Last year's efforts to have a week devoted to p try for young readers during National P try Month have been realized. This April 12-18 has been designated Young People's P try Week. Sponsored by the Children's Book Council, the annual event will be inaugurated on April 7 at the Center for the Book and the P try and Literature Center at the Library of Congress, in cooperation with the District Lines P try Project of the Federations of Friends of the D.C. Public Library.
The CBC has produced promotional materials that include a poster designed by Chris Raschka, bookmarks and a Future P ts Guide put together by Bernice E. Cullinan. For further information, contact the CBC (joanncbc@ aol.com) or visit the Booksellers Page on the CBC's Web site (www.cbcbooks.org/navigation/booindex.htm).
Last year, the week was unofficially celebrated by Harcourt Brace and by booksellers who participated in Harcourt's P try Jamboree. The Jamboree is being repeated this year with a contest for booksellers. To enter the contest, booksellers should send Harcourt a written description of their P try Jamboree and include photos, videos or other illustrations that demonstrate how the store celebrated Young People's P try Week. Grand prize winners, to be announced by May 20, will receive an original piece of art by Jose Aruego and Ariane Dewey, illustrators of Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin P ms by Judy Sierra.
Harcourt has also prepared a P try Jamboree kit for retailers, teachers and parents. The kit includes a color poster/calendar, teacher guides, reproducible activity sheets and event announcement materials. To receive a kit and for more information on the contest, call Harcourt's children's marketing department at (800) 221-2477, ext. 6435.
P try to Go
In an effort to take p try to as many kids as possible, Volkswagen has teamed up with Magnetic P try and Landscape Structures, a playground equipment company, for a Catch the P try Bug campaign kicking off at the end of this month.Three Volkswagen New Beetles, each covered with Magnetic P try, will leave San Diego, Boulder and Boston on March 30, embarking on a 30-city tour of Magnetic P try retailers, schools, parks, libraries and hospitals in the U.S. and Canada.
More than 100 schools on the tour route will serve as sites for "p try outbreaks," in which the Beetles' EMT (Emergency Metaphor Technicians)
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| TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: The P try Bug will make more than 100 stops next month. |
drivers will test kids for levels of "p try in their hearts," write Prescriptions for Reading and offer free books donated by publishers. There will also be p try readings and appearances by p ts.
Booksellers interested in scheduling a visit by the P try Bug should call Magnetic P try at (800) 370-7697. More information, including a p try contest, is posted on the Catch the P try Bug's campaign Web site: www.p trybug.com.
Special Offers and Discounts
Some children's book publishers are highlighting new and backlist p try titles with higher discounts and other promotions. Random House Children's Publishing is offering booksellers an additional 5% co-op allotment on one order of p try books placed by April 30. To support a new Knopf title, P ms for Children Nowhere Near Old Enough to Vote, the only collection of p ms Carl Sandburg wrote specifically for children and in print for the first time with illustrations by Istvan Banyai, RHCB created a counter display, an Internet promotion beginning April 1 (www.kidsatrandom.com), a P try Month Merchandising Kit, a hand-sell sheet and a postcard.
Sterling is offering a 53% discount plus free freight to any account ordering 12 assorted titles from its P try for Young People series by March 31. The latest title, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, edited by Frances Schoonmaker and illustrated by Chad Wallace, is the sixth in this series.
Farrar, Straus &Giroux offers a discount of 50% for backlist p try titles with orders of 25 assorted copies or more. To promote this spring's The Mouse of Amherst by Elizabeth Spires, illustrated by Claire Nivola, FSG extends a special $50 newsletter allowance for publicizing this title.
