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In the News |
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'Brisingr' Breaks Record for Random House Children's Books |
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Paolini, in his first
public reading of Brisingr,
in New York City.
Photo: Lisa Berg. |
Brisingr (Knopf), the long-awaited third volume in Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance cycle, arrived last Friday night, September 20, at midnight. In a record for Random House Children’s Books, the book sold 550,000 copies in its first day.
Random had printed 2.5 million copies of Brisingr, the largest-ever first printing for the division. First-day sales for the title were four times that of Eldest, second in the cycle, which pubbed in August 2005. RHCB president Chip Gibson said the numbers for Brisingr “far surpassed our projections.” More than 2,500 bookstores held midnight parties.
Random House U.K., which published the novel simultaneously, reported first-day sales of more than 45,000 copies, “Brisingr is by far and away the fastest-selling book we’ve ever published,” said children’s sales director Helen Randles. The company also called it the fastest-selling children’s book in Britain this year. |
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More News |
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Children's Book Council Looks Ahead to 2009 |
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Bill Tancer, author of Click (Hyperion), was the
featured speaker at Wednesday's CBC
annual meeting. |
In the 2008 annual meeting of the Children’s Book Council, held on Wednesday, September 24, executive director Robin Adelson called the CBC “dynamic,” noting the increased activity during the previous year is “a sign of things to come.” The CBC has gone “back to basics,” she stated; the staff has been reorganized, and the sales of printed materials have been discontinued, resulting in a profit for the first time in years, of more than $90,000 for the fiscal year that ended in June 2008.
CBC chair Suzanne Murphy reviewed the highlights of the previous year, including the naming of the first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, in conjunction with the Library of Congress; holding two Children’s Book Weeks within six months of each other (to move the official week into May, going forward); reactivating the Every Child a Reader program run by the CBC Foundation, which is chaired by Lori Benton; continuing and expanding initiatives such as the co-sponsoring of bibliographies; overhauling the CBC Web site, and growing the Early Career Committee, aimed at younger publishing staff. |
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News Briefs |
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Summer 2009 Pub Date for 'Hallows' Paperback |
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While British readers have been able to pick up the paperback edition of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows since July, fans in this country will have to wait a bit longer. Scholastic has announced that the U.S. paperback will arrive on July 7, 2009, just a few weeks ahead of the big-screen debut of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which was pushed back to July 17 from a planned release this November.
The U.S. paperback will pub two years after the 2007 hardcover publication of Deathly Hallows, and almost exactly one year after the British paperback release. That edition sold more than 46,000 copies in its first few days on the market, with British supermarket chain Asda nabbing 79% of the initial sales, following a limited-time £1 “Magic Price” promotion, according to the Bookseller. (Asda’s deep discounting drew complaints from booksellers, and the Guardian’s Book Blog contemplated whether this had
diminished the Potter brand.)
Celebrating Harry's 10th Anniversary
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Many Harry fans came
to the read-a-thon
in costume. |
On September 1, 1998, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in the U.S. Since it was the first book of the series, no one was eagerly anticipating its release, as they did for the more recent installments, so there was no fanfare. Now that the book has been out for 10 years and has sold over 120 million copies, Scholastic decided to celebrate the aniversary with an all-day read-a-thon at its headquarters in Manhattan. Hundreds of Harry Potter fans sat in J.K. Rowling’s throne (the one she read from at Radio City) and read, bit by bit, the entire book over the course of the day, as thousands more fans watched via a live webcast from home or school. read more
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Book News |
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More Book News |
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Even More Book News |
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Back to School with Mo |
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Earlier this year, Disney-Hyperion held a contest that invited readers to correctly guess the title of Mo Willems's latest Pigeon picture book, The Pigeon Wants a Puppy. (Until its April 1 pub date, the book was known only as The Pigeon Wants a...). The grand-prize winner, selected from more than 13,000 entries, was Jake Pizza, a third-grader at Highland Elementary in Sylvania, Ohio, who earned his school a visit from the bestselling author last Friday. Here, we present a few photos from the event. |
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Retailing News |
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New Kids' Store Launches in New Jersey |
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Sparkhouse Kids, a toy store in South
Orange, N.J., houses a children's
bookstore, SOMe Book Nook. |
Back in July, when Marietta Barral Zacker heard that Mike Casaren was opening Sparkhouse Kids, a toy store in South Orange, N.J., she met with him and told him about her dream of opening a bookstore in town. He suggested that the two team up and that she open a store within his store, on the condition that the bookstore would be ready to go by mid-September.
