Each year children’s books and authors have been an integral part of Winter Institute. This year at Winter Institute 8 in Kansas City (Feb. 22-25) is no exception. Not only are picture book, middle grade, and YA writers key to the Authors Reception, but Laurie Halse Anderson and Sherman Alexie are both active participants in an educational session on YA and banned books. Other programming on toys, book fairs, and nonfiction is specifically geared to children’s bookselling. And the show has become such an important place for booksellers to meet authors, that Scholastic is bringing in Paul Rudnick and Elizabeth Eulberg just for an after-party open to all attendees.
Picture Books
Title: Lidia’s Family Kitchen: Nonna’s Birthday Surprise
Author: Lidia Bastianich
Publisher: Running Press
Pub date: March 26
Price: $16.95 hardcover; $16.95 e-book
Publicity and marketing plans: Author appearances.
It’s Nonna Mima’s birthday, and Nonna Lidia and her grandkids are determined to throw her a surprise feast. Lidia shares her memories of growing up on the farm, while they plan the menu.
Title: What Makes a Baby
Author: Cory Silverberg, illus. by Fiona Smyth
Publisher: Seven Stories
Pub date: May 7
Price: $16.95 hardcover; e-book available
This colorful book on where babies come from is the first of a trio for young readers about sexuality, sexual health, and gender.
Middle Grade
Title: Helping Hands (Vet Volunteers #15)
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Publisher: Puffin
Pub date: August
Price: $6.99 paperback; e-book available
Jules and Josh are excited when their parents hire ponies to attract customers to their sidewalk sale. But the Vet Volunteers notice that the ponies don’t seem to be very healthy, and after an examination, they learn that the handler has been mistreating them.
Title: The School for Good and Evil
Author: Soman Chainani
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pub date: May 14
Price: $16.99 hardcover; $13.99 e-book
Publicity and marketing plans: 8-city tour with school visits and Class Acts appearances with Christopher Healy and Jarrett J. Korosoczka.
This is the first book in a trilogy about ordinary boys and girls who are trained to be perfect heroes or villains. When their education is complete, they graduate into a fairy tale.
Title: The Odd Squad: Bully Bait
Author: Michael Fry
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Pub date: February 12
Price: $12.99 paper over board; $9.99 e-book
Publicity and marketing plans: Three-city tour.
This book, which was chosen for the Spring 2013 Kids’ Indie Next List, is an ode to the perils, perplexities, and pleasures of middle-school. “This is a must have, must-read, must-sell book for all 8-14 year olds and those of us 50+ readers who never grew up,” says Judy Wrolson of Cornerstone Cottage Kids (Hampton, Iowa).
Title: Zebra Forest
Author: Adina Gewirtz
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Pub date: April 9
Price: $15.99 hardcover and e-book
Publicity & marketing plans: Author appearances; online promotion and blogger outreach.
In this debut novel, an escaped fugitive upends everything 11-year-old Annie and her little brother, Rew, think they know about their family, their past, and themselves.
Title: Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made
Author: Stephan Pastis
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Pub month: February
Price: $14.99 hardcover; e-book available.
Publicity and marketing plans: 12-city author tour; $250,000 marketing campaign; pre-pub tour; online and social media campaign; advertising with Poptropica and Funbrain, among others; nine-month teaser campaign that began at BEA.
First printing: 200,000 copies
“It’s exciting to debut Pastis as a children’s author to booksellers familiar with his wildly popular cartoon strip, Pearls Before Swine. It is a re-introduction of sorts to a very talented artist, writer, and comedian,” says publicist Tracy Miracle.
Title: An Army of Frogs: A Kulipari Novel
Author: Trevor Pryce
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Pub date: May
Price: $14.95 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: 3-city tour.
It’s frogs versus scorpions in this new series by professional football player Trevor Pryce, who helped lead the Broncos to a Super Bowl victory in 1999. Full-color illustrations by comics artist Sanford Greene.
Title: Desmond Pucket Makes Monster Magic
Author: Mark Tatulli
Publisher: Andrews McMeel
Pub date: October 1
Price: $13.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: 10-city tour; giveaways at BEA, San Diego Comic Con, NAIBA Fall Conference, and New York Comic Con; promo on GoComics.com; Halloween sweepstakes promo; advertising, including regional holiday catalogues; DesmondPucket.com Web site with downloadable activities and interactivity.
Syndicated cartoonist Tatulli tells the story of Desmond Pucket, who will be famous for his special effects wizardry someday. But for now he’s just trying to make it through sixth grade at Cloverfield Memorial Junior High. The only problem is, he can’t stop pulling pranks.
Title: The Center of Everything
Author: Linda Urban
Publisher: Harcourt
Pub month: March
Price: $15.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: Author tour; featured in Middle Grade Mania Campaign; consumer print and online advertising; educator discussion guide.
