The Chicago Underground Library (CUL) is something we’re duck-lucky to have in our city — founded in 2006 by Nell Taylor and Emerson Dameron, CUL connects, introduces, and surprises all kinds of rad Chicago writer-types. It’s a place for inspiration and — after jumping from a few boxes in the basement of Mercury Café to a full-fledged nonprofit in just four years — a model for growth. Even The New York Times did a head-snap.

As well it should! CUL has a rainbow-awesome archive, highlighting Chicago’s independent media and small press communities through an open acquisitions policy (meaning: it wants you) and a radical, straightforward cataloging process. CUL has crazy-awesome programming, riffing on everything from science fairs to roadshows to squid. Plus CUL has a straight-up-awesome staff, kind and savvy too — check the blog to drool over their bookshelves.

Want in on the excellence? This Saturday, January 30th from 3-5, CUL is holding an open house in the sparkly new space it’s sharing with Red Tape Theatre Company (621 W. Belmont, 2nd floor).

This is the perfect time to meet the staff or learn about upcoming programming (for example, the Storefront Theatre Project and Tuesday night Worklucks). To preview the new catalog. To high-five Nell Taylor. To donate your own works. You can also gawk at the archive (Gwendolyn Brooks chapbooks!), BYOB, or sign up to volunteer. See also: free drinks and free cookies.

P.S. Literago is not dating, related to, or paid by anyone at CUL. We’re in awe for real.

Monsters and Dust, the glorious new online magazine spearheaded by Aay Preston-Myint, Chris Pappas, and Joe Proulx — accurate adjectives on their website include innovative, fantastic, fabulous, subversive, radical, thoughtful, hilarious, witty, shrewd, cynical, optimistic, dark, surreal, sublime — recently announced their Spring 2010 theme, “Flowers”. To submit to it and/or future issues (”Ice”, “Barter”), go here, now!

We Literagonians get excited about lots of things — Mary Hamilton winning Rose Metal Press’s Short Short Chapbook Contest, for example — but we’re particularly jonesed for Write Club, a soon-to-be-monthly reading series launching this Friday, January 29th, 9pm at Prop Theater (3502 N Elston). Tonight’s inaugural battle is a part of Rhino Theater Fest, also $15 or pay-what-you-can, with proceeds benefiting Haiti.

The gist: two opposing writers have seven minutes apiece to discuss, argue, illustrate two opposing topics. Then the audience chooses a winner. The press release has lots of exciting language about high-velocity and picking teeth off canvas, so we’re fingers-crossed for a real live bloody-knuckle battle.

Tonight’s lineup: FATE (Jonathan Messinger) v FREE WILL (Christopher Platt), SEX (Eric Ziegenhagen) v. DEATH (Kristiana Rae Colón), LIGHT (Ian Belknap, who founded the series) v. DARK (Jenny Magnus). Wow, yes? See you all there — anyone who wimps out because of snow is a moron.

P.S. Please note that at least four of those topics — FREE WILL especially — can be written easily across knuckles with Sharpie.

What’s that you say? The holidays are so, like, over? OK, duly noted. But for my first real KL post, I’m going to share one of the books I gave Thalia for Christmas ‘09. Mind you, in the past couple of weeks I’ve compiled quite a list of ideas for future KL exploration, but my favorite of our newest additions seems as good and simple a place to start as any.

A Penguin Story, by Antoinette Portis

Harper Collins

40 pp.

PERFECT FOR: Dreamers, people who want to move away from home, people who have moved away from home, eternal seekers, the insatiably curious, those who bore easily, fans of the color orange, fans of the color green, fans of penguins.

We were already big fans of Portis’s first book, Not a Box, so when I saw this new one from her on The New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books 2009 list, it didn’t take me long to decide it’d be one of our Christmas adoptees. And I was in love on first read—in love with Portis’s simple, bold illustrations, rough and clean at the same time; in love with the story, which follows penguin Edna, weary of her home turf, as she looks for that “something else” that she knows must be out there, somewhere. The other penguins just want to play penguin games, but Edna is devoted to her search. And yep, her devotion pays off. Color represents the “something else”: Edna’s North Pole home is exclusively white, black, and blue, and what she finds—the tents and parkas, etc. of a team of research scientists—is brilliant orange.

She shares her discovery with the rest of her penguin crew, and the birds delight in their encounter with the scientists, who offer them an orange glove as a souvenir. But on the final page, Edna, our dear seeker of new experience, stands atop an icy outlook, wearing the orange glove as a jester hat, staring out at the blue, blue sea. “The next day, Edna wonders, What else could there be?” Behind her, on the facing page, a green boat is inching its way onto the horizon. The book’s end papers? Orange (front) and green (back).

I’m sure I don’t have to go on at length about how the theme of this book—the eternal search for the “something else”—should thrill any thinking adult. You’ll get it. That’s mainly why I’ve flipped over it, though it’d be a beautiful winner based on its look and design alone. A kid’s book that feeds the noisy adult mind’s need for meaning as well as it feeds its intended kiddo reader is a rare thing (rarer, maybe, than animated films that do the same?), and this is an exquisite example. And Thalia? She’s hooked too, on those sweet little penguins and the wide swaths of color and the pleasing geometry of each gorgeous page. And she wasted no time learning to see, and point out, the green boat…

I’ve already given A Penguin Story as a gift twice, and frankly, it’s killing me that I can’t show you every. single. page right now. It’s that good. (You can see a few pages, though not my absolute faves, here.)

