A Capital Kickoff to Fall
This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on May 25, 2006 Sign up now!
by Jennifer M. Brown, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 5/25/2006
One might naturally expect to find Senator Edward Kennedy in our nation’s capital, but Queen Latifah? Kennedy made an appearance to promote his new picture book, The Senator and Me, while Queen Latifah (as debut children’s author of Queen of the Scene) gave the keynote address to African-American booksellers, and Lane Smith visited Monticello sporting a colonial wig, in honor of his picture book John, Paul, George & Ben. Leave it to BEA, held last weekend in Washington, D.C., to bring together politicians, entertainers, and even the Founding Fathers, all in the name of books.
Coming off a soft spring, booksellers were cautiously optimistic about the fall season. No one book stood out, but children’s booksellers left BEA with a wealth of in-store ideas.
All photos © Stevekagan.com (L. to R.) Lisa Dugan of Koen-Levy, Alison Morris of Wellesley Booksmith in Wellesley, Mass., Sarah Todd of Children’s Book World in Haverford, Pa., incoming ABC executive director Kristen McLean, and Hannah Schwartz, also of Children’s Book World, gathered for the ABC’s annual meeting and children’s Book Buzz. |
 First-time novelist Watt Key read aloud from his fall book Alabama Moon. |
The afternoon offered a variety of marketing, handselling and hands-on ideas. Author/illustrator Laura Vaccaro Seeger encouraged booksellers to indulge in a craft of “revealing” opposites, in the vein of her new book Black? White! Day? Night! (Roaring Brook/Porter, Oct.). Roaring Brook marketing director Lauren Wohl, and Elizabeth Bluemle, co-owner of the Flying Pig Bookstore in Charlotte, Vt., joined Seeger in a program called “Selling Outside the Box: The Power of Independents.” The popular Children’s Book Buzz workshops involved two dozen publishers, each presenting a big fall title in roundtable discussions with booksellers.
Thursday night’s Evening with Children's Booksellers was held at the National Geographic Society. The annual Secret Garden Silent Auction offered more than 140 pieces of art, and brought in an estimated $40,000. The sold-out event began with a performance by Canadian singer-songwriter Connie Kaldor, whose music unfortunately competed with publishers, booksellers, authors and artists wishing to catch up on the past year’s events. Swedish Ambassador Gunnar Lund presented two-time Newbery Medalist Katherine Paterson with a bottle of champagne in recognition of her winning the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award; the actual award will be presented to her on May 31 in Stockholm.
 Roaring Brook editor Neal Porter gave author/artist Laura Vaccaro Seeger a pep talk before her panel discussion at the ABC luncheon. |
Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer opened his remarks with, “People love Irish colloquialisms. I will not stoop to that begorra.” The author also found several punnish ways to work the word “independents” subtly into the conversation (e.g., “What do you call insects thrown into a swimming pool?”), and kept the audience entertained with tales of his two children and their antics.
Outgoing executive director Anne Irish was honored at the dinner; in addition to a standing ovation for her leadership of the ABC, her colleagues gave her a piece of original art by fellow Madison, Wis., resident Kevin Henkes. The painting featured the winsome feline from his Caldecott-winning Kitten’s First Full Moon. An emotional Irish said that Kevin was “like a son” to her, recalling the first time the then 19-year-old author/artist walked into her children’s-only bookstore, Pooh Corner, to tell her, “My first book just got published. Do you think you could carry it?”
Friday Wake-Up Call
 Ridley Pearson, Laurie Halse Anderson, Marc Brown and Dave Barry (l. to r.) warmed up with a few laughs in preparation for Friday’s Children’s Book & Author Breakfast. |
Laurie Halse Anderson thanked booksellers for their dedication in selling Speak, which she said has sold more than one million copies (Penguin/Puffin released a “platinum” paperback edition last month), and for helping to keep her two older children in college and her youngest in braces.
Marc Brown wrapped the program up by commemorating the 30th anniversary of his Arthur character, born the star of a bedtime story the author told to his son. He said he has sold more than 50 million Arthur books in 100 countries around the world and remarked, “My own kids never found me that funny.” Luckily, millions of children outside his home did.
Fall Favorites
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| The author of My Senator and Me (Ted Kennedy) may have caused a Splash at BEA, but Queen Latifah was indeed Queen of the Scene. | |
And even though booksellers had not yet read Abadazad—the series’ first two titles released by Hyperion on May 19 with a 100,000-copy first printing each, under a veil of secrecy (really only because the publisher wanted people to see bound books rather than galleys)—the prose/graphics-novel hybrid by J.M. DeMatteis, illus. by Mike Ploog (a protégé of Will Eisner) nonetheless commanded a high profile at the show. The title appeared on badge lanyards, signs, as well as the carpeted stairs of the entrance hall in the convention center. Dave Barry certainly took notice, jokingly admonishing his publisher (also Hyperion) at a dinner, “I never got a stairway.”
 Terry Schmitz of the Children’s Book Shop in Brookline, Mass., Bobbie Combs of Two Lives Publishing and outgoing ABC executive director Anne Irish caught up at the annual meeting. |
On the fiction front, Jen Reynolds of Joseph-Beth Booksellers was excited about Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon (Little, Brown/Tingley, Aug., 100,000 print run). “We can’t wait to sell New Moon,” Reynolds said of the follow-up to Twilight. “I stayed up till 4 a.m. reading it, and every bookseller I know says the same thing. She’s got a huge following.” The 13th and final Lemony Snicket book, The End (HarperCollins, 2.5 million), due out in October got Judith Lafitte of Octavia Books in New Orleans talking, “We’re doing a major event at the store around this. It’s going to be really big.”
A pair of historical novels slated for September were also generating early buzz: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne (Random/Fickling), set during WWII, and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson (Candlewick), which has the Revolutionary War as backdrop.
Two big Christmas novels from bestselling authors will help booksellers deck the halls and fill the shelves: Cornelia Funke’s When Santa Fell to Earth (Scholastic/Chicken House, 120,000) and Ann M. Martin’s On Christmas Eve (Scholastic, 50,000).
Here’s hoping for happy holidays for all.
 Author/illustrator Rob Scotton and novelist Gabrielle Zevin, winners of Borders' Original Voices Award. |
 Booksellers joined Matthew Reinhart (l.) and Robert Sabuda for a Make Your Own Pop-Up workshop. |
 Hungry convention-goers headed to the Chronicle booth on Friday for a free lunch to celebrate the launch of the Hot Dog and Bob series. |
 Scholastic gave out 3,000 bags to promote Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People, which pubs on August 15 with a one-million-copy first printing. |
