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'Llama Llama' Now on Stage
The wide-eyed little llama who frets and fusses at lights-out in Anna Dewdney’s Llama Llama Red Pajama is now the star of a musical based on that 2005 Viking picture book. Performed by the Penguin Players, the adaptation debuted on April 16 at the Nashville Public Library. Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen and more than 1500 children attended the play, which the troupe is now performing at venues across the state through the month of May.
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Q & A with Margarita Engle
Margarita Engle’s The Surrender Tree marked the second time the Cuban-American poet won the Pura Belpré Award. Her novel tells of the brutality of slavery and war, and the compassion people share despite it. The Surrender Tree was also awarded a 2009 Newbery Honor, the first time the award had ever gone to a Latina author.
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Library Bats Take Flight
Librarians across the nation are on the lookout for bats—three stuffed, plush bats by the names of Green, Red and Blue, to be exact. Following the success of Bats at the Library and Bats at the Beach, Brian Lies is drumming up anticipation for a third volume, Bats at the Ballgame (Harcourt, 2010) by sending the three intrepid travelers (equipped with passports) on a whirlwind tour.
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Children's Book Reviews: Week of 4/13/2009
This week's reviews include picture books from Valeri Gorbachev, Samantha Berger and Yumi Heo; a round-up of titles for Mother's Day and Father's Day; and the return of a pair of spirited protagonists—Julia Gillian and Emma-Jean Lazarus.
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A ‘Quiet’ Debut Is Making Noise
Lisa McCue’s spirited animal characters have graced the pages of 175 picture books, including reworkings of classic Corduroytitles and stories by Margaret Wise Brown. This season the veteran illustrator ventures out on her own in Quiet Bunny, a picture book from Sterling that has already returned to press since its March release.
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ABC Announces BEA Events
The Association of Booksellers for Children has released its schedule of programs for BookExpo America. Just confirmed are the speakers at The ABC Not-a-Dinner and (Mostly) Silent Auction on Friday, May 29. Shannon Hale (Forest Born) will host the keynote program, after which Newbery Medalist Katherine Paterson (The Day of the Pelican) and Mike Lupica (Million Dollar Throw) will speak.
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Q & A with Graham Salisbury
Graham Salisbury’s books for middle-graders and young adults have won numerous accolades; his often dramatic tales of boyhood adventure in a rich Hawaiian setting are fan favorites. While continuing to work on a five-volume cycle of novels set during WWII, Salisbury has also created a new series for younger readers, beginning with Calvin Coconut: Trouble Magnet.
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Twittergirls: Laurie Halse Anderson on Tour
Despite the serious subject matter of her newest novel—teenage anorexia—Wintergirls (Viking, Mar.), there was plenty of fun during National Book Award finalist Laurie Halse Anderson’s recent two-week U.S. book tour, which wrapped up this past weekend. During the tour, Anderson provided her fans with updates from the road via her Twitter stream.
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From the Page to the Stage
When adapting a novel to the stage or screen, all writers will eventually be confronted with one question: How faithful will they remain to the original work? For New York playwright David Paterson, the pressure to stay true to the original piece may be a little more intense. After all, most of the major pieces he has adapted, including the 2007 film Bridge to Terabithia, began as well-known and beloved novels written by his Newbery Medalist mother, Katherine Paterson.
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The Return of ‘Blueberries for Sal’
Robert McCloskey’s Caldecott Honor picture book, Blueberries for Sal, hasn’t been available to order for the past year. However, following several years of negotiation between Penguin and McCloskey’s estate, that situation is about to change. Finally, last Thursday, an agreement was reached between Viking and the McCloskey estate for the entire body of McCloskey’s work.
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Sales Changes at Candlewick
John Mendelson, director of trade sales at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Boston, is crossing the river to take on the newly created position of senior v-p of sales and digital initiatives at Candlewick Press in Somerville, Mass., starting May 18.
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Sourcebooks Nabs Out-of-Print 'Witch Mountain'
The fact that Disney's recent blockbuster hit Race to Witch Mountain, starring Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) as a taxi driver who winds up helping two aliens-disguised-as-teenagers find their space ship, has literary roots may have been lost on a few fans. The reason is that the film's source material, a backlist science fiction title by Alexander Key, fell out of print years ago.
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Children's Books: Virginia Lee Burton Turns 100
With so many major literary commemorations this year—the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth and the 150th of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to name just a few—Virginia Lee Burton’s son, Aris Demetrios, says that he’ll do whatever it takes to make his mother’s centennial stand out, including donning a sandwich board and walking around the Boston Common.
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Children's Book Reviews: Week of 4/6/2009
Among this week's reviews: Kate and Jules Feiffer's take on the pet heading to the White House; new fiction from Margarita Engle and Jenny Valentine; and round-ups of advice titles and books with inventive formats.
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Association of Booksellers for Children in Talks With American Booksellers Association
Any possible merger of the Association of Booksellers for Children with the American Booksellers Association is at least a year away, ABC executive director Kristen McLean said. Late last month, the 25-year-old ABC announced that it had begun looking at options for the future, including some sort of collaboration with the ABA.
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Children’s Publishers Address CPSIA Testing and Labeling Provisions
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has said it will not enforce the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act when it comes to “ordinary” books printed after 1985, and legislation was introduced last week that potentially would exclude ink-on-paper and ink-on-board books from the Act entirely. But for publishers of novelty and book-plus formats, the CPSIA will remain in full force, with all of its costly testing, certification and labeling requirements.
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Candlewick Signs Picture Book by Obama’s Sister
Candlewick Press has acquired a picture book, Ladder to the Moon, by Maya Soetoro-Ng, sister of President Obama. Soetoro-Ng is a writer and educator with a PhD in international comparative education.
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‘Twilight’ Hits Arab World
The Arab Cultural Center, bought the Arabic-language rights to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight quartet at last year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, and will be publishing the books this May.
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Fourth Diary of a Wimpy Book Slated for October
Abrams is releasing the fourth book in Jeff Kinney’s bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series on October 12.
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Bologna 2009: A Photo Essay
See the sights from last week's Bologna Fair without leaving your chair, courtesy of veteran attendee Craig Virden and photographer Mario Ventimiglia. For more of Craig's take on this year's fair, visit our Bologna by Day and Night blog.
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