Introducing Lottie
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus, the much anticipated sequel to A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner isn’t out yet—it’s still embargoed until October 5, and details about the stories remain scant—but a brand-new character, named Lottie the Otter, has been revealed. Lottie is described in a release as “always dressed in pearls,” and “a smart and elegant character certain to cause a stir in the Hundred Acre Wood. Lottie has her own ideas about how things should be done and believes that everyone should follow the correct etiquette.”
An Animated ‘Exquisite Corpse’
As Children’s Bookshelfreported back in August, the Library of Congress and the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance have teamed up to create The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, a multi-episode online story, which was launched at the National Book Festival last weekend. Readers can now page through and read the first chapter—written by Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature—on the LOC’s Read.gov Web site. Author Katherine Paterson (The Day of the Pelican) will contribute the second installment, scheduled to go online October 9. Other participants will include M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Nikki Grimes, Shannon Hale and Daniel Handler.
In the Big Apple and on the Small Screen
Chris Paul, point guard for the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets, visited New York City recently—not for a game, but to promote his new picture book, Long Shot: Never Too Small to Dream Big, illustrated by Frank Morrison (S&S, Sept.). At the NBA flagship store on Fifth Avenue, Paul met with a group of students from the Mt. Vernon YMCA and Harlem Children’s Zone. Two students, shown here, helped Paul read from his book, which tells the story of how Paul, as a child, won a place on his school’s basketball team, despite being one of the shorter students. While in New York, Paul also visited Fox & Friends to read from the book and take questions from some young fans (click here for video). Photo: NBA Photo.
Roker Discovers ‘Magyk’
Last Friday, Al Roker announced the latest pick for Al’s Book Club on TheToday Show: Magyk, the first book in Angie Sage’s Septimus Heap fantasy series. Magyk was published in 2005 by HarperCollins’s Katherine Tegen Books; the series is now five books strong, with the most recent, Syren, just published in September with a 200,000-copy first printing. Click here for video of Roker with author Patrick Carman (seen here), discussing his previous book club pick, The Black Circle, part of The 39 Clues series.