First printing: 35,000 copies
“Linda will be a familiar face to many booksellers, as she began her career working at Vroman’s in Southern California,” says publicity director Jennifer Groves. “Her forthcoming title is a quiet story with a powerful impact. The Center of Everything explores a young girl’s grief, and regrets, following her grandmother’s death.”
Young Adult
Title: Unremembered
Author: Jessica Brody
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Pub date: March 5
Price: $17.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: 5-city author tour; advertising; blog tour.
A 16-year-old girl is discovered floating amid the wreckage of Flight 121, alive. But she has no memories. As she struggles to piece together the past and discover who she is, her only hope is a strange boy. He claims that he knows her and that they were in love.
Title: Perfect Scoundrels (Heist Society #3)
Author: Ally Carter
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Pub month: February
Price: $17.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: Author tour; Heist Society/Gallagher Girls free novella e-book, Double Crossed, released January 22; movie theatre ad campaign; featured title in Hyperion Teen “Design Challenge” cover promotion.
First printing: 200,000 copies
“Carter has mastered the art of giving readers exactly what they want while leaving them on the edge of their seats. She doesn’t disappoint in Perfect Scoundrels, the third book in her bestselling Heist Society series,” says senior editor Catherine Onder.
Title: Panic
Author: Sharon Draper
Publisher: Atheneum
Pub month: March
Price: $17.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: 7-city tour; SimonTEEN online, blogger, and book club outreach; Pulse It feature title.
First printing: 100,000 copies
“It’s a novel about a teen who says ‘yes’ when she should have said ‘no,’ a novel that is harrowing, haunting yet hopeful,” says v-p and editorial director Caitlyn Dlouhy.
Title: Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality
Author: Elizabeth Eulberg
Publisher: Scholastic Point
Pub date: March
Price: $17.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: Author appearances; advertising; promotions and contests on thisisteen.com/books.
Lexi is an average high school girl with a mother in financial trouble and a little sister on the pageant circuit. Her longtime crush considers her a great friend with a great personality. But Lexi is sick of being stuck on the sidelines. She’s ready to play the beauty game, to win.
Title: If You Could Be Mine
Author: Sara Farizan
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Pub date: August 20
Price: $16.99 hardcover; $16.99 e-book
Publicity and marketing plans: Prepub tour; 20-city radio satellite tour; print and online advertising; author appearances; blog tour; downloadable Reader’s Guide.
Sahar has been in love with her best friend, Nasrin, since they were six. They’ve shared romantic promises and stolen kisses. But Iran is a dangerous place for two girls in love.
Title: The Time Fetch
Author: Amy Herrick
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
Pub date: August 13
Price: $16.99 hardcover; $16.99 e-book
Publicity and marketing plans: Prepub tour; author appearances; downloadable Reading Group Guide and Educator Guide and Activities.
Under normal circumstances, a Time Fetch sends out its foragers to collect only those moments that will never be missed. But when eight-grader Edward mistakes a sleeping Fetch for a rock, he wakes its foragers too early, and they begin to multiply and gobble up too much time.
Title: Maddie on Things
Author: Theron Humphrey
Publisher: Chronicle
Pub date: March
Price: $15.95 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: 35-city, 8-month driving tour, kicking off in Austin; cross-marketing to children and adults.
This book collects photographer Humphrey’s photos of his rescue-coonhound Maddie.
Title: The Summer Prince
Author: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Publisher: March
Pub month: Scholastic/Levine
Price: $17.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: Author appearances; national advertising and social media campaigns; promotions and contests on thisisteen.com/books.
First printing: 50,000 copies
“Johnson is the personification of what’s so exciting about The Summer Prince, a swift, sharp intelligence, a palpable warmth, and style to spare,” says publisher Arthur A. Levine about this story of love, death, technology, and art set in the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.
Title: Far Far Away
Author: Tom McNeal
Publisher: Knopf
Pub date: June 11
Price: $17.99 hardcover; $10.99 e-book
Publicity and marketing plans: 6-city pre-pub tour; featured at San Diego Comic Con; YA Author Group Live Chat.
Ever since Jeremy admitted he’s able to hear voices, the townspeople of Never Better have treated him like an outsider. After his mother left and his father became a recluse, it’s been up to Jeremy to support the family. But he hasn’t had to do it alone. Jacob Grimm (yes, that Grimm), whose voice he hears, protects him from an unknown dark evil.
Title: Let the Sky Fall
Author: Shannon Messenger
Publisher: SimonPulse
Pub month: March
Price: $17.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: Author appearances; online chat post-publication; countdown widget; Pulse IT feature title; dedicated Windwalkers series microsite.
