Oliver Jeffers’ New Book, Stuck, & The Giveaway Schmiveaway

Have I mentioned that I love EVERYTHING JEFFERS!!  Well, I do.  Recently, Non and I got the chance to meet Oliver Jeffers at the SCIBA Author Feast and Trade Show in Long Beach, California.  It was fantastic! Jeffers spoke and presented a slide show about his life that was perfectly him and hilarious.  It read like one of his picture books and the audience was enthralled.  Afterward, Oliver Jeffers was kind enough to sign my iPhone case which has an image from another one of his books, Lost and Found.

Me, Oliver Jeffers, Non

My signed iPhone Case

We also received his newest book, Stuck!

Stuck is amazing!  The book is about a boy named Floyd who gets his kite stuck in a tree.  Well, naturally, Floyd throws his shoe into the tree to knock down the kite, then his other shoe to knock down his shoe, then Mitch the cat gets tossed up in order to get the shoe down, and, in proper Jeffers humor, Floyd fetches a ladder which he chucks into the tree to get Mitch out.  The result is, as you would imagine, a whole lot of stuff stuck in a tree.

My new Giveaway Schmiveaway is a SIGNED copy of Oliver Jeffers’ book, The Way Back Home!!!  It is a great book about two unlikely allies trying to find their way home.

Enter to win by subscribing to Read Schmead and by posting comments. Every current and new subscriber is entered into the contest automatically. If you happen to leave comments on posts then those will count as additional entries. Winners will be picked randomly.

All Jeffers Books:

Age Group: Embryo and up
Genre: Picture Book, Friendship, Home
Themes: Family, Friendship
Publisher: Philomel Books, Division of Penguin Young Readers Group

iPhone + Oliver Jeffers = Love

Me and my iPhone - Buddies for life!

I have finally been accepted into the iPhone club (a not so elite group of giddy iPhone owners)!  For my birthday last month my loving family and husband all chipped in to get me the iPhone 4 for Verizon.  I am very excited to have this little piece of electronic heaven.  Not just because the iPhone is amazing, but also because I ordered/made a most amazing case for it through Cafe Press.  It features one of my favorite illustrated books, Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.  Check out this previous blog review, Everything Jeffers.  If you are an iPhone user then check out Cafe Press and make your own iPhone case.  I love, love, love mine.

Note:  If you do order a case like this then I recommend using a black magic marker around the edges of the camera lens hole (of the case, not the phone!).  Do this before putting the phone into the case so you don’t accidentally marker on the phone.  This will make your pictures look lovely instead of washed out from the reflected flash.

Lost & Found Trailer

I really must own this.

Everything Jeffers

The mind of Oliver Jeffers is brilliant.  He has a way of capturing a brief moment and an inexpressible feeling in time within each picture book.  Every story he has created has left a very specific and lovely impression on my heart.  I hope this is not overstating it, but I love everything Oliver Jeffers.  His newest book, Heart in a Bottle, is no exception.

It is hard to explain Heart in a Bottle.  Everything I say will do it an injustice, but it had a lasting impact on me.  It is incredibly touching.  Jeffers captures emotions with very little (and even a bit abstract) text.  The story centers around a young girl who grows to be an adult.  At the beginning of the story she is full of wonder and excitement of the world, but the person she shares that with goes away (dies, or so it is implied by just an empty chair).  The absence of this figure causes her to put her heart in a bottle, but the consequences of locking away, protecting that precious heart is a loss of passion and love that she felt as a child.  It is not until she sees the wonder and enthusiasm of another child that she realizes what she has been missing by closing herself off to the world.  Here I take so many words just to explain this story, but Jeffers uses just enough.  His pictures fill in the details causing me to feel more than just read.  That is what Jeffers does with all of his stories.  It seems as though he is trying to tell  us, to remind us, that books, especially illustrated books, should show us the emotions and not just tell us how to feel them.

Age Group: Perhaps 4/5 and up – DEFINITELY FOR ADULTS dealing with grief and loneliness
Genre: Illustrated Book
Themes: Loneliness, Loss, Grief, Imagination, Emotions,
Publisher: Philomel Books, Imprint of Penguin Putnam

Wonderful books by Oliver Jeffers: