{"id":12908,"date":"2011-03-17T14:56:06","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T21:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hereville.com\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2011-03-17T14:56:06","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T21:56:06","slug":"hereville-is-knocked-out-of-the-battle-of-the-kids-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=12908","title":{"rendered":"Hereville is knocked out of The Battle Of The Kids Books!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alas, Hereville <\/em>has been knocked out of the SLJ Battle of the Kid’s Books<\/a>! Congratulations to Kathi Appelt’s Keeper<\/a><\/em>, which won the round.<\/p>\n

It’s hard for me to feel bad about this, though. For one thing, Keeper <\/em>sounds like a terrific book (and I intend to read it). For another, Hereville was one of only 16 books published in 2010 — out of the tens of thousands of kids books published in a year — to be selected to participate in the Battle at all.<\/p>\n

And finally, the judge for this round, Susan Patron<\/a>, had this to say about Hereville<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword<\/em>, a graphic novel by Barry Deutsch, must be the only book ever whose outside front cover made me laugh. \u201cYet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl,\u201d it proclaims. Thick, shiny, paper painted in shades of coral, brown, black and white\u2014changing to deep purples and grays in the scary night scenes\u2014feel silky to the touch. Every page is vibrant with energetic pictures, dialogue, sound effects\u2014and extremely minimal exposition.<\/p>\n

The story plays with genres, tilting them on their sides; using incongruity, it skewers conventions. Seemingly we are in the middle of a Hansel and Gretel pastiche, a fairy tale, in which the characters sprinkle their dialogue with Yiddish words, \u201cA klog iz mir: Woe is me!\u201d as well as expressions like \u201cYaaaah!\u201d \u201dMumph!\u201d and \u201cAaak!\u201d Mirka, one daughter in a large family of sibs and step-sibs, rebels against the traditional role expected of her in the Orthodox Jewish community of Hereville. Rather than learning such \u201cwomanly arts\u201d as knitting, she wants to fight dragons. There is lots of very clever stuff here: visual jokes such as an illustration contained within an exclamation point, table legs morphing into trees, and a deliciously horrid troll.<\/p>\n

Wit and irony also abound in the text: a monster pig eats Mirka\u2019s homework, Mirka and her clever, loving stepmother engage in wonderfully funny debates, and some Orthodox traditions are gently poked fun at (\u201cpreparing for all that non-working [on Shabbos] takes a lot of work!\u201d and \u201cIn Hereville, kids aren\u2019t allowed to have non-Jewish books. So Mirka keeps hers hidden\u201d). I was hugely entertained, even as one tender scene brought tears to my eyes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

How can I possibly feel bad about that? :-D<\/p>\n

(Info about purchasing Hereville <\/em>can be found here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alas, Hereville has been knocked out of the SLJ Battle of the Kid’s Books! Congratulations to Kathi Appelt’s Keeper, which won the round. It’s hard for me to feel bad about this, though. For one thing, Keeper sounds like a terrific book (and I intend to read it). For another, Hereville was one of only […] Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syndicated-feeds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12908"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13148,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12908\/revisions\/13148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}