» Newsletter Archive
» Sign Up

Trouble viewing this email? Click here.
To ensure our emails reach your inbox, add ChildrensBookshelf@email.publishersweekly.com to your address book.
Click here to learn how.

February 12, 2009

In The News
Book News
Moving On Up
Q&A
In the Media

More News
More Book News
People
Rights Report
Bestsellers

Even More News
In Brief
Obituaries
Featured Reviews
From the Slush Pile

In the News

HarperCollins Closes Bowen Press

On Tuesday, in response to rapidly declining sales and earnings, HarperCollins closed its Collins imprint and cut a rumored 60 positions. As part of the cutbacks, The Bowen Press is closing, and publisher Brenda Bowen has left the company.

The Bowen Press was just getting up to speed—it had released two titles, and was set to officially launch this month. A company spokesperson said that Bowen titles will be released under either the HarperCollins Children’s Books or HarperTeen banner.

read more

More News

CPSIA Enforcement Waived for Post-1985 Books

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has outlined its enforcement policy for the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which took effect on Tuesday, February 10. While consumer products for children 12 and under cannot contain more than 600 parts per million of lead in any accessible part, the Commission said it would “not impose penalties against anyone for making, importing, distributing or selling” a list of specified products, including “an ordinary children’s book printed after 1985.”
The Commission says it will not prosecute makers or sellers of these products even if they are found to contain higher-than-permissible lead levels, as long as they did not knowingly sell unsafe products. These rules, announced last Friday, will remain in effect until the Commission takes further action—such as exempting “ordinary” books entirely.

read more

Even More News

Comic-Con Report: Children’s Comics Poised for Growth

Jeff Kinney (l.) and Mo Willems were
on hand for Kidsday at Comic-Con.

Despite predictions of a down year in other sectors of the economy, publishers and editors of children’s comics and graphic novels at New York Comic-Con were optimistic that their category is poised for growth. Properties aimed at readers 13 years old and under were prominent both on the floor and in the panels and the booths for publishers with strong children’s lines, such as First Second, Top Shelf, Oni Press, and Archie Comics were bustling.

read more

Book News

Scholastic Media Has Big Plans for Clifford

“It only takes a little…to BE BIG!” The motto for Scholastic Media’s new Clifford The Big Red Dog BE BIG! campaign delivers the message at the heart of this initiative: small actions based on Clifford’s Big Ideas—among them sharing, helping others, being responsible, playing fair and working together—can make the world a better place.
The campaign’s Big Ideas philosophy is rooted in the curriculum developed for PBS KIDS’ Clifford The Big Red DogTV series, currently in its ninth season. “The BE BIG! campaign is a natural extension of Clifford brand,” says Daisy Kline, director of marketing and brand management for Scholastic Media. “Our goal was to leverage the Big Ideas more effectively.”

read more

More Book News

‘The Year We Disappeared’ to Appear on National TV

In their young adult memoir, The Year We Disappeared(Bloomsbury, Aug. 2008), Cylin Busby and her father, John Busby, describe in alternating chapters the chain of events that occurred 30 years ago when John, then a police officer on a small-town police force in Falmouth, Mass., was shot in the face, and he and his family were forced into hiding. Since its publication in August, the book has revived interest in the case, for which no arrests were ever made, and has gone back to press for a total of 30,000 copies in print.
This Saturday, February 14, at 10 p.m., CBS News' 48 Hours will air its own investigation of the case. Much of the footage comes from last August, when father and daughter re-visited Cape Cod for the first time since the shooting.

read more

In Brief

Another Presidential Reading Session

President and Mrs. Obama thrilled the children's book community last week by sitting down to read The Moon Over Star aloud to children, and the First Family is at it again. Earlier this week, Michelle Obama made her first official visit to a D.C.-area nonprofit organization, Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Care, which provides social services to local mothers. While there, the First Lady read Bill Martin Jr.’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (Holt), illustrated by Eric Carle. "Do you know how many times I have read this book?" Obama reportedly asked the assembled crowd of toddlers, before opening the pages (she estimated "a million times," not necessarily a stretch for a mother of two).

