In Brief: October 28

Swift Teams Up with Scholastic

On Wednesday afternoon, Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Taylor Swift participated in a 30-minute live webcast for classrooms organized by Scholastic. Nick Cannon, seen here with Swift during the webcast, which he hosted, interviewed the musician about the importance of reading during the event, which also featured a Q&A session and a performance by Swift. Those who missed seeing the webcast live can register on Scholastic’s Read Every Day Web site and watch a replay. Photo: AP.

Artist Marion Bataille has won the 2010 Meggendorfer Prize for her 2008 pop-up book, ABC3D (Roaring Brook/Porter). The prize, awarded biennially by the Movable Book Society to an outstanding pop-up book, was announced at the organization’s conference in September. Bataille, the first European paper engineer to receive the award, joins the ranks of winners that include Robert Sabuda, Andrew Baron, David A. Carter, and Matthew Reinhart. Here, Bataille (l.) shows off spreads from the book with her U.S. editor, Neal Porter, at a ceremony this past Monday at Roaring Brook’s offices, at which Bataille received her prize.

Lauren Kate recently wrapped up a nine-city tour for Torment (Delacorte, Sept.), the second book in her Fallen series. At Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Calif., fans wore pipe cleaner halos in honor of Kate’s angel themed series (Kate collected many other photos from the tour on her Web site). Following her U.S. tour, Kate traveled to the U.K. to promote the book. Torment debuted at number one on both the Publishers Weekly and New York Times bestseller lists. A prequel, Passion, will be released in June 2011, and a fourth book, Rapture, is currently scheduled for spring 2012.

Author/illustrator Jon J Muth has been touring the Northeast in support of his third picture book starring Stillwater the panda, Zen Ghosts (Scholastic Press, Sept.), which takes place on Halloween, and which PW called “[h]aunting in multiple senses of the word” in a starred review. Here, Muth paints a picture of Stillwater riding a sled for children at Gladwyne Elementary School outside Philadelphia, at an event hosted by independent bookstore Children’s Book World in Haverford, Pa. Muth also made stops in Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and the New York/New Jersey area, and will participate in the Connecticut Children’s Book Fair in Storrs, Conn., in November.

Last month, Mem Fox traveled from Australia to the U.S. to promote her new picture book, Let’s Count Goats! (S&S/Beach Lane, Oct.), illustrated by Jan Thomas. More than 200 students and teachers turned out for Fox’s visit to Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., where she gave a presentation about the book and read it to the audience (the kids seen here with Fox are yelling “Mem Fox,” hence the shouts not smiles). Fox’s two-week U.S. tour began with an appearance at the National Book Festival and concluded at the GLiBA conference in Dearborn, Mich.