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In the News |
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NBA Finalists Announced |
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The finalists for the 2008 National Book Award in Young People's Literature were announced on Wednesday. The nominees are: Laurie Halse Anderson for Chains (S&S), Kathi Appelt for The Underneath (Atheneum), Judy Blundell for What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic), E. Lockhart for The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion) and Tim Tharp for The Spectacular Now (Knopf). Anderson was previously a finalist in 1999 for her novel Speak. This year's judges were Daniel Handler (chair), Holly Black, Angela Johnson, Carolyn Mackler and Cynthia Voigt. The winner will be announced on November 19 at the National Book Awards in New York City.
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More News |
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All Ears on 'Paper Towns' |
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When John Green’s third YA novel, Paper Towns (Dutton), hits shelves this week, it will be attended by the type of fanfare expected to accompany a much-anticipated book from an award-winning author, including a national tour, an extensive online promotion and a mobile text messaging campaign. But as part of the launch, audiobook fans can expect something groundbreaking: Paper Towns will be released simultaneously with the print book in a range of different audio formats. “This is the first time we’ve ever done a multi-format, multi-channel simultaneous release with the book,” says Tim Ditlow, v-p of children’s publishing at Brilliance Audio. The various versions (a record number for a new
release) include CD and MP3-CD; Playaway; and Audible and OverDrive downloadable options for the retail and library markets. For Ditlow, this experiment has been a case of “the planets aligning. I have all these resources—a plethora of platforms—at my fingertips and I can get listeners a book where they live and breathe.” |
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Even More News |
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Cavendish to Launch Line of Classics |
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Beginning next March, Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books will publish a line of formerly out-of-print picture books and novels under the name Marshall Cavendish Classics. The debut list will consist of two picture books—Genghis Khan by Demi and Little Sister and the Month Brothers by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, illustrated by Margot Tomes—as well as the YA novel If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever? by M.E. Kerr. “Even though we have a commitment to bringing new talent into the field of children’s books,” says Marshall Cavendish publisher Margery Cuyler, “it’s also important for children to read the literature of the past.” |
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Book News |
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More Book News |
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Portrait of an Artist by a Like-Minded Artist |
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When she was young, Deborah Kogan Ray read Millions of Cats, Wanda Gág’s 1929 Newbery Honor Book, as well as her other picture books, and subsequently shared them with her own children. Several years ago, she came across excerpts from Gág’s diaries and immediately recognized a kindred spirit. That inspired Ray to research Gág’s life and create a picture-book biography, Wanda Gág: The Girl Who Lived to Draw, out this month from Viking.
“As a biographer, I look for something about a person that resonates with me, which happened when I read Wanda’s diaries,” says Ray, an author and illustrator who has created more than 60 books for children. After Gág’s artist father died in 1908, the 15-year-old used her artistic talents to support her ailing mother and six younger siblings. She went on to win a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York and to become an accomplished painter, before breaking into children’s books with Millions of Cats. “In her diary entries, her emotions are crystal clear,” says Ray. “I found her writing very exciting and I wanted to find out more about her.” |
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Even More Book News |
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A New Stage for Whoopi Goldberg |
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| Whoopi Goldberg. |
Whoopi Goldberg steps into a new role next week, when Disney’s Jump at the Sun imprint publishes the debut novel in her first chapter-book series, Sugar Plum Ballerinas. Written with Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Maryn Roos, the series introduces six girls from diverse backgrounds who attend a ballet school in Harlem. A reluctant dancer with a ballet-crazy mother steals the spotlight in the inaugural tale, Plum Fantastic, which lands with a combined hardcover and paperback first printing of 100,000 copies.
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On the Scene |
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In Brief |
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In the 'Mood' for Fun |
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Candlewick Press has announced the winners in a contest tied in to this year's Judy Moody Day celebrations, now in their third year. The publisher broadened the festivities this year, providing event kits and inviting bookstores, libraries, schools and community organizations to enter the contest, with a visit from Judy Moody author Megan McDonald as a grand prize. McDonald will visit The King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City on November 7, and events with the Laguna Beach Public Library in Laguna Beach, Calif., and Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, N.C., will be held as well. Here, kids at The King's English show their support for siblings Judy and Stink. |
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Sending Samantha On |
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American Girl is retiring one of its original characters, Samantha Parkington, removing the doll's product collection from the company's catalogue. "Moving Samantha to the American Girl Archives allows us to preserve her honored place in American Girl's history and make it possible for us to introduce new characters and product offerings for our customers to enjoy," said American Girl president Ellen Brothers in a statement. The six books about Samantha, an orphan living with relatives in New York in 1904, will continue to be sold. The character was introduced in 1986; fans can share stories and memories of Samantha on a Web page American Girl has created. |
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Voting for a Cause |
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To promote America: The Making of a Nation (Sept.), a look at major moments in U.S. history by Charlie Samuels, Little, Brown has teamed up with nonprofit First Book for a promotion that gives kids a chance to vote this election season. On a dedicated Web site, visitors can cast votes in 10 categories that range from "Who would you pick as President?" to "Greatest vacation destination." For each submitted set of votes, Little, Brown will donate a new children's book to First Book. |
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Bruce Hale on Hammett's Trail |
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Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is one of several featured titles in the NEA's ongoing Big Read initiative, which invites cities and communities nationwide to read and discuss a selected book. As a result, children's author Bruce Hale has seen increased interest in his hardboiled book for middle-graders, The Malted Falcon (Harcourt, 2003), part of his Chet Gecko series. Hale recently visited schools, libraries and other locations for events in Churchill County, Nev., and Maricopa County, Ariz. Here, Hale and Churchill County library director Barbara Mathews pose with detective Sam Spade (and a couple of falcons) at a presentation Hale gave at the Churchill County Museum and Archives in Fallon, Nev. Photo:
Sue
Sevon.
