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Dog and Bear Hit the Road
They may be just three feet tall and made of plush, but that’s not keeping Dog and Bear, the eponymous stars of Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s Dog and Bear and Dog and Bear: Two’s Company (Roaring Brook/Porter), from striking out across the U.S. on tour. The Dog and Bear Best Friends Tour got underway last week and will run through the summer.
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Flashlight Press Turns Five
Flashlight Press could also be called The Little Publisher That Could. Since the micro-press started five years ago, it has steadily published two to four 32-page picture books a year. Based out of Jerusalem, Shari Dash Greenspan serves as the tiny publisher’s jack-of-all-trades. She acquires and edits manuscripts, collaborates with the illustrators and maintains Flashlight’s web site.
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In Defense of Historical Fiction
Someone who owns a successful independent bookstore told me recently that if I ever decide to write a novel about an officer in the army in the American Revolution I’d better give him dripping fangs, bat wings and a tail. Well, he wasn’t far from wrong, because as we all know, the bestselling young adult novels today are either about vampires, fantasy or romance.
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Q & A with Francisco X. Stork
Francisco X. Stork’s novel, Marcelo in the Real World (Scholastic/ Levine) is about a young man with Asperger’s syndrome who experiences “the real world” for the first time while working one summer at his father’s law firm. So far it has garnered five starred reviews, and foreign rights have been sold in nine languages.
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ABC to Explore Merger with ABA
A quarter century after children’s booksellers broke away from the American Booksellers Association and formed a separate group, the Association of Booksellers for Children, the two have begun discussions to consider reuniting. Among the possibilities that such a collaboration might take: for the ABC to become a division or department of ABA.
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The New Storytelling: Multimedia Children's Publishing
Back in early December, when we meet with Lisa Holton about her new book packaging company, Fourth Story Media, it seems like an oddly exhilarating moment to be discussing a start-up, much less a book publishing start-up. Back then, word had just leaked that Houghton Mifflin wasn't acquiring new books.
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Children's Book Reviews: Week of 3/30/09
Picture Books What Is This? Antje Damm . Frances Lincoln (PGW, dist.), $15.95 (96p) ISBN 978-1-84507-899-7 Buttons become pig noses and a kitchen faucet turns into a swan under Damm's inventive hand. This appealing title, in line with Damm's Ask Me, invites readers to imagine what ordinary objects could become, given the addition of some paint, paper or clay.
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Stephenie Meyer Phenomenon Propels Hachette Books
In discussing the first-half performance of Hachette Book Group earlier this year, CEO David Young said 2008 would be remembered as the year of Stephenie Meyer, a prediction that indeed came true. With Meyer's books selling a total of 29.7 million copies last year, HBG's sales jumped 26%, to well over $600 million.
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New Pooh: A Preview of the Upcoming Sequel
This week we provide a sneak peek at illustrator Mark Burgess’s artwork for Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, the first authorized sequel to Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. Return to the Hundred Acre Wood will be published by Dutton on October 5, 2009.
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Teens, Tweens, and Me: An Afternoon at the Biggest Teen Author Signing Ever!
The multicolored sign outside of Books of Wonder called the event I was about to walk into “The Biggest Teen Author Signing Ever!” As I stepped into the Manhattan children’s bookstore last Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. The sign, however, wasn’t lying. What I walked into certainly appeared to be the biggest teen author signing ever. Period. Exclamation!
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Mirror, Mirror...
Though two spring YA novels, North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley (Little, Brown) and Evermore by Alison Noël (St. Martin’s Griffin) certainly have their differences, they have a few things in common—including the same cover photo.
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On the Radar: The Vampire Is Just Not That Into You
Are you nursing a pair of fang marks in your neck, but also a broken heart? Scholastic may have just the book for you, when it crashes The Vampire Is Just Not That Into You by Vlad Mezrich (if you need to be told it’s a pseudonym...) onto its fall list. “It’s a dating guide for dating the undead—forked tongue firmly in cheek—and to getting the vampire of your dreams,” says editor David Levithan.
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Q & A with Brent Runyon
Author Brent Runyon talked to Children’s Bookshelf about his transition from autobiographer to novelist, and his new coming-of-age story, Surface Tension (Knopf).
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The Biggest Teen Author Signing Ever: A Photo Gallery
Sara Antill braved epic crowds at New York City’s Books of Wonder on Sunday, March 22, for an author event that featured 40 YA writers. See her photos from the event below.
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Chronicle Finds a Hit Online
Nina Laden’s board book, Peek-a-Who? (Chronicle, 2000), keeps young readers guessing, but the title’s phenomenal popularity on Amazon has some adults pleasantly surprised, too. Last December the book was the retailing site’s highest ranked children’s picture/board book, as well as the 57th bestselling title overall, selling more than 4000 copies per week.
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Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 3/23/2009
This week's Web: a chorus of modern African Americans, an army chaplain on the field and at home, the true story of fake history, and a "Real Housewife of New York City" (the single one) on uncovering the thin within. Plus: Elizabeth Gilbert gets skewered, Hollis Frampton gets collected, and five new reviews for kids.
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Children's Book Reviews: Week of 3/23/2009
Picture Books The Secret Circus Johanna Wright . Roaring Brook/Porter , $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-59643-403-5 A charismatic group of French mice enjoy a night out in Wright’s dreamy, muted debut. “Somewhere, deep in the city of Paris, there is a circus that is so small, and so secret... only the mice know how to find it.
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Facts and Figures 2008: Meyer’s Deep Run
This time last year, booksellers were bemoaning the end of Harry Potter. That series, which ended in 2007, sold 19 million copies that year, and it didn’t seem as though anything would be replacing it anytime soon. How quickly things change. Last year, as the final volume in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series pubbed (six million copies sold) and the Twilight movie was released (dom...
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Print Run Set for New DiCamillo Novel
Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo’s eagerly awaited new novel, The Magician’s Elephant (Candlewick, Sept.), illustrated by Yoko Tanaka, continues to move forward. This week Candlewick revealed the cover art and announced a hefty first printing of 500,000 copies for the 208-page fable.
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Harlequin Targets Teens
Harlequin is set to broaden its presence in the young adult market. Harlequin Teen, a fiction line, debuts in August with Rachel Vincent’s My Soul to Take, the first installment of the Soul Screamers series. Another paranormal tale, Intertwined by Gena Showalter, is rolling off press in September. The imprint will initially consist of trade paperbacks, hardcovers and digital publications.
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