Children's Bookshelf
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In the News |
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More News |
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Q&A with Robin Adelson |
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In early September, Robin Adelson joined the Children's Book Council as executive director, succeeding Paula Quint, who stepped down in June after 40 years with the organization. We caught up with Adelson after two weeks on the job.
What direction do you want to take the CBC?
Onward and upward. My mandate, upon accepting the position of executive director, was broadly stated as revitalizing the CBC. While it has a rich history and a solid foundation, I believe that the CBC is ready for and in need of change.
I'd like to take the CBC to a place where we are focused, responsive and prolific. In practical terms, this means that we are reviewing each and every program and project with a view toward assessing whether it ought to be maintained as is, maintained but amended, or terminated.
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Book News |
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National Book Festival Welcomes Authors and Illustrators |
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Washington, D.C. plays host
to the National Book Festival. |
Politics took at least part of last weekend off as nearly 100,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Saturday to celebrate books and reading at the sixth annual National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by First Lady Laura Bush. Among the children's authors talking about their work and signing books throughout the day were Stephenie Meyer, Betsy Lewin, Mark Teague, Judith Viorst, Bryan Collier, Mo Willems and Richard Peck. Meeting and greeting the throngs of fans at such an event proved quite a workout for some, as Andrew Clements signed 850 books and Louis Sachar 400 during their autographing sessions.
A decidedly non-partisan affair, the festival offered booklovers of all ages and affiliations an opportunity to see and hear their favorite authors and illustrators, 70 in all. Literacy campaigns from around the country were highlighted as were the latest endeavors and collections of the Library of Congress.
And it seems a good number of attendees wanted to bring the festival's powerful pro-reading vibe home with them: on-site sales of books, administered by Barnes & Noble, were up 20% over last year.
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More Book News |
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It's a Shore Thing |
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In David Wiesner's new wordless picture book, Flotsam (Clarion, Sept.), a boy on vacation at the beach happens upon an old camera that had been floating in the water. When the camera's film is developed, the boy discovers an underwater world like no other, with Martians riding fish and walking starfish islands. Also on the roll of film is an intriguing photo of a girl holding a photo holding a photo of a boy holding a photo of a boy, and so on, back through time.
For Wiesner, the inspiration for Flotsam came about in a roundabout way, with a melding of two separate thoughts. "I had this idea of a kid walking down the beach finding something extraordinary," he says. "I didn't know what that something was going to be, but I knew it was going to be extraordinary." Then he had another idea about "connecting kids across time and space," and he says the two ideas "started following in two parallel paths."
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In Brief |
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Breaking Records |
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On September 28, more than 300,000 middle-school students in Florida broke the Guinness World Record in the category of Most People Reading Aloud Simultaneously in Multiple Locations while reading Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. The event was staged by the Just Read, Florida! office of the Florida Department of Education; the previous world record was set in 2004 by 155,528 students in schools in the U.K. Seen here, Barry and Pearson read from their book at Disney-MGM Studios during a live public broadcast and Webcast. For more information about the event, click here. |
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A Story on Stage |
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Karen LeFrak, author of Jake the Philharmonic Dog, illustrated by Marcin Baranski (Walker, Aug.), recently read her book to a group of elementary school students on stage at Lincoln Center. The author was accompanied by musicians from the New York Philharmonic, who played a special piece written to accompany her reading. Here, LeFrak reads from Jake, with help from Ted Wiprud, education director of the New York Philharmonic. |
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An Early Anniversary Wish |
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Random House Children's Books has launched a Web site to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. The anniversary takes place in 2007, but the publisher is gearing up for what will be a year-long, multi-tiered celebration. The Web site contains a plethora of Seuss information as well as a playground area, where visitors can play games, print activities and create a story. Click here to enter Seussville.
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Q&A |
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Bookshelf caught up with M.T. Anderson in Nepal, where he was vacationing in Pharping, a village south of Katmandu. We spoke to him about his new novel, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing Traitor to the Nation, Volume One, The Pox Party (Candlewick, Sept.).
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Are you in Nepal to research a new book?
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No, just to see the place. I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being. We timed our visit to take in some of the festivals. We saw one last week where the local people dragged a giant chariot through the streets carrying a living goddess, who is eight years old, and whose feet are not allowed to touch the ground. And I've brought some work, so I can get some writing done.
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In the Winners' Circle |
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The 2006 Guardian Children's Fiction prize has been awarded to Philip Reeve for A Darkling Plain (Scholastic U.K.), the fourth book in Reeve's Hungry Cities Chronicles. |
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The Society of Illustrators have announced the winners of the 2006 The Original Art awards. In the Gold category, Elisha Cooper won for Beach (Orchard). In the Silver category, awards went to Jeanette Winter for Mama: A True Story (Harcourt) and Craig Frazier for Stanley Mows the Lawn (Chronicle). The Founder's Award went to Carin Berger for Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant (Greenwillow), written by Jack Prelutsky. Jerry Pinkney is the winner of the Contemporary Lifetime Achievement Award and Ezra Jack Keats was given the Posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award. All awards will be presented on October 26. The exhibit will run through November 22 at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators in New
York City.
