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Q& A with Tony Abbott
Since 1994, Connecticut author Tony Abbott has published more than 70 books for young readers. These include standalone hardcover novels Kringle, Firegirl and The Postcard, as well as a handful of paperback series, among them The Secrets of Droon, which has sold more than 10 million copies. His new paperback series with Scholastic, The Haunting of Derek Stone, debuts with City of the Dead.
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North-South Ushers in the Year of the Little Polar Bear
Lars, also known as Hans de Beer’s ever-friendly Little Polar Bear returns next month in his ninth adventure, Little Polar Bear and the Whales. This character’s popularity and the new book’s timely environmental warning—chunks of ice from a melting glacier block a pod of whales’ passage from the bay to the sea—inspired the publisher to name 2009 “The Year of the Little Polar Bear.” And North-South Books has some celebratory plans in place.
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Chorion: Managing the Brand
When Jon Scieszka and his editor at Simon & Schuster, Justin Chanda, first discussed the idea for Scieszka's preschool boys' brand, Trucktown, it included not only 52 books, but online games, social networking, toys and entertainment. “All this stuff was really crucial to the whole concept of Trucktown,” Sciescka said.
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books Tsunami! Kimiko Kajikawa , illus. by Ed Young. Philomel , $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-399-25006-4 An earthquake, a fire, a tidal wave and selfless heroism, all packed into 32 pages, guarantee that this story will hold the attention of even the most restless listeners. Four hundred villagers are saved from death when Ojiisan, a wealthy old rice farmer on the mountainside, feels trem...
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More (and Better) Books for Black Teens
Talk to a YA editor or take a stroll through that section at your local bookstore and it's evident that there's a growing number of books aimed at the young adult market—and those numbers include more titles geared specifically to African-American teens. As publishers are addressing the lack of material aimed at this market—many African-American teens have turned to popular adult au...
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The 'Clues' Keep On Coming
Scholastic’s multimedia The 39 Clues series continued to grow this week, with the second book, One False Note by Gordon Korman, going on sale in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The first book was The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan. One million copies of that title are now in print worldwide, along with an additional 500,000 trading card packs. One False Note landed with a 500,000-copy first printing.
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Princess Diaries Take a Final Bow
Princess Mia Thermopolis will don her tiara for the last time in Forever Princess, the 10th and crowning installment of Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series. Turned down by 12 houses before finding a home in 1999, the inaugural novel, The Princess Diaries launched one of the first commercial, girl-oriented series that have been so successful in the young adult market during the last decade
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Q & A with Jonathan Stroud
Jonathan Stroud burst on the YA scene back in 2003 with The Amulet of Samarkand, the first book in his bestselling Bartimaeus Trilogy. Disney-Hyperion will publish Heroes of the Valley, Stroud’s first novel since the Bartimaeus Trilogy. Children's Bookshelf spoke to Stroud from his home in England.
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Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw
Greg Heffley may be the “Wimpy Kid,” but his series keeps going strong. On January 13, Abrams’s Amulet imprint will release The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney, the third storybook in the series that has staked out a claim on bestseller charts since its 2007 debut. In The Last Straw, which lands with a million-copy first printing, Greg’s father attempts to toughen up his son.
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December Comics Bestsellers
Jeff Kinney’s Rodrick Rules continues to top the list; followed by DC’s Azzarello/Bermejo Joker at #2; Stephen King’s The Long Road Home returns, this time at #5 and Jim Butcher’s Welcome to Jungle (this week at #9) is on the list for the second month in a row.
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings Elizabeth Spires . FSG/Foster , $17.95 (64p) ISBN 978-0-374-33528-1 Of interest to adults as well as children, this handsomely produced black-and-white book intriguingly combines photography, sculpture and poetry. The illiterate child of freed slaves, William Edmondson (1874—1951) experienced religious vi...
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Udon Debuts Manga Line for Kids
Udon Entertainment, an Ontario-based manga studio that produces manga adaptations of Capcom's popular Street Fighter video game, is launching Udon Kids Manga, a line of licensed Japanese comics titles aimed at children ages seven and up, beginning with four titles in April 2009. Udon Kids Manga will be distributed to the trade by Diamond Book Distributors, and Udon plans to promote the line at ...
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books What a Good Big Brother! Diane Wright Landolf , illus. by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher. Random , $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-84258-0 Every time Cameron's infant sister cries, his parents seem to have an answer: she's wet, she's hungry, she's tired. And once Cameron knows the problem, he's eager to help out.
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Boy, 9, Dispenses Advice
Alec Greven makes it look like child’s play. In the span of a year, the nine-year-old author has gone from self-published book fair bestseller to national media darling, and has three books arriving between now and next May. This month HarperCollins will release the first, How to Talk to Girls, based on a book Greven wrote at the age of eight, for a school assignment.
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The French Connection: Children’s Books in Translation
Children’s books in translation—from France to the United States, and much more often from the United States to France—were the topic of a lively panel hosted by the French Publishers’ Association this past Tuesday, which took place at NYU’s La Maison Française in New York City.
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Candlewick Launches Templar Imprint
In spring 2009, Candlewick Press will debut its first imprint, Templar Books. A partnership with Britain’s Templar Publishing (which was recently acquired by Bonnier Publishing), the line will bring selected Templar titles to the U.S. market, including picture books, novelty titles and board books.
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Remembering James Marshall
Earlier this week more than 100 booksellers, librarians, and other children’s book devotees attended a panel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., to mark the publication of James Marshall’s George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends Stories (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sept.).
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NBA Finalists Take Teens Behind Their Books
For the 11th year running, the National Book Foundation held a National Book Awards Teen Press Conference, which allows the five nominees in the Young People’s Literature category to read for and field questions from their books’ audience—teenagers.
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Blundell Wins NBA in Young People’s Literature
The National Book Award for Young People’s Literature was given Wednesday night to Judy Blundell, for her novel What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic Press), a noirish coming-of-age mystery set just after World War II.
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India-Based Author Takes a Virtual Tour
Even before the economic crunch, large publishers might have had trouble bringing over an author from India to promote a picture book. For Tilbury House in Gardiner, Maine, which publishes eight books a year, funding a U.S. tour for Katia Novet Saint-Lot would have been out of the question. Instead Saint-Lot (author of Amadi’s Snowman, illustrated by Dimitrea Tokunbo) and Tilbury publicist Sarah McGinnis came up with the idea of touring virtually.
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