Zacker said she was able to pull together the bookstore, SOMe Book Nook, in just two months by reusing plans that she had made more than a decade ago when she first contemplated opening a children’s bookstore, that one in Atlanta. read more
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In Brief |
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Jonas Brothers Go On the Record |
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This November, Disney-Hyperion will publish Burning Up: On Tour with the Jonas Brothers, the only book about the pop band heartthrobs written by the brothers themselves. (For the uninitiated: the platinum-selling band has three albums to its name and has appeared in numerous Disney Channel shows, including this summer's Camp Rock and the reality show Jonas Brothers: Living the Dream.) The book will feature more than 200 previously unseen photos of Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas as well as their behind-the-scenes take on touring, songwriting, recording and growing up in the music industry. Disney has set a 750,000-copy print run for the title. |
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Gathering for Gorillas |
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| Photo: Getty Images. |
On Friday, September 26, Scholastic will host the Kids Gorilla Summit—
a gathering of some 180 elementary and middle-school students focusing on the plight of Africa's endangered mountain gorillas—in its New York City headquarters. The summit, part of a broader campaign for which Scholastic has partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative, the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation and Wildlife Direct, will be broadcast live on Scholastic's Web site. Among the speakers at the summit will be Dr. Paula Kahumbu and Craig Hatkoff, part of the team behind Looking for Miza: The True Story of the Mountain Gorilla Family Who Rescued One of Their Own (Scholastic
Press) as well as the bestseller Owen and Mzee. Here, President Bill Clinton looks on as children from the Scholastic Kids Press Corps from Rwanda and the U.S. sign the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment. |
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Boston 'Sea' Parrrrty |
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Last Friday—International Talk Like a Pirate Day—proved a worrrthy occasion for Jane Yolen's visit to the Watertown Free Public Library in Watertown, Mass. At the library, Yolen promoted her latest book, Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World, illustrated by Christine Joy Pratt (Charlesbridge), which tells stories and legends surrounding 13 female pirates. Yolen, pictured here with a young scallywag, read from the book and signed copies for landlubbers and seafarers alike.
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PeaceJam's Big Goals |
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| Photo: Tyler Golden. |
On September 11, the PeaceJam Foundation, a nonprofit that works to inspire young leaders, held a Global Call to Action Conference in Los Angeles with the goal of helping support one billion acts of kindness and peace over the next decade. Numerous Nobel Peace Laureates participated, including activists Shirin Ebadi and Rigoberta Menchú Tum, José Ramos-Horta (president of East Timor), and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Here, Tutu is pictured with nine members of Team Kids, a community organization from Orange County, Calif. In addition, Puffin recently published PeaceJam: A Billion Simple Acts of Peace by the organization's founders, Ivan Suvanjieff and Dawn Gifford Engle, the official guide for the movement, which profiles
numerous Laureates, including Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama.
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On the Road with Feig |
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Author/director/producer Paul Feig's first book for children, Ignatius MacFarland: Frequenaut! (Little, Brown), stars a boy who discovers a strange world in another frequency. However, on Feig's recent tour, it was electricity that proved more problematic. Following appearances at a school and (seen here) Books & Books in Miami, Feig traveled to Cincinnati, where half the city was without power following storms caused by Hurricane Ike. Still, Feig was able to visit nearby Wyoming Middle School—the only open middle school in the area—in an event arranged by Joseph-Beth Booksellers. Feig also made appearances at Books & Co. in Dayton, as well as school and bookstore events in and around Chicago.
