In Brief: September 22

Picture book creator Peter Brown is in the middle of a five-week, 10-city tour in support of his latest book, You Will Be My Friend! (Little, Brown, Sept.), about Lucy the bear (first seen in Children Make Terrible Pets) who is actively seeking to acquire new friends, whether they like it or not. Here, Brown gives a drawing demonstration at Boswell Books in Madison, Wis. Brown has visited Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, and St. Louis and Kansas City, and Atlantic City (for the NAIBA trade show), with additional stops in Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

On September 15, schools around the world celebrated the birthday of Peter H. Reynolds’s The Dot (Candlewick, 2003), by participating in International Dot Day. The idea to use the book, which is about creativity and encourages children to make their mark as artists, originated in 2009 with Terry Shay, a teacher in North Tama County Community School in Des Moines, Ia., and has since spread as far as Norway, where the Birralee International School made a large “Human Dot” by taking photos of young students from above. More than 15,830 students and close to 900 adults took part in this year’s Dot Day. Here, a student at Brook Forest Elementary School in Oak Brook, Ill., shows off his dot on an iPad.

Nonprofit literacy organization First Book has teamed up with cosmetic company philosophy to create a “sweet dreams” shampoo/shower gel/bubble bath, with 100% of net proceeds from the sales of the product going to First Book, now through the end of the calendar year. Additionally, the partnership between First Book and philosophy has allowed Lisa Greenwald’s 2009 middle-grade novel, My Life in Pink and Green (Abrams/Amulet) to be made available in the First Book Marketplace, which sells children’s books at a discount to Title I schools and programs serving disadvantaged children.

A Children’s Place in Portland, Ore., recently hosted an event for Myra Wolfe, who celebrated the release of her first picture book, Charlotte Jane Battles Bedtime (Harcourt, Sept.). In the book, which is illustrated by Maria Monescillo, young pirate Charlotte Jane has too much to do to bother with going to sleep. Wolfe is seen here with some young fans, who are getting in the pirate spirit in the book. PW’s review said the book was “full of insouciant pirate energy,” and that “Wolfe’s text has as much charm and verve as her heroine.”

Author MacKenzie Cadenhead celebrated the release of her first children’s book, Sally’s Bones (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, Sept.), illustrated by T.S. Spookytooth, at a launch event last Thursday at Bank Street Books in New York City. More than 90 fans and friends turned out to get signed copies of Cadenhead’s middle-grade novel, about Sally Simplesmith and her dog, Bones, who is unjustly accused of a crime despite his being dead. Cadenhead, a former editor at Marvel Comics, also visited Barnes & Noble in Kingston, N.Y. Photo: Alison Sheehy.