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Sheff Takes His Drug Recovery Public
Nic Sheff’s bestselling memoir about methamphetamine addiction, Tweak, landed on bestseller lists earlier this year. Now, a new blog by the author, New Dawn Transmission, has quickly found a strong following.
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Workman ‘Kicks’ Out a Tweaked Sequel
Baseball may be America’s national pastime, but it doesn’t have as strong a following in other countries. So while Swing!, Rufus Butler Seder’s sports-centered follow-up to last year’s bestseller, Gallop!, goes on sale in the U.S. next week, other countries will see a slightly different version of the book.
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Tomi Ungerer Relaunched, via Phaidon
I have been heavily criticized. This idea of the ideal world for the ideal child has nothing to do with reality.” So said author/illustrator Tomi Ungerer, reached by phone in Ireland, whose 1962 picture book, The Three Robbers, about a trio of villains and a young orphan, returns to bookstores this month, as part of a relaunch program from Phaidon Press.
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books Peter Pan: A Classic Collectible Pop-Up Robert Sabuda . S&S/Little Simon , $29.99 ISBN 978-0-689-85364-7 Continuing to innovate, Sabuda enhances the already powerful enchantments of J.M. Barrie's classic 1902 tale with astonishing paper engineering. Illustrations suggest a hybrid of period styles, somewhere between arts and crafts, with their rich patterning, and art nouvea...
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Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 9/29/2008
This week on the Web: a vaccine and pediatrics expert on the latest autism myths, an activist on America's fossil fuel addiciton, a bad-boy screenwriter's path to God, a Jewish typographer's memoir of survival in the Nazi counterfeiting operation, a French marine biologist explains the origins of life, and a multi-talented UK writer takes a trip through the human head. Plus: doughnuts, dogs, green cosmetics, farming, Richard Nixon and exquisite Chinese food.
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books Amandina Sergio Ruzzier . Roaring Brook/Porter , $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-59643-236-9 Amandina Goldeneyes, a shy, lonely, long-eared dog, is a talented performer, “but nobody knew that, because nobody knew Amandina.” Amandina decides to rent the rundown Teatro Ventura “in the old town” and spruce it up.
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‘Brisingr’ Breaks Random House Children’s Record
Brisingr (Knopf), the long-awaited third volume in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance cycle, arrived last Friday night, September 20, at midnight. In a record for Random House Children’s Books, the book sold 550,000 copies in its first day.
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Temple Adds Children's Titles
It's never too late to go young: 40 years after its founding, scholarly Temple University Press in Philadelphia is broadening its children's book publishing. The press, which publishes between 50 and 60 new titles a year, will release two kids' books at the end of September: Marc Bekoff's Animals at Play: Rules of the Game, illustrated by Michael J.
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Girls Just Wanna Do Math
At one time, Danica McKellar was best known for her role as Winnie Cooper on the TV show The Wonder Years; more recently, she played a speechwriter on NBC’s The West Wing. But now the actress, a longtime mathematics advocate (not to mention the co-author of a physics theorem), is making herself known to a new generation, with two books about math for teenage girls.
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Children's Books
Picture Books Say a Little Prayer Dionne Warwick , David Freeman Wooley and Tonya Bolden , illus. by Soud. Running/RPKids , $17.95 (32p plus CD) ISBN 978-0-7624-3268-4 The title is borrowed from one of Warwick's timeless collaborations with Burt Bacharach and Hal David, but her book is a flat, pedestrian self-esteem primer.
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Small Beer, for Children
When Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, founders of Small Beer Press in Easthampton, Mass., first considered publishing children's books several years ago, they had a problem: the name of their press sounded like a brewery. And they had already faced having a book display taken down at Comic-Con because of a presumed alcohol connection, until the powers that be realized that the press actually special...
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie Norton Juster , illus. by Chris Raschka. Scholastic/di Capua , $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-439-92943-1 This welcome sequel to the Caldecott Medal title The Hello, Goodbye Window knowingly describes a child's conflicting personalities. “Sometimes I'm Sourpuss,” a multiracial girl admits.
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Movie Alert: City of Ember
Though Jeanne DuPrau’s Books of Ember series has just ended, with the publication of last month’s The Diamond of Darkhold, fans still have something to look forward to: City of Ember, based on the first book in the series, arrives in theaters October 10.
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Bob Dylan, for a New Generation
For illustrator Paul Rogers, the spirit of collaboration was the key to his work with jazz musician Wynton Marsalis on Jazz A-B-Z: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits, which Candlewick published in 2005. So it initially seems surprising that Rogers’ new project is illustrating the words of a notoriously uncompromising, self-contained and often inscrutable artist, Bob Dylan, in Forever Young (Atheneum/Seo, Sept.).
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Rowling Wins Potter Lexicon Suit
Author J.K. Rowling won her lawsuit against Michigan-based publisher RDR Books on Monday, blocking the publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon by Steven Vander Ark. Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment held that the planned publication of the book, based on a Web site of the same name maintained by Vander Ark, would infringe on Rowling’s copyright to her bestselling Harry Potter series.
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books Dinosaur vs. Bedtime Bob Shea . Hyperion , $15.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4231-1335-5 Shea (New Socks) makes a hilarious commentator as his hero, a small red dinosaur, elevates everyday encounters into a series of matches worthy of the WWF. “Dinosaur versus... a bowl of spaghetti!” announces Shea and, with a trio of bold typographic roars (and two chomps), the bowl is vanq...
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Meyer's 'Midnight Sun' On Hold
Stephenie Meyer has postponed finishing Midnight Sun, the latest title in her Twilight Saga, after a rough draft appeared online.
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Children's Book Reviews
Picture Books Welcome to the Zoo Alison Jay . Dial , $16.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-8037-3177-6 Working in the burnished, crackle-varnished surfaces that are her signature, Jay (1-2-3: A Child's First Counting Book) takes the idea of a cageless zoo to the extreme, imagining humans and animals mingling with all the privileged coolness of habitués of a five-star resort.
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Digital Technology Brings Kids' Books to Life
A computer isn't the only place to look for new takes on books that use digital technology. A new generation of interactive children's books featuring pen-like devices that trigger voiceovers, sound effects, music and activities on the pages of books are now hitting store shelves. Simon & Schuster's Follow the Reader debuted in fall 2007; LeapFrog's Tag reading system came out this summer; a...
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A Cubano Huck Finn
Dark Dude Oscar Hijuelos . Simon & Schuster/Atheneum, $16.99 (448p) ISBN 978-1-4169-4804-9 Hijuelos, the Pulitzer Prize—winning author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, has said that his first YA novel is a novel he wished he'd read as a teen. His themes are classic—alienation, the search for identity—but his approach is pure Hijuelos: Cuban-American, musical an...
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