A Castle Built on Memories
When Claire Boland purchased the Califon Book Shop in Califon, N.J., last summer, her mother, former sculptor Kathleen Thomas, wanted to create something magical to draw customers to the store. So she crafted a seven-foot, rotating woodland castle from cardboard, twine, sticks, and ribbon, which seems like it could have come straight out of the Harry Potter books. Thomas says that she was inspired by childhood memories of trips to view department-store Christmas windows in downtown Wichita in the 1940s. The Califon castle is lit each evening throughout the holidays. Photo: Courtesy Hunterdon County Democrat/George Pacciello, staff photographer.
Graduation Time for Vampire Academy
Vampires may be immortal, but the same isn’t true for vampire series. Richelle Mead’s bestselling Vampire Academy series comes to a close this month with Last Sacrifice (Razorbill), and Mead visited Barnes & Noble Tribeca in New York City on Tuesday to kick off her national tour for the book. More than 300 fans were in attendance, and 1,000+ tuned in online to watch a live webcast (click here to view an archived version of the video). Mead was in Philadelphia yesterday and is in Chicago today, with upcoming stops in Cincinnati, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.
Partridge Visits Laredo
National Book Award Finalist Elizabeth Partridge spoke to 700 Laredo, Tex., students this week after school librarian Carmen Escamilla of J.B. Alexander High School put together a program that paired Partridge’s Marching for Freedom, about children who participated in the 1965 civil rights march in Selma, with Laurie Halse Anderson’s Revolutionary War novel Chains. Students read and studied both books, made T-shirts (modeled here by Escamilla, l., and Partridge), and organized a literacy march. “Students in the district are 99% Hispanic,” said Partridge. “Every day they hear negative press about immigrants and Hispanic-American citizens. Together these two books helped them realize other kids had faced terrible circumstances and prevailed.”
An ‘Enchanted’ Trip
Author Sarah Beth Durst visited her alma mater of Princeton earlier this month to discuss her latest novel, Enchanted Ivy (S&S/McElderry, Oct.), a YA fantasy novel that is set on the college’s campus. In the book, teenage Lily Carter discovers an alternate Princeton, populated with magical creatures. At the Barnes & Noble in Princeton, N.J., Durst, seen here with a fan, spoke about the pressures of applying to college, gave advice to aspiring young writers, and signed copies of her book.
