Franceschelli will head Handprint from Brooklyn, which is just one benefit that Bill Boedeker, children's publishing director at Chronicle, sees in the new relationship. "It's great to have Christopher in New York as [a set of] eyes and ears working for us," he says. "Having Christopher increases our bandwidth." Boedeker points to Franceschelli's industry experience and contacts as additional advantages.

Franceschelli also sees multiple benefits in Handprint becoming a Chronicle imprint. "Over time it's become clear that it's hardly easy to be a completely independent small publisher," he says. "You want to be able to say to an author or artist, 'We're going to market your books every bit that they deserve.' I felt that someone like Chronicle is in a much better position than I am."    

Debra Dorfman.

Scholastic trade president Ellie Berger said Dorfman is "one of the industry's most savvy publishers of commercial and accessible books for children." Dorfman, who will report to Berger but also work closely with Scholastic v-p and group publisher Suzanne Murphy, said the move was like a return home, since she began her career at Scholastic and spent 12 years at the company. —Jim Milliot   

David Fickling and Philip Pullman, at the launch party for The DFC. Photo: Dominic Turner.

Compared with the rest of Europe, the U.K. has little to show in either comics or graphic novels. As PW reported earlier this year, Fickling plans to change that, with a weekly comic that will initially be delivered to subscribers only. With a rolling program of stories and strips which will last different lengths of time thus giving space for new ones to come on board, The DFC will include around seven stories in each issue. The names of the contributors, which have now been revealed, include Philip Pullman, Chris Riddell, Adam Brockbank and John Aggs, among others.

Many would-be contributors and their agents attended the launch party on May 15 at the British Film Institute, at which contributing authors and illustrators, agents, booksellers and friends toasted the two-week-hence arrival of the first edition of The DFC’s arrival at subscribers’ homes. The party included comic animation workshops, a session for children on storytelling by Philip Pullman, and an appearance by Malorie Blackman, who stepped in for an unwell Jacqueline Wilson.

A limited-edition teaser was available for viewing at the launch, showing some of the initial stories, including a weekly strip called “The Adventures of John Blake” by Philip Pullman. Pullman, who is passionate about The DFC, remembers the excitement of receiving a weekly comic as a child. “Comics have all the pleasure of the cinema with all the advantages of a book,” he told PW. “I’m convinced that a new generation of children will happily wait for the next episode. As the comic will arrive each week addressed straight to the child, it will be irresistible.”  

"It was always my goal to be a writer, and I had been writing fiction for adults for a while," says Stewart, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. "I hadn't been long thinking of being a children's book writer, but it was always a possibility. I figured that when my own children were old enough to read, I'd write stories for them." 

It turns out Stewart is a bit ahead of schedule, as his two sons are six and three, not quite able to tackle Dad's books on their own. "I kept getting these slightly preposterous ideas that didn't fit anywhere else," Stewart recalls of beginning The Mysterious Benedict Society. "I thought when I pieced them together they might make a humorous adventure novel for children, filled with riddles and puzzles and breakneck action—the kind of story I loved when I was 10 or 11."   

Evans was a nurse at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital in 1959 when she met the painter Nell Blaine, who was undergoing treatment for polio. "I was going to art school at night," Evans recalls, "and Nell offered me the job of an assistant to help rehabilitate her and to travel and study." For six years they visited museums and galleries, traveling from New York to London, Paris, Lisbon and Madrid, and everywhere Evans pushed the wheelchair, Nell talked about art. Evans then studied painting and drawing in New York at the Art Students League, the New School, the Riverside Museum and won a fellowship to Yaddo in Saratoga Springs.

An opportunity to work at Cricket magazine in the mid-1970's changed her career focus. "I found myself entering a whole new world and discovered a new passion in life," Evans says. Working with Trina Schart Hyman, who was then Cricket's art director, Evans learned the mechanics of matching art to story and became familiar with the work of Maurice Sendak, Hilary Knight, Arnold Lobel, Richard Egielski and others. In 1978 she met a young art student from the Rhode Island School of Design named David Wiesner who had been commissioned to do a cover for Cricket. Two years later, when she launched Dilys Evans Fine Illustration, an agency representing children's book illustrators in New York City, Wiesner was one of the first artists to join her portfolio; he designed her business logo, and Evans has worked with him on each of his projects since the agency was founded.    

Although some grads at the high school or college level might prefer a check to accompany their diploma, Alison Morris, children’s book buyer at Wellesley Booksmith in Wellesley, Mass. (and PW blogger), says that picture books definitely have gift appeal. "I do think that people like to give a nice, classic gift book," she says, acknowledging that nostalgia may play a role. Like many bookstores, Wellesley Booksmith sets up a display each spring, containing a mix of adult and children’s titles (both in gift and regular editions) that they believe make good gifts. “One benefit to a picture book is that it doesn’t feel like a burdensome book,” she says. “They don’t have to read how to find a job or how to make it in the marketplace.”