-1.

TREVIÑO, Elizabeth Borton. I, Juan de Pareja. Square Fish/Macmillan. 2008. pap. $6.99. ISBN 978-0-312-38005-2.