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Q&A |
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People |
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Mary Albi has joined Egmont USA as director of sales and marketing, reporting to Douglas Pocock, executive v-p. Most recently, she was marketing director at HarperCollins Children's Books, and previously worked at Rizzoli, Hyperion, Phaidon Press and Stewart, Tabori & Chang. |
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Karen Frangipane has been hired as director of marketing at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, reporting to Maggie Richards, v-p, sales and marketing. She was associate director of trade marketing at Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, and had previously worked at Bookspan, HarperCollins and Disney.
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Wendy Lefkon has been promoted to v-p and editorial director, Disney Global Book Group. She will oversee editorial development for all Disney franchises for the global books business, and continues to report to Jonathan Yaged, v-p and U.S. publisher. |
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Elizabeth Bewley has joined the Poppy imprint at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. She had been a freelance editor for ReganBooks at HarperCollins in Los Angeles.
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Featured Reviews |
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Into the Volcano |
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 Don Wood. Scholastic/Blue Sky, $18.99 (176p) ISBN 978-0-439-72671-9
Wood's (The Napping House) first foray into graphic novels is a visual stunner. Sumo and Duffy Pugg are called out of class by their father, who insists they immediately go off with their long-lost, oddly named cousin, Mr. Come-and-Go, to visit their (also unknown to them) Aunt Lulu on Kocalaha, the island where their absent mother was born. Blunt, bald and broad as a refrigerator, Come-and-Go does not inspire confidence in Sumo, the less adventurous of the brothers, and his reluctance looks reasonable when Lulu hustles them off on a mysterious expedition, which involves entering Kocalaha's volcano as it is erupting. Wood's full-color digital illustrations vividly depict fabulous scenery—lava flows, ocean swells, lush foliage—and the muscularity of the action will
impress thrill-seeking readers. The boys repeatedly face peril, including a terrifying and surreal episode in which deathly specters surround Sumo while he tries to rescue Duffy. The plot does not answer all the questions it raises: the boys' trip is eventually explained, but not why their father has sanctioned it. The audience will likely be too busy living vicariously through Sumo and Duffy's ultimately excellent adventure to mind. Ages 7–up. (Oct.)
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 Vibes |
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 Amy Kathleen Ryan. Houghton Mifflin, $16 (256p) ISBN 978-0-618-99530-1
Wearing skirts she's made out of Mylar balloons or potato sacks, shirts she's sewed out of torn umbrellas or her absentee dad's abandoned clothing, narrator Kristi marches to her alternative high school, prepared to take on a world that hates her—she's pretty sure of it, given that she can read minds. Ryan, far outstripping the level of plotting and characterizations in her debut, Shadow Falls, turns in an exceptional second novel. Although Kristi is hostile to her mother, classmates and teachers, and genuinely nasty to total strangers, she makes herself vulnerable to readers. She is also consistently funny in a cynical, teenage way: "I live in a suburb of a suburb. I'm surrounded by the offspring of professional people who attend parent-teacher meetings and volunteer on
Election Day." Events cast doubt on Kristi's mind-reading skills, but given the author's solid portraiture, readers will nevertheless want to trust Kristi, even before she learns to trust herself. Ryan works in both a romance and a divorce, and reverses Kristi's instinctive satirizing of people who care about her—and does it all with an abundance of wit. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)
Reviews from the October 13 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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Fiction Bestsellers
October 2008 |
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- Inkdeath. Cornelia Funke.
Scholastic/Chicken House, $24.99
ISBN 978-0-439-86628-6
- The Maze of Bones. Rick Riordan.
Scholastic, $12.99
ISBN 978-0-545-060394
- The Graveyard Book. Neil Gaiman.
