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In Brief: July 9
This week, we watch Mo Willems's Pigeon send out his first tweets from ALA, and give word of a middle-grade launch party in Cambridge, Mass.
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In the Media: July 9
A roundup of articles about children's books in the media this week.
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Author Throws Online Party to Benefit School
Children’s author Cynthea Liu believes in putting her money where her mouth is. And she’s succeeded in encouraging others to put their money down for a good cause. Liu, a native of Oklahoma and author of The Great Call of China, launched her second book for middle-grade readers, Paris Pan Takes the Dare (Putnam, June), with an online "slumber party," featuring an auction to benefit a Title I school in an impoverished and crime-ridden area in Oklahoma City.
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Children's Book Reviews: 7/6/2009
This week: picture books from Matthew Cordell, Elizabeth Bluemle & Randy Cecil, Ross Collins, Uri Shulevitz and others; novelists including Mary Ann Hoberman, Devin Jordan and R.A. Nelson; plus nonfiction and series favorites.
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Scholastic Reconfigures Book Fairs
As part of its effots to centralize its book fair operations, Scholastic last month closed seven distribution centers and laid off about 100 book fair employees.
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Children's Book Reviews: 6/29/2009
Reviewed this week: the latest picture book from the Emberley clan, a picture-book biography of the inventors of Day-Glo paint, new novels from Richard W. Jennings and Elizabeth Scott, as well as a round-up of concept books for younger readers.
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Winning ‘Hunger Games’ Essay Announced
Scholastic announced today that 17-year-old Kayley Hyde of Seattle has won the publisher’s The Hunger Games essay contest. As grand prize winner, she will receive a trip to New York City, where she will be treated to lunch with author Suzanne Collins. Kaylee will also be given a signed, personalized copy of The Hunger Games, an autographed ARC of Catching Fire, and a collectible “mockingjay” pin.
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Dowd, Rayner Win Carnegie and Greenaway Medals
The 2009 CILIP Carnegie Medal was awarded posthumously to Siobhan Dowd for Bog Child (David Fickling Books) at a ceremony in London today. Dowd finished Bog Child in 2007, just before her death from cancer. Set in Northern Ireland in 1981 at the height of the Troubles, it tells a story of growing up against a background of sectarian violence. “Siobhan Dowd was a writing phenomenon,” said David Fickling, who edited all of Dowd’s books.
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Licensing Hotline: June 2009
Cartoon Network is extending its boy-skewing television franchise The Secret Saturdays into books, through a partnership with Random House Children’s Publishing. The first books will debut later this summer. “Everyone always says boys don’t read,” says Christina Miller, v-p, Cartoon Network Enterprises. “So we asked, how do we get them to read? How do we engage them?” Read on to see many more licensing stories.
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Q & A with Sharon M. Draper
Sharon M. Draper has been busy of late, with her new Sassy series for tween girls from Scholastic, as well as the release of Just Another Hero (Atheneum), the final book in her Jericho trilogy. The former teacher now writes fulltime, and does school visits and appearances. PW caught up with the author to talk about her writing life.
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Putnam to Publish Tale of Pachyderm and Pooch Pals
An animal odd couple that has captivated the mainstream media and has become a YouTube sensation will soon star in a picture book. In September, Putnam will publish Tarra & Bella: The Elephant and Dog Who Became Best Friends by Carol Buckley, documenting the friendship between an elephant and a stray dog at the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn.
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It’s the Dog Days of Summer at Square Fish
Square Fish Books is going to the dogs this season: Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group’s paperback imprint is featuring its six new canine capers in The Dog Days of Summer promotion. The cover of each book displays a crisp, close-up photo of a pooch on its cover, giving the middle-grade novels a uniform look and surefire appeal to young dog devotees. The promotion encompasses five reprints of books originally published by one of the group’s imprints, as well as one Square Fish original.
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In Brief: June 25
This week, we toast Ellen Krieger's retirement, watch Sarah Dessen kick off her book tour, visit Jill Santopolo's pub party, hear about a LipSmackers giveaway with a new novel from Tricycle, and see an outdoor book signing for James Prosek at the Smithsonian.
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Makeover Alert: Gossip Girl’s Sporting a New Jacket
With the third season of the Gossip Girl TV series not starting until September, and with teens ever in need of summer beach reading, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers’ Poppy imprint is promoting its flagship Gossip Girl series with new slipcover jackets for all 12 titles, as well an iPhone book app. The new jackets feature members of the cast in stills taken from the TV show.
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Blue Marble Celebrates 30 Years
The Blue Marble, a children’s bookstore located in Ft. Thomas, Ky., celebrated its 30th anniversary with an in-store celebration Saturday, June 20. Seventeen local authors and illustrators spent the day mingling with customers. The daylong celebration culminated in a dinner that included the day’s featured authors, past and present store employees, a few sales reps, and friends of the store from the community.
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Chicago School Keeps Alexie Novel on Summer Reading List
Despite public calls to do so from a group of parents, Sherman Alexie’s critically acclaimed YA novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, will not be pulled as required summer reading for 400 incoming freshmen students at Antioch (Ill.) Community High School. In a meeting on Monday night, school district 117 superintendent Jay Sabatino and the seven-member school board voiced their strong support for the book as an educational tool that engages young readers.
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Children's Book Reviews: 6/22/2009
Reviewed this week: new books from Kenneth Oppel, Rebecca Stead and Paul Griffin, plus PW's review of the sequel to The Hunger Games, Catching Fire.
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Web Exclusive Reviews: 6/22/2009
Four Daily News sports reporters turn in the definitive story of Roger Clemens and drugs in baseball; Miles Kington presents a lively epistolary meta-nonfiction collection about dying; Sam Pocker catches retailers gone wild; and smallpox eradicator D.A. Henderson chronicles his showdown with the disease. Plus: fiction from Jane Porter, Sarah Prineas's second Magic Thief novel, and Alex Flinn's Gossip Girl makeover of "Sleeping Beauty."
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Spring 2009 Flying Starts
This spring saw many strong children’s book debuts, but for our semiannual Flying Starts, which highlight standout first books, we narrowed the field to four. The novels we selected feature a girl who embraces science one stifling summer in 1899 Texas; a boy coming of age in rural Oregon against the backdrop of war; a group of delinquent teenage boys investigating the disappearance of a friend; and a family quietly suffering an abusive father.
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NECBA's Pub Crawl: Two Publishers, One Day
Given the early hour at which the New England Children’s Booksellers Advisory Council kicked off its June 10th meeting, aka Pub Crawl, it’s probably just as well that co-chairs Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Me., and Vicky Uminowicz of Titcomb’s Bookshop in East Sandwich, Mass., weren’t thinking of that kind of pub.
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