At Dafina's helm is executive editor Selena James, who moved to Kensington almost two years ago from Pocket Books, where she had spearheaded an inspirational teen publishing program. Drama High, which James describes as "an African-American Sweet Valley High," has five titles in print, with Courtin' Jayd due in September. "This is one of our star series," James says. "It's an episodic series with a multicultural cast. The books move seamlessly from one to the next and readers become very invested in the characters."    

Kidsbooks will stay a separate company with its editorial, product development and sales functions remaining in Kidsbooks' Boston office under the direction of Kidsbooks president Kevin Murphy. IT and accounting will be moved to SoftPlay's Chicago offices. Among the SoftPlay licenses are ones with Fisher-Price, Sesame Workshop, Dora the Explorer and VeggieTales. 

At Feiwel and Friends, even the catalog has its own flavor. Before the first list was launched, Jean Feiwel, senior v-p and publisher, decided she wanted her catalogs to be different, so a paragraph or two written by her accompanies each book, explaining why Feiwel and Friends chose to publish it. According to marketing director Elizabeth Fithian, “This gives a very personal view of children’s publishing and gives sales and accounts a better handle on a title instead of saying, ‘And here’s another book about...’ ” It was in this spirit that the blog was born.

Just about everyone at Feiwel, from editorial assistant Allison Remcheck right up to Feiwel, and authors too, participates in the blog. Feiwel posted from the Bologna Book Fair. Garen Thomas wrote about why he wrote a biography of Barack Obama for young readers. Author Jordan Sonnenblick occasionally lets Dodger the chimp, star of his novel Dodger and Me, write for him. Marketing assistant Ksenia Winnicki wrote candidly about the fact that she was drawn to a particular book, for all the wrong reasons. From her post: “On my first day here at Feiwel and Friends, I found a stack of galleys on my new desk, marked ‘Required Reading.’ I looked through the galleys and I had no problem deciding which one I would read first. I based my decision purely on the title. Zombie Blondes. Then when I saw the cover, I was even more intrigued. I was completely shallow: I judged a book by its cover... and title. And I had no regrets.”   

First stop on the tour: suburban Chicago, for a July 15 performance at Anderson's Bookshop in Downer's Grove; this first show will be simulcast to 40 bookstores across the country, marking the first time Disney has simulcast a live author event. Ellen Scott, manager of the children's department at the Bookworm Omaha in Nebraska, is one of the stores broadcasting the Anderson's event. "We've never done this high-tech kind of thing before," Scott says. "I've heard Eoin Colfer speak several times—it should be pretty fun."

The "Fairies, Fiends, & Flatulence" tour derives from a show of the same name that Colfer performed across Britain in 2006, in conjunction with the release of the fifth Artemis Fowl book. Based on the success of the traveling show, Colfer was then asked to bring the show to London's West End. "It was weird because we were on before a very dark adult play, which had all these barbed-wire curtains—we had to use their sets," the author recalls, joking that people must have thought a lot of money was being pumped into the production. "We're not bringing the barbed-wire curtains to the U.S.," he adds. "It's probably for the best."  

Before chicks played such an active role in her life, Tanen was pursuing a Ph.D. in art history at Columbia when she realized that she would rather paint than study painters. "I began building dioramas inside boxes, creating scenes that I would then paint," she says. But she didn't envision these scenes filled with the birds from the start. "I started putting little iconic Easter chicks in the scenes and began photographing them with a point-and-click camera and making personalized cards for friends." 

But why chicks? "One day I went to the dentist and the receptionist had taped a couple of chicks to her desk. It occurred to me that it looked like they were having a conversation and I thought it was hilarious," Tanen recalls. People who saw her dioramas had a similar reaction. "These chicks got a universally positive response, which I wouldn't have expected in a million years."   

Each book focuses on a particular time of day. For example, five December titles will include one for stroller time (a book that clips on to the stroller), car time (a coloring book with a cardboard lap pad), and mealtime (a new format that includes 12 write-on, wipe-off placemats folded into a book cover, with blister-packed crayons attached).

The books will introduce a family of Playskool characters inspired by toys from the brand’s 80-year history, according to Bryony Bouyer, senior v-p licensing for the Americas, Hasbro Entertainment & Licensing. The characters also will appear on some toys, in marketing materials and on the Playskool Web site. 

There's lots of news from last month’s Licensing Show and beyond: children’s books tied to Dean Koontz’s Trixie, a first license for Meadowbrook Press, a mass market book line for Bob the Builder, a Roald Dahl licensing program, an expansion of the Weekly Reader brand, and the first children’s books from the Save Our Seas Foundation.