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Featured Reviews |
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 Once Upon a Banana |
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 Jennifer Armstrong, illus. by David Small. S&S/Wiseman, $16.95 (48p) ISBN 0-689-84251-1
Armstrong (Chin Yu Min and the Ginger Cat) and Small (So You Want to Be President?) join forces for this sublimely silly wordless story, which brings to mind a silent short by Laurel and Hardy (who make a cameo appearance). The action gets underway even before the title page, when a street juggler's pet monkey runs off and steals a deli's outdoor stall. Blithely ignoring the sign reading "Please put litter in its place," the monkey tosses the banana peel on the sidewalk, thus triggering a book-long, slapstick-rich chase that covers an entire city center and ensnares a cavalcade of characters, including a passel of dogs, an airborne baby and a banana-packed dump truck. The running joke is that none of the street signs meant to impose order on urban life ("4 way
stop," "Keep off the grass!" "Look both ways") has any effect on damping the mounting chaos, and in the twist ending, the juggler winds up a hero. Small's loose yet precise ink lines and watercolor wash seem ideal for these crowded streets where anarchy abounds. He clearly relishes choreographing the huge, motley cast and effortlessly connects the geography of one spread to another; the pages overflow with enough pratfalls and comic asides to reward many readings. Even the closing endpapers play a role, tracing the chain of events. Ages 4-8. (Nov.)
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Psyche in a Dress |
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 Francesca Lia Block. HarperCollins/Cotler, $15.99 (128p) ISBN 0-06-076372-8
Narrated in luminous free verse, Block's (Weetzie Bat) magically compassionate novel traces a girl's sinuous path through love, into adulthood and eventually into the fullness of her powers as a mother and a woman. The author deftly weaves myth and magic into scenes from contemporary life, viewed through a shimmering prism of the very hip. Block's shape- and name-shifting heroine starts out as Psyche, the passive star of her Zeus-like father's films ("My father had become a bull/ a swan/ a cloud/ a shower/ of gold/ so that he could have sex with other women"). When her brief and star-crossed love affair with tender Eros ends, a mourning Psyche metamorphoses first into Echo, foil for a modern-day Narcissus (a self-absorbed but ultimately wounded film star), and then into Eurydice,
soulmate to an Orpheus whose modern-day incarnation calls to mind Kurt Cobain. As Persephone, the heroine lives through a dark period as consort to the ruler of a modern-day underworld until she finds respite with her mother, Demeter. Block brilliantly integrates aspects of mythology, as when the heroine works for tyrannical Aphrodite (whom she does not know is actually Eros's mother) in a clothing store, and ants help her sort beads into little boxes. Briefly reunited with Eros, Psyche has a daughter, Joy, and later is transformed into a goddess at last. Haunting and heartbreaking, Block's novel once again demonstrates the mythical aspects of mortal lives. Ages 14-up. (Sept.)
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see all of this week's reviews
including our web exclusive Annex *
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Points of Sale |
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People |
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Scholastic has hired Melissa Goldner Bloomfield as publicist for the trade book division. She was formerly a publicist at McGraw Hill. |
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Random House Children's Books has hired Patricia Collins as senior production manager. She was previously at HarperCollins Children's Books. Shasta Jean-Mary has been promoted to associate managing editor, from assistant managing editor; and Allison Wortche has been promoted to assistant editor at Knopf & Crown, from editorial assistant.
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Obituaries |
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Maureen Daly |
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Author Maureen Daly died on September 25 of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. She was 85. Daly had published a number of young adult novels, but she is best known for her classic novel of young love, Seventeenth Summer, published in 1942 when Daly was a teenager in college.
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Movie Alert |
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On October 20, Flicka will be released nationwide, starring Alison Lohman, Tim McGraw and Maria Bello. The movie, based on the 1941 book My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara, is actually a remake of the 1943 film of the same name. One key difference between the book, the first movie and the new remake is that the 2006 film has the story centering around a girl who cares for a horse, while both the book and the first film star a boy and a horse. HarperCollins is getting into the movie action with three tie-in books: Flicka: The Movie Novel by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld, Flicka: Untamed Spirit by Judy Katschke and Flicka: A Friend for Katy by Jennifer Frantz.
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Rights Report |
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Warner Bros. Pictures has bought film rights to Here, There Be Dragons by James A. Owen (S&S), first in The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series. David Goyer and David Heyman (who produced the Harry Potter films) will produce, with Ellen Goldsmith-Vein of Rosen and Gotham Group executive producing, and Lindsay Williams at Gotham as co-producer.
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Did You Miss? |
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From the pages of PW |
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DK gives reference a new look—again. |
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From PW Daily: Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Terrell Owens will publish his first picture book this November, called Little T Learns to Share. read more
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In the Media |
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A portion of Charles Frazier's new novel, Thirteen Moons, will
be translated into Cherokee, and the author hopes this will pave the way for children's books and others to be similarly translated, thus helping to keep the language alive. |
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School Library Journal interviews Jack Prelutsky on the occasion of his appointment as the first children's poet laureate. |
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From The Age in Australia: Pop star Kylie Minogue has released her first picture book, The Showgirl Princess; the story also looks at the phenomenon of celebrity publishing.
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On-Sale Calendar |
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Contact Us |
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Dear Bookshelf Readers,
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Hope you enjoyed this week's issue. We'd
love to hear from you with any comments and suggestions—drop us a note here.
—The Editors
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