An Event Fit for a President

As evidenced by the number of book titles included in our recent Lincoln Log, many children’s publishers are commemorating the 200th anniversary of the 16th President’s birth, which occurs today. This past Saturday, Books of Wonder in New York City hosted a number of authors and artists who have created a few of these titles. Here, (l. to r.) are Sam Fink, illustrator of The Gettysburg Address (Welcome Books, 2007); Staton Rabin, author of Mr. Lincoln’s Boys (Viking, 2008); Wendell Minor, who illustrated Abraham Lincoln Comes Home (Holt, 2008); Brandy Rabin, who, dressed as Lincoln, interviewed his sister, Staton; Books of Wonder owner Peter Glassman; Dianne Hess, executive editor of Scholastic Press; and Barbara McClintock, illustrator of Our Abe Lincoln (Scholastic/Blue Sky).

Sterling Gets in the Studio

Sterling Publishing has opened an in-house recording studio, which will serve to produce audio and video interviews, podcasts and more featuring the house’s authors and illustrators. The recordings, set to begin this month, will then be made available on Sterling’s Web site. Here, from Sterling’s editorial department, are (l. to r.) Bill Luckey, Robert Agis, Meredith Wasinger and Susan Schader. (Their t-shirts display a departmental in-joke and slogan, "Unicorns Sell"—words of wisdom from Sterling’s editorial director, Frances Gilbert.)

Q&A

K.L. Going

Bookshelf spoke with K.L. Going about her new novel, King of the Screwups (Harcourt, Apr.).

How did you, a novelist, come to author the how-to book Writing and Selling the Young Adult Novel?

Alice Pope [an editor at Writer’s Digest Books] approached me about writing it because I do happen to have a unique array of experience. I worked for Curtis Brown, Ltd., for five years and was just getting to the point of taking on my own clients when I was launched into being an author myself. Then after I left Curtis Brown, I worked part-time managing an independent bookstore, Merritt Books in Cold Spring, N.Y., which, sadly, has since closed.
read more

Featured Reviews

The Cuckoo’s Haiku and Other Birding Poems

Michael J. Rosen, illus. by Stan Fellows. Candlewick, $17.99 (64p) ISBN 978-0-7636-3049-2
A rare gift for young and old alike, this exquisite book about birds combines delicate verses and stunning watercolors that celebrate the natural world. Designed as if it were a birder’s notebook, the book provides an intriguing haiku for each bird, dazzling paintings of the species in their habitats, as well as notes about their behaviors and traits. The double-page spread about American goldfinches shows them perched on a thistle feeder, "above gold jon-quils/ feeding finches stacked like coins/ April’s alchemy." (A handwritten note adds, "funny—their song is ‘potato-chips, potato-chips.’ ") The poems are arranged by seasons, and Rosen’s words conjure dramatic images—in winter the dark-eyed juncos are "phased like tilted moons/ half shadow, half reflection" while the blue jay is "December’s bugler/ jay! jay! jay! your one carol." Fellows revels in the iridescent sheen of a blackbird or a field of summer wildflowers as he accurately yet expressively varies the point of view, settings and design elements for each page turn. Text and images, like a well-rehearsed duet, balance and echo each other’s beauty. Ages 6–10. (Mar.)

