Fizz and Peppers Got a New Cover!
Remember my obsession for Fizz and Peppers? Do you also recall my adoration for Bryan Collins?
You can imagine my squeals of joy when this happened:
This second is my favorite. Munk really POPS!
Just thought I’d share and send two of my favorite people to promote some online love.
Fairy Bell (and Fizz)
Title: Fairy Bell Sisters: Sylva and the Fairy Ball
Author: Margaret McNamara
Illustrator: Julia Denos
Kiddo is on a Peter Pan kick. We’re reading bits of Peter Pan every night before bed. She’s watching the Disney movie as I type this. A few months back she watched the ballet.
Not just Peter Pan, though. She loves ALL things Neverland. Jake & the Neverland Pirates is a huge favorite and she’s dying for the lego set. I’m making her wait until her birthday. Speaking of birthdays, the child wants a Neverland themed party. She will dress as Tinker Bell, she says, someone must be Peter Pan. Everyone else has to be a lost boy. If we could get one of the grandfathers or uncles to be Captain Hook I think the girl might die of happiness on the spot. She loves Captain Hook. Also, she has an unusual amount of adoration for crocodiles and clocks.
So, naturally, when she saw a book at the library with a fairy she squealed, “Tinka Bell.” Her “er” sounds don’t always makes it all the way out of her mouth. She’s only three. I explained that the book was about Tinker Bell’s little sisters. She was blinded by fairy wings and shoved them in the library bag.
Warning to other Moms: THIS IS NOT A STORY ABOUT TINKER BELL.
Or Neverland.
My daughter had to remind me of this on nearly every page. I cannot express enough how disappointed she was…
Until the TROLLS arrived.
Apparently we are a troll-loving family. Both me and my daughter loved The Three Billy Goats Gruff (my grandmother read it to me when I spent the night at her house and kiddo has her own updated version we read all the time).
She is fascinated by The Hobbit. Mostly, I think, for the troll scene. She has seen the live action movie, but she relishes the 1970’s cartoon.
And of course – we adore Fizz & Peppers. I adore Fizz & Peppers and I think she loves it a bit because I do – but it is heaven. And full of trolls.
Ultimately, she enjoyed the book, but decided she didn’t want to read the rest of the series yet. At the end of the Fairy Bell ball story there is a blueberry birthday cake – and a blueberry fairy cake recipe. So, naturally, we baked. Oddly enough, we had freshly picked blueberries in our fridge… picked by M.G. King (the author of Fizz & Peppers!) and delivered to our house!
Another odd coincidence for this reading adventure… take a look at these chapters:
The books have nothing in common. And somehow managed to have everything in common. It was one of those reading experiences where we could not sit down and read one without thinking of the other. Note: Chapter three of the Fairy Bell Sisters book ends on that page. On the next page begins chapter four.
Til the next reading adventure…
The Latest from M.G. King!
Title: The Clock Snatcher
Author: M.G. King
Illustrators: Angela A. Corson & Sebastian Alvarado
Genre: Children’s Picture Books
NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Bartholomew the Dragon
When I heard M.G. King was writing another book, I was pretty excited. We love Librarian on the Roof! here at our house and I completely devoured Fizz & Peppers. Anything M.G. King touches, pretty much turns to gold in my opinion. She’s Texas’ very own Rumpelstiltskin.
This latest picture book is 47 pages long, with a lot of glorious black and white pictures. Think The Spider and the Fly when Tony DiTerlizzi did the illustrations – a myth to last the ages in combination with high quality sketches can’t go wrong.
Right now the book is only $3.99 on Kindle. Maybe if everyone buys one and supports our favorite local kid’s author there will be a hardback edition in our future. My bookshelves are already itching for a copy… I can hear them calling for it… this book belongs in every mother’s library… and child’s, and dragon lovers’, and clock collector, and art appreciator, and…
Word Love
Photograph by Maureen F, click to visit her Flickr page.
I have a strangely inappropriate love for certain words. One of them is wafted.
wafted past participle, past tense of waft
VerbPass or cause to pass easily or gently through or as if through the air: “the smell of stale fat wafted out from the restaurant”.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned my love for this word in this blog somewhere before, I know I briefly commented on it in my review of Kendall Grey’s Inhale. But while reading Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, I decided this topic deserved its very own post – not just a brief comment.
It struck me, much more strongly than ever before, how much I truly love this word as I read these lines:
“His napkin clung to his waist for a moment, hanging absurdly, like a loin cloth, and then wafted to the floor in slow motion.” – On Chesil Beach, pg. 33
Because there I was reading Ian McEwan’s book, completely uninterested and partly uncomfortable by the topic altogether, until that word hit the page. With one word, my entire mindset turned around. With one word, I thought: McEwan really is a lovely writer.