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Q&A |
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Featured Reviews |
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 Swing! |
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 Rufus Butler Seder. Workman, $12.95 ISBN 978-0-7611-5127-2
Admirers of Gallop!, which last year introduced Seder's astonishing Scanimation technology, won't want to miss this sports-themed follow-up. Open the die-cut cover and see a baseball player swing his bat at a ball, then watch as the ball zooms ever-larger to fit the acetate window showcasing all this action. Yes, there's motion on each of these spreads, or the illusion of motion, as hidden engineering triggers codes on the b&w Scanimation images. As in the previous title, colored fonts and multicolored borders offset the severity of the b&w pictures and generate reader participation: "Can you ride a bicycle?/ spin! vrim! vrooom!" On other spreads, child athletes perform soccer drills, run, cartwheel, twirl on ice skates, shoot hoops, swim and lead cheers—it's all
jaw-dropping, even if the novelty technology has yet to find its most imaginative application. Ages 3–up. (Oct.)
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Ghost Medicine |
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 Andrew Smith. Feiwel and Friends, $16.95 (368p) ISBN 978-0-312-37557-7
Smith's first novel, a deceptively simple coming-of-age story, defies expectations via its sublime imagery and its elliptical narrative structure. Troy, 16, and two childhood friends spend the summer following Troy's mother's death wrangling wild horses while drinking homemade wine and sampling chewing tobacco. Each of their brushes with danger—a rattlesnake attack, a predatory mountain lion—they commemorate with tattoos and rituals in homage to the mysterious force they call "ghost medicine." The intrepid Troy—who, in the beginning of the book, reads sections of The Idiot and Jude the Obscure while hiding out in his grandfather's mountain cabin with his horse—grapples with his mother's death through philosophical ruminations: "There might be a
God [but He is, at best, ambivalent to all of the things set in motion in this world." In the periphery is Troy's first love, Luz, for whom Troy contemplates staying forever in the idyllic landscape, rather than leaving for college. While the summer climaxes with jarring violence, the possibility of a true departure never materializes: the outside world is held at bay by the inscrutable questions unveiled in the book's conclusion. Ages 12–up. (Sept.)
Reviews from the September 22 issue of Publishers Weekly.
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see all of this week's reviews
including our web exclusive Annex *
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Bestsellers |
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Picture Books Bestsellers
September 2008 |
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- Big Words for Little People. Jamie Lee Curtis, illus. by Laura Cornell.
HarperCollins/Cotler, $16.99
ISBN 978-0-06-112759-5
- My Dad, John McCain. Meghan McCain, illus. by Dan Andreasen.
Simon & Schuster/Aladdin, $16.99
ISBN 978-1-416-97528-1
- Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope. Nikki Grimes, illus. by Bryan Collier.
Simon & Schuster, $16.99
ISBN 978-1-416-97144-3
- Gallop! Rufus Butler Seder.
Workman, $12.95
ISBN 978-0-7611-4763-3
- Gingerbread Friends. Jan Brett.
Putnam, $17.99
ISBN 978-0-399-25161-0
see more bestseller lists
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Behind the Bestsellers
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McCain vs. Obama. They're not just fighting it out on the campaign trail—they're also fighting it out on our picture book list. Playing the role of Switzerland is Simon & Schuster, which has a McCain book and an Obama book this season. S&S publicity director Paul Crichton, who found himself setting up book signings at both political conventions, admits, "It's been interesting." And who will get Crichton's vote, come November? Wisely, he was mum on the subject.
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Rights Report |
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Nancy Conescu at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers won an auction for world rights to a photographic picture book detailing the friendship between Maj. Brian Dennis of the U.S. Marines, and his dog Nubs, tentatively titled Nubs: A Journey Home. The book will be written with Newbery Honor author Kirby Larson and picture book author Mary Nethery, who previously collaborated on Two Bobbies. Dennis first met Nubs, a German shepherd/border collie mix, while patrolling an Iraqi border fort; the dog was dubbed Nubs because of his ears, which had been cut off. Dennis nurtured the dog back to health after a near-fatal injury; subsequently, each time Dennis's unit decamped, Nubs chased after the marines—he eventually navigated his way through the desert in
below-freezing temperatures to track down Dennis's team 70 miles away. The six-figure sale was negotiated by Jill Grinberg on behalf of Larson and Andrea Cascardi of Transatlantic Literary, who represented Nethery; both agents co-represented Dennis in the deal. The book will be published in fall 2009. |
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Kate O'Sullivan at Houghton Mifflin acquired world rights to Bats at the Ballgame, the third picture book about bats from bestselling author/illustrator Brian Lies. The book is unagented and is slated for fall 2010.