First printing: 75,000 copies
“In the YA publishing world, we’ve seen a large number of books focusing on a teen girl who falls for a guy with some kind of special power. Then along comes Let the Sky Fall, where it’s the girl who’s got the kick-butt power and the guy who’s desperately in love with her. Even better, in this story the characters are wind sylphs,” says executive editor Liesa Abrams.
Title: Gorgeous
Author: Paul Rudnick
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Pub date: May
Price: $18.99 hardcover; e-book available
Publicity and marketing plans: Author appearances; advertising.
Playwright, screenwriter, and humorist Paul Rudnick delivers a modern fairytale in his debut YA novel. Senior editor Rachel Griffiths says that this book “rips open the cult of beauty to show what might happen if every promise in every ad for lipstick or eyeliner suddenly came true.”
Title: Severed Heads, Broken Hearts
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: HarperCollins/Tegen
Pub date: June 4
Price: $17.99 hardcover; $10.99 e-book
Publicity and marketing plans: 3-city tour cosponsored by Big Frame Productions; BEA appearance.
This novel follows one year in the life of a California Prom King, whose charmed existence collides with multiple tragedies. Bookseller Krys Tourtois at Schuler Books and Music in Lansing, Mich., calls it “beautifully told and achingly haunting.”
Title: Icons
Author: Margaret Stohl
Publisher: Little, Brown
Pub date: May 7
Price: $18 hardcover; $9.99 e-book; $22.98 audiobook
Publicity and marketing plans: Author tour; print and online advertising; promotion at San Diego Comic-Con; extended free preview for all e-tailers.
The co-author of the Beautiful Creatures series sets the first book of her new series in a near future Los Angeles where four teens must piece together the mysteries of their pasts in order to save the future.
Title: The 5th Wave
Author: Rick Yancey
Publisher: Putnam
Pub date: May 7
Price: $18.99 hardcover; $10.99 e-book; $22.98 audiobook
Publicity and marketing plans: Two-week national tour in May, including an appearance at BEA; film rights optioned by Tobey Maguire and Graham King.
“[This] is totally unique, gritty, terrifying and one of the most furious page turners I’ve read in a great long while. What if there is life out beyond our planet—what if there are Others who look like us—but trusting another human being can cost you your life. Cassie is that rare protagonist that shows fear with every act of bravery. The 5th Wave will knock you out!,” says Becky Anderson, co-owner of Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville, Ill.
Winter Institute Programming and Events for Children’s Booksellers
Nonfiction Buying With Core Curriculum in Mind
(Saturday, Feb. 23, 4:15-5:30 p.m.)
Booksellers Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers (Farmington, Maine), and ABA president Becky Anderson, co-owner of Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville, Ill., join Richard Buthod, sales manager of Turtleback Books, to talk about how best to curate a collection of nonfiction that will appeal to students, parents, and teachers and how to become a nonfiction resource in the community.
This Is Teen After-party
(Saturday, Feb. 23, 9-11 p.m.)
Red-carpet photo-shoot, cocktails, and sweets with Elizabeth Eulberg, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Paul Rudnick. Sponsored by Scholastic.
Banned Books, Censorship, and YA Literature
(Monday, Feb. 25, 10:30-11:45 a.m.)
Authors Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak) and Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian), frequent targets of the censors, join Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books (Coral Gables, Fla.), and American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom president Chris Finan to discuss how to meet the threat of censorship today. Sponsored by ABFFE.
Book Fair Best Practices
(Monday, Feb. 25, 10:30-11:45 a.m.)
Booksellers Christie Olson Day at the Gallery Bookshop (Mendocino, Calif.), Ann Seaton at Hicklebee’s Children’s Books (San Jose, Calif.), and Heather Hebert at Children’s Book World (Haverford, Pa.) address best practices for developing relationships with schools, arranging on-site payment, deciding on an appropriate donation, and other logistics, such as creating and filling orders, staffing and transportation needs, and fostering school relationships throughout the year.
Addressing the Special Needs Market
(Monday, Feb. 25, 2:30-3:45 p.m.)
Booksellers Tami Furlong, owner of Fundamentals Parent-Teacher Bookstore (Delaware, Ohio); Jonah Zimiles, owner of [words] Bookstore (Maplewood, N.J.); and Lauren Peugh at Mrs. Nelson’s Toy and Book Shop (LaVerne, Calif.) discuss how to create a section or collection of books for this growing market and events to better serve this community.
Toy Market Trends
(Monday, Feb. 25, 4:00-5:15 p.m.)
Bookseller Suzanna Hermans, co-owner of Oblong Books & Music (Rhinebeck, N.Y.); toy retailer Jonny Girson, owner of The Learning Tree (Kansas City, Kans.); and toy distributor Carle Wunderlich at Best Toys (Lisle, Ill.) show examples of popular toy products and share ideas for mixing toys into store inventory.