HarperCollins, $17.99
ISBN 978-0-06-053092-1
- The Book Thief. Markus Zusak.
Knopf, paper $11.99
ISBN 978-0-375-84220-7
- The Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins.
Scholastic, $17.99
ISBN 978-0-439-02348-1
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On the Radar |
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Cornelia Funke 'Inks' Her Final Chapter |
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This month sees the release of Inkdeath (Scholastic/Chicken House), the third and final book in Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart trilogy, which began in 2003 with a book of the same name. Inkheart tells the story of Meggie and her father, who has the ability to bring fictional characters into the real world when he reads from a book. The second book in the trilogy, Inkspell, followed in 2005.
Looking back, Funke says it feels “incredibly satisfying” to bring her series to a close. “Everything that started to grow in the first and second book comes into full bloom, and there’s so much hope in the third. Everything comes to a good ending, and I always wanted that to happen.”
Funke says that when she wrote Inkheart, she had no idea that it would ultimately lead into two additional books. But during a third draft of that first title, she began to feel that there were nagging questions she wanted answers to, such as the fates of certain characters. “I thought, ‘There are so many trilogies out there, Cornelia, don’t do that. That’s really embarrassing,’ ” she recalls. But she gave herself two weeks to come up with what she calls “a reasonable plot” for a second book, and “Inkspell flooded onto the paper.”
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Book Bytes |
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A Book (and Contest) for 'Wimpy' Fans |
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Calling all cartoonists! Last week, the latest addition to Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Do-It-Yourself Book, went on sale with a 500,000-copy first printing. The fill-in-the-blank journal-style book consists of activities and questions for kids (“Have you ever been bitten by an animal? Have you ever been bitten by person?”), as well as blank pages for kids to write and draw on, like the young hero of Kinney’s series, Greg Heffley.
“It ends up being a really weird book,” acknowledges Kinney of the book’s unusual format, with a 16-page color comics insert separating the activity section and lined blank pages. “We’d conceived of it as a blank journal originally, and then I had the horrifying thought of kids seeing that there was a new Wimpy Kid book out and opening it up and finding blank pages. I wanted to create a My Book About Me [by Dr. Seuss] for an older generation. It’s really like a time capsule of the kid’s life.”
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Rights Report |
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The Cartoon Network has bought rights to The Tiger's Apprentice by Lawrence Yep, and will turn it into a live-action/CGI movie; it's in pre-production for a 2010 premiere. |
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Joe Monti at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has bought Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated author Paolo Bacigalupi's debut YA novel Ship Breaker, in a two-book deal for world English rights. The story is set on the Gulf Coast of the future, in a post-oil, environmentally precarious world; the hero is forced to flee from his murderous father and is thrust into a high-stakes adventure. Publication of Ship Breaker is set for spring 2010. Martha Millard of the Martha Millard Literary Agency was the agent.
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Joe Monti at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers also bought an illustrated middle-grade novel from Charles de Lint and Charles Vess, an expansion of their 2003 picture book, A Circle of Cats; the new book will bear the same title. Monti will also reprint the original picture book's sequel, Seven Wild Sisters, which will have additional new art. Pub dates are fall 2011 and fall 2012 respectively. Russell Galen at Scovil, Galen, Gosh Literary Agency did the deal.
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In the Media |
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From Slate: A slideshow featuring kids' books about financial ruin.
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From Consumerist: A tongue-in-cheek look at some "poverty lit" titles that may be on the horizon.
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From the BBC: More than 100,000 library books have gone missing in Wales over the last two years, many by bestselling authors like J.K. Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson and others.
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From the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D.: The South Dakota State Historical Press is reissuing The Jumping-Off Place, which won a Newbery Honor in 1930.
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From SLJ Teen: Several publishers are issuing graphic novels based on the classics.
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From the North Shore News in North Vancouver: A conversation with the creator of the new graphic novel Skim.
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New in ShelfTalker |
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Say your house is on fire, and you can only rescue one book. What book would it be? That's the question Alison poses on her blog today; join the discussion and add your comments!
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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,
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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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Bestsellers |
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Behind the Bestsellers
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Because of several of the country's bestselling children's novels are part of an established series, they aren't on this week's bestseller list, but instead will appear on our Series and Tie-ins list later this month. Christopher Paolini's Brisingr, for instance, is the bestselling novel in the country right now, children's or adult. Stephenie Meyer's four Twilight novels are all near the top of most lists. And a third Wimpy Kid title from Jeff Kinney joins his first two surprise mega-hits.
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Cooking Fun: 121 Simple Recipes to Make with Kids by Rae Grant
(St. Martin’s Griffin, Sept.)
Crumbs: Bakeshop in a Box
by Mia Bauer (DK, Sept.)