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People |
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Nadine Topalian, associate publisher of Grosset & Dunlap and Price Stern Sloan, has been promoted to v-p and is now associate publisher of Frederick Warne and Co., in addition to her previous responsibilities. She will report to Francesco Sedita, incoming v-p and publisher of Grosset & Dunlap and PSS. Topalian has been with the company since 1998. |
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Quinlan Lee has joined Adams Literary, which represents children's authors and artists. Lee has been a freelance writer for several children's publishers, including Scholastic, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. She will be working with Tracey and Josh Adams out of their office in Charlotte, N.C. |
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Ron Longe has been named account director at Media Masters Publicity. He was formerly publicity director at Workman and Artisan, and has previously worked in the publicity departments at Abrams, Routledge, St. Martin's, Penguin and HarperCollins. He will be based in the New York City office.
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In the Winners' Circle |
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Patrick Ness has won the 2008 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize for The Knife of Never Letting Go (Walker Books). The shortlisted titles were: Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd, Before I Die by Jenny Downham and Cosmic by Frank Cotrell Boyce. The first book in the Chaos Walking trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go is a teen novel set in a city in which people can hear each other's thoughts. Candlewick published the novel in the U.S. earlier this month. The novel is also up for the Booktrust Teenage Prize, to be announced in November; it is Ness's first book for younger readers, following a novel and collection of short stories for adults.
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Three Booktrust Early Years Awards were awarded: for the Baby Book Award, Is This My Nose? by Georgie Birkett (Red Fox); for the Pre-School Award, The Bog Baby by Jeanne Willis, illustrated by Gwen Millward (Puffin) and the Best Emerging Illustrator prize went to Tim Hopgood for Here Comes Frankie! (Macmillan).
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In the Media |
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From the New York Times: Scholastic will no longer include chapter books based on the Bratz dolls in its school book clubs or fairs.
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And a Wall Street Journal report this week said that the Bratz brand had begun to show its age.
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From the Toronto Star: Is "insert children’s author name here" the next J.K. Rowling? Earlier this summer, reporters were asking that about Stephenie Meyer. Now it’s Christopher Paolini’s turn.
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From MSNBC.com: Tourism to the town of Forks, on the Olympic peninsula in western Washington, has soared, thanks to the Twilight series.
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From the New Yorker: A revisiting of the Babar books, occasioned by a new show at the Morgan Library.
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From the BBC: A court in India rejected a lawsuit filed by Warner Bros. against the makers of a Bollywood film, Hari Puttar, which claimed the title was too similar to Harry Potter.
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From the Times-Picayune: An appreciation of the life of children's literature professor and picture book author Coleen Salley, who died last week.
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From Variety: In My Hands, the Holocaust memoir by Irene Gut Opdyke (see our story), has been made into a one-act play, which opened in New York City this week.
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Did You Miss? |
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From the pages of PW |
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Temple University Press is starting a line of children's books.
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The story behind Danica McKellar's bestselling math books for teens and tweens.
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Capstone has bought the Heinemann-Raintree library reference group.
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Mark Your Calendar |
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Next Friday, October 3, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City will open an exhibition entitled Wall Stories: Children's Wallpaper and Books. The show will explore the relationship between children's literature, popular culture and wallpaper since the 1870s, with papers inspired by Peter Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland and other works. The show will also trace the development of children's books "from instructional to fictional" and the evolution of various interactive elements in books. The show runs through April 5, 2009; additional information is available here.
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New in ShelfTalker |
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This week, Alison gives a guided tour to one of her favorite bookstores, admits her obsession with Project Runway, and reports on her store's Brisingr party. Catch up on her blog posts here.
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Attention! |
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Calling all booksellers and librarians! Want to contribute to Children's Bookshelf? We'd love to hear about galleys you're loving, or books that you're selling or circ'ing especially well. Just click here—we want to hear from you!
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Contact Us |
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Dear Bookshelf Readers,
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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