Anything but Typical

Nora Raleigh Baskin. Simon & Schuster, $15.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-4169-9378-3
Baskin (All We Know of Love) steps into the mind of an autistic boy who, while struggling to deal with the "neuro-typical" world, finds his voice through his writing ability. Though Jason initially seemed a prodigy, by third grade he had fallen behind academically, and his parents reluctantly had him tested ("A year later the only letters anybody cared about were ASD, NLD, and maybe ADD or ADHD, which I think my mom would have liked better. BLNT. Better luck next time"). Now in sixth grade, Jason still has behavioral difficulties, but is passionate about his writing and actively posts stories in an online forum. There he strikes up a friendship with (and develops a crush on) a fellow writer, though he becomes distraught when he discovers they will both be attending the same writing conference. The first-person narration gives dramatic voice to Jason’s inner thoughts about his family and his own insecurities, even as he withholds details (usually about incidents at school) from readers. Jason’s powerful and perceptive viewpoint should readily captivate readers and open eyes. Ages 10–14. (Mar.)
Reviews from the February 9 issue of Publishers Weekly.

see all of this week's reviews
including our web exclusive Annex *

Bestsellers

Fiction Bestsellers
February 2009

The Graveyard Book. Neil Gaiman.
HarperCollins, $17.99
ISBN 978-0-06-053092-1

Scat. Carl Hiaasen. Knopf, $16.99
ISBN 978-0375-83486-8

The Tale of Despereaux. Kate DiCamillo.
Candlewick, paper $7.99
ISBN 978-0-7636-2529-0

Envy. Anna Godbersen.
HarperCollins, $17.99
ISBN 978-0-06-134572-2

The Book Thief. Markus Zusak.
Knopf, paper $11.99
ISBN 978-0-375-84220-7

see full list
see more bestseller lists

Moving On Up

It’s not unusual for rodent characters to make it big in the world of children’s books. (Look at Stuart Little, for instance.) Currently, a humble hamster named Humphrey is riding his yellow hamster ball to popularity as star of a series of books by Betty G. Birney. A hamster’s-eye-view chronicle of the school year during which Humphrey leaves Pet-O-Rama for a new home as the pet in Room 26 of Longfellow School, the Putnam series kicked off in 2004 with The World According to Humphrey, and continues this month with volume #5, Adventure According to Humphrey. To date, the Humphrey books have more than 400,000 copies in print.
read more

People

Michelle Bayuk has joined Albert Whitman and Co. as director of marketing, having relocated from New York to Chicago. She had been marketing director for the Children’s Book Council, and before that she was with Millbrook Press and Scholastic.

Marina Cambareri has joined Kingfisher as marketing manager. She previously held marketing positions at Lee & Low, Holiday House and the Children’s Book Council.

Obituaries

Beth Krush

Illustrator Beth Krush died on February 2, at the age of 90. She and her husband Joseph collaborated on many works for children, and are perhaps best known for their drawings for the American editions of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers series, published in this country from 1953 to 1971. Krush also provided the artwork for The Shoe Bird, Eudora Welty’s only book for children. For a longer obituary, click here.

Rights Report

The Fox 2000/Walden Media film version of Beverly Cleary’s classic novel Beezus and Ramona is moving along. According to Variety, Selena Gomez (Wizards of Waverly Place) has been cast as Beezus, and Joey King (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody) will play Ramona. A release date is set for March 19, 2010.

The CW has picked up a pilot based on L.J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries series. The books, which were originally published in 1993, revolve around a girl who is torn between two vampire brothers, both battling for her soul. Variety reports that Kevin Williamson (Scream; I Know What You Did Last Summer; Dawson’s Creek) will write the screenplay and serve as one of the executive producers.

In the Media

From the New York Times: A consumer watchdog group has accused Scholastic Book Clubs of pushing non-book items in its ubiquitous classroom catalogues.
read more

From School Library Journal: An appeals court has ruled that Vamos a Cuba, a controversial book that paints a rosy picture of life in communist Cuba, can be removed from Miami-Dade County school libraries.
read more

From Reuters: An interview with novelist Betsy Byars.
read more

New in ShelfTalker

Alison visited Comic-Con last weekend, and provides an amusing rendition of her day there. She also asks for suggestions of books that might help a loved one deal with grief, and solicits the last round of entries for her Name a Bookish Breakfast Cereal contest.

read more

Contact Us

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

Click here to read Tales from the Slush Pile from the beginning