(”I’ll never get tired of looking, thinks Edna.”)

THE2NDHAND, an awesome quarterly broadsheet/weekly online magazine whose archives you should read if you haven’t already, no really, we’re serious, just debuted a sweet mini-broadsheet series. “Mini” means the whole thing fits on one 8.5×11 sheet, so you can print out the whole thing while your boss is on the phone instead of waiting until she’s on break so you can load the special paper, only it fritzes and you’re left with three half-printed sheets, which you can’t really read so feel extra-badly about wasting and, well, you know what we’re saying. The series kicks off with a story by C.T. Ballentine and a short by Doug Milam. Download and print here.

Who: Kathleen Rooney and Erika “Ace” Mikkalo
What: Release Party for For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs
Where: Women and Children First at 5233 N Clark St., Chicago
When: Wednesday, January 20, 7:30pm
Admission: Free! plus snacks

We figured it out! Kathleen Rooney is a superhero. We, who can sometimes barely microwave ourselves some Easy Mac before bed (and by “we” of course I mean “me”; sorry, Mom) are totally impressed by Rooney’s accomplishments, which include Rose Metal Press, several volumes of poetry with Elisa Gabbert, an award-winning book of poems over at Switchback Books, and the nonfiction Live Nude Girl. Supposedly also Rooney has time to do yoga and work in an office and not eat powdered macaroni. We are in awe.

Tonight, she’s celebrating the debut of For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs, a collection of essays about lots of things, including convents and pornography. We’re excited to hear her and co-reader Erika Mikkalo, who’s promised something awesome about animals or something awesome about tarot.

img src: Jeope Wolfe

Hello, all, and welcome to Literago’s kid lit column. It’s pretty simple, really: Chicago has kid lit authors and illustrators, Chicago has kids, Chicago has parents who want said kids to become book-loving, book-devouring geniuses. And finally, Chicago has this fine literary go-to site, and on it a contributor (hi!) with a healthy curiosity about books of the words-&-pictures variety.  Hence, Literago’s new column dedicated solely to children’s lit.

Like the adult stuff, children’s lit encompasses worlds, and I don’t plan to traverse all of them. My exploration will be focused on picture books – from, say, baby-friendly titles up to about age 8 or so. There may be exceptions—say, when I discover Chicagoland middle-grade or YA authors I simply can’t not rave about or pull into our lair for a quick Q&A, or otherwise flirt with and flatter. But mostly, what you can hope to find here is regular dish and dialogue (and I do hope it’s a dialogue!) on marvelous books for the blankie set.

I come to this column bubbling with semi-selfish excitement, but also a lick of humility. As mama to one book-crazy toddlerina, I’m hot for the picture books right now, too—i.e., enthusiasm I have in spades. But let’s face it: The kidlitosphere is richly populated enough already to, well, merit the description “kidlitosphere,” so who do I think I am, hoisting myself all up in here as a children’s lit blogger, adding my tinny chirp to the chorus?

I base my authority on two pieces of cred: A) I am writer of some things that’ve found their way into print, including one quasi YA novel, and B) that bona fide mama status I mentioned just above.

Which is to say: Not that much. But hopefully enough.

If I am so lucky to have other, more seasoned children’s book bloggers out there reading these words? Please do send word (to susannah.felts [at] gmail [dot] com). Take my sweaty, sticky little hand in yours, and let’s play nice. Please: send inspirations, kind nudges of direction, corrections where merited.

What I hope we’ll all get out of this: Inspiration and guidance for your next library or bookstore spree. A glance at the latest and best in newly published picture books. A doorway to the lively chatter in the kidlitosphere. Lively (and by lively, I mean toddler-worthy lively) discussions of kid lit old and new, and of the challenge of raising readers in not-so-book-besotted world (A licensed-character-driven narrative of a world. The question: To Elmo lit or not to Elmo lit?). And, as my toddler would say, with left pointer finger poking vigorously at right palm: “Meh,” or more.

I hope to offer you an idiosyncratic, at times irreverent, take on the books my family and I are digging at a given moment, on our adventures in reading. And I hope to bring in some children’s book writers and illustrators for hearty Q&A, especially those bedded down in, or with even the most tenuous ties to, Chicago. (Shout out via that email address above if this sounds like you; likewise, if you’re a publicist/publisher/author workin’ it…)

More soon, but for now, speaking of irreverence, I leave you with this bit o’ fun: “Mom Takes Children’s Songs Literally,” from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. (What are you talking about, “how I wonder what you are”? It’s a star. You just said it was a star.)

Check back soon for official column the first!

Lamestain news: disaster struck our pals at Artifice Magazine. Somebody nabbed Editor Rebekah’s wallet while she was at lunch, then drained the mag’s business account of nearly $2K. Luckily, the bank’s on Artifice’s side so the money should be returned in a couple weeks. However, the inaugural issue streets Feb. 1st, which means these kids need to pay postage and print costs now. Read up on what went down here — $400 to Banana Republic?! — and subscribe ASAP if you can. Planeteers, go!