Posts Tagged ‘slidy diner’

Swag…

Monday, October 13th, 2008

Tell me these are not the coolest temporary tattoos in the history of the universe.  Jaime designed them for Slidy Diner events and school visits!

Want a lemondrop?

PW Review!!!

Monday, October 13th, 2008

The Slidy Diner is one big health code violation: the proprietress wears a fly-covered sweater and “smells like rotten grill grease,” the toilet is a cesspool, “someone is usually running with scissors” and the sticky buns are scraped up off the floor. Even the people are ghoulish, with their flattened, oversize heads, blank eyes and doll-like bodies. Snyder, a debut picture book author and PW reviewer, and Zollars (Not in Room 204) serve up a wealth of Grand Guignol detail, beginning with the creepy premise: Edie, the narrator, claims she is held captive at the diner for stealing a lemon drop, and she gives a young patron the insider’s tour of the joint. Most of the best jokes are visual: the poison label stuck onto a countertop; pet food tins stashed amid the staples; a slice of pie garnished as if with eyeballs. The gross-out crowd will eat this up. Ages 5–8. (Oct.)

Eclectica Review!!!

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

(If Tom wrote a picture book, Jaime Zollars would HAVE to illustrate!)

It’s funny how different people get different things from a picture book. In her awesome review of Slidy Diner (for Eclectica), Colleen Mondor points unwittingly to my secret debt to the Tom Waits record, Bone Machine. Genre-defying punk-rock calliope?  Ummmmm, yeah!  I’ll take that, and write 10 more if someone gives me half a chance. Here ’tis:

Laurel Snyder combines a bit of grossness and some sly humor for her off-the-wall treat, Inside the Slidy Diner. The perfectly charming and cute protagonist Edie explains that she spends her days in the diner because she once “stole a lemon drop from the box behind the counter, and got caught.” Ethelmae, who runs the diner, “sees everything.” Edie sort of works at the diner to repay her transgression but mostly she observes all the strangeness, from the sometimes odd patrons (“a gray man at the counter who mumbles and smells like mice”), to the disgusting dishes (if it’s crunchy avoid it all costs). She happily points out the grease and leads her companion on a trip to the bathroom which becomes reminiscent of the search for the Grail and results in a most exquisite surprise.

Slidy Diner is genre-defying but dwells on the side of story-telling where carnivals and puppet shows and calliope music reside. It’s not a scary book at all—it’s too over-the-top for fear—but Snyder does dance right up to genuine fright; she almost dares the reader to think she will go over. But if you are brave enough to turn the pages past the icky food and slimy seats and through the flooded out basement then what you find is stars and crowns and giddy fun. So why is Edie really there and what is the Slidy Diner truly about? I have no idea but this odd little story with Jaime Zollars’ big lush illustrations, is something that has to be read to be truly appreciated. I don’t know how Snyder came up with it (I can’t imagine how she came up with this) but it’s an intrigue and curiosity and close to a punk picture book fairy tale. (If you like your fairy stories a bit dark and sneaky of course.)

What a review!!!

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

Wow! Wowowowowowowowow!  Seven Imposible Things totally gets the Slidy Diner!

Ever waited tables, Jules?

Slidy Review!!!

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

It isn’t out for another month yet, but Slidy Diner got a great mention in Wondertime‘s Halloween issue, and the result is exciting!  Today, a blog review by Nancy Arruda, who read it at BEA!

Yay!

I didn’t conceive of this as a Halloween book, but it makes a wonderful kind of sense.

Thanks to Nancy, and also to Daniel Pinkwater (who wrote it up for Wondertime!)

A big, big, BIG day!

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

Okay… so it’s officially official. I’m now an actual children’s author.  I stopped in at two local bookstores, and saw Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains face-out at both.

(here it is, at Little Shop of Stories!)

Then, in an odd coincidence, on Publisher’s Marketplace today, there was this…

Laurel Snyder’s PENNY DREADFUL, about a young girl who moves to a strange little town in the country  and has trouble making new friends amongst her rather odd neighbors, to Mallory Loehr at Random  House Children’s, by Tina Wexler at ICM (World).

So now I can shout about it. I’ve sold my third novel to my  awesome editor at Random House!!!

And to top it all off, Slidy Diner comes out in October!!!

I’m over, over, over the MOOOOOOOOOON!

Here’s a dazzler for ya…

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

So I’m surfing around the BEA site, and I see this: 

11:00AM – 12:30PM SPEED DATING WITH CHILDREN’S AUTHORS (Room 403AB)
Sponsored by the Children’s Booksellers and Publishers Committee [A cooperative committee of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC), and the Children’s Book Council (CBC)].

Get to know twenty children’s book creators up close and personal! Authors and illustrators will move from table to table, stopping for quick get-to-know-you chats. Please note: this event is for booksellers only!

Participating “dates” include: M.T. Anderson (Harcourt), Joan Bauer (Putnam/Penguin), Francesca Lia Block (HarperCollins), Cylin Busby (Bloomsbury), Cecil Castellucci (Candlewick), Tim Egan (Houghton Mifflin), Victoria Forester (Feiwel and Friends) Donna Freitas (FSG), Polly Horvath (Random House), James Lescene (HarperCollins), Barry Lyga (Houghton Mifflin), Brandon Mull (Shadow Mountain), Travis Nichols (Roaring Brook), Chris Raschka (Scholastic), Gary D.Schmidt (Clarion), David Shannon (Scholastic), Judy Sierra (Random House), Laurel Snyder (Tricycle), Nancy Werlin (Penguin), and Jane Yolen (Charlesbridge).

Um.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I was superexcited to go to BEA, and to do this event. But I do not think I realized that the other authors would all be… well, who they are.  Such names.  Real authors.  These folks have won Caldecott and Newbery and Edgar and National Book Award and Pulitzer prizes. And Academy Awards!!!

And prizes aside, Polly Horvath is a particular favorite of mine.

Like, wow. 

Oooh! Oooh!

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

It’s up online!  For all the world to see.  My very first picture book!

I have known for a looooooong time now that I would, in theory, have a picture book coming out in September of 2008.  But now I finally, fully, truly believe it.

Yay!

I am so so so so so excited about traveling the country with the boys, reading this book to little kids in amazing bookstores areound the US.

Can we sleep on your couch?