As soon as that thought struck me and I was able to identify where it came from, I recalled reading that word somewhere else earlier in the week. I poked around in my reading material a bit and found that M.G. King used it in Fizz & Peppers. Not only did she use it, I found that I had whimsically underlined it without giving it a single thought. I often read with a pen or pencil in my hand. You can often find doodles, or notes, or sporadic underlining in many of my books. It is something that often happens without thought, and sometimes upon re-reading the title, without reason. It seems as though, while reading Fizz & Peppers, I came across that word, and my pencil just reached out from my hand and licked it like it was a delicious bit of whip cream on top of a fine dessert.
“Even before he made it halfway down the hall he felt the hot, soggy air wafting through the house.” – Fizz & Peppers
Well, it doesn’t have to be in past tense, you see, I like any form of the word waft:
Definition of WAFT
intransitive verb: to move or go lightly on or as if on a buoyant medium <heavenly aromas wafted from the kitchen>transitive verb
: to cause to move or go lightly by or as if by the impulse of wind or waves— waft·er noun
Although these fonts aren’t doing the word justice, in all its forms I just love that word. The deep smile it gives me is inevitable. And I couldn’t tell you whether it starts with my lips and seeps down into my gut or if it is the reverse, but I cannot read the word waft without becoming inexplicably happy.
I would like to go on a hunt through my personal library and see where else I have made note of this wonderful word in my books. That would take years, but it would be a worthy cause. From now on, I’ll just remember to make note in my journals of where I have read it and who wrote it.
Click to visit book blog: Wafting Through the Bookshelf, adventures in bookwaft
Do you have any favorite words? Another of mine is speakeasy, I like they way it feels when it is spoken aloud, but I have no deep love for the meaning. Waft is unique for me in that I love every aspect of it, how it sounds, what it means, the elegance it gives a sentence when it used, the image I have in my mind when I read it… oh yes, but what is your favorite word? And why do you like it?
M.G. King: the new voice of young adult fantasy
Title: Fizz & Peppers
Author: M.G. King
Genre: Young Adult/Fantasy/Adventure
“Sometimes great ideas are so genius and unlikely they fall from the heavens; but sometimes the best ones are simple, waiting to be found already in the palm of your hand.”
I don’t know if this idea fell from the heavens or was found in the palm of King’s hands, but Fizz & Peppers is utter genius. It’s quite possible we have the next J.K. Rowling on our hands, folks.
Meet Colin Colbeck and a girl named Pepper, arch enemies and ex-best friends. Also, meet Colin’s kid brother Sid… by the way, he has trolls living under his bed. There’s also a nutty but endearing grandmother to rescue, an entire world under suburbia and the nearby wood, thrums, hot peppers, and a game called knattlebones.
This book, written by a mom for and with her own middle-grade sons, is about two boys who are full of some of the most “brilliantly, beautiful idea[s] ever to be thought of in the history of the world” as they fight off trolls to rescue their kidnapped, sometimes senile grandmother from the bottom of the world.
What an imagination this family has! The family responsible for writing the book that is… After reading King’s dedication at the front of the book to her “what if?” family, immediately I wanted to be a fly on the wall at their house as they speculate the nature of the world. What minds! To come up with the idea that a little bit of fizz from a soda pop would wake up a sleeping troll from a stone-like state and send them romping the underground, free to steal from (and eat!) Peoplekins and wreak havoc on everything.
Not every author can make such a smooth transition between genres – picture book to young adult is a couple hundred page leap – but King has done an excellent job. Fizz & Peppers is just as wonderful as Librarian on the Roof, and I am excited to have an author to share with my daughter for her whole life, not just her babyhood.
The only draw back is that Fizz & Peppers is currently only available on e-book, and I am very old fashioned when it comes to books… I like them in my hands, I like to sniff their pages, I like the risk of a paper cut. Lucky me, King printed me a copy in a binder! (Yes, I am bragging to cyberspace, I have this book in a binder! And I feel special.)
Reminiscent of The Labyrinth (come on you ’80’s kids, I know you were fascinated with Jareth the Goblin King as much as I was) and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Fizz & Peppers will captivate you and keep you wide-eyed from the first hint of a troll until the very last drop of ginger ale. It’s a fantastic adventure for all ages that I believe will stand the test of time.
***UPDATE*** Fizz & Peppers is now available in paperback!
Fizz & Peppers
From the author of Librarian on the Roof comes Fizz & Peppers…
Out in E-book March 7th, 2013!
Purchase Fizz & Peppers
Story Time Party With M.G. King
With summer in full gear, story time at Half Price Books in Humble has become a force to be reckoned with, but mostly because M.G. King is quite possibly one of the coolest ladies I’ve ever met and she was kind enough to do a reading and book signing in place of the usual kid’s story time on Wednesday.
There was a fun little song, a reading of Librarian on the Roof!
Make your own poof book! http://www.vickiblackwell.com/makingbooks/poofbook.htm
Read my review of Librarian on the Roof! https://anakalianwhims.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/weekly-low-down-on-kids-books-31312/
Anakalian Whims 